If memory serves correctly, it has been over a year since the last post on here. Even then, the last campaign mentioned was a repeat, which, in retrospect, was a bad idea to follow through on. Thankfully, this campaign is new, but with seeing them side by side now, it is apparent that on some levels there is not much difference.
Similar to the previous campaign, this campaign takes place in the 1920s. Instead of the players' characters being inter-planar adventurers that bumble their way into the "real world," they are instead immersed directly into the setting. For better or worse, they will be victims to their own vicarious choices. (No mercy!)
For this campaign I am using, what now is, my standby: The Black Company Campaign Setting. While others seemed to have progressed from Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 onto other platforms, such as Pathfinder, or other homebrews, I have latched onto this gem. I love it, and I wish that more people within our collection of local gamers would give it an actual try. Sadly, it seems like I am the only person willing to run a game utilizing this system. I used to wonder why, and I have discovered two big reasons: Flavor, and complexity. Let us face it, when we game, we are there for fun and escapism. High fantasy is great for that, and other systems (I will use Pathfinder for comparison) provide that in spades. In addition, Pathfinder has simplified rules and spells - it is something much more friendly to the new and old gamer. The Black Company Campaign Setting, on the other hand, hovers around the opposite end of the spectrum. It is made for those people who like low fantasy, with some gobs of gritty realism. The 3.5 Edition of Dungeons and Dragons is already rather cumbersome with it rules, so having some additional cogs to add to all that clockwork is a burden for the casual gamer - not to mention a beginner. (A third reason can be named, but it is tied in with the complexity: the overhaul of the magic casting system. While once you the system down, you can quickly and proficiently cast spells, learning the system takes a degree of dedication that a lot of people just do not want to commit when it comes to having fun. I can not say I blame them much, but those who do put in the effort seem to rather enjoy the innovation and freedom that new magic system provides.) The saving grace, by far, for the Black Company system is its modularity - you can mix and match aspects and rulings to fit other settings as you see fit.
In the past year, I have seen a lot of different games run and ideas get thrown around. I even had the honor of playing in a few. One involved the D20 Modern Campaign Setting and hunting monsters from the Monster Manual for a company as a living. There also has been numerous zombie campaigns (well, "campaigns") trying to recreate some movie or game (Left4Dead). Lastly, that I can recall at the moment, there has been short campaigns run in history settings in the early modern era of Western culture. Some of these also used the D20 Modern system, while the rest used Pathfinder with some minor modifications. I have picked up a fear of using firearms in my games; I feel they are not properly represented, as well as they usually ruin the game in some form or another. Usually, everyone wants to get their hands on one, which ends up making things boring for all players involved. If that does not cause the eventual downfall of a game, another thing that happens is a player or two goes gets disgruntled because of past experiences with firearms have left a bitter taste in their mouth. (If you are there for fun, why would you put up with something you think will ruin it?) Babbling aside, I decided to conquer this fear, and try to find something that works - using the Black Company system, of course.
I wanted something relatively modern, and so I set out for a wide scale research scope. I had to delve pretty deeply into a lot of different areas, and pool together the knowledge I had gained from handloading my own ammunition and hunting, as well as historical studies. To prevent this post from turning into a novel, I ultimately settled on the nebulous time frame of the "late 1920s." Why? There were a lot of interesting aspects to this time frame that easily stood out and were very identifiable with aspects of the Black Company system. It was also an era where modern still commingled with the old - one would not have to go out of their way to fit in something like a tribesmen, hunter, or a hermit. Paired with that is technology - cell phones and GPS are tricky elements to deal with, so the 1920s has the old familiar DnD ways of doing things (Ham Radios aside). From a legal standpoint, there are a lot of interesting gameplay elements as well. The 1920s is the decade where people sought to improve society from the "old model" which caused the horror of The Great War, and so laws were passed to ensure general betterment. This is where women's suffrage, prohibition, and personal firearms laws come from. (As for firearms, metallurgy was truly being mastered, as well as other technical mechanics. Revolvers were still in their height, with semi-automatic technology being mastered, but not quite yet perfected.) In terms of magic, the late 19th and early 20th century was a prime time for the occult - the prime age for esoteric circles such as The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn with Aleister Crowley. Lastly, from what I can remember, it was in 1929 that global market began to crash, and the world all but knew it.
It should also be noted that, with this campaign, I am using the rules for full brutality: hits on the surprise round go straight to the Constitution (Con) score, and grievous injury threshold is equal to just the PCs Con score (instead of Con plus Hit Dice). Infection rules are another inclusion, as well as the Sanity system. I almost feel sorry for my players just in terms of everything they have to keep track of and remember.
Speaking of players, I have a total of seven for this campaign. More than what most any Dungeon Master (DM) would care for. (Why do I keep saying DM even when it might be a misnomer?) Several of them are relatively new, but, at this point in my gaming experience, I am starting to see that as a boon rather than obstacle. Yes, it is unfortunate that they are subjected to all of these rules and expected to keep up with the more experienced players, but I am finding that the fresh perspective can help out a lot when trying to solve a situation. Perhaps it is because I am trying to run campaigns that are more than just dice rolling and kicking down the door. Perhaps the system just simply has a weakness against out-of-the-box thinking. Either way, here is a list of my players with their characters' background and class.
Jessie - Prostitute Thief (Yes!)
Logan - Thug Thief
Andrew* - Engineer Scout
Ricco - Criminal Fighter
Tyler - Criminal Thief
Andrew - Con Artist Noble
Brandon - Soldier Zealot
I will make a following post about their background write ups, for the sake of being concise.
The first session opened up with going around the table, one by one, introducing characters, and playing through the PCs' arrival at New Orleans and their encounters shortly afterwards. Most everyone attended Mardi Gras with the slanted intentions - stealing and other underground activities. Oddly enough, Ricco perhaps had the most pure intentions; he arrived in New Orleans simply by happenstance while doing a cross-country hike. Brandon and Andrew* buddied up in being war veterans, and were doing light "watch-my-purse" guard duty for a dilettante who was enjoying the festivities. (Well, Brandon was. Andrew* gathered as much beads as possible.) Some heard of odd happenings going on, mostly involving creepy people who act weird; standing outside people's windows, and sorting through trash. There was not much to follow up on, and being caught up in the ebb and flow of things, most of the party ended up captured. The closest to escape was Tyler, who, over the course of several days, managed to escape traps, encounters, and even the police while visiting every corner of the city. One such avoidance involved hiding the in sewers. At the end of an epic stretch of evasion, Tyler's freedom ended in the outskirts of the city, in a hotel over the swamp. After successfully defending himself against two assailants in the dead of night, the hotel owner, a furious "ragin' Cajun" swamp queen, pummeled him with a lamp when she awake and came to the scene.
After introductions, the party woke up in a dark room, in individual cast iron cages with tin buckets provide for (and with) waste. Others were in the room with them. The situation looked grim. Some tried digging and discovered that the wood of the room was undergoing a state of petrification. Probably the high light event was when a man, described as tall, dark, and handsome, walked into the room to direct some masked lackeys to take away two of the unfortunate prisoners. Logan gave the man some lip, and for that he was rewarded with a "scan" - grubs which were tossed on him that quickly burrowed into his person and caused him to pass out. Later, when the man returned, he harvested the grubs and ate them. Both events caused those had witnessed these to roll a sanity check. Other unfortunate events occurred, such as Jessie's character going through a memory wipe for supposedly learning bit of information that he was not supposed to. Finally, after Logan created lock picks from his tin can, he managed to pick the lock to his cage, and then subdue both the guards left in the room.
After releasing everyone else from their cages, the party then began to work on their first true encounter: a small non-Euclidean maze. Though the complex they were in seemed to be made purely of straight hallways and turns made of right angles, they would find themselves returned back to the the starting hallway if they made a "wrong" turn. Several members tripped over angles which behaved not according to perception. After a lot of time, frustration, and madness caused by failed sanity checks, small groups managed to find their way out - appearing in random places around a small cabin besieged by police.
A shoot-out occurred between the police and the NPC occupants of the household. The Police won. That is where the session ended.
2 comments:
I misspelled Jesse's name. It is actually spelled... well... Jesse.
Right. Gave myself a little break before vomiting out another novel.
Character creation parameters are a bit different from usual. Given the historical aspect of the game, only humans were allowed as a race. This is also the standard with the Black Company setting, since backgrounds are expected to provide that flavor in that regard. Since, as a player, I like having a lot of skills, and I want my players to have more versatility and survivability at low levels, I allow racial and background bonuses to stack. (I find it also helps with balance a bit, since magical items of any sort, notably potions, are so rare.)
When it came to stats, I used the so-called dice pool system. I am not sure precisely where it came from, but it was introduced by a fellow DM in a short campaign as one of the things he was testing. I believe he dropped the system, favoring the old system of pointing buying. I am a fan of "natural stats" and I liked the idea so much of using the dice pool, that I am still using it, despite some of its downfalls. To explain the dice pool system, it is where you have a large number of dice (a pool) that you can allocate to roll for each stat. You still only take the highest three dice, so you are merely increasing your chances; nothing is guaranteed. I will illustrate and explain more by using my game as an example.
I gave my players 24 dice (D6's) to allocate across their six stats. That works out to being able to put four dice into each stat. That works out just as a standard DnD game would probably do it. Where the dice pool differs is that I can take a dice from any stat, let us say intelligence, and put it into strength. So now I have five dice to roll in strength, increasing my chances of getting a high number (remember, I only take the highest three dice.) However, the dice do not always work they way you want them to, and sometimes the stat you put less dice in rolls higher.
While I may be a nice DM is trying to balance things out, and increase player survivability, I can be restrictive. In terms of stats, I like people to play them as they roll ("natural stats" I was told is the term. This means that your first stat number you successfully roll up goes to strength, second to dexterity, and third to constitution, and so on. Some people hate this, and I can sympathize. It can be not fun. After experiencing it several times as a player, though, and running games as a DM, I am really starting to like it. Why? It is a challenge. It forces you to think outside the box. Players who are open-minded tend to find the same thing. I had a player (and friend) join a game, and he always played either a wizard or a sorcerer. He loved the idea of casting spells and bending reality. So when he joined my game, and had fighter-like stats, he was not happy. However, he stuck with it, and created a fighter character - lo and behold, he made an excellent fighter. Not because he was really great at swinging a sword, or whatever, but because of how he (role)played his character with his different perspective. It is great experience for everyone to get that outside-the-box experience. On the flipside, I have seen people get really frustrated because they could not play what they wanted to. Further more, it is also unfortunate when someone rolls only decent stats, but another person rolls absolutely great stats. It is hard for a lot of people to overcome those limitations.
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