Bioware Read My Mind
I've been designing my campaign for quite some time now. Officially, the campaign's been built in the D&D 4e mechanic for about nine months, and before that some of the underlying concepts have existed as part of an alternate reality game that I've been designing for almost two years. A lot of the ideas came to me in the same manner most of my good ideas come: in the middle of the night, while driving, in the shower, etc...
A week ago I purchased Dragon Age: Origins "Ultimate" Edition ($40 on Steam, I think). Everyone I know who's played it loved it, and it's a game that I've been looking forward to playing myself for quite some time, but didn't have the necessary hardware to run it adequately until recently. I've been playing it since, logging close to 40 hours of play time, and it's kind of awkward for me to see several of my ideas - ideas that I had thought were original creations of mine - in the game.
Some of the things are slightly different but the similarity exists at the core. And some things are almost direct copies... For example, DA:O has a village called Haven. My campaign has a village named Haven as well (to be honest, I was inspired by the Haven in Everquest 2), and it's eerily similar in terms of what it contains (I don't want to elaborate for spoiler reasons, as it relates to DA:O as well as my own campaign).
And it doesn't end there. Even the first two encounters are remarkably similar to the assault on Ostagar. They have "darkspawn", I have "shadowtouched" and "darktouched". Two companions are remarkably similar to NPCs I created for my campaign, and one of them even shares a similar name. I also found at least three world NPCs that are similar to NPCs in my world as well. Even my main antagonist makes an appearance (he is an older person in DA:O, but still). And there are several quests and even some items that are similar to what I had created on my own.
Similarities in any design process are inevitable. Someone once said that there's no such thing as an "original" idea any more (which is why Hollywood insists on remaking anything they can think of). And I admit that I probably share some background to those that created this content for Bioware: game designers/D&D player. "Great minds think alike," if you will.
But in the back of my mind I have a problem. During my campaign design I knew nothing about DA:O, and little did I know I was creating something that many might think is a mirror image of it. People might look at my creation and think "he took this from Dragon Age", even if I know for a fact that wasn't the case.
So here I am, seriously considering if I should rename my version of the village of Haven. Part of me doesn't want to change it because its design came out of my mind and, although inspired by loads of reference materials, is not "ripped" from a popular game. But another part of me can't help but think how many people out there would read my campaign and think just that.
Maybe I'll call it "Kirkwall"... That's original, right?
Ever Forward
Before I continue with this blog, I thought I'd clarify a little about myself. I am a "gamer" in the traditional sense, and have been involved with game design and game development for close to 25 years. But, as far as D&D goes, I'm somewhat inexperienced when it comes to running a campaign in person... I'm currently DM-ing four different campaigns and playing in around six or seven, all of which are "play by post" (mostly on the Wizards of the Coast forums). The last time I played a live session of D&D - with other humans - was around 1988.
A lot of my ramblings will seem to most as the trivial, nonsensical banter from someone who may not know what he's talking about and is not experienced in this sort of thing. I freely admit that, when it comes to running a campaign that isn't exclusively online, I don't have the level of experience in this genre that most of my readers do. I will make mistakes, say things that are incorrect, talk about things that have been talked to death... Simply because I'm clueless.
As it turns out, Critical Hits had an article today called "So You Want to Write RPGs", which talks about what it takes to be an RPG designer... And it got me thinking a bit. Of the seven things listed, I fail miserably at a couple of them, and the ones that I do fail at might not be that easy to remedy because of personal situations and available means (full time job, family, geography, etc...). So if I do want to make a run of this sort of thing, I have a lot of work to do. Will that stop me from doing what I want to do? Probably not. If I don't follow those suggestions and continue on the way I have been, I might end up with a product that sucks.
Honestly, I don't care if it does.
Ten years ago I was the lead programmer of a group called "The Redeemed Assassins", and we were developing The Opera: an add-on for the original Half-Life from Valve Software. Development of TO was a brutal, painstaking process that took several years, and during that time we suffered in ways I can't even begin to describe. But we did it anyway. When asked why we would go through so much trouble to create something that would be disliked by anyone who saw it, and would probably not last a week (we released at the same time that CounterStrike came on to the scene; 99% of all Half-Life servers were running CS at the time, and there simply wasn't an audience for anything else) we had a simple answer: "If one person found our product enjoyable, that will make us happy."
After over two years of development, we finally released it... And it lasted about three weeks before it was overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of CounterStrike servers. But, to our surprise and happiness, there was actually more than one person out there that really liked what we did. That made it all worthwhile, and despite appeasing only a handful of people it reassured us that the past two years weren't a total waste.
As nice as it would be, I'm certainly not doing this for fame or fortune. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I've been a game designer for almost twenty-five years and during that time I don't think I've ever been paid to do anything game related (Valve flew me for a day to Seattle to meet the HL2 development team... Does that count?). This isn't a career, and at this point in my life I'm not expecting to make a living doing this sort of thing. But I do it anyway because I do this for myself and the hope that there's someone out there that might actually enjoy my creations.
So I press on, pouring hours upon hours in to something that has no other apparent reward beyond being a part of it. I will continue development of this campaign in the way that I think it should be, even if some of my designs might be awkward and not for everyone. The campaign might end up being such a train wreck that that nobody will ever run it in a table top game, or it might be so campy and flawed that nobody cares for it.
But in the back of my mind I'll remain hopeful that one person out there might like it, or might benefit in some way from that which I do.
Until I find out who that one person is... "Ever forward."
Overly Complex Encounters
"Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge" - Winston Churchill
Part of my problem designing a D&D 4e module is that I haven't played a live table top D&D game in over ten years. During that time, all the games I've been involved with are "play by post": I'm currently DM-ing several online games, and playing multiple characters in many more.
And the reason I can do so many concurrently is because of the nature of "play by post". The advantage of PbP is that all the mechanics involved in managing encounters is transparent to the players, so the players may not be fully aware of the amount of work the DM has to do. Since all my games are PbP and I have a multitude of utilities in order for me to do that management, I have the luxury of making some rather complex encounters. These may not translate well to a table top setting.
Several of the encounters in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of my campaign involve NPC allies. If it were one ally that's not a problem, but I use them a lot, and in once very specific case there are five PCs, five to six enemies and - last time I counted - twenty-three allies and/or non-combatants. I can't imagine what it would be like to handle the status of thirty-four creatures using pen and paper, dealing with things like rolling initiative over a dozen times. Heck, most people might not even own that many miniatures.
So there's my problem... I really like some of these encounters (the one I mention above is my favorite in the entire campaign), but some DMs might take one look at them and think "No way I'm going to deal with all that!" For the sake of publishing, I think I'm virtually forced to modify them so that they are manageable, so that DMs won't be dismayed at running them and elect to either reduce the complexity or skip the encounter entirely.
Another option I'm considering is possibly including two versions in the module, or at least enough descriptive text to explain how to simplify a seemingly complex encounter. But that would feel kind of odd... Including a "normal" version and a "use this if you're crazy" version of the same encounter.
But something interesting happened relating to all this... In addition to all the 4e campaigns I'm active in, I'm also active in one rather epic 3.5e campaign (also PbP). In that campaign we are a group of eight 8th level players currently fighting over ninety orcs, most of which are minions. As a player it doesn't appear that overwhelming, but I can see the amount of work involved in managing such an encounter. Even dealing with all the markers on the digital map is quite daunting sometimes.
But in 3.5e it seems almost... normal, as if that level of complexity was expected and commonplace. In 4e, it's ludricrous. I assume that's simply due to the nature of the 4e mechanic, and the new level of number crunching involved.
So has anyone out there run these sort of "epic" encounters where there are few against many, or perhaps a normal encounter that has a lot of NPCs just waiting to be turned in to collateral damage?
And the reason I can do so many concurrently is because of the nature of "play by post". The advantage of PbP is that all the mechanics involved in managing encounters is transparent to the players, so the players may not be fully aware of the amount of management the DM has to make. Since all my games are PbP and I have a multitude of utilities in order for me to do that management, I have the luxury of making some rather complex encounters. These may not translate well to a table top setting.
And there's the added benefit of time. It's much easier to do that much die rolling and encounter management when you don't have five people sitting across from you at the table wondering "well? Are you done yet?"
Several of the encounters in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of my campaign involve NPC allies. If it were one ally that's not a problem, but I use them a lot, and in once very specific case there are five PCs, five to six enemies and twenty-three allies. I can't imagine what it would be like to handle the status of thirty-four creatures using pen and paper, dealing with things like rolling initiative over twenty times. Heck, most people might not even own that many miniatures.
So there's my problem... I really like some of these encounters (the one I mention above is my favorite in the entire campaign), but some DMs might take one look at them and think "no way I'm going to deal with all that!" For the sake of publishing, I'm forced to modify them so that they are manageable, so that DMs won't be dismayed at running them, preferring to reduce the complexity or skip the encounter entirely.
I've been interested in getting a feel for live games once again, even if it was simply observing and not an active player. Maybe then I'll have a better idea of whether these encounters really are as complex as I fear them to be.
Skill Challenge: The Interview
POSSIBLE SPOILER WARNING: If you are participating in my campaign, or intend to participate in it, you may not want to read the attached PDF.
Skill challenges have always been my heroic flaw. I don't think I've been able to run a skill challenge correctly yet, but I'm getting there. A boatload of online resources and posts on other blogs surely helped me get it together, and I suggest everyone to look those up if they're having as much trouble as I.
The first scene in my campaign isn't an encounter... It's an interview. The five players are brought before the rulers of the village of Solis and essentially interrogated for the job of "village protectors". Depending on how they respond, the nobles might like them (in which case they'll actually support their efforts) or despise them (in which case they don't really care if the players die painfully).
In concept this was perfect for a skill challenge, but the mechanic didn't quite fit as it was designed. There were a few concerns:
- The party wasn't doing this as a collective; each person was being interrogated one at a time. They may be able to assist each other, but they can't speak out of turn.
- There were two people asking the questions, and they were both radically different individuals: one was a soldier and war general, the other was a mystic. The DCs should definitely not be the same.
- It was an interview to gauge the ability of the players... Should the players' reactions be restricted to a handful of "primary" skills? Almost anything should be fair game (I had a hard time figuring a way that Stealth could be used, though).
- The two people asking the questions have a high degree of bias for certain races and classes; there are certain types of people that they will be more sympathetic to, and others that they will have a seething hatred for. For example, they're elves who worship Corellon... so God help you if you're a drow.
Here is "Chapter 1, Scene 1" from my upcoming campaign, edited slightly to remove the really major plot spoilers (no "Conclusion"). You'll note a few changes to the skill challenge mechanic:
- Number of failures is irrelevant; only successes count. Furthermore, a PC has the option of not doing a skill check at all. If you're no good at being diplomatic or talkative, you don't have to force yourself to succeed. You simply don't do anything (you can speak, but it doesn't have to be a rolled skill check). In fact, if the players never fail they get bonus XP.
- There are two sets of DCs, depending on who the players are responding to: Laris or Lia. The warrior reacts better to feats of strength and endurance, while the mystic reacts better to diplomacy and intelligence.
- There are a whole boatload of modifiers depending on the player's class and race. You'll probably do great if you're a shardmind psion, but you're pretty much screwed if you're a drow rogue (you're lucky if they talk to you at all).
So here you go... The first scene in my upcoming campaign! Hope you enjoy!
Encounter: Hall of Spiders
We Xogo recently had a "Create an Encounter" contest. Unfortunately I didn't win, but I figure the following encounter should not be wasted.
During the development of my campaign quite a lot of things have changed. Rooms have been added and removed, creatures have changed drastically, the plot has been altered five different ways, etc...
The main reason is that certain things look good on paper, but when it comes to actually using them in a game it doesn't quite work. Many a time I have thought of a really cool idea that I wound up trying to railroad in the the D&D 4e mechanic, and the end result isn't quite what I had hoped. And some things that do seem to fit perfectly end up being a disaster when it comes to playtesting it.
On the massive external hard drive I use to keep all my campaign information I have one folder called "Legacy", which is where maps go to die. But just because they don't fit in to my campaign doesn't mean they'll never see the light of day. Maybe someone out there could use them... Someone like you!
So this will probably be an ongoing series of mine where I provide encounters or scenes that are disassociated from the rest of my campaign, and because I have no immediate plans to use them they aren't "spoilers". Maybe someone out there will breathe new life in to them.
The Hall of Spiders
One of the focal points in my campaign is, without giving too much away, a dungeon with very strong divine and arcane influences that has been abandoned for hundreds of years. In these environments there are generally three different things you can find: undead that simply refuse to die, strange creations infused with arcane energies or nature simply taking residence in a nice comfy place. This is the latter of the three.
This encounter was the very first encounter I developed for my campaign, at a time when I had no idea what the rest of the zone was going to contain. I didn't even know what this was the entrance to... A castle? A lair? The local inn?
After everything else in the zone was developed, this seemed horribly out of place. And the fact that it came immediately after a complicated encounter with a lot of enemies didn't help; I know some would argue that it goes against some sort of DM's obligation, but I simply didn't want to keep slamming the PCs with encounter after encounter.
Originally this had a fixed amount of minions, which you are most certainly welcome to do to simplify your life (I had six Spiderlings in the original design), but recently I read the article by Mario Podeshi on Save Versus Death called "Endless Hordes" Minions and I wondered "why does the number of spiderlings have to be finite?"
So here it is... The Hall of Spiders (Level 4+ Encounter)
Enjoy! If you do use it, or make any modifications to it, do let me know.
About the Author
Software developer and game designer in Miami, Florida. Currently working on content for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Pathfinder, 13th Age and other systems.
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