Being a wannabe noob GM as I’ve said in a previous post Matthew Colville has a lot of good advice.
One such nugget is the campaign handout. A short document for the players telling them about the world they will be adventuring in, and helping them decide what characters to create.
So I’ve made a stab at writing one for the Genesys Android campaign I want to run.
It needs a brief paragraph talking about how mega companies really run everything. Plus it also needs a brief description for each character type.
But here is what I’ve written so far (stuff in italics FFG words not mine).
It is the future. The world changed. People did not.
“In the not so-distant future, humanity has spread across the solar system, unlocked the frontiers of cyberspace, and created millions of intelligent androids in its own image. At the heart of this progress stands a ladder leading to the riches of the stars—the massive space elevator called the Beanstalk. And at its base sprawls the biggest, meanest, and most exciting city on Earth: New Angeles.”
12 hours ago your life turned upside down. 12 hours ago a tsunami hit “parts of six districts and caused massive damage to New Angeles’ coastal infrastructure.” Early estimates put the loss of life in the tens of thousands. It is thought at least a thousand androids also died rushing into the wall of water trying to save human lives.
NBN vidcasts are wall to wall floating bodies, and human suffering in the wake of the tsunami.
Somehow you survived the brutal force of nature as it lay waste to the feeble man made structures in its way. Battered and bruised, you have ended up at one of the many emergency relief centres. All you have left in the world are the possessions you managed to grab as the water crashed into your home. You are one of the lucky ones.
You are first level citizens of New Angeles. You do not know each other. But you are all in the same emergency relief centre.
So what was missing from yesterday’s brief and subpar write up from the Ravnica Allegiance Standard Showdown season start?
Yep my subpar deck lists for the two decks that I played.
Before I present the deck lists here is my get out of jail disclaimer about these decks.
“I’m not claiming these are the best decks in the world, they certainly are not top competitive decks. They are hopefully fun,affordable (subjective I know) decks. I don’t try and keep to a target price point. I try and use as many cards in my collection as possible to keep my costs down.I’m certainly not a master deck builder claiming this deck will win tournaments, if it is fun to play and does it thing then I’ll be happy.“
And based on the weekends performances these decks are definitely not competitive.
So here for your derision is the deck played in the Standard Showdown…
It’s Standard Showdown season once more. Naturally I went along to the first one at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole.
When I arrived at the store a X-Wing “mini” competition had started. The game still looks lovely when out on the table. Shame I was never able to get the game to the table and sold out of it. Well exchanged my collection for a couple of games I wanted. But I still miss the models, they are stunning. I don’t miss buying models just for the cards.
John and I tried to have a friendly game to test our decks, but with having to serve customers it was frequently interrupted. In the end John conceded with a dominant board state on my side ready to swing in.
This Standard Showdown was a pretty well attended one for a Saturday, with 10 entrants.
Round 1 – John (merfolk)
Sadly I was unable to continue the success of our earlier test game into the tournament.
I won the first game. But it was down hill from there. The second game saw me desperately play 3 Nexus of Fates to try and draw into an answer and snatch the win. But it was to no avail and just delayed the inevitable. Our third and final game was better for me. However John still managed to get into a superior position and get the win.
But close, fun games. I like those sort of games.
Result: Loss 1-2
Round 2 – Kar-Fai
Our first game must have been frustrating for Kar-Fai. He had me down to 2 life, before I stabilised and snatched the win from him.
You would have thought having won the first game so dramatically I would have remembered I had won it. But by the time I won the second game it had totally escaped me that I had won. The draw backs of old age.
Result: Win 2-0
Round 3 – Sophie (pirates)
Sophie had built her deck the day before. It still needed work. But the idea was good, and it has promise. Being more consistent and having more than one copy of cards would be the first improvement to make.
This was an easy match up for me. My deck walked all over it because of the reasons given above.
A bit more work and this deck will cause me problems.
Result: Win 2-0
Round 4 – Dean (dinosaurs)
My deck just didn’t fire in this match up. In some ways I need to be faster. But not sure exactly how. But my deck does struggle against fast aggro like decks. Something I need to look into. Fast aggro does seem to be a strong force in our meta.
Result: Loss 0-2
Afterwards Dean and I played a friendly game. This time I did much much better. But his Vivien Reid ultimate kicking in was the inevitable end for me. Trying to pump out oozes to delay things until I could hit a Krasis was futile.
Friendly Loss
After getting beat again by Dean but at least putting up more of a challenge, I played my mono blue mill deck against Kar-Fai in another friendly game. Which I lost. I hit none of my walls. So was at the mercy of Kar-Fai’s deck.
Friendly Loss
Final position: 7th with a 2-2 record
I only got a participation pack this time. Too many entrants to also get a Showdown pack. But I pulled a Repudiate//Replicate. That’s a sweet card for my deck. A strong card for going into the sideboard.
I don’t know when or how Matthew Colville first popped into the stuff Youtube recommends to me. I do remember that it was his reaction/explanation video for some key twist/event in the climax of Critical Roll season one.
A brief aside I’m not a fan of Critical Roll. I think it presents an unrealistic view and expectations of the majority of RPG sessions. Not every group is made up of voice actors, and all that over theatrical stuff.
Back to Matthew Colville. On his channel he has a series of videos giving advice to DMs both new and old. Which I’ve been dipping into, watching episodes that catch my interest.
I think it’s the opening video in the series where he creates a starting adventure off the top of his head. It’s impressive and demonstrates his decades of experience. It also looks like a nice little dungeon to use at the start of a campaign with new players. And from what I can tell has been run by a lot of folks.
However from all the videos I have watched so far, and enjoyed I decided to share the following one. It’s about sandbox campaigns. Colville has done another discussing on rails vs sandbox. I fall on the side of sandboxes. Hence why I’m sharing the video. But there are also a few links to adventures that he uses to seed his sandbox world. So it’s an amazing resource for those looking into running their own sandbox campaign. I’m a particularly new fan/convert to the Dungeon Delve and Book of Challenges. They look fantastic resources for a GM.
Sadly for an Android campaign doing something similar using existing published adventures isn’t going to happen. At best there will be that GenCon/Pax Unplugged two parter. So to do something similar would require a lot more work.
A Judge Dredd sandbox campaign on the other hand using suitable existing adventures as Colville has for D&D is do able. Before this latest Judge Dredd system using the WOIN came out, there were three other systems with their own supplements and adventures. So more material to work with.
So after that it’s about time we find out what Dram has been up to.
Gundren the dwarf was lying on the floor of the room in pretty bad shape.
“The dwarf needs healing!” shouted Dram.
But his words fell on deaf ears.
Dram tried once more to get the dwarf the help he desperately needed. But the other members of the party were wrapped up in their own petty little interests to listen or help.
Disgusted with the others Dram wandered off back to the hall where he had roasted the group of goblins. Leaving the dwarf to an uncertain future. He wasn’t happy about it. Dram had done all he could to help the dwarf. But healing wasn’t in his skill set. He had no potions or spells. He was a wizard not a Druid.
On his way to the hall Dram witnesses Ace lock Nick in a small room. “That was more important than helping the dwarf?” muttered Dram to no-one in particularly and shaking his head.
In the hall at the far end the charred remains of goblins littered the floor near to the blockage that Dram and Grull had created. But despite that burnt smell of goblin flesh wafting round the room, his nose hadn’t let him down. In the opposite corner to the bodies near to where he had entered the hall was a large pot of stew cooking.
Dram grabbed a spoon, dipped it in the pot. Tentatively Dram tasted the contents. It wasn’t the best stew he’d tasted, but it was not the worst either. It was edible whatever the mystery meat used was. He tucked in. Maybe a full stomach will easy his disgust at his companions.
After eating his fill of stew. Dram decided he better share the rest with the others.
On his way back to the others in the hall way there was an owl bear! It was a fleeting glimpse of this beautiful creature before it disappeared behind a curtain.
He had just seen an owl bear! He was surely one of the luckiest halflings ever.
Once the initial shock had worn off. dram shouted “I saw an owl bear!!!!”
The gnome and Sarmyar joined Dram in the hall way. The gnome wanted to get some food but was too scared to go by himself. But Dram wanted to see the owl bear again, so he went behind the curtain moments before that the owl bear had disappeared behind. The other two joined him.
The room they entered was empty. No sign of the owl bear. However in the outer wall was a gap leading to the outside. Dram reasoned it must have escaped the keep that way.
Back in the room where the wounded dwarf had been left, Dram was pleasantly surprised to see the dwarf back on his feet and looking a bit healthier than he had been.
Everyone was now back in the room with them. Including an unconscious Nick.
After short rest, a battered Nick was back on his feet.
A brief discussion was held on what to do next. Did the group rest so they were in better shape for the journey back to Phandaline, or did they set off immediately and risk the open road? Resting first won out. But Sarmyar decided to head off on her own.
The party returned back to the hall to eat and rest.
Early evening bought a surprise. As the sun set a war-band returned from it’s patrol.
As the war-band approached the keep, Grull came up with a cunning plan of negotiating with the war-band. It was risky, but it just might work.
Back in the room where the bugbear had been, and the dwarf had been found, Grull wearing the crown of the bugbear, sat on the throne. Declaring himself the king of the keep. On one side of the throne stood the gnome, hidden in the corner of the room was Ace. Nick was hiding in the side room. And Dram was on the other side of Grull ready to cast a spell.
Three hobgoblins and a couple of wolves entered the keep and blocked the doorway to the room.
Grull and the leader of the war-band parley. Apparently the previous occupants were not that popular with the war-band, and there was very little loyalty towards them. An agreement is arrived at despite the clumsiness of Ace dropping a hobgoblin head on the floor.
The war-band would get the keep, and the crown. And the party would leave without any trouble. Everyone was a winner.
The journey back to Phandaline was uneventful. They met up again with Sarmyar just outside of town.
In Phandaline Dram went back to his room at the inn, and ordered food and drink delivered to his room. Whilst in his room he sat at his table, opened up his spell book and started writing down some new spells.
With the Android Shadow of the Beanstalk source book for the Genesys system dropping though people’s letterboxes in the UK (they landed on the door mat in the US a couple of weeks ago, and the pdf can be downloaded from the 5th March, no hint at the moment when the taster scenario will be released). I thought I’d write some initial thoughts from my twenty minute bath time soak this morning, where Shadow of the Beanstalk was my reading material.
I’ve only really looked at the GM section of the book which looks at creating an immersive world for the players and building adventures in the Android universe.
There is some great advice for GM’s in this section, especially for wannabe noob GM’s like me.
I particularly like the advice on creating a living world. Which bits of can be applied to other genres. They also map across to some of the stuff O’Neal talks about in his book The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics. Particularly about the npc’s lives not being a static thing.
It’s also this advice that can be used to seed future adventures, and also add colour and depth to the world.
Also part of the GM section is the adventure builder that uses a Three Act structure. Hmmm I wonder where we have come across that? They split it into Hooks (7 provided), Escalations (5 provided) and Climaxes (5 provided). And like an ala carte menu, you chose one from section A, one from section B, and one from section C and you have an adventure.
My planning…
For my own planned campaign I think I have now settled on a setting and a reason for the players to come together.
I’m going to set the campaign in the aftermath of the New Angeles Tsunami as detailed in the novella Monster Slayer by Daniel Lovat Clark. And hopefully explore the impact of such an event. Naturally there will be power vacuums and gang warfare going on as rival gangs try to exploit this opportunity to gain more power. At the corporate level there will also be fallout, as the other rival corporations take this opportunity to hit Weyland and GRNDL who were behind the tsunami. Much of this will play out in the newsfeeds during the adventures. However who knows they may get sucked into some of the power plays also.
Naturally the players will be survivors of this disaster and getting aid at an emergency relief camp. The starting equipment they have is all they were able to grab when the tsunami hit.
So what other stories will be running in the newsfeeds during ongoing adventures? The events of the novella Monitor by Leigh Alexander seem ideal material to play out in the background. Although the theme may not be explored.
Although Exodus by Lisa Farrell, will see parts play out in the feeds. I do want to explore the themes of this. Android/Clone rights are analogous to the battle for black rights, slavery and the underground railway (I’m sure the inspiration for Exodus or an influence at the least). I like that Android gives an opportunity to look at this difficult and emotive subject. So we will see protests and riots reported on the news. And players will get caught up in some of these as well I’m sure. I like the idea of having the players involved in the Android version of the underground railway.
Although the players won’t get involved the events detailed in the Mumbad cycle also make great material for background colour that highlight the Android/Clone rights.
The Flashpoint Cycle also is something I’d like to explore and have the players involved with. It’s something that can play out in newsfeeds and seed adventures for players as they get involved in the fallout from those infamous 23 seconds.
I’m going to avoid any cycles or events that are off planet for the time being. So I won’t have them in the newsfeeds for the players until I want to move the party off Earth. I need more information about the Kitara Cycle which is on Earth. Maybe the events could be mentioned. From an initial look they could tie in with the fallout of Exodus, and have the players getting revenge on Weyland.
So that’s my thoughts on direction, themes etc at the moment. What the first adventure will be I don’t know. I still would like to see what the two part taster scenario FFG was. It may be suitable as the starting point. Or something that can be used during the campaign. My early leanings are that I have the players do an intro one shot, maybe a rescue mission, then into the FFG scenario (if suitable).
As far as my FLGS is concerned the D&D side of the two Ravnica weekends were a success.
WotC had provided two scenarios for stores to use
Krenko’ s Way
A zib for your thoughts
Ok Krenko’s Way was from the at the time just released, or about to be released Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica source book. But had some pre-made characters with it.
A zib for your thoughts was a brand new adventure that picks up after Krenko’s Way. It can be used with the characters from the first adventure or with supplied characters (I didn’t manage to get a copy of these, they are not included in the scenario pdf).
Apparently the weekend equivalent to the two Ravnica Weekends for War of the Spark will not have a D&D crossover scenario. But it will have something new and exciting instead.
I’m interested to see what this new and exciting is. But also disappointed that WotC didn’t use a three adventure story arc. And continue it to it’s conclusion as an option along side whatever else they have planned.
They provide enough ideas for a further scenario to use at the end of the second scenario.
“If you’re continuing a campaign set on Ravnica, this adventure sows numerous seeds to use as a part of your campaign. If you’d like, you can review the list of questions below to help inspire future adventures:
• Who was Vezska’s client? What do they intend to do with the information they sought?
• Who is in possession of the vial at the end of the adventure?
• What is the identity of the Dimir operative that sent retrieval teams to obtain the vial?
• Didthepartywithholdanyadditionalinformation they learned?
• What do the etchings mean on the door that Delrim discovered?
• Are there any NPCs that could become future con- tacts for one or more characters?”
I know my FLGS would have liked another scenario. There are plenty of ideas above to create their own. Or they can use the advice contained in the excellent chapter 6 (if I recall correctly) of Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica for rolling your own adventures. Or find a third party one online. So they have options.
Maybe we will see the D&D stuff return when WotC move to their next plane, and I’m sure print their next source book for it.
With the Android source book most likely dropping in the next week. I thought I better get a move on with this series.
“Fundamentally, adventures are stories. An adventure shares many of the features of a novel, a movie, an issue of a comic, or an episode of a TV show. Comic series and serialized TV dramas are particularly good comparisons, because of the way individual adventures are limited in scope but blend together to create a larger narrative. If an adventure is a single issue or episode, a campaign is the series as a whole.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)
When I started this series of posts I hadn’t got to that part of the DMs Guide. But it confirms that I’m not completely crazy with my comparison and taking ideas from other forms of entertainment.
This post continues the high level approach to creating a campaign and the adventures that make it up. Future posts will look at the details. But for now we continue to steal, sorry stand on the shoulders of giants.
“The basic elements of good storytelling should guide you throughout this process, so your players experience the adventure as a story and not a disjointed series of encounters.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)
The One-Damn-Thing-After-Another structure based on as previously mentioned 1930’s serials like Buck Rogers is discussed by O’Neil briefly. It’s a simple structure that is basically a series of encounters between your party and some big bad. They keep trading blows until finally one side is victorious. And potentially could be seen as “a disjointed series of encounters.”
We have already seen in the Paranoia post on planning an adventure the use of The Three Act structure. In the Dungeon Masters Guide they use beginning,middle,end for telling a story. Which is basically the Three Act structure.
In the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics we get presented with O’Neil’s Heavy-Duty, Industrial-Strength Structure for a Single-Issue Comic Book Story. Which happens to be the authors version of the Three Act structure that they developed over their many years in the comic book industry.
“Act 1
The Hook
Inciting incident
Establish situation and conflict
Act 2
Develop and complicate situation
Act 3
Events leading to:
The climax
Denouement“
Act 1
For my planning using the above structure the hook and inciting incident are combined into one. The inciting incident aka “the event that causes our party to react, that provides the danger or puzzle or task that galvanises our party into action.” (O’Neal) is how we get the story moving and entice our party.
Establishing the situation, conflict, and the McGuffin should all fall naturally within that inciting incident, and the opening scene setting.
But what is a McGuffin?
“A McGuffin is what the hero and villain are fighting over… The only thing that matters is that the plans, documents, secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters… it must be credible. If the conflict is over something inconsequential or silly, your hero is diminished…” (O’Neal)
Act 2
“take the story in a new direction. Something unexpected happens…” So in terms of the scenario or campaign, we are adding plot twists, complications, new situation(s).
Act 3
This is it the climax of the adventure. The player characters have solved the biggest problems, maybe even all of them. Defeated the threat, and restored order to the world. To paraphrase O’Neil. If this is the end of the story arc it could be the big finale, the final confrontation between the players and the big bad.
Denouement
For our purposes this ties up loose ends, has the heroes returning/delivering items, returning to base, shopping. And set up the next or future adventure.
So that’s a quick look at a basic structure to use for adventures.
In the comic book world there are basically two schools of thought on script development, full scripts and plot first aka “The Marvel Way of Plotting”. This is relevant to us planning our adventures because we have a similar choice. Our equivalent of the full script is the full adventure with all the details. Or we can go with the Marvel Way.
These posts I’m writing are starting at a macro level, and then zooming in to the micro. Which means because I am still at that macro level for this post I’m going to focus on the Marvel Way.
Stan Lee “With the Marvel style, I would give the artists the broad outlines of the story, and fill in the dialogue after the penciling was completed.”
Once I’m happy with the campaign planning, and the plots I’ve created. I can zoom in and do the detail. For me that detail is the equivalent of the drawing of the comic book, and the subsequent dialogue.
So what I’m proposing is that for each of the three acts a paragraph or two is written describing what is happening story wise.
Which means I haven’t gone into lots of detail, but I have a good overview
I do appreciate that so far that all this planning is for a linear medium. Where as the nature of an RPG is non-linear. Or it is if you don’t keep the players on the path and stop them wondering off. So I think that there is potential to learn from the video game industry on this front. I’ll have to look through my text books and hope that I can find stuff online.
But that will be for a future post. For now I’ll leave this here and keep an eye out for the postman and hope they are carrying a parcel for me.
Well I’ve surprised myself by looking at a third MtG card in the current Standard format.
This time I’m looking at a card that has been controversial since it was printed!
Nexus of Fate started it’s life as a Buy-A-Box promo for Core Set 2019. Nothing wrong with that you may think. You buy a booster box and get a copy of Nexus of Fate (while stock lasted).
But for many it’s appearance confirmed their worst fears about these promo cards since their reintroduction with Dominaria. That WotC would print a tournament legal card which has a small print run, and the price of the card would shoot up. Especially if it was a powerful card. Plus there were reports of some unscrupulous LGS’s not giving the buy-a-box promo with the booster boxes when purchased and selling them separately on eBay.
The tail end of last year Nexus of Fate turned up in a deck called Turbo Fog. Being super lazy after hearing talk about the deck in podcasts that didn’t go into much detail except to mention the deck had a few fog cards in it, and Nexus of Fate. I didn’t rush to the Internet and look at deck listings.
Naturally because it had a weekend in the spotlight at a pro tour or whatever the official event was, the price jumped. But that happens to a lot of cards.
What made people salty naturally was the “exclusivity” of the card. To have them you had to had bought a booster box, or for a playset four booster boxes.
I did hear the argument that being a buy-a-box promo instead of just a Mythic in boosters meant that there were probably more copies of the card out there in the wild than if it had just been only in boosters. So it could have been a big benefit for players that it was a promo.
I checked the price of Nexus of Fate a couple of days ago, and it was sitting at around £25. That’s not cheap. However it’s cheaper than buying a £90 booster box to get one. In fact a playset costs about the same as a booster box. Ok you haven’t got 36 booster packs as well. But you do have that playset of a card you want!
So while I would baulk at paying that for a card, there are many out there that wouldn’t. Especially if they are taking part in these big official tournaments where they are expecting get into the prize pool.
Jump forward to last week and in the digital world of MtG:Arena in the best of one format the card has been banned. Apparently there are decks on there that go infinite using Nexus of Fate that have no actual win condition. Except that your opponent quits or something. Plus for their e-sports and twitch streamers it makes boring viewing. Which is probably more the reason that it was banned, bad tv, over it not being not a fun experience to be on the end of.
So 7 CMC is not a cheap card. Without any ramp (which blue doesn’t have) this isn’t being played before turn 7 at the earliest. So with a deck like Turbo Fog the fog is basically there to keep you alive until you can start playing Nexus of Fate, and other big cost cards that might be in the deck.
As an instant you can play this any time. During your end step, during your opponents. And this is what I think makes the card powerful. If it was a sorcery that could be played on your turn only it would be a bit less powerful.
Once you play the card, you get to take an extra turn after the current turn ends.
The fact you shuffle the card back into the library is important. When you get to the last few cards of your library you are going to be constantly drawing the card. Which means you basically have infinite turns! That’s game over for your opponent.
I’ve not been to a Monday Commander session at my FLGS The Hobbit Hole since the first one was held a few weeks ago.
So half term gave me the ideal excuse to get along to another one.
When I arrived a couple of ex-students of mine Josh and Tom were there, as was Andy a regular at the shop and training MtG judge. It appeared a bit of Commander deck building advice was being given to Josh.
I used my Muldrotha deck for the first game of Commander. Which was a true roller coaster ride. I do regret using my Cyclonic Rift to save Tom from a massive attack by Andy that would have killed him. I had already “bluffed” Andy not to attack me the previous turn of his. Well it wasn’t a bluff, I had the card in hand with the mana open to cast it. But Andy wasn’t sure of that.
What was my reward for saving Tom’s butt? Yeah you guessed it, a few rounds later he killed me first before moving on and killing Andy and Josh in a single strike.
Game two for the afternoon saw the Horrors from the Deep wake from their slumber and head towards the surface to wreck havoc and destruction.
Trench Gorger is such a great card to play once you have sufficient mana out. As you can see in the game yesterday it got rid of my remaining 22 lands, to become a 22/22. With trample. Which is nice. But the big benefit is that it gets rid of dead draws. Well not completely. There were still one or two cards that were in the deck to help me ramp and get lands, and therefore useless now. But that’s better than nearing 30.
Andy took out Josh. His threat assessment was that Josh was the bigger threat. Well he’d know because it was his deck Josh was playing.
With my big threats on the board I was able to take Andy out, well at that point I had them all with flying whilst grounding everyone else’s fliers.
It then took a couple of rounds for the horrors that had surfaced to pound Tom into submission. And get me my first win with this deck. Wow.
It was great to catch up with Josh and Tom. Everyone had a fun time. It’s great that The Hobbit Hole hosts this for those that are at a lose end on a Monday.
A relatively short post for today. Which many will be glad to hear.
Yesterday I had the pleasure to game with one of my favourite persons to game with (the others know who they are), Diego.
In this relaxed afternoons gaming we got Wingspan to the table. Which was a first play for Diego. And got a very respectable score of 60 points. Truth be told I was expecting Diego to crush me. But it was my eggs that grabbed me the victory and winning a couple of the end of round bonuses. We were pretty much matching each other score wise up until that point.
Wingspan was followed up with me teaching Hanamikoji to Diego. Because it is so quick to teach and play we got three games in. With Diego winning two of them. I think this may well be at the moment my favourite two player go to filler game.
We finished off the fun filled afternoon with a couple of games of MtG. Diego was kind enough to allow me to test my Simic Standard deck against his Elf deck. The version tested is giving me more reliable draw of the counter spells. One more tweak and I think I then need to fix a sideboard.
Thank you once again Diego for sharing you home and hospitality with me once again.
I’m going to finish this post with some photos of Nico and Loki the attack chihuahuas playing on the bed last night.
As far as my FLGS is concerned the D&D side of the two Ravnica weekends were a success.
