On Adventuring Sans Dungeon

There is a shift in mentality when your group of players finds itself in an adventure outside of the dungeon. The walls of the mythic underworld oppress and funnel energy in a series of fixed directions. Every decision point is binary, every scenario considered for survivability, and an expectation exists of a conclusion to the endeavor; the ruby to be acquired, the big bad boss to be killed, the princess to be freed.

Adventures that take place outside of the dungeon are different. A broader world awaits where the players must have considerations beyond the tactical. Creative juices flow, resulting in a changed dynamic among the party as those normally passive players in the dungeon use this freedom to provide more input and take more action. Priorities and goals are set with broader parameters as the unknown variables multiply dramatically.

DMing these adventures is challenging. It’s easy to see many steps ahead in a dungeon by following the binary decision points. You can still get curve balls but you know, unless you’ve been forced to zero prep the dungeon, the likely results of any given action that the party takes deeper into the depths. Conversely, few decisions are binary outside of the dungeon. Most events will depend heavily on subjective inputs. The efficiency of the session relies on your ability to parse declared actions and provide feedback that the players can use. Hone your skills with reaction checks, encounter tables, and abductive reasoning to keep up with your players.

Playing in these adventures is challenging. It’s easy to see the options available to you in a dungeon; left or right, open or close, fight or run. When offered the breadth of an urban sprawl or vast wilderness, many players simply seize up with analysis paralysis. Avoid this by maintaining your bias for action. Observe your environment, Orient yourself towards desired outcomes, Decide what actions to take, and Act to realize those outcomes.

Calling in these adventures is challenging. It’s easy to guide a group through tactical challenges, apply binary inputs to binary decisions, and maintain an effective tempo in a dungeon. All that goes out the window when you leave the dungeon. You are figuratively herding cats, good luck. Your goal is to pick an objective out of the cloud of ideas that will thunder above the party’s head and try to maintain some kind of focus of action. The alternative is a diffusion of “can I”s and “what if”s that will kill the session flat.

The game doesn’t have to take place in a dungeon and many of the most memorable sessions that I’ve had over the years have been in the wilderness or an urban environment. The key is that you make the most of your session time and MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN. The DM’s temptation to exposit on setting details that no one cares about and the players’ temptation to scout and recon and acquire intel and ask questions and discuss options must be curbed by action. Play the game, don’t talk about it.

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Bloodfall 27

Following the attack on Bloodfall by Frostvinge and Isfang the Ice Dragons, our heroes gathered to deal with the menace once and for all. Long ago, promises and oaths were made and today was the day they would be fulfilled.

Raylan had the helm, using scrying from Ojisan's Palantir to help zero in on the dragons' lair. They had moved from their previous glacial spot after the PCs robbed their hoard some months back. Turns out satellite surveillance wasn't on their bingo card.

Using a bunch of math to convince me to roll 2d6, Ojisan worked with the rangers to locate the long ravine that the dragons had holed up in along with the remainder of their gnoll army. They scouted a bit and located the gnoll tribe underneath a large overhang. The adventurers did not see the cave one of the dragons was sleeping in because it was hidden behind ILLLLUUUUSION. Ooooh, aahhhh.

Anyway, Thorgal wanted satisfaction from the very same gnolls that chopped off his hand after agreeing to set him free during a prior captivity. He rolled up with some mercs and demanded a duel with Chief Biter. See, gnolls are chaotic evil and not very honorable or trustworthy. Biter said suuuure buddy let's duel, with no real intent of risking himself to danger. His 7 bodyguards were to jump in if Biter got hit or after a few rounds.

So that happened, alerting the rest of the party hidden away that things had not gone Thorgal's way. They rushed in to engage the gnoll tribe with their small merc army as Thrice-killed parried for all he was worth. A battle made too long by unlikely morale rolls dragged out. Once contact was made, I had determined there was a chance the patrolling Isfang would return. Ojisan on overwatch discovered the ancient dragon was inbound and warned the party.

Raylan bolted to go fight the dragon at the top of the ravine while the rest of the warriors finished off the gnolls. Ojisan flew invisibly and threw his Rope of Entanglement at the dragon, hoping to cause it to crash. A white dragon is longer than a storm giant is tall, which is the largest creature mentioned in the item description. It was close enough that I left it up to chance, requiring an attack roll from the magician. He hit, Isfang crashed to the ground, and Ojisan jumped on her back to stab her with his dagger. A 50 year old magic user that "speaks with spirits" btw.

Tons of noise from the dragon fight above woke the sleeping dragon in the cave, who started to stomp and rumble. I failed to roll the dragon fear for Isfang as Raylan arrived and Ojisan flew away. Oops. With leveled PCs it wasn't that impactful anyway. Isfang broke the rope and charged Raylan who drew the dragonslaying blade Istand and met it. Raylan chopped off a dragon wing, took a shot from a bite, and Isfang collapsed. Ojisan dropped flaming oil on her head and that was that. One down, one to go.

Frostvinge, with Leadbelly's spear sticking out of his eye, emerged from the illusory wall and roared. This time I remembered the fear and then realized it really only matters for mercs and low level folks. The party found themselves without their dragonslaying sword since Raylan was up top. They were undaunted, declaring unanimously that they would charge the beast (except Floki who was paralyzed with fear). Initiative would decide how impactful that charge might be.

Frostvinge reacted faster, breathing a cone of deadly ice shards on most of the party. That killed Thorgal and Rune the warriors outright, severely damaged Ormr and Broderick, and killed some horses. It was do or die, so Broderick and Ormr charged. Frostvinge rocked from the initial blows, but killed Broderick the Neon, Hersir of Bloodfall, with a wicked 123 combo. Ormr hung in and Ojisan flew his last flaming oil in to drop it on the dragon's head. The beast fell, the terrors of Bloodfall slain, but at what cost? Ormr plucked the glowing raven tipped spear from the dragon's eye.

Floki and Ormr ate of the dragons' hearts, the party recovered what hide and scales they could, and the group returned with their friends on their shields. Cairns were raised with the arms and armor of the heroes interred within to continue the fight in Valhalla. A great donation was made in Thorgal's name to finally get Thor some mfing representation in Bloodfall. Temple will just need a priest.

Grading:

I don't want to. The death toll on this one hurts. ~11 PC levels gone, like tears in rain. Funny thing, Norse gods can't really heal or raise dead. Not the ones you'd want to do it anyway. Deities and Demigods stays winning.

Thorgal: Excellent. RIP
Ormr: Excellent. Held the line, supported his brother warrior, no guts no glory
Raylan: Excellent. Led, bled, slayed.
Rune: Excellent. RIP
Broderick: Excellent. RIP
Floki: Excellent. Used his single spell to effect, tried to be useful. MU1 is a mfer.
Ojisan: Superior. Great use of magic and magic items to locate and engage the enemy. Jumping on the dragon's back, while metal af, was outside of MU territory.

Combat
Total XP:	3940
Cuts:	8
PC:	985.00

Touched

Back into the tomb for the umpteenth time, now with Zimon the Touched, Chosen of Sirlios. We had hoped to trigger some kind of response simply by proximity but that didn't fly. Zimon used a scroll to get some divine guidance, we rested outdoors, then returned once he had his prophetic dream.

He jumped in the moon pool and met with Sirlios, Goddess of Time or Dimensional shifts or something. He reported that Sirlios was in danger both in the future and in the past, threatened on each of two dual timelines that we were interacting with. Combined with the discovery at the gnome village, it appeared that some antagonist was angling for the destruction of all time by having her killed.

Being the heroes that we are, of course we jumped right to trying to solve the problem. Unfortunately we're really bad at guessing the DM's intent behind things. We conscripted some halflings to provide the security and supply line to the mage Scuba Steve at the gnome village like we had previously agreed and bounced back to town.

The elven court was concerned and intrigued by the problem and promised some level of magic research to be done in coordination with Steve. We traveled back to Horizon where we will continue to muster arms and consolidate resources to point at the problem. Bala Soto of Bastia needs to be in the loop, Boblin the diviner could help narrow in on the date in question maybe, and I am owed favors by Keoland that I intend to collect.

Bloodfall 26

Small group this time, with only Raylan, Thorgil, and Pius showing up to Raylan's call to arms. He'd had this Blackblade crazy evil sword locked away in a lead lined box for ages now and finally had a lead on a volcano to throw it in.

Captain Fili, some swarthy foreigner at the helm of a Viking longship, agreed to ferry them out to the volcanic island east of Sland, but only within about 1000 yards. Wreathed in smoke and guarded by a giant sized castle, it was a formidable fortress that guarded the only approach from a black sand and rock studded beach.

They poked around, found a tough way to climb, and managed to dodge any detection from whoever might be home in the castle (it's fire giants). The way ended at a drop into a pit of refuse, discarded bones and gristle of humans deposited from a trash hatch that hung ajar in the volcano's wall. Pius was in the process of fashioning shields to his feet as "gore shoes" when Thorgil tossed a rock in and saw the whole mass quiver.

Pius was lowered down to investigate and nearly killed by an abominable monstrous segmented arm of gristle and sinew that rose out of the pit and thrashed about. The rangers reeled him in before he was clobbered and they shot arrows and threw oil at it until it submerged itself back in the gore. A massive boulder was pushed off their ledge to try and crush it but it missed. It did make a ton of noise no big deal.

The group spent some time discussing various options while I determined if the occupants had heard the noise. Eventually a fire giant poked his head out of the hatch, saw the rock, but didn't see any arrows and figured it was just a landslide. He closed, and latched, the heavy metal hatch behind him. One point of ingress was made more difficult but they had some good recon on the place and bounced.

Back to Sland and nervous about fire giants they opted to avoid the island for now. Temple of the Jotun time. The eastern buildings held a runed stone that gave of Thor vibes in tones of approval. They cleared the east wing and went upstairs, finding a patrol of goblins that had exploded into bone shrapnel. Wisely, Thorgil tossed a piece of bone into the room before entering, triggering the trap? Trick? Whatever that animated the bits and pieces with black lightning and sent another corpselike abomination at them. Despite their separation, it seemed to the group that the two monstrous beings encountered this session were linked.

The rangers held the line, Pius successfully turned undead, and the thing cowered as they beat it to death. Good thing, it was a nasty bugger. There was some black scale mail stowed nearby with Hel themed decoration, too. They finished the map of the 2nd floor and went down to the disgusting pus-lined rift in the central room. Thorgil tried to approach it and light it on fire but succumbed to the smell again and ran to the corner to puke. Raylan tossed oil and a fireball erupted for a minute or two from the gap. Good thing Thorgil failed his first time.

They dropped into the rift, poked around some narrow cavern hallways, and found a shrine to Hel, goddess of death, pestilence, and disease. Pius's Find Traps spell shone around the rune-rimmed iron bowl sitting atop the pedestal. Raylan threw a javelin, disturbed the bowl, triggered the spear trap, and they found some loot stashed. Off they fucked back to town with a bit of ruby and some intel about both locations.

Grading:

Raylan: Excellent. Called, bold
Thorgil: Excellent. Good teamwork w/ Raylan, bold
Pius: Excellent. Good use of spells. Turn undead clutch

Combat
Total XP:	630
Cuts:	6
PC:	210.00

Davids the Gnome

Back in Ahtet's Tomb, more wandering around, this time Cassian went to some alternate time line where ranks of terracotta soldiers waited in the massive chamber. It's clearly extradimensional and tied to the Sirlios stuff that our other pirate party had mostly interacted with. We couldn't really dope anything out so we planned to return with one of our Sirlios touched members to see if they could spark something off.

En route back to the house we ran across a little village of gnomes. Of course, they were all named David. They were kind and hospitable and we spent the night, but our watchman noted the gnomes got up and did some crazy ritual death spiral thing around a big obelisk in the woods. Poof, they disappeared, and the day reset. All the food we'd eaten, interactions we'd had, etc with the gnomes were as if they never happened and the gnomes just reappeared back in their village. We'd seen things like this as players before but little of it as these characters.

A human mage was incognito in the gnome village, the only one not named David. Steve shared a lot of theories about the obelisk, the gnomes, and the weird time dimension stuff. He also shared that the moon pools we keep running across were fixed portals between the two timelines. It was all very interesting but we lacked any mages or anything to really engage with it in character. He remained at the village studying the phenomenon and agreed to exchange more info and magic items in exchange for supplies and guards. Off we went back to Lijiang Tower where Cassian bought a Potion of Tongues to hench up an incredibly friendly griffon and we could interact with the Class 1 market to help out Steve.

Downtime in Bloodfall or How 2d6 Preserves My Sanity

You must keep a strict record of time that passes in the game in order to run a proper campaign of AD&D. One result of doing so means that time becomes a measurable resource that both players and NPC factions will want to make use of. You will quickly realize, particularly if you're still on the Always On side of the spectrum, that you need a method to manage the incoming drags on your time or you will drown. Always On is not sustainable. No, I don't care about your anecdotal one shot that's run for 3 months.

The challenge then is how to manage the downtime requests of your players without either drowning in daily requests or ignoring them and compromising the buy-in of the table to the campaign. As the Always On methods evolved, some similarities with play by post and wargaming came to light, most importantly a schedule of turn adjudication to stem the never-ending adjudication. The efforts of the DMs of Sojenka, Torpenhow, and various wargame pbp games proved to me that a turn-based system for downtime was the balance that DMs needed in order to maintain momentum over the span of a campaign.

Next, the discussion around convergence and diffusion demonstrated that downtime really should develop the game state in some way. It's not about collecting resources, or power-leveling for the vidya crowd. It's about collecting hooks, threads, and opportunities for interaction to be used with other players. Some diffusion to collect these tidbits makes the inevitable convergence hit with a different energy. To that end, players need to understand that the energy spent on their downtime will feed the campaign state, one way or another.

I started the campaign Bloodfall in the Urf club to get experience DMing AD&D. I've run an awful lot of ACKS, both Always On and evolved away from that, but AD&D is the better system for what we do. I love ACKS and will only say that running AD&D is less likely to miss the forest for the trees. Macris suggests that a successful long-term campaign must be consistent and my extensive history confirms the same. Barring RL complications, Bloodfall runs once weekly hell or high water.

Staying with the consistency theme, I run downtime orders like a play by post wargame. There is a deadline, I check for ways that the various actions can intersect and provide outcomes to the players. I then post an update to the game state for all to see. This is a wonderful opportunity to use the GOSS method to determine if it's good or bad info or doesn't make it out at all. Parties can then use information gained this way to inform their actions during session.

Orders should be submitted clearly, with clear intentions and resources willing to be spent to achieve the goals. I talk more about submitting orders in this post. The DM has to run 4-20 of these, depending on the game, and doesn't have time for back and forth. Remember, we're trying to reduce the demand on the DM's bandwidth. 

I use a simple method in Bloodfall to resolve actions. When there's a mechanic to resolve an action, like an assassin's spy mission, I use those rules. They're the rules. When it's a matter of determining an unknown, like it is 99% of the time, I roll 2d6 where a low result is against the order's intent, high result is for, and the most common middle result is some marginal success.. If the player has made some effort to improve his chances, especially at the expense of some actual resource, I may modify that roll in their favor. Conversely, if the order is boring or outside reasonable expectations, I may modify that roll against them. But in any event, I'm not arbitrarily deciding the outcome of any event mostly because I'm lazy.

I use 2d6 because I like the bell curve. I like never remembering the exact percentage breakdowns. It has a different feel. If you like hard %, use percentile, but develop a system that is consistent and does not require you to decide the result of every small thing.  It's a DM mini-game to abduct why the dragons have relocated from their lair or why there's a job available for the assassin from his handler, in the same way that you'd abduct the action around a random encounter during session. 

Keep strict time records. Set a consistent schedule that your players can trust. Use something quick and simple to adjudicate orders. DMing doesn't have to be a second job.

On Warlords of Pergamuth

It's that time again. I've won another stein-style event, this time a pbp Traveller/RECON mashup refereed by Joshinyu. What follows is my general strategy for victory and observations about the setup, pace, and conclusion of the game from my perspective.

I played as Captain Bellisarius "Whiskey" Woltievsky of the WTF PMC. My nod to the storygamer Ref was that CPT Whiskey was being fed 40k Imperial propaganda from an unknown source; Inquisition, Astartes, Chaos agent, who knows?! It didn't matter at all to mechanical choices that I made but it certainly fed the flavor. Our mission was to overthrow The Great Leader of Pergamuth and establish rule in our image.

The setup of the game was surprisingly involved. We had a budget to purchase men and equipment of various levels, from infantry grunts to ballistic submarines. Ref wanted us to roll up individual Traveller stats for our personnel which was quite the ask. I wasn't doing that so we negotiated a middle ground of establishing skills. Still a lot but I got through it. 

I built out Whiskey as a spec ops sniper a la Mellowlink from VOTOMS. I then had two identical squads of infantry with a versatile cross section of roles. One squad had an aerial craft in support, the other an ATV. Rounding out my loadout was an artillery piece, which the ref considered a mobile combination arty/AA gun. I essentially made templates for each type of infantry; rifleman, medic, AT, etc. This made tracking stats and capabilities of each squad easier to see at a glance. With the advantage of hindsight, I think part of the budgeting would have been to buy a template, rather than a blank slate, for infantry if those skills were required to be known.

The next stage of setup was placement on the map. Ref gave me a few options so I chose as close to the Starport as I could get. A plan was forming to take over the means of resupply and reinforcement and then strangle the game by capturing the Starport. I couldn't do it alone and I couldn't do it without the fog of war. The other players were gonna help me out with both of these challenges.

I needed an ally. Glancing at the roster I had a handful of known lunatics, a handful of unknowns, and one player of honorable and noble character, HootOwl (nevermind that I had to blast his character in the face in the previous stein event that I undisputedly won). I approached him with my plan and after some negotiation and light RP we formed an alliance. Our loadouts complimented each other well and he had his eyes on a village near him to capture for uh, reasons. At this stage of the game we didn't know how anything worked or what anything meant so we really leaned into a bias for action.

Turn one came around and I needed recon, I was blind. I knew I wanted to work towards the Starport so off I went. My scout team turned up with a native smuggler who had lost his team. He was starving and cagey but after some encouragement I got some critical local details. Another warlord was destroying river crossings nearby. The smuggler, who I named Snowman, also knew a smuggler's route into the Starport area. 

This first turn had a lot of back and forth and I sensed that that wasn't gonna be the norm. I identified two targets, the river guys and some guys laying mines at the Starport. I had set my objective at the start so I opted to engage at the Starport. I attempted to set an ambush, was mostly successful, and after a brief fight had control of the only means on or off planet. So far so good.

Thankfully, it seemed most of the other groups were scrapping well away from me. This gave me and Hoot a chance to consolidate our forces at a fortified position. It was around this time that my side project of running through the USMC Decision Making Tactical Games workbook with Belloc bore practical fruit in the form of how to issue orders. The light bulb moment was that someone else was going to process your orders, either a subordinate or a referee in a game, so they needed to be delivered in an easy to understand and direct manner. 

The second turn put the river guys in our crosshairs. Since we were consolidated, I would use one of my squads to act as a fixing element and Hoot's highly mobile squads to flank and destroy. I'd keep my other squad for a QRF and defense of the base. My new order format was a hit with the ref and really helped organize what I actually wanted to achieve with a turn. I also sensed the scope of game the ref wanted, one of strategic maneuver and scheming rather than fiddly tactical shot by shot combat. I let him adjudicate the results of orders based on my declarations without needling him with detail and took the good with the bad. Hold on loosely, baby.

Our second engagement was successful, destroying the river mercs to the south with air strikes, flanking, and a little help from unknown third parties who dropped an ATV on some of Hoot's men. Meanwhile, I was attacked at the base! Good thing I'm a strategic mastermind and my defense force was able to repel the counterattack from The Great Leader's men trying to recapture the Starport. The Great Leader was goin' through it, one warlord was KIA, and we had our target secured. I got reinforcements from off-world and set my sights on capturing TGL's island base nearby.

Turn three, we established a screening force of Catechan jungle fighters, a mine field in the water to combat the threat of Frogmen in Submarines, and Hoot's highly mobile platoon as a QRF. I consolidated my entire force and struck at the island fortress. We captured the base while TGL fled in a VOTOMS, which he ditched to try and sneak off world. Our minefield disabled a submarine, man am I smart, causing it to surface and be destroyed. The warlord aboard mounted the ditched VOTOMS but was destroyed by focused fire from the remaining resources on the island.

Meanwhile, the Frogman's indigenous ally struck at the Starport but fell to a Catechan ambush and artillery. With both the functional power and symbolic seat of Pergamuth in our control, Hoot and I declared victory. He definitely was not considering betraying me and is a good and loyal subject of the Imperium. The remaining warlords spent their turns scrapping amongst themselves and their stories are their own (cuz I have no idea what went on over there).

The game went very well for me, equal parts teamwork, forethought, and luck. I'd also like to think understanding what type of game the ref was trying to run helped me to communicate my turns effectively. My take away from this game was all in the orders. I made a good alliance and then really didn't communicate with anyone else outside of a clearly sketchy attempt to fish for details from one of those aforementioned "known lunatics." 10/10 would play again.