Giving Players Difficult choices

I could probably write a lot about the second season of D&D which I have been running, but lets keep this simple and to the point. This is all about a season finale for a set of adventures and the difficult choices that it included and the results it had. There is quite a bit of background to read, but its worth the read to understand the importance of the decisions.

The season has been very much like a TV series, a set of episodes (one-shot adventures) with generally the same cast (player characters), but a few guest stars (PC's who join for a session or two). As the season progresses, there is a general theme to the adventures and the actions which the characters take have effects or consequences in later adventures. The players enjoy this style of play as it makes the campaign feel alive and it helps keep the story together.

The regulars

Of the table of 5-6, three of the regulars characters meshed themselves into the campaign story:

• Eion the Dwarven Paladin of no-particular-god. At the end of season one, he was fighting along side a group of knights of Bahamut (good dragon god) and was rolling hopelessly. So out of frustration/desperation he called upon Tiamat (evil dragon god) for aid and started rolling well. Seeing an opportunity, I took it. We had the closing scene for Eion in a dream and Tiamat declaring that Eion was now his servant. And so he became a Paladin of Tiamat.
• Sunny the Tiefling Warlock. Sunny is the parties chaos engine and McGuffin. She is a young Tiefling who was held for her entire life in captivity by a cult. She only broke away from them recently, murdering the cult in the process. So she has a rather naive/childish outlook on life, but the potential to also be destructive when she wants to. Her current fixations are her 'brother' (Eion), talking wolves, dragons and shiny things (which she puts in her mouth).
• Tak the half elf Warlock. She is the parties mainly functional drunk. Spending most of the time drinking and trying to hit off anything male. When she first appeared, towards the end of season 1, she spent her first session trying to hit off with a Revenant knight, who was later lost into a portal to hell at the season finale

So quite an interesting bunch of characters to work with.

Beginning of the season

As the beginning of season 2, we were working through some of the old D&D adventurers league missions, which put the PC's against the dragon cult. The idea was for the adventurers to fight through cultist and kobolds, eventually working their way up to fighting a dragon. But no plan survives contact with the players. What actually happened was the first time they encounter a small dragon they hang back and start planning what to do. Eion walk's up and starts befriending the dragon, as he is a follower of Tiamat. Sunny decides that this is a good idea and joins him, and starts going all googly eyes over a real dragon, even if it is the size of a large dog. Eventually Lakonic (dragon hunting ranger) decides to try to kill the dragon, which promptly escapes and the PC's end up arguing on whether or not they should be fighting the dragons.

Errr... Scrap all current plans and go for plan B.

Then try to figure out what plan B is.

Plan B

Plan B involved activating my other bad guy. The Revenant knight (Sir Keegan) who was lost to a portal of hell and came back as an Incubus (male succubus). At the start of the season there has been a throwaway scene which saw the Keegan seducing Tak, sleeping with her and then flying off into the distance. At end of session I had asked Tak's player (out of earshot of the others) whether Tak was pregnant. Her response was, "why not".

Suddenly there was a plan B. Keegan started appearing regularly, finding a certain artifact (massive gem) and causing issues at the same time.

Season finale

Without going through the adventure details, the PC's had returned home from a mission to discover their home city covered in an energy dome, put there by Keegan. The party meet a rather angry, but powerful white dragon who demands they go into the city and find a big gem which the dragon has decided is his. They get in, fight Keegan, find the gem (a source of great magical power) which Tak picks up and then all hell breaks loose.

• Tak with a demon baby inside her and a gem of vast magic in her hands suddently goes into spasm and her belly starts contorting (think Alien chest-burster) as the baby is coming out
• Sunny who was distracted by the wonderful colours of the stained glass window of the Regents throne room (where they were all fighting) is standing in front of them when the angry dragon (Grathnax) bursts through, landing (on Sunny) and demanding his gem

I then called a break and handed out love letters to Eion, Sunny & Tak. 

The love letter is a idea I got from some of the PBTA RPG's. They gives each character a vignette and choices on what they wish to do. Normally they are not this drastic, but these letters gave each of the three characters the option to remove themselves from the story in a suitable dramatic manner, but they also has the option to keep their character providing dramatic salvation to them. By giving them time (the break) and encouraging them to talk between themselves, I hoped to get a suitably epic outcome to the story.

Here are the letters (as I gave it to them):

I hope you have enjoyed this season, and I hope you are ok with the story liberties I have taken with your characters to put them into this situation. Now its your turn to control the story. I have a set of possible options on how the story progresses and what happens to people. In the adventure introduction it was asked “How much are our heroes prepared to sacrifice to be victorious? Will this price be too high?” Lets find out.

There are no best choices: the right choice is the thing that gives the most epic and memorable story. I want you to make this story epic and memorable. 

For all these choices, if you can narrate a great event, go for it! If you would rather not, I will take any suggestions and run with the ideas.

Tak: Your stomach splits as the Cambion (Demon spawn) erupts from your body. 

• Option1: Tak dies, Keegan dies/killed. You are joined together in the afterlife 

• Option2: Tak dies, Keegan lives, Keegan remains on the dark side, (Sunny may yet try to kill Keegan, so he is not confirmed safe) 

• Option3: Keegan dies restoring Tak’s life, Keegan is redeemed, Tak will be bitter forever 

• Option4: Tak and Keegan live. But you are going to have to think of a very good reason why/how this can happen

Bonus: the Cambion is going to be a major force in the upcoming season, as the mother you get to name him (or her). Alternatively he will be known as Raphael

Sunny: You are badly (possibly mortally) wounded and under a dragons claw, it is looking down at you. Pain is making is difficult to see clearly, but you vaguely see a red-brown shape in the rafters and you remember Angelo’s words: “One day soon, you are going to be facing the open jaws of a dragon and it may be too late to change your mind. I pray that it is not”. You also know that, it's not just you who is in trouble, you can sense Eoin near you and know what a dreadful challenge he will be facing  

• Option1: Sunny unleashed with whatever magic she has left, the dragon will lose an eye from your assault but it will eat Sunny. Eion will be free to act as he wishes (probably following Tiamat) 

• Option2: Sunny stays put/feigns death/cries for help. This gives you time, but it means that Eion is going to have to make the toughest decision of his life 

• Option3: (if Keegan is still alive) Sunny can burn the last of her life energy to destroy Keegan forever, but it will cost Sunny’s life

Eion: Tak is in a bad way, but Sunny is lying in a pool of pinkish blood under the claw of Grathanx. It looks at you smiling, challenging you, then it looks at the small form of the Tiefling under its claw and licks its lips hungrily. As for the voice of Tiamat, it is deathly silent, but you know she is watching you.

• Option1: Kill Sunny. Prove your dedication to Tiamat by sacrificing everything. Eion will become a major NPC in the upcoming season and Sunny will be dead 

• Option2: Join with the dragon on condition of sparing Sunny’s life. Eion will become a minor NPC in the upcoming season, but Sunny will live 

• Option3: Suicide charge, you don’t stand a chance against this creature, but you could give is a scar or two so it remembers you by. You have no idea if this will save Sunny, but it will give her a chance 

• Option4: Curse Tiamat and refuse to serve her. Eion will lose his Paladin status and be considered a fighter (we need to work this out), and he still needs to come up with a plan to stay alive and save Sunny

Let me ask you reader, what would you choose? Would you keep your characters alive or lose them for the storyline?

I tried to balance the options, but its not possible to keep them completely balanced, but I tried to make them reasonable. (I would not recommend giving a character the option to execute his fellow party member, this might have gone horribly wrong and we could have had some major fallout at the table. But because of the table dynamics, knowing the players, and general level of trust at the table, I knew I could offer this option.)

The results

As planned, the decisions were hard, some harder than others.

• Tak chose to die. I wasn't surprised. When I wrote the love letter, I didn't know that the player was thinking about dropping out anyway. But it gave her a suitable way out of the story with a memorable exit
• Sunny chose to burst into tears (almost literal tears from the player), she called to her patron (an old one known only as mother) for help. Again this didn't surprise me too much, Sunny is much too fun a character to let die, so I didn't expect her to take any of the martyr options
• Eion (who I purposely left to last) was left in a very difficult situation, Sunny's tears had made it much harder for all at the table, and Eion's player did comment that he was close to tears. As he narrated the story.

I was not sure what Eion was going to choose, I half expecting he might turn away from Tiamat, but his choice delivered the most moving storyline:

Eion looks the dragon in the face, "Spare her, I will bring you the gem and serve you!" 

The dragon kicks the Tiefling away. Eion walks away from the party, Sabrina (the cleric who sprinted to Sunny and burned her last spell points saving her) is holding a crying Sunny back as the dwarf climbed onto the back of the dragon. "I'm sorry" he says as the dragon takes to the air and flies off.

This is how legends are made.

Mark

PS. I cannot wait to see whats going to happen in Season 3, but I don't think I want to end a season like this again. It cheapens the decisions which happened this season. They should be remembered.

But I will be doing love letters again at lower stakes.

Apocalypse Initiative for D&D

So D&D initiative is rather boring turn based. Over the years D&D has used a variety of methods to manage it. But some of the games that I have been playing (Masks, Dungeon World, The Warren, Night Witches) use a different kind of initiative system. They all get the idea from the original Apocalypse World. The idea situation runs roughly like this:

1. As the story progresses, pick a character and put them in a situation and ask ‘What do you do?’
2. The character narrates an action which resolves the situation of escalates the issue
3. Based upon the narrative, select another character & put them in a situation…

So here is how I have been attempting to use Apocalypse Initiative in my current D&D game.  It worked very well for the adventure ‘Midnight on Blood lake’ which had the characters hunting/being hunted by a high level warlock. Think the characters trying to hunt the Alien in the original Alien movie. It went something like this:

• GM: Eion- You head the sound of movement to the left in the area with the large rock. (Its actually a minor illusion to distract the party) What do you do?
• Eion: I callout to the party that there is evil over there by the big rock and charge around the left of the rock
• GM: OK (looking around) Khatak, you hear the call, what do you want to do?
• Khatak: Drawing my sword I charge around the rock from the right
• GM: Right, so Etelion what are you doing?
• Etelion: I hang back and wait and see what happens?
• GM: Eion and Khatak you advance around the rock and find another there (Rolling dice) Etelion, you are hit in the back for 7 points of damage, by some kind of spell. What do you want to do?
• Etelion: Thats half my HP! I fall down on the floor and mumble an invisibility spell
• GM: sounds good, meanwhile (Rolling dice) Mordelinal you are also hit in the back at almost the same time for 3 points of damage. What do you want to do?
• Mordelinal: I spin around and charge whatever attacked me.
• GM: great, roll perception, (seeing the roll fail) you spin around and fail to see anything, there are a bunch of boulders around you but you have no idea where the attack came from. Meanwhile Etelion and Khatak you have reached each other when you hear the bolt of energy and a cry of pain from the others, what do you do?

Generally this worked quite well, everyone was trying different things, and it worked fine when the party split off trying different methods to hunt the warlock. I didn’t always require characters to make rolls when they acted and I still have problems with thinking about ways to increase the drama rather than say ‘nothing happens’ or ‘you miss’.

When the party was in a more normal battle I found that I was able to modify the method by instead of jumping from player to player I would work sequentially around the table, putting each player in a situation and asking them what they do? In essence breaking down the battle into a set of single character battles. It's important that in a strict combat, each player gets a turn. I went a little like this:

• GM: As the party go down the slope into the archeological dig the gnome suddenly shouts something out. Etelion, you hear a sound behind you and realise a pair of dogs are running towards you at top speed. What do you do?
• Etelion: Burning hands on the dogs as they approach me (dice are rolled, the dogs are injured but not killed)
• GM: (rolling) the dogs attack doing 5 damage, meanwhile Eion the workers near you heft their pickaxes and attack you, what are you doing?
• Eion: I hit them with my greataxe (rolling) 15 damage
• GM: Ouch! That cleaves one of the men in two, the other one (rolls) slices into your leg, 6 damage.
• Meanwhile, Mordelinal being in the middle of the party you are currently unengaged, in front of you Eion is fighting some of the workers, Khatak is going to be engaged in a second or two, meanwhile behind you Etelion is being mauled by dogs. Who are you going to help?
• Mordelinal: I unsling my bow and take aim at the gnome...

And as such the battle progressed, Etelion overcame the dogs and was then unengaged, so they had flexibility on their actions. Meanwhile the frontliners (Eion and Khatak) continued to carve through the workers, while Mordelinal got into a sniper battle with the gnome.

Right now the idea is not complete, and I’m still testing how it feels with my current group. Have a try and let me know what you think of the idea.

Enjoy you game:

Mark

Game Jam 2018 Day 3

The game jam is finished, it went well, but it took me a long time to get the games published, sorry.

The girls finished their Armour of God game (click image to see full sized).

Daniel built a similar platformer game, but themed on a Shepherd looking for his lost Sheep.

And my Bible Smuggling game:

You can find the games to play on itch.io

• Armour of Game
• The Lost Sheepies
• Bible Smuggler

All games are web playable, and most are playable on mobile (I think).

Enjoy,
Mark

Game Jam 2018 Day 1

So, it seems that my last post was a year ago, when we did a game jam in July.
I have been doing a lot of stuff at work (which I cannot share, but it is A M A Z I N G). A few game jams, including this one: https://playingfield.cc/gallery/

But the main reason for writing was to talk about this years kids jam.
Again its 3 days, using Construct 2. As a new inspiration I was talking to a lady in church and she was asking about Christian Computer games, and I thought "Why not?" so that was the topic for this years game jam.

The girls are on a platformer around collecting the Armour of God. Its only the basics for now, but it coming on.

Daniel is also on a platformer, this one about a shepherd looking for lost , but he seems to have got the graphics coming along nicely.

I'm working on a stealth game based upon bible smuggling. Its early days and the AI is pitiful, but I should be able to get it better.

So Day 1 complete. We started late, so thats only 8 hours work. I'm personally finding Construct 2 to be quite clumsy, but thats what happens when you switch tools.
Not a bad days work.

Three Day GameJam: Day 3

The game jam is over (just about). Carmen is still struggling to get the last bits of the girls game ready.  There were a lot of last minute changes: mainly art, and deciding to put the menu in and so on. So they are running late.
Mid morning Daniel hit the max 100 event limit on Construct 2-Free Edition, but it turned out he had been copy-pasting a lot of events everywhere, so when he went back and tidied up his code it was only 80 events.
Myself as the Game Jam veteran (I think its about 5 jams), had art and sound finished by lunchtime, then finished off the with menu and final game balancing. Which I must say actually went very well.

Results, Noon

Lots of art changes in the platformer which was undergoing a total change in direction as the girls argued on a new name

The battle animals gained a name 'Save The Forest' and became fully 2 player.

Space Battler actually has proper graphics and now looks like a real game (if a little hectic)

Results, End of Day

The girls decided to rename their game Shadows of 'Deceipt' and Carmen wrote a massive storyline for it (because she's Carmen)

Save the Forest added a sound and music and a title screen

Space Battler now has a menu with difficulty levels and the game starts slow but gets hard quickly, thanks to the Danger Rating (tm) system.

Conclusion

It has a fun 3 days. Will post feedback from the kids later.

The games are up on Itch.io (which turned out to be really easy to do) and you can play them.

• https://markgossage.itch.io/shadowsdeceit
• https://markgossage.itch.io/savetheforest
• https://markgossage.itch.io/spacebattler

Next time, it might be only 2 days, and we might consider inviting some friends, but that's probably not for a while yet.

Three Day GameJam: Day 2

Day 2

All told, day 2 was just dull. I lot of time was spent on getting the art ready, but not much progress was done otherwise. Daniel and I spend a lot of time working on our tech issues, which seem to take most of the day.

We also forgot the midday screen captures, so there is only the end of day results.

Results, end of day

Lost Treasures 2 now has a good chunk of art, and the worlds largest score.

Battle Animals now has proper images and a bit of animation

Space Battler still has no real graphics (on purpose), but now has 5 different ship types

All that remains is to wait for Day 3...

Three Day GameJam: Day 1

Its summer holidays, what can I do to keep the kids busy?

This time, I'm trying something new, a Game Jam.

The basic rules are: Build a game with Construct 2 working 9-5 Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Day One is now complete, here is the progress so far. I deliberately kept the kids focused on gameplay not wasting time working on artwork. So they look rubbish, but you can see the gameplay.

There are 3 games being worked on:

• Margaret is working on Lost Treasures 2 (the original was build 5 years ago). Its a simple platformer which allows her to work quickly.
• Daniel is working on a game like battlecats. He spent most of the day getting basic battle mechanics to work
• I am working on a space themed lane war game. I'm discovering a lot of flexibility in construct-2 as I'm trying to build something more complex than ever before.

Results, Midday

Lost Treasures 2, platformer with spikes and re-spawns

Battle Animals, battle with knockback

Space battler, just a ship flying and shooting at targets when the get within range.

Results, End of Day

By end of day 1 most groups have the core mechanics working:

Lost Treasures 2: Pickups, Enemies and lots of levels (not shown)

Daniels game: auto spawn of enemies, ghosts on death, base health and money. A lot done.

Space Battler: Both sides spawn and shoot. Health bars for both teams, and an ugly yellow explosion when ships collide.

So Day 1 is over, good work done by all, lets see what happens on Day 2