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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
7/30/2010 12:36:39 PM
After the (un)death of two key characters in the game, the remaining two (plus one) made their way back to Rome to evaluate what had happened and what their next moves would be.
The appearance of a pair of well-muscled brothers from Cisapline Gaul in the Collegium was unexpected, but not unwelcome.
The characters now are in a state of flux. They're between jobs, so to speak, and floundering a bit in their attempts to find employment. Day labor is always an option. You probably won't starve as a laborer, but you'll certainly never get rich making 3 As per day.
Crime, obviously, is one way to make money quickly, and the gang is clearly eying that career option, but without much direction. Collections, enforcement, bodyguard work -- these are all options, but finding an employer is proving difficult.
What's next for our heroes?
On the campaign development side of things, I've found some new information on the Roman economy that looks to be exactly what I needed to get to the next step in defining the Macro Economy of Italia.
The question of the Talent of Silver acquired by one Gnaeus Cenaeus of Etruria has been plaguing me for the last couple of sessions. My DM instincts tell me that this was probably too much money to hand out for even the rare and expensive fish he traded for it, but that bridge has been crossed and burned. Retroactive continuity is not an option in this game (because I think it's stupid) and so I've been trying to come up with a fair market value for this 57 pound unit of silver.
First, I opted for the Attic talent, not because it is smaller than the Roman talent, but because it's much more likely that if a talent were to exist in Rome, it would be Greek. You see, at this point in history, Rome didn't have much silver or gold. That wouldn't happen until the conquest of Hispania, some 40 years in the future.
The value of an Attic talent is 6000 drachma. The Drachma (and Tetradrachma) is the coin of the Aegean. It is the coin of Aegyptus (the current economic powerhouse of the world) and lucky for us, it's exchange rate with the Denarius is very nearly 1 to 1.
That means that Gnaeus Cenaeus has gone from dirt-poor to modestly well-off with one fishing trip, and I'm OK with this. I don't really have any choice, but it's still OK. However, there will be some in-game specifics we'll deal with on Sunday.
The good news is this. Gnaeus Cenaeus has managed to acquire approximately 6000 denarii and bank it. That means that he has also acquired 6000 experience points, and is entitled to more experience points as that money was deposited into the Roman Treasury (AKA The Temple of Saturn) and is now collecting interest.
Before you get all excited, I should clarify that since he is not a citizen, he is not entitled to the 10% per annum simple interest that (most) citizen depositors are entitled to. Had he gone with a private banker he might have done better than the 2% he's being paid, but at least his money is working for him.
I'll see you Sunday.
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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
7/19/2010 12:56:49 PM
Having arrived in Salernum, the party opted to catch the ship that left them stranded on Caepre (Capri) by attempting to cross the saddle of the shoe of Italia. The plan was to get to Herculaneum, hire a ship and try to intercept the wayard slave and his Greek cohort before they made it to Metropontum. Hopefully, Xenocrates spell books would still be on board.
It was a sound plan, but not immune from criticism. I mumbled a few words about how dangerous such a trek might be, considering they're getting into a part of Italia, specifically Lucania, that is still populated, and sparsely so, by early Iron-Age tribes and family groups. There were walking trails, but few roads and they were headed deep into the mountains.
The party responded in classic adventurer fashion, stocking up on food stuffs (30 pounds of bread!), buying a pretty good map with landmarks, discussing their route with locals -- all good stuff. Good preparation on their part for an overland journey, anticipation of getting lost and possibly starving. The local who sold them the map offered to guide them, but they opted to do it themselves. Guides are expensive after all, and you never know when one is just going to lead you to an ambush.
One day and one night after leaving the small hill town of Eburum, they encountered a terrifying creature lurking at the edge of their campfire. There was violence and screaming and death and un-death and running. There was a lot of running. The running was followed by hiding.
After a slow, and somewhat distracting start, we hit our game stride after about 2 hours. The session went pretty well overall, with thrills, spills and chills enough for everyone. Thom and Dave opted to roll new characters immediately, and I'm glad they did. Again, their gamesmanship was fantastic, taking character death in-stride and with good humor. Gn. Cenaeus and Aurelia opted to hoof it back to Rome, as they felt their fortunes would be better served there. And in the mountains of Lucania, there are two new Wights haunting the woods surrounding a set of ancient burial mounds.
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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
7/14/2010 10:17:04 AM
We had another interesting session. It was a good session, in my mind. What stands out to me more than anything else was the players' willingness to put the roleplay of characters into a different category than the interaction between the players. Jason and Dave chatted before the session, and amicably decided that they would fight it out and whoever lost would roll up a new character. As it turned out, no one had to.
I've made a little progress on the economics of the world, but coming up with even quasi-realistic numbers for commodities produced in the world at this time is very difficult. I may have to result to rectal extraction. Any idea on how many tons of Bronze are produced over the course of a month in the Ancient World? Wheat? Millet? Eels?
*sigh*
I'm finding that as I get inside the minds of my NPCs and examine their motivations as people rather than characters, it's much easier to determine what they will do in a fast-paced sandbox game. For example, the Greeks on the boat saw the principles of the expedition descend to in-fighting, with one dead (apparently) and at least one other about to be killed. The guy who was paying them, although a slave, was cowering in a corner. As I pictured the scene in my mind, and I'll often do this during the course of a session, I saw the commander give the nod to his men, who strung their bows, knocked arrows and let fly.
Roll for surprise.
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Posted under
Today's Special
by:
Carl
on
7/8/2010 2:01:04 PM
Comments (2)
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Posted under
Today's Special
by:
Carl
on
6/28/2010 9:02:04 PM
Greetings.
For those of you who were there on Sunday I think we need no recap of the events of the last hour of the game.
For those of you who weren't we had a rare and magical occurrence in the last hour of the game. I'm keeping the event description brief on-purpose. I don't want to devolve into, "This one-time in D&D..." because those stories are always lame except to the people who were there. In a role-playing moment, one of the characters stabbed a fellow character and mortally wounded him. He then proceeded to chase another character and attack him as well. I sat back and watched. And laughed a little to myself as I watched the drama between these characters unfold in my mind.
That wasn't easy for me. As a DM, I could easily step in and say, "No." I have in the past. This time, I let it unfold. I became the world for a few moments there and the world doesn't care if you try to murder your fellow party members. This isn't the first time I've had a hands-off policy, but it's I think it's the first time I haven't broken in on a player and asked them what they, themselves, were doing.
I've got a lot going on in my head about the last session. I think it was very good. Perhaps one of our best sessions ever. Ditching alignment was the right thing to do. Setting the game in Rome was a good thing to do. I think the players are still struggling a bit with the moral codes of the ancient world. Also, I really enjoy that experience comes from Monsters, Money, and Magic Items.
How many experience points is a 1st level player character worth?
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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
6/23/2010 11:00:50 AM
Alexis has a great post up today. He says it's satire, and I suppose it is, too.
Regardless, if any of these things ever happened in one of my games I'd be sure that my players had been replaced with dopplegangers.
I feel that I have brought this on myself. I have rewarded a lot of bad behavior and as a result, things can get out of hand in games. This is especially true when things aren't exactly going in the party's favor.
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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
6/21/2010 6:33:18 PM
I haven't posted my system yet, because there isn't much of one, but here goes. This is not entirely my system. I learned it from a guy named Bob that I gamed with 20-some years ago. He was a good DM and ran a good group and shaped a lot of my DM and player personality. Anyway, this is my interpretation of his recipe.
I use critical hits because rolling a 20 is fun and it brings a level of what I think of as Casino Excitement to the game. If you can hit something with a 20, and you roll a 20, you get a critical hit. This allows you to make an immediate, additional attack. If you keep rolling 20s, you can keep swinging. You can even switch targets, and you may "adjust" your position once to get at more enemies if it comes to that.
AD&D is an abstract system. It's not supposed to detail every swing and step. It says this repeatedly and even rails against critical hit systems. It also says that the rules are guidelines. I realize that renders everything in the books to a discussion point, but so be it. This is supposed to be an adventure for everyone, right?
This critical hit system reflects a series of well-placed, expert swings on your target over the course of 1 minute of fighting. Since the system is an abstract, we can easily include missiles, but you must make sure that you don't run out of ammo before you run out of 20s.
Questions?
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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
6/18/2010 1:35:42 PM
These are five categories that I included on my references worksheet prior to starting this campaign. These categories are in addition to the food, mineral and animal references I've posted in the past. I've never talked about these, but I think now is as good a time as any.
These categories represent the basic things that are interesting to adventurer types. Based on the information I read about a particular locale, I put numbers into these categories for that area. Using an analog of Alexis' reference system, if I read about a god making an appearance somewhere, say founding a city, I put a '1' in the Gods column for that city. Same goes for the rest. The monsters category is a bit of a catch-all right now, but is meant to include any non-animal/mythical beast type encounters. For example, there's a beach on the Sicilian coast that Odysseus and Aeneus landed upon where they encountered Cyclopses. Since I found references to Cyclopses on this beach in two different sources, I put a 2 in the Monsters column for that area. The higher the number, the greater the likelihood that you'll encounter a monster there, and the more powerful the monsters will tend to be.
Tombs are similar, but they contain undead. Same deal for encounter frequency and difficulty. Wizards are references to magic users. Syracuse, home of Archimedes (an Archmage by anyone's measure) gets a Wizard reference. Given the number of times Archimedes is referred to, and the number of powerful apprentices and colleagues of his that live there, I should probably push that number up, but we're not in Syracuse yet.
The Military category is a lot less abstract than the others. Each number represents a legion, either Roman or Local. The more legions in a place, the more likely you'll have an encounter with the military.
This is one dimension of my attempt to create a meaningful playground within the campaign world. Italia is chock full of mystical weirdness, gods, monsters, tombs and so forth. Each of these represents an opportunity for the characters to make huge gains in experience through monetary gain, combat and acquisition of magic items. In essence, the whole world becomes the dungeon. See? No storyline needed. However, there may be a story there. For example, the Cyclopses on Sicilia are Vulcan's workforce.
Did I mention that Vulcan's Workshop is under Mount Aetna?
This brings me to something I had in mind when I started this post. Your character's knowledge of myth and legend is a lot more extensive than your own. I encourage you not to rely completely upon me to discover things about the mythical nature of the world in which we are playing. I think part of the reason that the Dungeon thing caused so much discussion among the group is that I look over Italia and see a place littered with gods, monsters, tombs, wizards and military, and you guys see a map with dots on it. You're looking for adventure, and I'm thinking, "Just walk about 20 miles in any direction and you'll find it."
I'll try to meet you in the middle by posting interesting bits that I discover about Italy from time to time. These could be considered adventure hooks that lead to something we might refer to as a dungeon. Or they could just turn out to be myths.
Here's something to think about for the next session, since you'll be sailing past it. The island of Tyrrhenia (now known as Ponza) once held a large and prosperous city, but at some point, mostly sunk into the Tyrrehnian Sea (notice the name similarity there?). Circe may still live there.
See you Sunday!
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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
6/15/2010 8:22:58 PM
In this post, I refer to Dungeon not so much as a hole in the ground where dwell monsters who have treasure, but instead to a more generic detailed area wherein one finds monster and treasure. A dungeon can be a town, its sewers, the surrounding woods, and/or the nearby abandoned farmhouse.
The problem I'm having with the dungeon at present is that it is contrived. Why is the farmhouse haunted? Ultimately it is because I, the Dungeon Master, decided it would be. There is no logical explanation for it, nor can there be.
Which brings me to my discussion point for this evening. Given that a dungeon is a pre-defined area with containing monsters and treasures, how does a Dungeon Master trying to provide his players with a simulation, rather than a story, deal with a situation where his world clearly calls for a dungeon?
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Comments (16)
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Posted under
Game Day
by:
Carl
on
6/14/2010 4:23:29 PM
I've had bigger groups in the past and while it was fun, that fun never lasted. Last session I had two remote players and new in-person player. The two new additions worked out very well.
As there's no story to progress I can instead discuss just how interesting it is to see the players driving their characters through this world. They pay attention to mundane details, they are concerned about their appearance, they care about the affectionately named, "Red Tunics" who are accompanying them on their little journey.
I'm not yet ready to start dealing with an economic sub-game yet. I continue to update my references spreadsheet, but it's nowhere near ready for even low-level trading. I go back-and-forth on how critical this is to the future of the game. At some point it has to exist, but I don't think it will ever be "finished" The spreadsheet is the high-level game for the characters. As they gain wealth and begin to acquire lands and estates, crop yields and the price of wine in Capua is going to be critical. I hope I'm ready for it.
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