What ROLE-PLAYING have you been doing?

Thanks, Wade.

Isn't there a Gazetteer of sort for Magnamund coming out for this game?

I understand there aren't many adventures for LWAG, but I was thinking I could use the LWAG system and setting to run adventures from the Dragon Warriors rpg. Both having a lot of similar British fantasy trappings. I could be wrong, but I don't think it'd be a stretch at all.



www.drivethrurpg.com/product/94178/Sleeping-Gods

Yeah there's a setting book, campaign, and bestiary at least on the horizon. All of those were promised in the Kickstarter that I wish I had backed.
I don't see any reason you couldn't run just about any low-medium fantasy setting with the LWAG rules. I've been looking at some classic DnD modules for inspiration and adventure design, but I've been trying to keep it in Magnamund as much as I can without forcing it. Really, nobody I've played the game with knows a damn thing about Magnamund other than what I tell them, but Magnamund is a pretty fleshed out place and I like to use it since the game was made for it.

It's really easy to design enemies and mobs that are scaled to the players though. Converting stat blocks won't work very well. LWAG basically has a single stat for enemies called Combat Skill (CS). On the fly you don't even have to have the CS for a bad guy planned out, you can just make it above or below the player's at a margin as needed. Just don't tell the players that's what you're doing or they'll think your job is easy. Mostly everything else combat-related -- stances, reactions, styles, effects, etc -- are narrative with the mechanical effect being a CS modifier of some type.

For example in an adventure module I'm using for inspiration if I've got a poacher with a net that should be slightly weaker than the players I'll ask the players what each their baseline CS is (if I don't have it written in my notes) and give them +1 or 2 against the poacher before their modifiers. If the poacher manages to net a PC I'll narrate it and if the PC doesn't have the type of skill that might let them avoid it or something they'll be hindered and get a negative modifier to their CS as well as an ability test or something each round to get out while they (or I) narrate their struggles. That's just what I came up with this second for the effects of being caught in a net, if I thought about it more I'd probably have something better. The combat in LWAG is pretty simple mechanically, so if you don't do stuff like that you're really just rolling on a chart.

After about a month off, I got together my 5 players for a second session of DCC. We ran Portal Under the Stars last time, this time it would be Sailors on the Starless Sea, each player running 3 new level 0 characters. Interesting stuff happened both in game and out of character; I feel I learned a whole lot about running a game. Gameplay of the module in the spoiler followed by thoughts after...



Everyone again had a blast, but there was a sense of disappointment in the TPK for me and at least a few of the players (the ones who had no survivors from last funnel were kind of bummed that they again were left without their own level 1 survivor). We should've split this session into two sessions, because it got late and the alcohol consumption affected the late game. There was far less thinking outside the box or exploring the areas in the tail end of the adventure due to this, which to me was a shame. I as the GM need to recognize such things. Combat was a lot easier for me to organize with just a single completed game under my belt, I think I'm ready for the added abilities of level 1s but I'm sure there will be a bit of a learning curve. This group plays things very gonzo, which is great but I think once they aren't running multiple characters they will be a little more cautious, hopefully it doesn't reduce the fun. Sadly the player who does the most and best role playing... has been ravaged by dice and just getting his teeth kicked in by the game. I think this will change at level 1 though I'm very interested how the dynamic is gonna shift among the players.

Anyway what I need to do is figure out what level 1 adventure we are gonna do, between Doom of Savage Kings, One Who Watches from Below, or People of the Pit, and how I'm gonna have the players with no funnel survivors roll up characters. Next session should be great!

our group went into the...



in this adventure, we had a glove maker...best known for singing "feel like making gloves..." while travelling to the tune of Bad Company's "feel like making love". ha! still makes me laugh!

love DCC. I don't think I can ever go back to D&D.

In our first funnel, we had 2 halfling glove makers. Obviously they became brothers one skilled at crafting right handed gloves, the other left. The very first room the left handed glove crafter tried to shove someone in front of him into the first room. Without bringing up spoilers I will say he rolled a 1 on his attempt to shove and karma worked it out. Left handed gloves immediately became a symbol of treachery and deceit for the rest of the night.

So any and all DCCers. I now have 5 players, one has 3 lvl 1s, two others have 1 lvl 1, and two others have no surviving characters. We are for sure graduating to level 1 for the next adventure and while I have 5 players and 5 level 1s... ideally I'd like to have a way to introduce some level 1s so each player has a stable of 2-3 characters. We could roll them up randomly which seems to be in the spirit of DCC, but I was thinking of maybe a pit fight, some added battle with a big bad, or an ultra quick mini-funnel encounter before the next adventure kicks off, where survivors instantly level afterwards so there is just a hint of connection to these characters. Has anyone done something like this or similar that worked well?

It is mostly up to what you and your players consider fun, but what I would do is let the two PC-less players roll up L1s, and give a small benny to the existing players with the L1s.

Reason being:
- Playing L0s in a group of normal PCs is a frustrating exercise in cowardice, so they should be more than zero.
- Giving them a level equal to the average level of the party is kind of BS, because there should be consequences for all your dudes dying.
- The default DCC XP system is based on "how hard is this encounter" so things should equal out after a while.

Repost from the Kickstarter thread:

Every year Goodman Games does a special holiday themed adventure module for Dungeon Crawl Classics. This year it includes scratch-off character sheets. It's a Level 4 adventure and your characters have lost their memories and sense of who they are so you scratch off parts of your characters sheets throughout the adventure. Cool idea. www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409961192/...odule?ref=nav_search

Mr. White wrote: our group went into the...

Warning: Spoiler!

tower from the base and we got butchered. I had a halfling who gave up and was basically making it rain coins amongst the slaughter in the hope he would be spared...he wasn't.

We did have a few survivors carry on though because the party thankfully split previously...

in this adventure, we had a glove maker...best known for singing "feel like making gloves..." while travelling to the tune of Bad Company's "feel like making love". ha! still makes me laugh!

love DCC. I don't think I can ever go back to D&D.

Do players need multiple characters at Level 1? Could the players who have multiple give some to the players who didn't have any come out of the funnel?

I got a hardcover copy of the song of ice and fire RPG (Green Ronin, I think). It's making me want to run it because the design a house part of it really works for me in terms of what I could do with the PCs...

I just bought a copy of Maze of the Blue Medusa and A Red & Pleasant Land...I am going to run them as D&D 2nd(Or DCC )

Blue Medusa is pretty fantastic; I hope to eventually run it in DCC.

Since I picked up WFRP 3e in the FFG Holiday sale I've been liking what I'm reading and have been trying to trade for the supplements and expansions. Our Lone Wolf Adventure Game is on hiatus due to being busier than usual through the holidays, so it looks like we may just shift gears and give WFRP a go. My wife is a very visual person when it comes to games and she's a big fan of the WFRP 3e components and cards already, even though I've only barely explained to her how they work.

So I'm trying to figure out the best way to scale WFRP adventures down to a single adventurer because us playing one-on-one really helps me learn the system and she's doesn't really enjoy running multiple characters.

I liked WFRPG 3rd quite a bit, actually, while I had it. I wasn't sold on the dice systems for reasons that escape me right now. There was something about the scaling when you started rolling more dice that felt strange to me on a math level.

boothwah wrote: So a while back one of you linked a great vid from Matt Colville - I'm pretty sure it was part of the SJW-athon that was spurred by the "Hobby Gaming will get you raped or KILLED!" thread. Anyhoo - I enjoyed it and have been consuming all his content - You should check it out www.youtube.com/user/mcolville

His manifesto and mission of encouraging people to play DnD worked : I'm two sessions into running a game for my 20 year old and her BF, my 16 year old and her friend, and two of my 30ish year old gaming buddies - It's going great!

Based on his suggestion from the series we did a session 0 - Everybody rolled their characters up and discussed backstories, I gave them campaign info, to help them fit in and I think this is a great thing to do - For the newbies (4 of them) it allowed them to ask questions about mechanics and work through the PHB together. I highly suggest and will be doing this if I ever run any other games.

I'm using Lost Mines of Phandelver and I reskinned it for the DnD Known World setting (heretics call it Mystara) circa the Gazetteer Line - Basically dropping it into Karameikos and replacing big city (Neverwinter) with a bordertown (Threshold) and dropping the lost mines and Phandelin in the Highforge area south of there. I've forever despised Forgotten realms - When I did leave my Red and Blue box settings** for the world of AD&D back in the day, it was to the Greyhawk boxed set, which was a close second to running a game in Karameikos/Known World - Karameikos won out because it is so simple - Basic political rift set up initially between lingering Traladaran resentment of new Thyation nobles being granted land in a 30 year old nation - tons of borderlands and wilderness - surrounded by mostly friendly neighbors but separated by uncontrolled territory held by demihumans and such.

So they rolled up :

Attikus a human paladin (Thyation, ex military, bearing the weight of a crushing defeat)
Valeria Kelvin a human wizard (young, the daughter of the a local Thyatian Baron on her 2 year "Shearing*." )
Petra, human monk ( Traladaran, part of a special order entrusted with safeguarding the nobility....tasked with Valeria's safekeeping)
Arrick the dwarf sea cleric (returning from 50 years at sea to put his house in order)
Asogohan, a human barbarian (from a Traladaran group of travelers that live in NW section Karameikos - Think wood gypsies)
Kindle, a gnome wizard (think more a pixie or sprite - woodland fey creature, but we are using forest gnome stat and racials - a local wood wizards apprentice who started studying with him because of her insatiable curiosity)

Session 1 was great - a couple of light combats to break them in - they really took a long time for a couple of two round fights, but I was OK with that, and they were too - they spent a lot of time flipping the PHB, realizing that spell selection was a big deal, learned about long and short rests - the realization that first level characters are fragile....I'm a roll in front of the players kind of guy so it there was the moment when the first goblin in the ambush rolled a nat 20 on the surprise round and his bow took the cleric down to 1 HP - everyone was like - Crap! this is serious. They eventually beat the goblins - with the gnome wizard making a heroic nat 20 on her -2 (wisdom = 8) perception to check to spot the fleeing/hiding goblin - everyone huzzahed - they were smart enough to disable one and tackle it, so they had one goblin to interrogate.

They stowed the wagon away and set up their first marching order and tracked the goblins down - Then there was a 30 minute discussion of how they were going to approach the cave mouth and avoid the goblin ambush they were sure was waiting - I stepped back from the table and let them work it out - they started comparing character sheets, more PHB flipping, and then finally they launched their grand scheme - The cleric created a magical fog to provide them cover, while wizard used dancing lights and minor illusion to create distractions in the fog while the monk circled around the cave mouth in the thicket - they RP'd it pretty well and they got to smash the disorganized scouts without a single one escaping.

Not a lot for a first 3 hour session (they will all be 3 hour sessions) plotwise or story wise, but I could almost call it session 0.5 - The one where we learn how to do combat - Tomorrow (as long as my wife doesn;t go into labor) they get the opportunity to assault the caves that serve as the Cragmaw hideout and see if they can find out what happened to Sildar Hallwinter.


*Shearing is a practice in Karameikos where a child declares his/her majority by approaching their parent/family and having a send off party, where they shear the end of their cloaks and send them out to prove their ability to fend/provide for themselves for 2 years without the support and rank and title or resources of the family - Of course the wizard is ticked because her dad sent a secret bodyguard that she totally knows about but Petra doesn't know that she knows.

**How many of you guys killed Bargle? Remember Aleena? Fear not solo adventurers from the Red Box era....Aleena is alive and well in my campaign.

Campaign Update -

Some slight spoilers for Lost Mines of Phandelver

Last Monday, we finished the penultimate session - Previously, The party had defeated the Redbrands, chased down a favor from a banshee, cleared out Cragmaw Castle, and had begun their exploration into the Wave Echo cave - so this last session was their final confrontation with the Black Spider.

Rather than a play by play, I thought I'd just share some bullet point thoughts on the adventure and the play experience in general.

• It took us about 12 approximately 3 hour sessions in all - I think we ran longer than most, and the pace for our group was definitely casual - probably 30 minutes lost most nights to off topic banter and having 6 players.
• The early fights can be deadly until the players hit level 3 - That is just D and D 5e, not the adventure as written.
• If you you are going to run with more than 4, you are going to have to fudge on the encounters - generally an extra goblin or 2, and extra minion for set piece boss fights, etc. Because 5e flattened the numbers, the real challenge for for a larger play group is challenging their action economy. It also make solo big bads a little underwhelming if you don't either beef the HP, or add some distractions - Otherwise the players can just pile on their actions, take their one big bad hit and then finish whittling down the baddy.
• 4 of the 6 had never played D and D before. 5e was easy to learn, and they all went from showing up to the table with a character sheet and a pencil, to showing up with a mini, and their dice, and either their PHB or their Ipads with Fight Club installed
• BTW - Fight Club is a GREAT APP for 5e - You have have to do a little legwork to grab drop box files if you want to use all of the supplements, but definitely well worth it.
• About halfway through, I scrapped the battle map and mini's and went to using my friend's projector and Roku box to project rooms, monster pics, etc on the wall off my Ipad and we ran "theater of the mind." It sped up combat and the players started getting more descriptive and engaged in their actions. Much faster and more engaging. Which is what 5e is set up for.
• Hardest fights - The Flameskull scared them the most - having the party get hit for 26ish damage from a fireball was sobering. Castle Cragmaw was almost a TPK, but only because they chose to bum rush the entire castle, and chained 4 rooms of encounters together. The Black Spider would be underwhelming if you don't use his spiders and their web effects to great efficiency. At one point, I had the entire party immobilized by webs from the spiders and his staves and it allowed for some great sneering exposition. They didn't face the Dragon...that probably would not have gone well.
• Magic Items - Decent mix, and if you make on the fly adjustments everyone can/should leave with something that is neat but will not break the game. I'll list their specific booty in the character recaps in a sec.
• Droop was the greatest hit of the module - the party burnt most of a session RPing whether or not to kill him and what to do with him afterwards - The end result : Droop is now tending bar at the former "Sleeping Giant" taproom. The party purchased the business and have renamed it "The Grateful Goblin" where every Tuesday is "Ladies Night and Not Kicking Droop Night."
• at $20 (or $15 marked down) LOST MINES OF PHANDELVER IS A SCREAMING DEAL - There is plenty of entertainment in the box - I basically ran the adventure, as written, with only about 3-4 hours of prep work...that was entirely unnecessary and done only because I wanted to fit it into a campaign setting that I have been running forever. A brand new DM could spend half that time reading the adventure, handing out the pre-gen characters, and hitting the ground running. Every rule you need is included in the box.

Only one of the players really actively min-maxed (the cleric) the rest made character leveling/skill/feat/spell choices based on their character concepts or because it sounded "neat." And it played out just fine. The final iterations of the characters at level 4 :

Kindle - Gnome mage - chose to cash in all of her earnings from the early part of the adventure to buy every item a gp or under from the PHB merchant items that I would allow - being a fey creature, with a serious cultural misunderstanding of currency and value (8 wisdom), she bought all the trinkets - including a bucket of 1000 ball bearings. Which she has been handing out as tokens of affection and attempted on multiple occasions to use as currency. She has been trying (to no avail) to make her animal friendship race perk do something useful...as it stands there is always a new squirrel named "Stacy" to befriend on the way to, and then get lost in every dungeon she enters. She went down the illusionist specialization, and was modestly ineffective in combat, but incredibly effective in a number of social interactions. She currently has a bone/horn/fingernail/residual goo/ etc from most every creature they defeated for "research." The party, thankfully, talked her out of keeping the dormant Flameskull as a memento. Kindle earned a magic dagger +1 (with an undetermined minor ability)she named Toepick and some magical potions.

Attikus - Human Paladin - Oath of Vengeance - He took Sildar's offer and has been initiated as a Cloak in my shoe-horning of a version of the Lord's Alliance into Karameikos - Same basic goals as the FR version, expansion of civilization, bringing law and order to the border regions (which is like 90% of Karameikos.) The player is happy to have a badge, and has been chomping at the bit to raise a militia in Phandelver - His goal is to earn enough money/favor to allow him to purchase/be granted the abandoned keep the Redbrands used as a hideout and restore it, and protect Phandelver and the surrounding area. Oath of Vengeance, Tresendar Manor.....he wants to be Batman. I'll probably let him, too. Attikus gained a magical sword +1 named Talon, that can cast Hunter's Mark once per day and a Cloak of the Winterlands.


Asagohan - Human Fighter - Great Weapon Fighter - First time player - Enjoyed playing great big man mountain with big hammer. His signature battle cry is to shout out whatever it is he is charging in to hit with his hammer - It;s the running joke, because he ha rolled really well on initiative and most battles are led off with "Wolves!" or "Goblins!" or "Goo Creature!" He had a really nice one on one role playing session with me, during a session he was not able to attend, via text and set the stage for what the raid he had set up in town, while the rest of the party was chasing owlbears and visiting with a banshee. Asagohan's prized possession is a the last weapon forged in the Forge of Spell - Lightbringer - A huge maul +1 that can shine with the radiance of a light spell and does extra damage against undead.

Valeria - Human Mage - She went with the conjurer spec - Another first time player - She was pretty quiet the first half of the campaign, only really engaging in her turns on initiative - It took a little bit to draw her out, but it was worth it - She's still not entirely comfortable with the RP bits, but is much more engaged in dungeoneering now - She came up with some inventive uses for her class specialization and conjured items. She received a Wand of Magic Missiles and some potions.


Petra - Human Monk - Elemental spec - It was really great watching my middle daughter fall in love with a character - It really clicked for when she got to pick her elemental sec and become, in her words, "Airbender!" What an amazingly fun character - Excellent movement, decent action economy, and a simple resource economy (ki points) - One of the most memorable moments of the campaign was her chasing down a fleeing Glass Staff by using her ki points to get a free dash action and grappling him to the ground ( He escaped, but the chase which only lasted a couple of combat rounds had every one at the table engaged.) Petra proudly brandishes the Spider Staff she pried of the Black Spider's cold lifeless corpse.

Airick - Dwarven Sea Cleric - Our power gamer - which was good, because I think he saved the party from TPK at least twice when they overextended themselves. The combination of Thunderwave/Shatter with the Channel Divinity feature that gives max damage was brutal. There was also a fight where his Turn Undead roll was so good, that it turned what should have been a tense fight with ghouls into an exercise in herding them into kill lanes as he leaped around the room with his Boots of Striding and Springing. He also was a great model for the noobies, as he spent just as much time developing his character. Airick has Boots of Striding and Springing and Dwarven Breastplate +1 (with advantage on saves vs Dragon breath)

Last night, we played Ryuutama, session #4 out of a scheduled 6. If you haven't heard of it, imagine if someone asked Hiyao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, etc.) to make an RPG based on Oregon Trail.

So: brutal wilderness survival and resource management, where if you were forced to choose between facing a dragon or a blizzard, you'd probably choose the dragon. But it's all cute and heartwarming! With the laughter of children, and the joy of exploration and discovery. But sometimes you get lost and starve to death.

Anyway, super fun. My nerdbros are trying to save a village witch from being framed and executed for the failure of the iceberry crop. There's an obnoxious witch-hunter, totally Dudley Doright, including a cleft chin. And a reluctant young executioner. But they haven't yet learnt that the witch is guilty! Looking forward to busting expectations.

Got the new edition of Paranoia in the mail last week. Small, but perfectly formed and full of interesting ideas.

It's updated the setting for the modern world, both in terms of the technology and the satire. The result is a much more coherent, interesting and believable Alpha Complex. And the tone is a definite walk back to earlier editions. Of course it's still funny, but it's very black comedy rather than slapstick, and although it's not prescribed one gets the sense it's "supposed" to run campaign style. The three linked adventures included strengthen that feeling. The fact it comes with a bunch of cards for use in combat and mutant powers and stuff like that made me think it was going to be a one-shot when I backed the KS. And it could work like that, but it's not the focus.

Perhaps the oddest thing about it is that it's very rules-light, using the cards to strip everything back to the essentials while still providing lots of choice and narrative. That's especially true for the GM. Players use dice, but the GM is instructed not to (although there is an unsatisfying optional rule to allow them). Instead they simply make up combat results, damage, etc as it fits the pace of the game. If you know what you're doing, it's going to be a very empowering experience. But I'm not sure how suitable this is for neophyte GM's. Again, the somewhat bare-bones nature of the included adventures backs that up.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to giving it an in-depth play through