The First Game of my Campaign

[gamepunk26]

I ran my first prepared T&T game for what will hopefully be a long term campaign. I have run several spur of the moment games using random maps and just making things up as I go, but this was my first planned adventure.

I converted a D&D 3.0 module which was easy. Using DC saves and converting them to T&T SRs was a snap. The game ran well and the players were really into the adventure. The best thing was that since the system was new to all of us there was no rules lawyering or complaints. I ran a few cinematic encounters where the monsters just did stuff and the players laughed and participated without anyone saying "You can't do that. I want to roll initiative." It was great.

I have a few mechanics questions though about things that I allowed, but am not sure that I want to keep in play.

I let the rogue of the party go thru the tedium of searching for traps, a D&D standard. It slows that game a little and I am thinking about eliminating that and having the party just make luck SR to find any traps. Any thoughts?

I came up with a talent for the Wizard that gave him a familiar and by making a Talent SR equal to the spell level, he can lower the cost of his spells by 1 Wiz, similar to the effect of a magic staff. He loves it. Is this game breaking?

My inexperiance with the rules for the monsters still has me messing with the MRs and fudging my dice rolls during the session so as not to slay the party. If I give the monsters a sufficintly large MR so they are not all slain in one round, they have potential to kill a player per turn. If the MR is too low, the party rolls the monsters in a single round. I have only 4 players now, but next session will swell the group to six. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Overall the experience was great. The players really enjoyed it. One player is an old D&D fanatic and he could not stop talking aboutthe game afterward and asking for suggestions about what his next talent could be. A full convert in a single session; he has seen the light. Praise be to St. Andre!

[apeloverage]

gamepunk26 said:

My inexperiance with the rules for the monsters still has me messing with the MRs and fudging my dice rolls during the session so as not to slay the party. If I give the monsters a sufficintly large MR so they are not all slain in one round, they have potential to kill a player per turn. If the MR is too low, the party rolls the monsters in a single round. I have only 4 players now, but next session will swell the group to six. Any suggestions would be helpful.

After reading this, I wrote a little Excel spreadsheet which calculates how much the totals will be on average in combat - let me know if it works - it's at www.apolitical.info/webgame/tnt.xls

Thanks,
James.

[branderwydd /|\]

just curious - what d&d 3e adventure did you use?

t&t rogues are basically untrained wizards (t&t type is based on magical abilities), not d&d thieves. anyone can TRY anything in t&t, with the GM setting the SR level.... someone who wants to specialize in thief-like skills should take a talent in thievery (they could be of any type).

i've done similar things with familiars being another form of foci (like a wizard's staff to reduce cost).

IMO, combat should be challenging for the PCs some (even much) of the time. when the players get more experience, they'll be able to beat superior foes through use of magic, creative tactics, SRs and other means that break the mundane routine of rolling dice and comparing totals. don't sweat it too much. my players always surrpise me - just when i think they will eat it on the next round, they do something creative and save everyone's butt.

[gamepunk26]

I used NeMoren's Vault. The Rogue in this case is a pirate and I thought that roguery would sub well in that case. As I said before, I am going to make finding traps dependent upon Luck SRs from now on. Mostly because I dislike the tedium of searching everything. It bogs the game down so much and eliminates alot of the risk.

There was a healing pool that they kept going back to after combats so I collapsed the tunnel leading to it. They are still very much in D&D, no risk, no sponteneity land.

I will break them of that.

[Mhegrrrim Skulltosser]

gamepunk26 said:

I let the rogue of the party go thru the tedium of searching for traps, a D&D standard. It slows that game a little and I am thinking about eliminating that and having the party just make luck SR to find any traps. Any thoughts?

I came up with a talent for the Wizard that gave him a familiar and by making a Talent SR equal to the spell level, he can lower the cost of his spells by 1 Wiz, similar to the effect of a magic staff. He loves it. Is this game breaking?

Your instincts are good young Jedi .... er... I mean Delver (d**n wrong game! ).

Checking for traps can be very tedious. I normally ask players to give me a list of things they regularly do. (check for traps, check out the ceiling, evaluate things, sharpen weapons between fights, etc.) Then I ask for SRs whenever the Delver blunders across the right situation. Whether or not they warn their team mates... sometimes someone will keep quiet about a trap creating a very conflict within the group.

I like your familiar idea. Don't worry about game breaking. Each GM is master of their own Universe. Tell us more about the familiar? Can the familiar extend the spell casting range? (i.e. a familiar imp flies across the chasm to our warrior friend, lands on his sword and the mighty mage can cast Vorpal Blade on the weapon.)

[gamepunk26]

The familiar has no in game effect except for the cost reduction of spells. It is functionally immortal in that it takes no damage and cannot die. If the mage dies, it disappears.

Thanks for the idea about the list. That suits my purpose perfectly. The PCs in this case were actually meta-gaming to a degree as none of the characters have ever been in a dungeon and the setup and story were not a typical dungeon delve. Their characters would only learn about traps as they stepped on them, so the list of duties and appropriate SRs will work good for me.

Can this thread be moved to the new campaign journals section? Seems more appropriate there.

[mahrundl]

Gamepunk,

This thread isn't really appropriate for campaign journals - it's discussing mechanics, not gameplay. Good thread though - lots of nifty ideas!

[WSmith]

gamepunk26 said:

My inexperiance with the rules for the monsters still has me messing with the MRs and fudging my dice rolls during the session so as not to slay the party. If I give the monsters a sufficintly large MR so they are not all slain in one round, they have potential to kill a player per turn. If the MR is too low, the party rolls the monsters in a single round. I have only 4 players now, but next session will swell the group to six. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Yes. Let the dice roll when they may and do not be afraid to let the player characters die. One of the beautiful things about T&T is how fast a delver can be generated. Another part of the beauty is that a body count should be expected. Now, to answer the question on judging MRs, find the combat average dice for the party. multiply it by 2 and that should be a rough estimate of what type of MR your group should face. This is not perfect, but can be a quick guide.

[gamepunk26]

The problem with that is that I am trying to run a campaign. I want the PCs to survive their first few runs so that the players can develop their characters. In a beer & pretzels game, I have no problem killing a party, but I want this to run for awhile. The players all put alot of thought into their characters and a few even wrote backgrouds for them. This type of game is not condusive to the death of a whole party in the first session because of dice rolls unless they do something really stupid, which they have not yet.

I am figuring it out, but T&T is a rough system if the players do not do creative stuff in combat and just let the dice fall.

[Fenris]

gamepunk26 said:

My inexperiance with the rules for the monsters still has me messing with the MRs and fudging my dice rolls during the session so as not to slay the party. If I give the monsters a sufficintly large MR so they are not all slain in one round, they have potential to kill a player per turn. If the MR is too low, the party rolls the monsters in a single round. I have only 4 players now, but next session will swell the group to six. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Okay, some suggestions, take them as you will (or won't!)

Keep fudging those numbers! This is T&T, not math class! Give 'em a great experience, that's more important than dice rolls!

Start on the low side with MRs. If they beat the encounter too quickly, you can bump up the next one.

Remind the players that they have magic on their side. TTYF always hits, and always does damage even if the players lose the round. Oh Go Away can cause one or more monsters to run from the combat (even if the caster doesn't have the attributes to make it effective, lie about it and let the monster run anyway... maybe the monster is scared and is looking for an excuse!). But don't forget the value of TTYF!

Let the monsters break and run for no apparent reason. If the players were losing, this can be even more scary! Say that they suddenly stopped and turned their heads as if they were "hearing" something, then turned and ran off! The players could spend the rest of the game worrying about what that was about!

HOUSE RULE ALERT: I don't kill characters. That doesn't mean you shouldn't! But 0 Con to me only means the character is knocked out, and may die without assistance. As long as any other character gives assistance (wakes them up, binds wounds, whatever), the character will live. I only kill characters if the player wants the character to die, perhaps because he wants to create a new character, or wants to "take one for the team" and die heroically because it's right for the scene.

A knocked out character alone can be killed with one hit, but why? A live captive is much more useful than a corpse. If the monster is just a predator for food, perhaps it got scared away by some other factor (an old Wizard over the dune giving a strange howl, for instance!). ;D

I hope you find one or more of these suggestions useful!

[gamepunk26]

Awesome suggestions. I have been playing around with numbers and I am getting a feel for it. The second game is this Sunday. It is 99% role-playing as the characters are gambling and tlaking to NPCs for most of the session. There is some tough combat at the end and I think I have the numbers right. I will report.

The players are enjoying themselves and that matters the most to me. I got a rare moment of joy overhearing one of the players telling someone else about one of the dramatic encounters they had and relaying how much fun it was.

[Fenris]

Hey gamepunk, here's another suggestion that just came to mind, I thought you mind it helpful.
EDIT: I was looking around and noticed that you had posted that you use 7e for character creation. The following suggestion is for 5e; if you are using 7e, this may not be helpful at all. I'll leave it up anyway, since I'm really not sure.

When using opponents for the characters to fight, consider using the Fighting MR, Constitution MR system (outlined in the rulebook, 5th ed).

With this system, you give the "Monsters" two MRs, one for fighting and one for dying. This is much like what the players have. They roll dice and add their adds for combat, and they also have a CON that tells how much damage they can take before they die.

The downside to this system is that the Fighting MR doesn't drop when the players land a hit. As a result, getting that first hit on a creature that is too-tough doesn't mean anything. A monster with a Fighting MR 50 and a CON MR 50 will continue to fight with 6 dice + 25 adds until it dies... so if this is too tough, it will stay too tough through the whole battle.

The upside to this system is that you can have an MR that varies from the CON, making the monsters weaker than they appear. The monster above may have a Fighting MR of 50 (6d+25), but maybe a CON of 10! (That will make it a tough fight, but only briefly. A couple of good combat spells will finish the battle).

Or you could go the other way and give a monster with a Fighting MR of 20 (3d+10) a CON of 100! The characters may always win the combat round, but will take quite a while before they actually beat him! (This will make the combat seem tougher than it is. They'll fight long, which seems like fighting hard, but really they're winning the whole time).

The "standard" way to abbreviate the Fighting MR/Constitution MR system is, for example, "Zombie MR 20/100."

If you start using this system, it's only a matter of time before you begin to make other changes to it, such as creating MRs and CONs that don't correspond to any system, such as, "Orc: 4d+10 in combat; CON 20." Doing this can really help you tailor your encounters to your group, but requires a few combats to get the numbers balanced.

This isn't an either/or proposition. It's completely fair to mix and match different MR types in one campaign/game. If only an MR is given, assume the standard system; if two numbers are given, that's Fighing/CON MR; if a caspsule description of how they fight is given, use that instead. Mix it up so the players have a variety of experiences!

Note that some monsters are more affected by certain weapons, too. Skeletons and Living Statues are hurt more by blunt weapons. Zombies won't even react to clubs generally. There are different ways of doing this in your game, but rather than take away your pleasure by detailing some of those methods here, I'll leave it to you to create your own. Hope you're having a blast!

[gamepunk26]

Thanks for the suggestion FenrisWulf. (Btw-are you a 40K player? Your screen name is very reminiscent of 40K.)

I had actually thought about this today at work. Using a monster with only 10 Hits, but it attacks with 4d6. I also thought about how to make a large group of individual monsters into a greater threat by using their combined MR for dice and eliminating them as the party did enough hits to kill individuals.

[mahrundl]

gamepunk26 said:

I am figuring it out, but T&T is a rough system if the players do not do creative stuff in combat and just let the dice fall.

Gamepunk,

I assume you've told your players that they can perform non-standard combat tricks and they are just not doing it? One way to 'encourage' them: have the monsters use such things occasionally. After a character has taken damage due to being blinded by a handful of thrown sand, they tend to get much more inventive about such things themselves... ;D

Don't let the monsters do it too often though. Save it for smart creatures, and preferably for the weaker ones, or you could wipe the whole party out accidentally!

[Fenris]

gamepunk26 said:

Thanks for the suggestion FenrisWulf. (Btw-are you a 40K player? Your screen name is very reminiscent of 40K.)

Sorry, I lost this post... I knew it was around here somewhere....

Anyway, sorry but that's not me! Fenris Wulf is from my obsession with Norse mythology. In fact, my real-life-no-I'm-not-kidding daughter's birth name is Valkyrie. Talk about your obsessions!

I was supposed to get my first tattoo this year, and it was going to be the Midgard Serpent/Oroborus, so there you have it.