Encumbrance & Treasure

I've talked about Encumbrance before. Basically I prefer a slot-based system which is fairly common among the OSR. What I'm thinking about now is how treasure is designated in an adventure. Typically a module (at least the ones I've run recently) will list off the how many coins of what type, like this bit from Lost Mines of Phandelvin.

My problem with this is the module gives boxed text all over the place. Why not here? It's not like the players are going to count out the cp and sp, at least not until a short or long rest, they won't know what the potions are, and it doesn't list how much it weighs in a system that counts every lbs. This is a place for boxed text. 

For my example 1 ENC = 1 Slot. 

In addition to the stolen provisions, Klarg has a wood chest with metal binding (5 ENC capacity, 1 ENC when empty, takes two hands to carry) with two potions (.5 ENC) and a jade statute of a frog (.5 ENC) small enough to fit into a pocket or pouch. The chest is also full of copper and silver coins (3.5 ENC).

Potions are both potions of healing. Jade statuette is worth 40gp. 600 cp (2 ENC), 110 sp (1.5 ENC).

The numbers are made up for the example, a GM should determine how much coins weight in bunches of ten or a hundred. When the players take a break and have time to roughly count the treasure, they can learn the amounts of the coins (they may just decide to leave the copper behind, or separate out coins so that they can dump the copper in a pinch while knowing the gold or gems are safe). Also notice that the chest takes two hands, so now it's a useful tool but all that ENC is gonna bog someone down.

Anyway, I'm still organizing my thoughts but it seems like it should work.

D&D and Comics connection

So I've been running T2 White Plume Mountain. Everyone has commented about Blackrazor being a hack of Stormbringer. What I've never seen is anyone commenting on the other two magic items Whelm the hammer and Wave the Trident. 

I didn't read super-hero comics back in the day so it totally went past me. A dwarf can throw it and have it return, or a user can smash the ground with it and stun enemies in a certain radius. Whelm is basically Thor's hammer Mjölnir without the only the worthy can use it aspect.

And Wave the trident seems to have all the powers of Aquaman bundled into a weapon.

Nothing really big, just odd that I've never heard anyone talk about this before.

5Es Tiers of Play

 I liked the idea of Tiers of play in theory, but my game just went to the 2nd tier and I didn't really like the way 5E handled it. I've felt the game gets more and more complicated as the players go up and it becomes less and less fun. Feels more and more video-gamey, and becomes more and more of an exercise in Min/Maxing (for two of my players at least). 

For example I have one player who picked the Polearm Master Feat instead of a Attribute bump at 6th level. So now he gets 2 attacks (for 5th level fighter) an occasional 3rd attack (Action Surge once per shor rest) and the Polearm Master feat allows one more bonus attack with the butt of the weapon (1d4). So he's making 4 attacks some rounds. That's just ridiculous. 

Unless I'm misreading something it's in the 2014 Players handbook which is where I drew the line in the sand about which rules counted so It's legal by my own rules. We'll see how it plays out, maybe he'll need all those attacks as we meander through Tier 2 play but it really makes the PC into a super-hero and I don't like it. 

I've always felt D&D combat was a bit like rock-em sock-em robots with both opponents standing still and punching each other. By turning shields into an AC boost and dodging being mostly in the fantasy of Hit Points there really isn't much tactics to the fighting. Even the tactics found in the Battlemaster Martial Archetype are pretty bland (trip and do extra damage, or scare and do extra damage, and oh my god if the enemy misses you the Repoist gives you a bonus attack making that possibly 7 in one round (i'm not giving a bonus ontop of the bonus for that one).

5E seems overly complicated and gets worse and worse for DMs as you progress. The game promotes the Min/Maxing I've always disliked. I'll continue going (Storm King's Thunder now) and see if it grows on me over time, and see how the players feel about it, but now I'm dreaming of RuneQuest 2 which we thought was complicated at the time but which is actually a pretty clean system.

If I Ran Phandelin Over Again

With a new group, that is. I've run them through a blend of Lost Mine of Phandelver with the Dragon of Icespire Peak from the start (both were pretty cheap on Roll20). I mostly like the adventures and combining the adventures gives you a lot of choices and allows you to toss the mediocre bits. 

Foreshadowing

Since the adventure ends with the players at 5th level you then have a few options for the players to choose from. I'd like to better setup the options ahead of time. The three likely options:

1. Option 1 is to go into Phandelver and Below: the Shattered Obelix. Shattered Obelix contains the Lost Mines of Phandelver so it's an easy transfer.
2. Option 2 is to continue into Beyond the Dragon of Icespire Peak extra Adventures. The extra adventures were designed to continue on from Dragon of Icespire Peak so it should be an easy transition as well.
3. Option 3 is to continue into Storm King's Thunder. The module has lots of notes on how to continue on from Lost Mines of Phandelver including skipping the first chapter.

Backstory - I'd give the players more of a backstory. When set up from the Starter Set you don't get much backstory. I noticed a lot more going into Storm King's Thunder so I'd use that to help link the two (if things go that way). Backstory that links one or two players with the Harpers (the chosen faction because they appear in the movie and so have some recognizability right away) or the Lord's Alliance or have a player that grew up on Butterskull ranch or in that area. 

Initiating Mission - Caravan guards is to bland. The PCs are doing that, but actually the Harpers in the party are going to Phandelin to figure out why the Harper representative isn't reporting back (Sister Garaele is missing from Lost Mines, why?). Any Lord's Alliance members are sent to look for what happened to Iarno Albrek. 

Re-arranging, combining, and dumping Missions - I hate fetch-quests and both adventures are filled with them which has them journeying here and there and back again. It feels very video-gamey and I'd try to get away from that by bundling them into a few mini-campaigns. This means I don't need rationals for 30 mini-adventures but only for 3 or so which makes them feel more important. Also the order of adventures is odd as the mission to save their friend gets put aside for a bunch of level-up fetch-quests. There should be a ticking clock to save their buddy, then after that there is time. The re-arranged sequences follow:

Goblin Troubles

So we start with Gwyn, the Rockseeker brothers scholar friend that appears in Phandelver and Below traveling with the party. I want her introduced early in case they segway into that adventure. She's also a useful resource as a scholar to give the PCs info. The order goes:

1. Goblin Arrows
2. Cragmaw Hideout
3. Cragmaw Castle

So the first two run as normal. Gwyn starts with the group, she can take the wagon to town and get reinforcements. If the party is beat up dealing with the Cragmaw Hideout she could have returned with help, and perhaps a healing potion or two, otherwise they are free to continue to Cragmaw Castle uninterupted. 

Changes The only real changes to the first two adventures would be the addition of dead Goblins hung near the entrance of Cragmaw Hideout. These Goblins have strange tattoos (the mark I'm giving to all the Sawplee Goblins from Phandelver and Below). Helping to set them up a bit, early on. The elongated heads are silly. 

I'd also include a captive Sawplee Goblin (if it survives the onslought through the Hideout, which is no sure thing) that can provide guidance to Cragmaw Castle and basically answer any questions the party has about Goblins or Orcs. At this point problems between Sawplee and Cragma Goblins should look mostly like tribal conflict. This Goblin would be a bit like Golum, not really trustworthy but in the end he doesn't try to deceive them. He will not help in a fight, but won't double-cross or anything either. 

I'm not one for a lot of funny voices but this guy gives the opportunity for lots of that. He's not a big fan of the Sawplee Goblins (he was drafted) and hates the Cragmaw Goblins. He also really hate the Orcs. If set free he'll head to Butterskull Ranch where he might be met later. If he's brought to town it's likely he'll be hung as a bandit and marauder.

More Changes Spider is a weak villian so he's gonna be a minion of Glasstaff. 

Phandelin

The time pressure is off. The party are heroes of the town.

4. Phandelin & Redbrand Hideout

This part should play out mostly as written. There are a few changes to the town.

New Faction Dwarven Ultra Patriots: The Miners Exchange is filled with Dwarf miners and they have a mine directly below the exchange. That mine is the economic heart of the town. The non-Dwarfs in town like the Dwarf coin but the Dwarves don't spend much which is a problem. Human miners mine the streams and rivers and sell their gold at the Exchange but don't think the Dwarves give a very good rate of exchange. So there is a bit of tension there. The Dwarves think the whole area is there as they once had a great kingdom here and they want it back. The Rockseeker brothers are sympathetic with the Dwarves but not as Zealous about their long-term plans. The races of the Forgotten Realms is to friendly.

Changed Faction The Redbrand Ruffians. They don't just beat people up. They are a proto-Thieves Guild that has set up gambling in the Sleeping Giant Tap House. A lot of the human miners have gambling debts and are occasionally beaten to get them to pay. Pretty standard stuff but the locals are hoping the heroes in town will deal with the problem for them so they are mostly mum. One might let it slip once Redbrands are gone, otherwise the paperwork in Glastaff's office might give it away. It may not matter. Glasstaff's paperwork will also show he is looking for Wave Echo cave without luck. He has a whole Grail Diary of info on the Wave Echo Cave and if given to Gwyn she can sort through it and provide hints and info to the party as they go. Also Glasstaff.

Other Changes Obsidion. There is a giant shard of obsidian at the Shrine of Luck. There are also shards of Obsidion flecked with color at different spots throughout town (Cornerstorne of Miner's Exchange, and embedded in the counter of the Sleeping Giant Traproom. These bits set up things alter, foreshadowing of sorts for Phandelver and Below.

If the party hasn't decided to remove the Red Brand Ruffians on their own, Sister Garaele will return and any Harpers in the group will be requested to do so. Any Lord's Alliance members will be told Iarno Albrek is Glasstaff.

Changes to Redbrand Hideout Glasstaff should survive if at all possible so he can replace Nilron Darlost in Storm King's Thunder and links things to Frost Giants. If he doesn't survive then Nilron Darlost can be himself. Otherwise the hidout plays out the same. 

Dwarves & Wave Echo

So now the rest of Lost Mines is silly fetch-quests and Wave Echo Cave. The party has still not found it. If you want to cut things short the location could be found in Glasstaff's notes and the party could go right there. Otherwise they go to Dwarven Excavation to see if they've found anything that might indicate the location of Wave Echo Cave. 

5. Dwarven Excavation
6. Axeholm/Wyvern Tor
7. Wave Echo Cave

Now we are jumping to Dragons of Icespire Peak for a bit. No changes to Dwarven Excavation and the Dwarves there haven't learned anything. They suggest Axeholm which has a map room of old Dwarven Kingdom but warn it's been owned by Orcs for generations. They may just be being difficult as Dwarves wouldn't want others to find the Cave, and sending the party to Axeholm may be a sort of suicide suggestion depending upon the DMs mood and how the Dwarves were treated. 

Changes To Axeholm Axeholm's Ghouls will be replaced with Orcs and Ogres from the Wyvern Tor adventure (which had no map anyway). The Banshee can stay, and maybe be talkative if the GM likes and the players are reasonable. Perhaps Sister Garaele gave her silver comb and asked her question, except now it's in Axeholm and not Agatha's Lair.

Changes To Wave Echo Cave The only real change is the location. I'd place it beneath the Ruined manor, at the bottom of the ravine in the Redbrand Hideout. Maybe Glasstaff knew it was there and has been trying to open some Dwarven doors to allow access, while keeping the site secure, maybe the Dwarfs at the Miner's Exchange know and are actually tunneling to get around Glasstaff. Either way putting it there removes an additional journey.

Morglum's Marauders!

So now the Lost Mines main adventure is over. If the DM wants to continue it a bit further Sister Garaele can have them go to Triboar with the art and other stuff they've accumulated. And to tell the Harpers there that Wave Echo was found and its a bust, and all that. 

8. Ruins of Thundertree/Conberry 
9. Butterskull Ranch (part 1)

On the journey the party pass through Conyberry a ruined town sacked by barbarians long ago. I'd use the Thundertree map and adventure. The players can get involved or not depending upon their whims. 

Changes To Thundertree/Conberry The dragon is Cryovain the White Dragon. If the players manage to kill him here, that of course would change or eliminate the need for killing it later. 

Changes To Butterskull Ranch (part 1) The cowboy hat is gone! It's embarrassing and stupid. The first time through the area the ranch is peaceful. The players meet Alfonse Kalazorn, he's a pleasure and puts them up for the night.  

Alfonse also has a Cow named Butterspout. The Cow was given limited intelligence and the ability to talk by a passing Elf Wizard. The Elf also gave the cow amazing tasting milk (which is used to make the Butter that Butterskull ranch is famous for). The Cow replaces the intelligent Crab from Tower of Storms. It can be used for comic relief (it proudly pushes milk and butter products and is very proud). The cow might even fall in love with an Elf if any are available, or a horse if none are.

Eventually the party makes it to Triboar, meets with the Harpers representatives. I now own Storm King's Thunder which has maps and details of Triboar. The PCs can exchange things of value and perhaps buy up a magic item if they'll need help when they eventually fight the dragon. They will learn about the white dragon that has been driving Orcs out of the mountains, and about the Dragon Barrow where the great dragonslayer and her sword were buried with suggestions the sword might be helpful and tokens to keep the spirits of the dead tranquil as long as the dead are not actually disturbed.

On the return trip they go to Butterskull Ranch again only to be overwhelmed by Orcs.

10. Butterskull Ranch (Part 2)
11. Shrine of Savras
12. Circle of Thunder (optional)

Morglum and his Orcs comes from issue #110 of White Dwarf. His maurders are Warhammer Greenskins full of malingering and screwing around. This was long before Pathfinder did their Gremlins take on Goblins and I like it a lot better. Also I'd have them wearing Talos symbols and chanting Talos a lot to help set up Talos cultists if the adventurers go into the Beyond the Dragon of Icespire Peak extra Adventures.

Changes To Butterskull Ranch (part 2) The party is dining with Alfonse when the Orcs attack. It should be a battle with the players able to select defensive positions and make a go of it. Possibly escaping to snipe at the Orcs. It's twilight and during the dark the Orcs can see nicely. In the end Butterspout the cow has been taken, along with a ranch-hand. The trail will be easy to follow in the morning, they were taken to the Shrine of Savras.

Changes To Shrine of Savras The main difference is the party is there (if they decide to get involved) to rescue the talking cow Butterspout. Otherwise the adventure should play out the same except some Orcs will escape at the end, leading to the Circle of Thunder where there will find re-enforcements.

Changes To Circle of Thunder (optional) The location is moved to a mile away from the Shrine of Savras. Circle of Thunder is optional because the players may not chase the fleeing Orcs. If they do, they can catch the orcs long before they arrive at the Circle of Thunder but will notice Orc footprints leading them clearly to the Circle of Thunder. Otherwise the adventure is the same.

13. Dragon Barrow

14. Icespire Hold

Dragon Barrow and Icespire Hold should play out mostly as written. I'd give the Sword a personality. Make it annoying and full of elitist "I will not allow that!" talk but basically it's all talk.

Segway to the next Tier of Adventure

So now you need to figure out where you are going with the adventure. Are the characters sick and tired of Phandelin, or are they protective of the place. Either way the 5th level portion of both Phandelver and Below and the Storm King's Thunder start with an attack.

15. Goldenfield (Storm King's Thunder) / Paths of Peril (Phandelver and Below)

Changes To Goldenfield The attacked city is Phandelin. I think Goldenfields is a lame location and nothing about the attack is really specific to the location. Hillgiants are my favorite Giants, and the lowest level giants, so they're gonna attack Phandelin instead, from their the Harper Sister Garaele can send the party to Triboar to inform them the giants are acting up. While there the PCs can be in the middle of the Triboar attack and are well into the Storm King's Thunder storyline.

Changes to the Paths of peril storyline. None, we've set up things nicely for Phandelver and Below.

If they go for Beyond the Dragon of Icespire Peak, nothing happens and they head to the coast. 

GM Mischief The GM can drop hints, or let the players figure things out for themselves. If going forward with Phandelver and Below then the Spider was working to stop the Mind Flayers, but he was stopped/killed by the party before he could. If going forward into the Storm King's Thunder it can be stated that Dragons and Giant are enemies, and hinted that a single white dragon near Phandelin would have stopped the Giant attack on the city that occurred prior to the goblin attack. A bit of guilt can help motivate PCs to push forward and do the right thing.

You Missed a Few Adventures?

There are a handful of mini-adventures in the Lost Mines of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak that haven't been used yet. 

Umbrage Hill, Logger's Camp, and old Owl Well can be repurposed for adventures along the road. Random encounters are dull, better to have something a bit more planned out from time to time.

x. Umbrage Hill (Manticore) 

x. Logger's Camp (Ankheg)  

x. Old Owl Well (Necromancer and zombies)  

Changes To Old Owl Well The Necromancer will sense/notice Glasstaff's staff if the players have it. He doesn't like Glasstaff so that could go either way depending upon how the players handle it.

The rest of the adventures I don't like. If you want wererats have them attack as a faction in Phandelin, otherwise get them out of there. 

x. Agatha's Lair (Banshie)

x. Falcon's Hunting Lodge

x. Mountain's Toe Gold Mine (wererats)

x. Gnomengarde (Mimic)  

x. Tower of Storms (Talking Crab)

x. Woodland Manse

Conclusions

This whole post is about how I would blend and inter-connect a module with other modules. In general I like Lost Mines of Phandelvin and Dragon of Icespire Peak. I think they made a mistake when they made Phandelin & Below instead of officially combining the two modules into a big low level sandbox with foreshadowing of The Shattered Obelisk. Then have shattered Obelisk as its own thing for levels 6-10.

The crazy way WotC handles modules

Most of these comments are based on Lost Mines of Phandelver, Phandelin and Below, Dragon of Icespire Peak (and the additional modules that came with it in Roll20) and Storm King's Thunder. Maybe the other modules change this but it doesn't really look like it. So...

1. Broad, not long

I have a problem is with the way Wizards does modules as a skeleton outline from level 1-20. This maps out a characters entire life. You start with this module and damnit your gonna go all the way... 20 levels is too much commitment. My characters are sick of Phandelin and they've only gone through a mash of Lost Mines of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak and they are only at 5th level. Space considerations ensure they can't put enough content for proper levelling so they race through levels and the DM has to fill in a lot of adventures along the way. Charitably this could be seen as a way to encourage DMs to home-brew but I don't think it works that way in practice. I think most will lean on DMs Guild content full of mini-adventures or just have them race up the levels.  

Storm King's Thunder showed the way, somewhat  (I haven't finished reading it). The module goes from 1-20 but also starts with a disposable 1st section that takes you from 1-5 and suggests skipping that part if your characters come over from the Starter Set's Lost Mines of Phandelver. I'd prefer the first chapter was skipped entirely but If you must start every adventure at 1st level this is the way to go.

I've also read that Storm King's Thunder and Rime of the Frostmaiden both have great middle-play and flop a bit at the end. If true that suggests, once again that they should be concentrating on the tiers of play. They list tiers of play in the DM's Guide. Write the adventures for the Tiers. A sandbox with a throughline. Then when done the GM can look over the next Tier of play for adventures or pick the one that naturally segways with the previous Throughline. 

I guess the downside is that a crappy adventure will never sell the upper tier, and like TSR found, high level adventures don't sell so well. Well then encourage the DM's Guild writers to concentrate on the upper tiers so the Wizards don't have to spend the time and resources. Let 3rd party folks continue the through-line. It would be great to have multiple companies come up with a high tier conclusion to different adventure threads.

2. Organize Better

I'm a technical writer by trade so organizing information is one of my bug-a-boos. I'm reading Storm King's Thunder and it's driving me crazy. In the Technical Writing World we have a thing called DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). The idea is to divide types of information (instruction, reference, info) so that different parts can be re-used easily. A simple example of this is the way Wizards has Goblin printed in a module with the Statblock in the Appendix or in the Monster Manual. Saves space. Not the most usable, but it saves a lot of space and makes reading the module far easier.

So in Storm King's Thunder they have a section of detailing a town. Then following that a bit of adventure, then quests. Then detailing a second town. Then adventure, then quests. Some of these quests take you to additional location. So the straight-up location info is great as it could be re-used in a dozen adventures but it's spread out all over the place making it far harder to use that way. It also is stuff that really isn't so relevant for the adventure or the quests. Then in the next chapter they have info on the different cultures and sites throughout the Savage Frontier. Great stuff for running those adventures between the set-pieces but it makes it harder to have them spread all over the place. Then they have a few locations that a blended with the adventure they serve. I'm not talking about those because those are logically combined.  

A better organization would have been to divide the book into three big sections. 

1. The Savage Frontier - Include all the details about cultures, locations (not specific to a one-shot adventure), cities. All the stuff you would want if you dumped the Giant content and just wanted to run adventures in the Savage Frontier.
2. The adventures. A chapter on each attack location and the Quests that follow. Mostly the way things were done in Storm King's Thunder from Chapter 4-12.
3. Appendixes. exactly as they are.

This would make the book easier to read. Easier to run at the table. 

3. Cut the fat

Reading through the town descriptions is a chore because they try to give fun little bits about every single building. for example:

Tl7. ULDINATH'S ARMS

This hilltop smithy across the road from Foehammer's Forge (area T18) is run by Harriet Uldinath (LG female Illuskan human commoner), the great-granddaughter of the establishment's founder. Harriet has known Ghel­ ryn Foehammer since she was a child, and the two are friendly rivals. Harriet sells fine weapons stamped with the Uldinath family glyph, which generally increases their value by 25 percent.

Could have been just...

Tl7. ULDINATH'S ARMS - Harriet Uldinath (LG female Illuskan human commoner) sells fine weapons stamped with the Uldinath family glyph, which increases their cost by 25 percent.

The rest could be included in a table of potential backgrounds for proprieters in that town and saved a lot of time. So now it's all canon but most adventurers aren't gonna go to T17, and if they do are unlikely to talk about the family history, so it's wasted space. Fluff takes longer to read, and makes it harder to find anything. Fluff is bad.

So if I was made lead designer of WoTC that's what I'd concentrate on first. Better modules.

Rethinking Weapon Damage

Using average weapon damage instead of rolling speeds up the game. I've been doing it in Roll20 because the system doesn't automatically roll the damage (at least I haven't found the correct setting yet) but this is unsatisfactory.

I've always felt that the hit roll and weapon damage should be linked. A really good hit should do more damage and a barely successful hit should less damage, so here is what I'm thinking. This applies to the raw roll without any modifiers and only when the roll is a hit of course.

    20         A critical, double damage

    15-19    Maximum damage

    10-14    Average damage

    05-09    Minimum damage 

For example: 

Thug's mace: Max is 8, Ave is 5, Min is 3. Easy enough.

Thug's Heavy Crossbow: Max is 10, Ave is 5, Min is 1.

Since Roll20 automatically calculates weapon damage for the players this will only be done for the foes but I think it should work.

My only question is would the critical be double the max damage or double the average? I'll have to think about that.

Lost Mines and Dragons of Icespire Peak

So I rolled our Lost Mines of Phandelin campaign into Dragons of Icespire Peak. Some players had wanted to buy up a house in Phandelin and make a base of operations but others didn't. Some thoughts so far:

• Phandelin should be walled with a small keep like the Keep on the Borderlands and every building in Phandelin should have been mapped with a table of who is inside during AM and PM.
• Town needs a wandering encounters table for the streets. Something quick and easy but currently there is nothing and this is an intro to the game so why not?
• The townsfolk should have been introduced better. Perhaps in the Inn where everyone knows your name they have a table that lists who is in there in the AM, and who is there in the PM.
• The Miners Exchange should be a building built over an actual mine. This would justify the town being there and makes the town a target for greedy villains. Also miners unearthing something could provide an adventure.
• The rumors should be introduced better. The game needs carousing rules with rumors added. The Innkeeper should be the source of most rumors. The message board used in Icespire Peek is gamey and stupid. 
• Phandelin should have a proper temple with encouragement for PC Clerics to either be connected to or in conflict with that temple.
• The campaign should have ended with a list of further adventures for the New PC to create in Phandelin. Orcs attack the town walls, Orcs get in and attack a specific building. The locals are hostile to that temple, or the temple has been taken over by a different faction within the greater cult and is no longer friendly.
• So far the bigger adventures have been decent and the short ones have been lame. Hopefully Icespire Peak gets better, online reviews seem mostly positive but reading ahead I have my doubts.

Crowscroft - One Page Dungeon Entry

Thought I'd give the one page dungeon contest a go. I'm pretty happy with it, even it is more of a setting than a dungeon. In case it isn't clear the name is a play on Ravenloft. Crowundercroft seemed too obvious so I chopped the name a bit. Fingers crossed. 

Some Thoughts on the Lost Mines of Phandelver

First a minor nit, the names Phandelver and Phandalin are too similar. Also Phandalin is a village on the frontier with tribes of goblins and bugbears around and it has no defenses, no militia, nothing. It's a miracle it hasn't been wiped out yet. I would expect a ditch and wooden palisade at the very least if not a stone wall surrounding the place. 

Second, the maps. Cragma Caves reminded me a lot of the map in Murria's Revenge in the old Runequest Borderlands box. It's a good map and the similarities might be accidental. In fact most of the changes are improvements, still you start on the left side of the stream and circle around and cross to the right. Weird coincidence. 

The map of Cragma Castle was nice as well, My players enjoyed the tactical nature of it, even if the designer has apparently never actually seen a castle before. I didn't like the Wave Echo map at first, visually its pretty bog-standard, but in play it worked nice as my players were trying to circle around the enemies and take advantage of the looping nature of the place. It needed more verticals but it was nicely designed. Just goes to show you can't judge a map entirely on the appears. Lastly the Orc mission needs a battlemap. Luckily pretty much any map you could dream of is online somewhere.

Third, I like the way they aimed for a sandbox but the pacing was odd. Maybe I misread something but it felt like there is a bit of hurry to save the missing dwarf brothers, but you aren't really high enough level so first right away, so you do a side-quests or two to level-up before hand. Very video-gamey and artificial. It would have been better if it started in Phandelin against ruffians, then side-quests and sandbox fun, and on one of those the party is Ambushed > Cragma dungeon > Cragma Castle > Wave Echo cave for the win.

Lastly the module missed a chance to explain how to run urban adventures in Phandelin.  They needed details on how to handle encounters, how to dole out rumors, maybe an encounter table. Instead they just list out the important buildings and leave it all up to the DM. They leave you the feeling that the players need to go door to door knocking and asking questions for quest hooks which is silly. They should have had carousing rules of some sort. Not the kind used throughout the OSR for XP, but some fun tables to handle the celebration that was likely to spring-up when the players took out the Redbrand Ruffians. Tables that helped introduce NPC and dole out scenario hooks. 

So it was a good module for my parties intro to 5E and re-intro to RPG after a couple of decades. 

To Death Save or not to Death Save, that is the question

When I read about the Death Saves I didn't like it. It seemed characters would be impossible to kill, which seemed unrealistic, and the threat of death is a big part of low-level play I like. Then we had a character go down in the middle of battle, the Cleric of all people, and were were mostly playing rules as written, so I looked up the rule:

Death Saving Throws
Whenever you start your turn with 0 hit points, you must make a special saving throw, called a death saving throw, to determine whether you creep closer to death or hang onto life. Unlike other saving throws, this one isn’t tied to any ability score. You are in the hands of fate now, aided only by spells and features that improve your chances of succeeding on a saving throw.

Roll a d20. If the roll is 10 or higher, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail. A success or failure has no effect by itself. On your third success, you become stable (see below). On your third failure, you die. The successes and failures don't need to be consecutive; keep track of both until you collect three of a kind. The number of both is reset to zero when you regain any hit points or become stable.

He failed two times, and on the third round the Bard healed him making a third roll unnecessary. It felt like a cheat. The guy was dead, but those are the rules so I let him live to fight another day.

Then later I talked to the Colonel and the Death Saves came up. It wasn't his character that went down but I don't think that would have changed his opinion. He really liked the way it worked. He fought in Iraq and said you had guys go down and you had a certain amount of time to treat them or they were gonna die. That meant one of their fellows had to stop fighting and help the injured person if a medic wasn't immediately available. Suddenly the combat had two less guns which could be very bad. They would stabilize the injured and send them off to a M*A*S*H unit to get proper attention later. Anyway he felt the game modeled the tactical situation pretty well, so I've been rethinking my dislike of the Death Saves as my life of technical writing has not really put me into a lot of combat situations but it has taught me to trust subject matter experts.

The one catch to all this is it makes a total party kill a bit more likely as you lose a combatant, even for a round, can really turn the tide of battle.

Some More Thoughs on Roll20

Our campaign continues through Lost Mines as the old group learns 5E and we all learn how best to use Roll20 from different timezones. Here are a few things I've learned about Roll20 along the way in case anyone is curious.

Discord Server is the way to go

We had problems with audio and video through Roll20. Every session started with tech support of trying to get everyone to hear everyone else. Then one of the kids set up a Discord server and we did all the videochat through that and turned it off in Roll20 and haven't had a problem since. Win!

Moving the map

Small thing but Roll20 has two icons, one for selecting things and a second for moving the map around. Its a pain shifting between the two (or forgetting to shift between the two). Turns out you can just use the select icon and right click on the map to drag it around the way you would with the hand icon. Very nice. Wish I'd found this earlier.

Remove Names

To keep track of everyone I turned on the Token names. They appeared beneath the token the entire time but eventually as we got into big brawls the names started covering up whomever was in the squares nearby which was not ideal, instead I turned on Tooltips to have names appear with a Mouseover. I may end up removing even that as the token images are enough  now to tell who is who. How to do it?

1. Select the Token and bring up the Token Settings (lower left circle when you select token). 

2. Deselect Nameplate (beside the character name). 

3. Scroll down and select Show (to the right of Tooltip).

4. Add the info into the Tooltip field.

Damage Rolls

I found out how to set it up so the system rolls player damage automatically. It even adds critical damage which is nice. Saves a lot of time because my players were slow between I hit and figuring out how to roll damage. Now I need to disable the always roll at Advantage so it doesn't add that extra damage to the rolls when not wanted. I also need to figure out how to auto-roll monster damage.

Ditching the Character Sheet, mostly

I found out how to roll for most anything without pulling up the character sheet each time. This was a game changer for me. If you do it right you select a token and get a series of buttons across the top of the map. Click a button and the game rolls as if you had brought up the character sheet and selected that thing. Because I once was a technical writer I wrote down how, but there are YouTube videos for those that prefer to sit through a half hour lesson on how to do it.

Select a token and bring up the NPC character sheet.

1. Click on Initiative

The initiative rolls in the chat.

2. Put the cursor in the Chat typing field and hit the Arrow up Key on your keyboard.

The code for rolling initiative appears in the typing field.

3. Copy the code.

5. Go to the NPC character sheet

6. Go to the Attributes & Abilities Tab.

7. Select +Add (on the upper right).

8. Select the Pencil

7. Replace the words New Ability with a title and select the Show as Token Action button.

8. Paste the code into the empty field.

9. Put the mouse over the empty spot to the right of the title, the select the Checkmark to save the ability.

Repeat for each weapon, spell, or ability you want to have access to without pulling up the character sheet. After all this whenever you select the token the attributes will appear as buttons on the top of the map so you don't have to open the character sheet again (or at least rarely). I did this for my players and it made everything smoother and they were universally impressed with the improvement in game play.

Using this I could give different Monsters multiple weapons and potentially include the damage separately if I can't figure out how to have that rolled automatically.

So the system is starting to work out very nicely.

What I'd Do, Warhammer Edition

Back in May 2019 Games Workshop was looking for a new CEO. I had some ideas of what I would do if I was CEO and re-reading them they were mostly crap. What I'd do now that I'm older and wiser i have some other ideas that may be mostly crap but...

I'd create a skirmish game. I know they already have a few like Mordheim to start with so most of the work is done. The problem is their previous skirmish games have been stand-alone. Buy it and Games Workshop never supported it. I'd support the game with campaigns full of modules like every RPG system does. This breaks down the cost of each, allows a stream of new products to draw attention, and means the newbie doesn't need a massive army to start playing as they do with Warhammer Fantasy Battle. For example: 

The Dwarven Vault campaign is about a Dwarven vault being besieged by Goblinoids. Each module would have 20ish miniatures. Different modules would cover different regions of the vault. The first could be fighting over the mines and crypts in the lower levels of the vault, a second is around the ore smelting furnaces, the third is fight in the great hall. So if you bought them in order you'd have a lot of mini's by the time you got to that big battle in the great hall. Each module would have some special tactical issues to deal with and a few additional miniatures. 

The Mordheim Campaign would do the same thing but use different parts of the city with different factions. The work has mostly been done on Mordheim already so this would be cheap and easy follow-up.

Continue that until you've given a taste of all of the major Warhammer Fantasy armies. Then when folks basically have built up a few armies over time the cost of putting together a Fantasy Army will be trivial.

I'd stop the silly lawfare Games Workshop has been waging against everybody (as if they own the term Space Marine, please) and release the skirmish game under the Creative Commons license and let others create content (knowing my, that is Games Workshop miniatures are the best and folks would buy them to play out these other games). Probably crazy but that's what I'd do.

Some thoughts on 5E

I was a little late getting into 5E. My players and I cut our teeth on AD&D so that is something to think about during this post. Also for the first few sessions every player wanted a fighter (the most popular character class in polls as well) which creates a somewhat unique dynamic. A group of four fighters, two of which are archers, provides a pretty devastating attack.

My players prefer to get increases in to hit rather than the fiddly benefits at each level. They were constantly reminding each other not to forget class features. It all felt meta gaming and I didn't like it. Also it adds a level of complexity to the GM who has to keep track of what they can do. This I think dates back to AD&D when your fighter got better at fighting, and there were no extras per level.

This next complaint is not a 5E issue but an issue with every game. After a particularly successful mission the players were the toast of the village they saved. Playing out the events of carousing are dull and awkward. Also going door to door looking for plot hooks as seems to be expected in Lost Mines of Phandelin is dull and stupid. It would be much better to mix the two. Have the players take out the Redbrand Ruffians and then while drinking the rumors come to them.  A Carousing mechanic would work easily enough handle the celebration and hand out rumors. Then the players can have a more targeted search for info the next day when sober again. Carousing tables were a fun idea but they are just under-used when used for experience (or just used for experience). 

Another one that is not strictly 5E, but... I thought I liked platform leveling. That is mission complete you go up a level. This avoids counting XP like a bookkeeper. I'm a GM not a bookkeeper! But we had a session where two players didn't make it. They may join half way into this next adventure. So do they go up when the group goes up, that doesn't seem fair.

Lastly, for now at least, 5E and Lost Mines level the PCs up too quickly. I think if the pace of leveling slowed down the players might get a chance to get use to their new Class Features each level instead of just collecting them and forgetting about them.

Some Thoughts on Roll20

We continue to have problems with the video and audio. It seems random. Everyone can hear everyone and then a lot of I can't hear Mike, Mike are you there. The new kid in the group says people use Discord at the same time to handle these problems. I've heard about Discord servers but never paid much attention so I'm gonna let him figure it out for all of us.

Roll20 has a problem with NPCs. If I try to roll Initiative for the NPC Cleric and then try to roll Initiative for the enemy Goblins it will often over-write the Clerics initiative with the new roll. Closing and opening the Goblin Character sheet right before I roll their initiative seems to work but it shouldn't require that.  I also not sure I like that all Goblins share the same initiative in the Initiative tracker, I'd at least like the option to split the goblins into two groups and have each roll initiative. 

I really don't like that all Goblins share the same sheet (and all the ruffians share, and all the Orcs share) and have the same weapons, armor, and HP. This is really an issue with 5E and the way Lost Mines was literally translated exactly as written and it would have been nice to mix up the weapons and armor and hit points. 

The group went into Cragma castle, while it was still daylight out, hoping to catch some Orcs asleep. The Dynamic Lighting for Roll20 isn't really set up to handle light on the outside coming in. Or I simply don't know how to do it which is very likely. So I have a Dwarf NPC with a light that I moved around outside to make light come through windows and such. Hardly ideal but serviceable.

We found out that if you roll a critical hit the result shows in green which is really nice. Also we figured out how to turn on automatically roll damage and critical hit damage which is also very nice.

A few years ago I read a blog post called Dungeon Brawls about having encounters pile on instead of waiting in their rooms for the players. I really liked this and Roll20 makes this super easy for a GM to manage. The GM just has to be careful to not overwhelm the players. That means prep them, if necessary, about tactical consideration like choke points and difficult terrain and such so they can use it to their advantage. Also keeping an eye on HPs so they don't get wiped out without a chance. It really makes for a funner, and more believable combat when enemy reinforcements start arriving.

Don't Play the Sheet...

Skerpies at Coins and Scrolls once said this about the Glog (a game with features per level like 5E).

In play, class features and abilities don't actually come up as often as you'd think.

I've read a lot of comparisons to OSR play that talk about not playing the sheet and this sounded about right to me. Now I've GM'd a few sessions of 5E and found my old AD&D gang doesn't look at the sheets during play (except to find where to click their attack/damage/init which on Roll20 are done by clicking the sheet). 

I had to remind my players about the Second Wind and Action Surge features (after the battle when they almost lost two PCs). This makes me appreciate Lamentations and other Basic variants that just give you a better to hit, or better skills or whatever, and leave the rest up to the player as it seems the problem will get worse as they get additional features each level. Also the features feel a bit video-gamey.

Session 3: Phandelin

The players made it to Phandelin, turned in the wagon and goods for some cash. Turned over a bugbear head, checked into the inn and listened for rumors and such. Learned mostly about the Redband Ruffians. Visited the retired adventurer/apple farmer and decided to pop over to the Taphouse and see the Redband to judge them with their own eyes. A fight ensued and one of the Redband raced off while the group cleaned up the street and prepared to defend the taphouse against a retribution attack. That's when we cut for the day.

The module doesn't mention anything about revenge attacks. The assumption is the party will come into conflict with the Redband gang at the taphouse or elsewhere and finish them off? Or charge immediately into the Redband hangout which would be daft. The module would be better if it gave defensive values for different buildings (with the mining company being the best) and had the possibility of hunkering down for a counter-attack as a possibility. Such a thing should also include what happens to the town if the PCs head for the hills to avoid a counter-attack.

The info in the town section is not organized for the DM very well. I applaud them for putting a little urban adventer into the starter set It would be better to have each NPC listed in a printable roster with roleplay notes, statblock and what they know/rumors/sidequests. Then the town info would be tighter and the DM could have all the NPC info up at the same time. They also need a random encounters table. This is a great place to introduce the concept even if its just who's walking about.

A large number of the encounters in town are womenfolk. For a frontier town with goblins and orcs around that seems odd but it's never mentioned why. Are the men all miners out in the hills? Were a large number of men killed? Is there something about the Shrine of Luck that drew a lot of women to the area? Or did the designers just want to have more women NPCs and didn't really think about the repercussions? or did I miss something?

NPC, especially Goblins should be given names/descriptors. Really anything that will help the GM describe the NPC (one-eye, three fingers, Short sword goblin, etc) so the players can indicate who they want to attack instead of just 'the Goblin in front of Bjorn'. Instead they are all functionally clones with the same weapons and everything. I think using the same stat block is a nice savings in space and all but it wouldn't have hurt Wizards to make Weak Goblin, Goblin, and Strong Goblin and give them different HP and AC. Roll20 should have added to this by changing the weapons and armor on the different goblins and giving each a different character sheet. As is all encounters in a group share the same character sheet which means they roll group initiative, otherwise one initiative roll overwrites the next. Each can be given a different character sheet, I'm pretty sure, but they didn't set up Lost Mines that way (at least the Cragmore Hideout). Its nice how you can roll for weapon hits from the character sheet but the NPCs in Lost Mines are not set up to roll damage from the sheet the way players are which is lame. 

When you show up at an Inn the DM shouldn't be told to look at the game rules for pricing. Again this was probably to save space but it's a hassle. Even if the hardcopy couldn't do it right they should have done better in the Roll20 version.

Also in Roll20 its very visual. The module doesn't need building interiors but for Roll20 they really should have them.

Roll20 initiative needs some work. If a player has two character sheets up and they touch one it becomes active, then if they click initiative on the second it rolls initiative for the first. The first touch should make the sheet active, then a second touch would roll initiative. This would be intuitive and not accidentally overwrite another characters initiative. Also clicking on a token should bring up the Character sheet right away, the fuddy controls should be a second click since you rarely use them.

Lastly having a frontier town with a gang defined by red is a bit to Tombstone. To really make this work they should have given each member of the gang a bit of personality and mixed them in with the random encounters table (that they should have included but didn't) and had the players get to see them being dicks instead of just hearing about it. Show don't tell, that sort of thing.

That's all for now, it was a short session but a good one.

 

Game Design - Mini Dragon Slayer

So I have a degree in Graphic Design (never used professionally) and a career in Technical Writing so I developed some kind of sickness in which I write and rewrite games. So many games are full of unnecessary and often confusing stuff. So many sentences are passive, or tangled, or generally awkward, so I try to see if I can make them better. I'd like to think that I usually do but then toss the results.

Then I came across a challenge on Venger Satanis' blog. He has a game called Crimson Dragon Slayer and he's recently cut it down to 3 pages and challenged anyone who wanted to format it. I took up the challenge, he sent me the Word file and and hour later I had hacked together a nice little game. 

I used art by Kim Diaz Holm, who makes incredible art that he releases under the Creative Commons license with attribution. He has a Youtube channel so you can see him create art from scratch, it's amazing.

I doubled the page count but its still a clean little game that I think would be good to include with modules and such that ordinarily require one own an RPG. I sent it to him and he seemed to like it, he gave me a free pdf for participating, and was generally agreeable about the whole thing. He also said I could post it or change it or do whatever I wanted with it, so I edited a bit more (removed some art and cut a few bits that seemed Cha'alt specific) and got it to 4 pages (2 pages of content as 1-4 is the title page, and 4-4 is the credits).

The main way the game is cut so short was ditching attributes and leaning on other games for spells and monsters. This works for a beer & pretzels pick-up game, or for a game bundled for free with a module. I might follow this up with some kind of Spell book crafted from the Glog. So here is the core game.

Mini Dragon Slayer

Session 2: Cragmaw Hideout continued

One player missing so we had his PC hang back as an NPC. The rolls balanced out this time and we had one near death and one PC that couldn't hit to save his life. Still the YouTube guy that said Lost Mines is brutal had a very different group because 5E is so forgiving. Perhaps he's a Gen Z. 

Our kid said "his generation could not be as detailed as we are when approaching a dangerous situation."

Maybe that had something to do with it. They went in with military precision, and scouting, and old school tactics like we used to do. I was lenient because the sound of the stream covered most of the talk. still, if you weren't killed in a single blow it would be hard to die. I mean Roll20 auto-generated Elf started with 2 healing potions and Warriors get a Second Wind and even a short rest brings you back up almost the whole way if you're first level.

I upgraded to the Dynamic lighting and that was worth it. It still will take some getting used to, Tokens fill out the full 5 foot square so they don't hide as well as I'd like. Still lots of fun. Next on to Phandalin, probably.

Session 1: The Lost Mines

The first meeting of the old group was on Zoom, which has a 40 minute deadline on free meetings. So we were cut off and reestablished a second meeting right after. You can pay a bit of money to have endless meetings but I knew we weren't gonna use Zoom as there are better options out there customized for RPGs. 

What we did straighten out is that everyone wanted a fighter, and all but one wanted humans. After joking about how one player cheated his rolls he suggested I create the characters and hand them out. 

I decided to use Roll20 because it is free for 5 or less players. I wasn't sure if that included the GM or not but we still fell within the limit. I bought Lost Mines since it was all set up and I didn't want to create my own adventure for the first 5E game. So that cost money but not a lot and Roll20 has a nice character generator and the way it handles the character sheets/rolls made it easy for the players as well. I sent out copies of the characters to each so they could pick which one they wanted and told them to log into Roll20 ahead of time. Two of the players and I logged in and I showed them how things would work and they seemed to like it. The colonel waited until the last minute to do anything which was a bit of a drag but it worked out eventually.

The only real issue was nobody went through the tutorial and I had to explain everything. I used to train engineers to use writing software as one of the tasks in my old job so it wasn't that big a deal except I was learning 5E, Roll20, Lost Mines, and would have appreciated one of them stepping up and taking the tutorial to explain to the rest. 

So we started up on Game Day and with everyone there we had bandwidth problems. Once we reduced the size of everyones video screen (you can even remove it and just have their name if necessary) things ran smoothly. 

When we played long ago I had a pretty steady ramp up from middleschool DM who was barely competent running TSR modules using AD&D to a University Student GMing during summers who was pretty good at running political games across Harn using modified RuneQuest rules (at least I think I was, playing with the same group makes that hard to really know). So I was starting over again with new rules, new adventure, new virtual playground, and old players who didn't know the system (and one new player). Everyone had fun, but I felt it could have been better. There were two faults with our first session. 

1. The fog of war was awkward. The entire crew saw the entire map for a moment. Luckily one said something. Roll20 really should have a PIP showing what the characters see instead of forcing the GM to login as a Player, and then back. Of course horrible Fog of War naturally leads to purchasing a subscription with the Dynamic Lighting. So I did that afterwards and I'm curious to see how that works out. 
2. I heard the Lost Mines could be deadly, and the group was all fighters so I added a Cleric NPC to help heal them if necessary. The NPC was mostly bored in the back of the group. We'd always joked that one player cheated at die rolls, but here we had pre-generated characters and the rolls are all handled by Roll20 and they still had amazing luck. Sure they loved it, they saw the ambush before it was sprung and riddled the Goblins with arrows before they could attack. They cleared out the left half of the caves without taking any damage. I'll see how things go in the second half of the caves and if its still too easy maybe I'll add an extra villian or two to future encounters.

I'm looking forward to Phandalin and a bit of actual Role Playing/Sandbox style play.

Of note, the Roll20 character generator didn't seem to list arrows in the characters inventory which seems like a miss. 

More playing with AI

 This time battlemaps. I was surfing around looking at battlemaps and came across TheAIWizard creating a battlemap or two using AI. He uses Stable Diffusion and has a post on how to set it up and I'm not ready for that level of complexity, yet. So I went back to one of the two I used perviously, ImageFX. 

I typed in "Battlemap, overhead, top-down, dungeon" and stuff like that. The rooms produced by ImageFX are pretty small, most were junk, and it created a bunch of isometric without being asked, but there were a few in there that I rather liked. This might be a way to get assets (firepit, statue, flagstone flooring, exc) instead of actual maps. Who knows. Anyway here are a few samples. It's AI work so I understand its Public Domain so do what you want with them.

I also had it try to make a town and castle. I got pieces of a town and a castle I wasn't happy with. I could probably do more with them, maybe later.

Thoughts on a Viking Campaign

 As mentioned before the Kid is a fan of Vikings. So I thought that's a decent place to start, once the Lost Mines are done and the training wheels are off we can start a viking campaign.

So my first thought is do I go historical. Do I have vikings based on the Isle of Mann raiding proto-dublin, St Michael's Island and perhaps out to Paris. I'd love them to raid Mont-Saint Michelle (and even found some nice maps at Milbysmaps) Or do I make them Vikings in the Saxon era dealing with Saxons and the King of the Britons and viking around like in the Bard series of books. Or do I go full fantasy viking like in How to Tame Your Dragon. 

Well my old gang is a literate bunch and the Kid is into vikings so there is a decent chance they can or will know more than me so getting historical details right could be more of a pain than it's worth. That's not a problem if I have fantasy vikings. Also I can create my own viking religion that praises bloodshed but denounce rape as a way to ensure nobody crosses a line that I think Viking-based games have tip-toed around or ignored in the past.

Side Note: I have all the RuneQuest, BRP, and Legend viking books. RuneQuest Vikings, Vikings of Legend, C'Thulu Dark Ages, Mythic Iceland. I don't think any of them cover raiding as much as they should. Viking is a job, it is piracy and war, not a culture. I wanted to emphasize that more.

Also I have a few AI fantasy cities ready to be pillaged and a few plunder by individual or by building tables I don't seem to have posted to my blog. I published Maritime so I have some maritime rules I can use for boat stuff. So fantasy vikings it will be.

Getting the Gang Back Together

So I haven't really run a game in decades. We used to all live in the San Francisco Bay Area and played throughout middle school and High School. But I haven't played since I graduated from University in 91 and we all went our different ways to start our lives and careers. 

I've played a few times and kept up on things but I really enjoy game mastering more than playing. So a few years ago (just before this blog) a member of my old gang suggested we play again. I didn't really take him seriously but it started the creative juices rolling I created the Grindstone Games blog in late Feb 2019 mostly posting the tons of notes I still had from my old gaming and things that popped into my head as I caught up on everything that had changed since 1E. Well I ditched the Grindstone name and migrated to Ruprecht in May 2021 when i found there were a few other Grindstone's out there. 

I sort of ran out of material to write about and things slowed down drastically on this blog.

So here we are 5 years later, still no game, when I was at the Sundance Film Festival when the Colonel (one of the gang) suggested we play again and Lord British (another player) thought it was a great idea. The Colonel has a kid who (in 20s now) wanted to play. Well with the kid in the mix the Colonel might be all in. 

A note of importance none of us lives near each other anymore. The cast:

Lord British = San Diego

Lucky Dice = Los Angelos

The Colonel (or Unlucky Dice) = Alabama

The Kid = Alabama

GM (aka me)  = Texas

Scheduling with two time zones and multiple schedules could be a factor. 

There is one more player who has somewhat disappeared. Another from San Diego. Our groups Thief and 5 years ago he cancelled invites to his Housewarming party and I haven't really heard from him since. One note on Linkedin and then gone again. 

So with the kid wanting to play I decided to run 5E. I figured if the kid liked it and our gang fell apart he'd at least know enough to join other 5E games. I also figured I didn't want to dive in with all the options of the full game so I handed out the D&D Essential Rules and I figured I'd run Keep on the Borderlands or Lost Mine of Phandelver to start.

So we texted back and forth discussing how to run the first meeting. Teams and Zoom came up as options. We'd all experienced one or the other in the corporate world, both were fairly easy. Zoom was free in 40 minute bites so we went with that and scheduled our first session to roll characters and shoot the shit. The Colonel didn't respond and one of the California boys didn't actually confirm. We decided a Saturday Morning would be best, we could work out other details afterwards. I sent out the zoom invite to everyone (still didn't have the kid's contact info).

So I started the zoom meeting. First attendee was 5 minutes late. Then not long after the Colonel joined with his kid in the room. The last member joined late, but he joined. So we were all in and I discussed the changes and making characters but we mostly shot the shit. Then, one of the California guys I'll call Lucky Roller (the Colonel was the unlucky roller, doesn't matter the game the best laid plans...) suggested that I just come up with pregens for them all as we learned. Also they all wanted fighters (that should be easier for me, although we'll see about that. I found out the Kid big into vikings these days. We were playing Essentials so there are no Barbarian characters (he doesn't know about them anyway) but when we were done with this the next campaign could be viking related easily enough.

Scheduling could be an issue as weekdays don't work and one of the California guys works every other Saturday, but maybe not super-early. The other California guy can play super-early and time zones dictate that super-early is just normal early in TX and AL so maybe it'll work after all. We semi-scheduled a re-occuring Saturday morning game at 6:30 am (I know, ouch). I guess they are serious as they suggested it but we'll see.

The group agreed that perhaps we should pay to upgrade zoom and they could all send me some cash to cover it (because the 40 minute time limit is annoying). I'm now watching Roll20 videos considering that I might give that a try as they've likely thought of a lot of the problems of a straight video meeting and fixed them by now. Also it's free initially with a limit on players being the only issue. limit of 5 and GM (I think) and our group has 4 and a GM.

So I found a website: https://fastcharacter.com/basicdnd.htm

And created seven fighters with different backgrounds and sent them out along with the URL for fastcharacter in case they wanted to try making their own. Alls good for now. I'll keep posting as the game rolls out.