Multiple mobs and Initiative

So the way initiative tends to work is that each player rolls a separate initiative and each type of mosnter rolls an initiative for that entire type. The reasons behind this are mainly bookkeeping ones. In a large battle where you are fighting maybe 20 guys that is a lot of initiative entries to track. Also you would have to match up for initiative entry to a particular participant instead of just having them all go at once and not worry about which entry matches which figure.

Well, finding the figure on the board the matches your data entry has become much more important given the number of individual effects. So I need a solution for this. I was planning on a series of lettered or colored tokens.

But this opens a new question. When the cost of tracking data entry to unit goes down would you want to roll a separate initiative for each member of a monster type?

PRO

• One danger in tactical battle is focused fire or multiple attacks done without being able to react. When all the enemies go at once they can basically unleash one massive attack before anyone can react. Interleaving actions prevents this massive build up of actions that occur without the option for attacking. In 4E this kind of thing is even more dangerous because monsters may have synergies or powerful encounter attacks that all go off at once.
• Like the above item, bunching the initiatives of a type can give them some options that players can't stop. A flood of minions can easily surround and flank characters who are even slightly over extended. They can also easily all move into position and then delay Going from being unflanked to having multiple enemies flanking you with some kind of bonus can again lead to the one super turn effect. Now, you could delay to get create this effect, but you would at least have to make some minor sacrifice to obtain it.
  
• Because the players know that a monster type goes as a group they can meta-game out the number of different types. In one encounter in Dungeon Delves that had a more powerful type mixed in among minions and they were supposed to delay their initiatives to match the slower group. So if you want to 'mix' groups you take an initiative penalty which seems stupid.
• This gives the option of having some units delay or ready and thus splitting the initiative. You could implement a 'splitting' function in the current tracker, but just having each monster having its own initiative order seems like a cleaner solution.
  

CON

• Tracking that many initiatives is a pain. Well, the initiative tracker with a few minor modifications can fix this problem. You just end up with a lot of entries and have to match the entries to figures on the board. See the next item.
  
• Tracking a data entry to a specific figure can often be a hassle. But it is a hassle that you really have to solve seamlessly for 4E anyway.
  

So in making this list of pros and cons I have convinced myself that IF you have a good system for tracking individual participants and for automatically doing bookkeeping (like rolling initiative for 10 guys and placing them in initiative order seamlessly), it is best to have a separate initiative entry for each unit in the battle.

So the steps I need to undertake are to modify the initiative tracker to generate numbers for large groups and label each group with a fixed letter and produce a series of easily useable tokens with letters.

Wishlists and Finding Items

So one thing that was done new in some 4e games was to use a character generated wishlist of items. The idea is that when you generate treasure instead of generating a completely random item you pick an item from a list of items that your players want. The benefit is clear. When you find a magic item it is exciting and cool. I have been in plenty of games where most of what you find is essentially magical junk that no one will use.

This issue got worse in 3rd edition since you could craft stuff. Your collection of items would include mainly the crafted stuff that you really wanted and maybe a couple of items you found that were useful to you. In early editions that had no real item crafting rules you really had to adapt to what you found, but also since you couldn't craft the items themselves could be extremely powerful.

So the things you want in a treasure generation system:
A) Magic items are not useless. They won't be just tossed into a sack for later sale with the players going 'bleh' i.e. toss that +1 Guisarme into the Bag of Holding.
B) Found magic items will be better than crafted items. (not a big problem in any edition of D&D)
C) Finding magic items won't be like checking off an entry. There will be a sense of 'Ooooh, what does it do? Who can use that best?'
D) Finding magic items will force decisions about what item to use and what strategies to use.
E) Random found magic items shouldn't overwhelm cool or plot specific items.
F) Magic items should have a 'found as part of the game' feel and not a 'found in the books' feel.

In regards to point E, I remember my high school game where I had a living metal blade crafted by a sentient metal creature we had helped. Later on we picked up a +3 sword. I really wanted to use my living metal weapon, but the +3 was better.

So in formulating a plan I have come up with the following. Magical treasure will almost always be a higher level than the players. Exceptions to this will include stuff like, 'Hey these orcs are using magic formed blades from the mystic forges of Placewhere. Lets check out Placewhere!' This will help reduce the whole dump-the-plus-one-guisarme-in-the-sack issue. Also, I will probably randomly roll up the items, but I will roll maybe 3 times and pickout the item that seems most suited to the PCs. This way magic items will still have a random discovery feel and be surprising, but they won't be utterly useless or not fit in.

Gear of Legends

So if you read descriptions of enchanted items that have appeared in game materials and fiction a lot of times the 'story of the item' is not so much concerned with the crafting of the item than it is with the heroics achieved with that item. For example, the mystic gauntlet is the one worn by Jichael Mackson when he battled a horde of zombies. The implication of many of these stories is that the greatness of the deeds done with this item rub off on the item itself and inpart it with specialness. Objects become special/enchanted because of the great things done with them.

Fourth edition does some interesting stuff with magic items. It makes them basically requried gear for scaling purposes although 'found' items can still be overpowered making them somewhat special. It is a heavily slot based system. I think I have written in a previous post about how slot based system mimic video games instead of fiction and are kind of suspect. They also emphasized artifacts as the 'special' magic items that add to the story.

I digress a little bit. My basic point is that if you like the idea of the greatness of a deed rubbing off on gear you can have have a system where gear essential gets experience. Systems like this have been brought up before, but a simple way to handle this kind of thing is that every character gets x% of his experience is residium to enchant/enhance the gear he was using. No ritual is needed, just an extended rest. This way even the plain items can have a little more character. Instead of swapping out gear, you can keep the weapons you started with and they begin to develop a history. "With the blade a avenged my father when I was a boy. I have followed that path of vengence and the blade that slew your minions will now slay you demon!"

Symbols and long running themes

Many long term games are based around very long term epic storylines. In my college game we did the whole Blackmoor thing with the alien spaceship that damaged reality or whatever, but one of my memories from that is stuff from years back suddenly having relevance. It was cool, but the basic fact was that I didn't remember the 'important' stuff since it was surrounded by others adventures.

This has been my observation in other games. It is often hard to make a huge epic storyline because for most of it you are concealing the huge epic storyline and trying to reveal it in small bits. The problem with this is that it can become remote and uninvolving. My last game was Shackled City and this had a massive overarching evil plot, but the players didn't really seemed very involved in that whole story till the end....

Anyway, my point behind this post was to introduce an idea I had for my next game. I am going to use symbolism. I have three symbols that I plan on trying to repeat throughout the game to help give a feel for things. I am not sure how it will all work out, butI am pretty sure at the worst it will be mildly amusing.

The loss of alignment!

One thing I am glad will be gone is alignment. No more stupid arguments about how 'Chaotic Whatever' should act or whether an act is lawful or not. I have largely been blessed with players who don't tend to play evil psychopaths (although most of the characters have been pretty far from saints). But I basically really hate stupid alignments arguments and hate trying to leash in players with alignment. In Doug's game I play a cleric and Holy Word is my go to spell. There is one character who doesn't have 'good' written down on their character sheet, but what they have written down is largely meanginless to the way our characters act. I play a 'Lawful Good' cleric, but I ignore a lot of church policy I find to be silly. Should I be chaotic? I don't care!

For a really spot on portrayal of stupid alignment stuff watch Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Can't recommend this enough to gamers.

New Campaign Building Style

Oh alas my poor abandoned blog! I have returned to you now that I am planning on running a D&D game again and will hopefully add some observations about 4e game play.

Anyway, my new game has developed out of experiences with my last couple campaigns. My goal in what I think was my first cambridge campaign was to have a kind of special story for each character. My original thought in doing this was to give each character a unique little power boost as well as an interesting side story. It worked pretty well. One of the memorable story lines was the clones of Sojano. I also really liked a side story about how one character became a Weretiger which really confused the players when they were attacked by a tiger in the middle of the city. Unfortunately that player moved on before this story went too far.

I felt like this was such a success that I tried to replicate it in my future games having each character have some little interesting side story. I found that these side stories tended to have as much or more player involvement than the main plotlines.

I was also running a player in the traditional Dragonlance game. I hadn't read the novels at that point. Because the game was based on a novel there was a back story and our characters were worked into things. It was very cool that my character was the son of the main bad guy and it was awesome when I cut his head off! Sneak attack / power attack forcing an instant death save! Although when I realized I couldn't fail at this due to a plot point it took a little wind out of my sails. Of course, when I went back and read the novels everything was eerily familiar....

Anyway, I think what happens with a lot of games is that the game story and campaign are developed without the players. A DM or publishing company creates a world and adventure and the players create characters to jump into this story. What I wanted to try and do was not just have the characters have interesting side stories, but for them to be the main story. In a work of fiction the characters aren't random adventurers who wander into the situation they are key pieces of the situation. They are the desposed princes, the victims, the children of prophecy and so on. In the game I am currently struggling to start I wanted to instead of trying to make a cool idea in my own head, to take the characters and try and make the campaign be their story.

I am still in the planning stage of this game, but I got some mixed success. Some players gave more input and some less. The input was spread out over weeks leading me to focus on the story of some characters while ignoring others. So the central story I have now feels a little lopsided, but I like it. I think it will be more like my previous campaigns than I had planned. Each character will have a storyline. I have rough outlines for many of the characters that have been presented already. Although I don't plan on getting too detailed since who knows where their travels will take them and making assumptions about their still forming character personalities is dangerous. For example, Elymas Rell didn't really seem to care that his family had been kidnapped by demons and probably would have gladly sold their souls for power.... There will also be a central storyline that binds them. I am hoping that answering their 'personal' quests will help involve them more in the central story.

So I generated a set of questions for players to answer, but I noticed that there was a vaguely similar set of questions in the DMG2. There were more and they were more specific so maybe I will take some more inspiration from those questions in the future.