Being A "Good" Player

The last few days, I've been poking around the blog-o-sphere, checking up on old blogs, making the acquaintence of new ones...just doing the rounds, you know? Lot of people have packed up shop the last few years. Some probably should pack up shop, but keep hanging around...for whatever reason.

[haha! I might well fall into that latter category myself!]

A lot of dross out there; a lot of drivel. As there always has been (duh)...but incorrigible bloggers, like degenerate gamblers, can't really help themselves. Writers got to write; bloggers got to blog. It is what it is in this day of instant internet gratification. [*POST*]

So it is, I came across this blog called Prismatic Wasteland. It would seem the author, a W.F. Smith, is kind of a big deal, having won multiple ENNIE awards, and been nominated for another (Best RPG Related Product) for his 200-page hardcover omnibus, Prismatic Wisdom...a collection of all his blog's "best theory, advice, and mechanical innovation" from its inception in 2020 to its "peak" in 2024. 

Uh-huh. 

As one might imagine, I have my own opinions on his wisdom (I took the time to read some of Smith's essays). However, those I shall keep to myself, save to say that Smith is on the same page with me in some regards (mainly: that player immersion comes from engaging with the rules and procedures of a game system). Also, I got a wry chuckle out of Smith celebrating (what he calls) "B/X Blackrazor Day," the anniversary of a blog post I wrote back in 2010. 

SO, for the day, I've decided to instead do the guy a solid and jump on his "blogwagon" event. This is Smith's regular soliciting of other bloggers to write essays on a subject he proposes...perhaps because (as he states himself) his own blogging "peaked in 2024." I missed his last blogwagon (the subject was write something about "randomness;" yesterday's post would have been appropriate!), but the current topic is simple enough:

What is a good player and how can you be a good player?

[and by player Smith means "non-GM participant in an RPG"]

Now, those readers who followed my "Dear JB" series of posts back in 2025 will know that I have no dearth of advice to hand out to players and GMs alike...even when such advice is completely unsolicited! But now I'm being asked to take a step to the side of my normal "teach-DMs-how-to-DM" shtick and put together an honest-to-gosh COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE to being a GOOD PLAYER? Challenge accepted!

But first things first: had to poll some actual players on the subject. 

Sofia Becker (age 12): 

You need to be good at strategizing and compromising. You have to be a good leader sometimes, and you have to know when to hush up and follow. You have to be cautious, but you can't be too cautious or you'll end up missing out on the gold. You have to be a lot of opposite things. Like, you have to take the game seriously, but you can't be too serious or it gets repetitive; sometimes you have to be goofy and laugh.

What's the difference between "strategizing" and "compromising?"

Strategizing means coming up with a plan. Compromising is agreeing to go along with someone else's plan.

How do you know when to "lead" and when to "hush up and follow?"

When no one has any ideas about what to do, you have to step up. But when someone else has a plan, you sometimes just have to go with it...and if it doesn't work out, you get to tell them 'see, I told you so.'

Diego Becker (age 15):

Know the game. Be familiar with the rules of the game. Follow the instructions of your Dungeon Master. Have fun, have imagination...think outside the box. 

Be smart about your decisions; plan stuff out. Play to your character's strengths: if you're a magic-user, don't just wade in there, daggers drawn to fight. 

Anything else. What about working with your fellow players?

Find good people to play with. Respect them, be a team player.

Sofia adds:

Don't try to be the "main character" and mess everyone up.

What do you mean by "main character."

I don't know how to say it. Diego?

Diego adds:

It's about teamwork; be a team player. Be productive. Help your team out. Listen to instructions.

Whose instructions?

Listen to what your team tells you. 

What if you're playing with people who are worse players than you? Should you listen to them then?

Yeah. 

And that's about all they had to say...it might give you a little insight into their distinct personalities, but they generally agree on fundamental parts of being a good player: Learn the rules of the game (so that you can make informed choices). Be cooperative with your fellow players. Learn to balance caution with bold action (risk-reward). Generally speaking, all stuff I agree with.

But some of that takes time...time to develop. Some folks might want something a little more "actionable," right from the get go.

Learning the rules is something concrete that players can do right up front. A DM worth their salt can run a perfectly fine game with most any bunch of lazy goons who've never cracked a PHB, but we're talking advice for the player who wants to get "good." If you want to get "good," you're going to have to do a little studying.

The edition of D&D that your DM is playing will determine which books you should study. Make no mistake: there are differences (both subtle and not) between EVERY edition of the game. 

If you're playing OD&D, you'll want to read the three LBBs, but you're also going to need a list of which supplements the DM is using, which rules in those supplements, which house rules, whether or not they're running Chainmail or the "alternate combat system," etc. Kind of a pain in the ass, really...but OD&D is loosey-goosey enough that having a strong grip on the rules ain't terribly necessary. Chances are, your OD&D DM is going to be winging and ruling a LOT of stuff. More than anything else, do your best to develop a good rapport with your referee...in the OD&D game, the referee IS (more or less) the "rulebook."

If you're playing some version of Basic (Holmes, B/X, BECMI, RC, or one of the various "clones") you're going to want to study that system. I'd recommend just picking up Moldvay's Basic and reading the first five chapters PLUS the Glossary at the end. If you have those things down, you'll be cream cheese for most every version of Basic EXCEPT Holmes Basic which is its own animal. Holmes is an easy read at some 40 pages total, but it's hard to find (no PDFs on DriveThru even)...I'd pick up its clone, BlueHolme, which is pretty faithful to the original, and nicely organized. Your DM is probably running BH anyway, unless they are an extremely crusty grog...

AD&D is, of course, The King of Games. For the 1E player, you need only the PHB...everything else gets handled by the DM in play. If you've NEVER played D&D before, I still recommend Moldvay to give you the rudimentary rundown on terms and concepts (even though some systems are different), but if you already know your way around a D20, the PHB gives you everything you need...and more!

You want to know what it takes to be a "good" D&D player? Read the section titled SUCCESSFUL ADVENTURES in the 1E PHB (pages 107-109). This gives you fantastic tips that will directly impact your experience at the AD&D table. In fact, when I first saw this blogwagon challenge, my initial thought was to simply excerpt this section in its entirety...it's really all you need.

Does it line up with my players' thoughts on what makes a "good player?" Hm. Let's see:

...get in touch with all those who will be included in the adventure, of if all are not available, at least talk to the better players so that you will be able to set an objective for the adventure....some firm objective should be established and then adhered to as strongly as possible. Note, however, that inflexibility or foolish stubbornness is often fatal....

...when agreement regarding these and similar questions has been reached, each participant must ready his or her character, but preparations must be made with the weldard of the whole group in mind.

Co-operation amongst party members is a major key to success...survival at lower levels is usually dependent upon group action and team spirit. Co-operation must begin when the party prepares for the adventure and continue through sage return to base and division of spoils -- including the special treatment required for any unfortunate characters cursed, diseased, maimed, or killed.

...When everything is all set, it will take only a very few minutes to organize the group for the adventure once time for actual play begins. Your referee will certainly appreciate this, for his or her enjoyment comes from adventuring, not from waiting for a party to get its act together.

..there are times when objectives must be abandoned. If the party becomes lost, the objective must immediately be changed to discovery of a way out. If the group becomes low on vital equipment or spells, it should turn back. The same is true if wounds and dead members have seriously weakened the group's strength. The old satement about running away to fight another day holds true in the game. It is a wise rule to follow.

On the other hand, if the party gains its set goal and is still quite strong, some other objectives can be established, and pursuit of them can then be followed. It is of utmost importance, however, to always carry slain members of the expedition with the party if at all possible, so even if but a lone character is lost, it is usually best to turn back and head for the surface.

Co-operation assumes mutual trust and confidence, and this is enhanced when members are certain that the survivors will do their best to see that any slain character is carried forth from the dungeon to be resurrected if at all possible. All members of the expedition should be ready and willing to part with any goods, money, and magic items in order to save lives. Failing that, each should be willing to fight to the death to assure the survival and success of the party. This will happen when mutual trust exists....

...Superior play makes the game more enjoyable for all participants, DM and players alike. It allows more actual playing time. It makes play more interesting. The DM will have to respond to superior play by extending himself or herself to pose bigger and better problems for the party to solve. This in turns means more enjoyment for the players. Successful play means long-lived characters, characters who will steadily, if not rapidly gain levels. You will find that such characters become like old friends; they become almost real....

There is more, and good stuff it is; I have only pulled out some of the choicer bits and pieces. Any emphasis in the text is Gygax's, not mine. The reader will note that Gygax was explicit in emphasizing team play and an "all-for-one" attitude as a key to success, building mutual trust through cooperative effort. 

Planning is, of course, important...but the planning occurs before the adventure, not during. The players' time...like the DM's, like ALL of ours...is finite. There should be no dithering once the game is in session, because good players ("superior" players) do not waste the game time they have been allotted. I heartily concur. Even in the 1970s, people  led busy lives, filled with the priorities of family and work and school and obligation. Why waste a moment of gaming time on things best settled or organized away from the table. It is much the same (if not more so) today.

Anyway,

My perspective on "what makes a good player" is...like that of my players...based on the kind of Dungeons & Dragons that I play. The kind of D&D we play is one rooted firmly in fantasy adventure, based on facing challenges in hopes of reaping a rich (in-game) reward. The surest path to success is through having a cognizant understanding of the rules and being able to work in cooperative fashion with one's teammates. The ability to balance risk-reward (boldness vs. caution) changes the RATE of success...how fast do we progress? Hoe much time (real time; real minutes from our lives) is spent and...potentially...wasted. The mark of a "good" player is maximizing efficiency. 

Of course, the solid DM is not going to allow such play to go unhindered and unchallenged. But that's the game, right? So it goes. 

Best wishes.

Rando

Blogger! Ain't you supposed to blog? Get to it!

Currently doing something I haven't done in a long, long while...sitting at a typical, boutique Seattle coffee shop, swilling a caffeinated beverage, and eating a pastry while blogging. Reminds me of my 30s, I tell you. No, I'm not REALLY back on the caffeine and carbs...it's just that it's the holiday season. Which is to say: it's cold in Seattle. And right now you can't turn around without running into a bagful of Halloween candy. And the Thanksgiving-type food and baked goodies are just getting ready to spring on you. Not to mention the hot, mulled wine (if you can get it...it's a pain to brew it yourself, though I have the 'fixins'). Basically, I'm just giving myself a pass to be slothful when it comes to my normal dietary "discipline;" we'll get back on the kale-and-sardine salads next week.

I'm feeling nostalgic.

And I'm looking at a post-it note I wrote myself with several possible topics. One is...well, we'll get to it, just not today. Another is about pacing when it comes to running your AD&D game...boring. Oh, and here's one about presentation of rules versus setting...yeah, not really in the mood for that either.

Random tables? Yeah, okay.

Not a rant, per se, but please allow me to be crystal clear in how underwhelmed and unimpressed I am with random tables, especially in lauded or critically acclaimed gaming products. To me, most random tables are just another (elaborate) form of padding in a game book. And by "padding" I mean useless (or next-to-useless) filler. I suppose it can be considered a form of art, a demonstrated expression of an author's creativity...but, man, it's pretty small beer compared to other forms of creative expression. As I said, I am largely unimpressed by the random tables that (other folks) celebrate

Which might seem a little contrarian. Because "old school" aficionados seem to love-love-love the random tables. A quick google search of WHY the OSR enjoys their random tables is that that they're considered a primary tool to spark emergent gameplay, injecting disruptive chance and unbiased fairness into a campaign and/or game session. The OSR has loved their random tables since at least as far back as Curtis's The Dungeon Alphabet (2009?), both as a means of sparking a DM's imagination and as acting as an 'oracle of imperfect information'...a prognosticator of chaos. As someone who's been a part of this "scene" some 17+ years, how could I not be on board the Random List Wagon? Am I just trying to be controversial for the sake of "blog fodder?"

Not really...this is a stance I've held for years. Back in 2011, I cited "too many random tables" as my main gripe about the DCC game. And I wrote (in that post):

There are very few random tables I use in my own games. Um…like none really (really? Yeah, I guess not). Even the placement of treasure and monsters is done “by hand;” I suppose I do use tables for wandering monsters on occasion (it’s rare that I use wandering monsters at all, actually), but that’s about it. My random dice rolls are left for the frenzy of combat, the resolution of negotiation, and the riskiness of saving throws. 

 Everything else is pretty un-random in my games.

And all that holds true to this day. I do (often) use the treasure tables in the Monster Manual for stocking particular monsters' lairs, but I am often using the ranges and averages (based on percentages given) rather than actually dicing for treasure. Magic items are an exception, however, mainly because I find dicing on the DMG tables gives a very good, accurate spread of variable items.

But other than magic items and wandering monsters? Nah, I don't really use random tables...these days.

HOWEVER (and this may account for some of my bias against the proliferation and adoration of these lists) as a kid (mostly circa age 12-14) we made extensive use of random tables. All sorts of random tables! Two caveats though: #1 these were mostly used for TOWNS (which were given notoriously short shrift in the rule books), and #2 for the most part, we (both my co-DM and our fellow players) developed these random tables ourselves. Most of these had to do with drinking establishments...names and types of taverns, what kind of booze was available, what kind of DRUGS were available (a lot of drug use in our adolescent games...), what the local constabulary/law enforcement was like, etc.

We DID take the pick pocketing results random table from Dragon #104 ("Was It Worth the Risk?" by Bruce Barber, 1985), but mostly we made our own. I imagine that it was articles like that (and, of course, the Wandering Harlots and Dungeon Trappings tables in the DMG) that gave us the idea in the first place. Heck, my faulty memory of how we played 40 years ago is probably doing a disservice to just how many random tables we used...random door types, random locks, random traps, random poisons of various types, etc.  Also random temples/churches, random love interests, random nobility types...all sorts of randomness to help fill our unpainted, unscripted campaign setting.

But this was our second campaign...what we always referred to as our First (AD&D) Campaign, as I've discussed in my personal history...a campaign largely concerned with exploring and learning the 1E system, and doing most of our adventures OUTSIDE the dungeon (having "done dungeons to death" in our "Original Campaign," a B/X-1E hybrid). If one were to watch us play, it would have been marked by how little it was "about" anything. The characters wandered the roads and wilderness of a world map we created on the fly (without hex maps), creating towns and monster lairs ("adventure sites") as needed. We, perhaps, spent MORE time in towns and villages (getting into trouble) than delving actual dungeons, and the random tables both broke up the monotony of what were (essentially) all 'one-horse-medieval-hamlets' and gave us some "suitably adventurous" stuff to do.

Mostly with sex and drugs. It was the 1980s, people.

AHEM. But I don't roll that way anymore. I certainly could...but random world building is pretty much the antithesis of what I consider the Dungeon Master's purview AND responsibility. It's not that you, as the DM, must painfully wrack your poor, beleaguered brain to come up with "creative" situations and scenarios, but in order to keep your players engaged with the setting, your world must have a certain rhyme and reason to it as well as verisimilitude. 

Look: a small town is going to have a certain type of economy (generally: one that can feed its population). Guardsmen are going to behave in a certain way with regard to certain situations (in other words NOT in a "random" fashion). Nobility and hierarchies are based on land and wealth and power (especially the power to defend itself). If someone's building a castle or keep, there has to exist the resources (both material and labor) for this to happen. Cities and townships have relationships with each other, both as rivals/allies and/or as trade/economic partners. Etc., etc.

And dungeons should have an (appropriate) place in your world as well.

You CAN create a campaign setting that is simply random, blasted, post-apocalyptic wilderness with random shit in each map hex but, for my money, that type of play gets OLD after a while. And by old, I mean staid and stale. Which, I'm sure, sounds like an oxymoron to those who love the gonzo, wahoo, weird sword & sorcery shtick. Eh. Different strokes for different folks. 

I just know what works for me...in the long term. FOR ME, the dice are a tool for adjudicating chance in situations where the random effects of chaos and fortune must be subsumed in the abstract for the sake of game play. Does your character inflict damage during the one minute combat round? Does your character manage to get under cover in time to avert some of the dragon's breath attack? Is your watchperson asleep at the wheel when the bear wanders into your camp at night? These are the situations where a random die roll enables and compels game play.

But world/setting creation stuff? Man, I am looking at this copy of Veins of the Earth (picked up at auction at Cauldron) with its "random types of darkness," "random cave features," "random smells" and "sounds," etc. No. This is all useless, useless padding. I'm sure there are some who would call this an aid, a tool, a "springboard" for their imagination. To me, it's a crutch...and one that will do nothing to exercise the legs of my imagination. Better to come up with your own random tables (as we did as children) than to rely on someone else.

What? Are you saying you AREN'T a creative, imaginative person? 

Do your own reading and research...and then inject your own imagination. That would be my advice to any and everyone, only (or mainly) because that's what I do and it works for me. My campaign world is just the Pac Northwest, using numbers and situations from the late 1800s - early 1900s and then giving it a swash of fantasy "color." It's enough...hell, it's plenty. That and a handful of pre-published modules (re-purposed to fit the campaign) have been enough to sustain me for nearly seven years...and I've only explored/detailed a VERY small section of my campaign map. Little slices here and there...man, there are so many more ideas I have, I doubt I'll ever get to them all in my lifetime! And I don't even have to create "new monsters" or "new magic items" to keep shit interesting. Just AD&D is enough...so chock full of fantasy is this game.

A little side anecdote...and perhaps a random one (pun intended!)...but I had the chance to catch the first couple episodes of the latest House of the Dragon season last week. And what did it feature, but a bunch of ship-to-ship battles, and a bunch of medieval-style warfare between armored humans and armored humans. Fun enough, but then you add DRAGONS...burning ships, devouring troops, forcing surrenders (and sometimes getting shot down by ballistae)...what fun! It absolutely reminded me of my recent forays into Chainmail; how could it not? That's awesome fantasy...and do you not think I wouldn't like to showcase something like this in my own campaign? You don't need a Big Bad Evil to fight against...a lich queen or Sauron type. Just pirates and bandits and rival lords and humanoid hordes and would-be tyrants. That's fantastic stuff, with no "random rolls" needed...just world building, my friends.

Anyway...

As I said, this isn't supposed to be a rant against a somewhat beloved pillar of the Old School gaming community (random tables); rather, I just wanted to state and stake my stance on the matter in definitive terms. And, yeah, I do want to "push back" a bit on the idea that using random tables to create "emergent gameplay" is something to be promulgated or encouraged. Those who rely on these random tables may infer that I am judging them or calling them "lazy" for doing so. Eh. Not really. What I AM saying is that when I use them, I'm being lazy...and that's short-changing myself.  Some might say that eliminating the random tables is akin to railroading or ruling based on fiat; I say that relying on randomness for creation is depriving me of my right and responsibility as the Dungeon Master of my campaign world. 

Just my thought of the day. Cheers!

: )

Not So Dreamy

Mmmm...let's see. Where to start? Where to start...?

So, for last year's Cauldron, my inspiration for the Blackrazor Tournament Cup adventure came mainly from the old TSR module DL6: Dragons of Ice (you can read all about it in this post from last year). The reasons were many, but mostly I found the substantive bits of DL6...the encounter numbers and constituent parts...to be perfectly sound, even if they were (IMO) rather blandly executed. Consequently, it seemed an ideal time to repurpose yet another one of the Dragonlance adventures that I'd picked up in a huge stack, way back in 2023. 

And the result had been so great (from my perspective) that I thought I'd mine the same vein again for 2026's Cauldron. 

DL10: Dragons of Dreams is one of the more infamous adventure modules from the DL line. It is terrible as written...nigh unplayable. Or, rather, it is playable but it would be such a headache to run in a practical, efficient manner that most DMs would probably throw up their hands halfway through the thing. Here's a fairly accurate review of the module...the first sentence pretty much sums it up.

Great, evocative artwork

And yet, the premise of DL10 isn't bad at all...it works especially well in my home campaign where I've made a "war with Tiamat" an ongoing part of the setting. The Dragonlance Silvanesti are pretty obviously stand-ins for AD&D's "grey elves" (themselves akin to Tolkien's Noldor...maybe), but for me they work better as wood elves which puts them in the Colville National Forest of (north) Eastern Washington, an area that (later in the war) is continuously beset and harrassed by the Green Wing of Tiamat's army, operating out of occupied Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho. The wood elves of that realm (more similar to Tolkien's Mirkwood elves in my setting than the Melnibonean stand-ins that are my high elves on the Olympic Peninsula) have largely left because of the war, becoming refugees, driven from one town to the next in the (human) Red Empire of eastern Washington. If your PC is an elven thief or fighter in my campaign, chances are you are a wood elf (the assassins, magic-users, and multi-class MUs are mainly high elf adventurers from west of the Cascades).

[here's an overview of my campaign world's elves...solely for the interested]

ANYway...DL10's premise is pretty good: the elven king has sent away his people as he tried to use a dragon orb (one of three such artifacts in the Dragonlance universe) in a bid to stave off the dragon army and instead gets ensorcelled by the thing. The PCs get Shanghaied (is that still an acceptable term to use?) by the king's only daughter to help free her father; meanwhile, the whole realm has gone all twisted and weird as it has been molded by the enchanted nightmare of the king. Players have to fight their way through a illusions and their own psychomachia just so that they can face a green dragon in the king's throne room at the end. That's the BASIC outline/gist of the adventure...I challenge ANY DM to run DL10 as written using the standard AD&D rules. Seriously, gauntlet thrown. You want to prank someone hard? Get them a copy of DL10 off of DriveThruRPG and ask them to read it for you.

As I discussed earlier, I spent months considering how I could make a proper "dreamscape" adventure for Cauldron using the premise of DL10. I came up with the title ("Nightmare Realm of Death") waaaay back in March or April (I started my early documents for the thing on April 2nd). But it wasn't till June or July that I made any headway on the thing. For TOURNAMENT purposes, there were several considerations I was working with:

• It needed to be runnable in four hour time slot.
• It needed some solid "victory" conditions with granular variation between TOTAL SUCCESS and ABJECT FAILURE (TPK usually).
• Scoring should be OBJECTIVE and (mainly) TREASURE BASED
• It couldn't be so convoluted and subjective in ruling that different DMs couldn't all run it in (more or less) the same fashion.

The elements I wanted to KEEP from the original module included:

• The level range of the module (8th-10th).
• The king, the "orb," and the green dragon.
• The princess/adventurer (who would be a playable PC as in the DL10 module).
• An overland journey through a nightmare realm where reality wasn't what it seemed.
• A castle destination at the end.

While the pre-gens are all based on the actual Dragonlance PCs included in DL10 (why not? They're written for the proper level of the module), I wanted none of their past history BS being dragged into dream scenarios...that kind of thing is fine in a book or novel, but it doesn't (usually) resonate with players at a gaming table. Besides, the tournament measures skill as an adventurer (knowledge of systems, risk-reward, cooperation) not the level of melodramatic feeling one can bring to a "role-played" performance. No, sir. This is AD&D we're playing.

In the end, I punted on the whole dream bit. Instead, I took creatures one might expect to encounter in an elven wood (treants, bears, etc.) and made them evil and mentally unbalanced. Polluted lakes could have shambling mounds. River crossings would have trolls. That kind of thing. Had to throw in some level-draining critters (wraiths disguised as illusionary elves...pretty sure those are in the original module, too) in order for the cleric to feel they've earned their salt in addition to healing. Plus, since this is my campaign setting's version of "Mirkwood," giant spiders were a must. 

The road to the palace would be fairly linear, with distractions along the way...some of which could be rewarding, most of which would be time-wasters. Certain choices would increase the amount of "game time" being spent, which could have repercussions (certain encounters being more dangerous in the dark), but this was a minor consideration. Game time is elastic...real time (the four hour time limit) is the true enemy to success, and the more players chose to dither or plan or explore side paths, the less time they would have to fulfill their ultimate objective: freeing the wood elf king from the spell he was under. 

I don't have "dragon orbs" in my campaign, but I have the standard artifacts of the DMG, and for me the Orb of the Elder Wyrm was a perfect fit: it explained the presence of Cabos Saabz (my version of Cyan Bloodbane) and how the thing had trapped the mind of the king (the Orb has a particularly high INT and EGO scores). What's more, as a reward it's a nice chunk of change (70K) easily traded to the Red Emperor for the ongoing conflict with Tiamat. I decided that there would be several possible "victory results:"

#1 the party defeats the dragon, but lose both the princess and the king in the process. 

#2 the party defeats the dragon, but loses the princess (the king remains alive).

#3 the party defeats the dragon, but loses the king (the princess remains alive).

#4 the party defeats the dragon, save the king, AND maintain the life of the princess.

All four victory results would allow the players to acquire varying amounts of treasure. In the case of #1, the party would be left to try to find Cabos's hoard on their own (not very hard) but would be left without a means of transporting it. With #2, the PCs' employer (the princess) would not be around to provide transportation of the treasure, but the king could at least point them to the hoard. In the case of #3, the princess would honor her contract, giving the PCs all of the hoard (and arranging transportation of it); her own share of the treasure would, of course, also count towards the score. And in the case of #4, the party would receive the hoard AND would be given access to the elves' "secret treasure vault," only accessible (and known) by the grateful king.

I further stipulated (having some experience with goody-goody, hero-type players) that if the party decided to altruistically give back some of their hard-won treasure to rebuild the elven kingdom, that the king might be impressed enough to arrange a marriage between his daughter and one of the adventurers. This would result in a slight hit to the treasure total, but all other treasure recovered would count for DOUBLE the score. However, accomplishing this would require a positive (76+) reaction roll (modified by the CHA of the PC). This was a SECRET victory objective, unknown to the players.

Achieving all four victory conditions (let alone the SECRET victory condition) would require the players to keep the elf princess alive...not terribly easy given that she only had 31 hit points and was likely to get blasted by the dragon. However, the pre-gens DID have an "ace in the hole" that could, in theory, keep the elf alive...the thief PC possessed a luck blade with two (2) wishes. 

However, I'm mean so I didn't note that the luck blade had wishes...only that it had "two charges."

[players are welcome to ask me what the powers/abilities of their magical equipment does...and I'll tell them...but this takes precious time from their four hour game limit. Still, it's a good idea: Sabine, playing the magic-user in my session, recorded all the abilities of her 14 charge staff of power to start the game, and was able to make good use of the item]

The wishes could, of course, be used to shortcut or survive other travails in the adventure...this is to be expected. I gave some guidelines to the DMs of how to use the wishes (guidelines that not all of them followed...*AHEM*)...but as with many things related to differing DMing "styles," such is ALSO to be expected.

In play-testing the adventure with my home group, the players decided (right after getting mashed half-to-death by insane treants in the first encounter): "F this noise, we're going to wish ourselves into the elves' secret treasure vault." Not even knowing there WAS a "secret treasure vault." The treasure vault is, however, all but impossible to open without the king so they were effectively trapped (albeit with one more wish to their names). Still, my players never got so far as looking for an exit...after looting the hell out of the place, they said "Hey, aren't we supposed to rescue that king guy?" and wished themselves into the elf king's presence. 

At which point, hilarity ensued.

For my tournament session at Cauldron, my players were largely unaware of the wishes...the thief player did not (apparently) know what a luck blade was, nor did he ask about it, nor did he communicate to the other players the fact that he possessed it. Again, this kind of situation is totally reasonable to expect...the tournament measures players' skill...not just how well they know the rules ('what's a luck blade?') but how well they play the game. Do they look at their character sheet? Do they communicate with their companions? Do they ask for help when they are ignorant and in need of advice? And, then, how EXPEDIENT they are in accomplishing these things?

The time limit is there for a Very Real Reason. Not just because Cauldron is broken up into four hour time slots (which, I imagine, is what the convention organizers would say), but because it measures how we use our time. We are busy individuals, with all sorts of distractions and priorities vying for our attention. When we sit down to play a game like D&D, we are measuring out the minutes of our life...minutes we will never get back. Do we throw them away? Or do we use them wisely? Yes, you can go over every step of a plan a half-dozen times...eating away your time on the clock...in order to perfectly succeed (always assuming the dice rolls cooperate...). But will you accomplish as much as keeping things short and sweet and letting bold action rule your decision making process? This is a balancing act players must master, just as much as the vaunted "risk-reward" axis of game play.

The time limit, along with the treasure score, measures just how much game action you're getting out of your game play. Or, to put it another way: are you making it worth your while to play the game the way you're playing it?

In my Cauldron session, the party was proceeding in a brisk, but semi-cautious fashion when they came to the first combat encounter: four insane/enraged treants. Treants...even 8 HD ones like these...are no joke. Because of the terrain, the encounter distance is short, even if the treants don't achieve surprise...you're basically wading into melee against (the equivalent of) four hill giants with AC 0 and double attacks. That's a bone-crunching mess, depending on what formation the PCs are walking in. After sustaining a massive pummeling and expending a lot of healing, my group wanted to rest and regain their spells...something that (under the scenario conditions) they could not do in the evilly enchanted forest. They instead decided to retreat from the forest, out beyond the Pend Oreille river, in order to camp and rest in relative peace. 

[I will note that not EVERYONE in the party wanted to do this; Prince pushed for 'following the treants backtrail' into the woods, hoping to discover their lair. This would have been especially amusing as the scenario explicitly notes: "If the party decides to travel off the road for some reason, they will be attacked by 1d20 such treants every hour." Oh, how I would have cackled!]

SO...basically they wanted to do a "hard reset" of the adventure. Which wasn't explicitly disallowed, but wasn't something I'd really considered a possibility when designing the thing.  I allowed them to follow their plan of making camp, and rolled a random (night) encounter on the temperate wilderness table of the DMG. A "1" came up on the D12, and wouldn't you know it, but 10 OGRES happened upon them. So much for a good night's sleep!

At this point, I made the decision to ignore the random encounter, and just let them have their rest. They were already wasting time on the clock, and the adventure was explicit about where and when to roll for random encounters (this being a tournament scenario, such things are set only in certain places, and for specific reasons). Why water down the experience they had signed up to have by beating them to a pulp, spoiling their party's rest, and possibly TPKing them at encounter minus one?

I am nothing if not generous.

Back into the fray they went, Prince still talking about following the treants backtrail (he was playing a ranger, after all), but he was outvoted. Another side trail led to a long abandoned elven shrine where they could potentially score some loot from the offering bowls. They sent the thief in alone to scout the place. He was promptly surprised by five huge spiders dropping from the ceiling of the shrine. Uh-oh. Thief down.

The party fired a ton of missile fire (and magic missiles) into the open shrine and then demonstrated their ample AD&D knowledge by using slow poison and neutralize poison to save the beleaguered thief. Good enough. They took the handful of coins, chose NOT to defile the shrine by prying the emerald eyes out of the statue, and found an old dirt path leading through the woods. They decided to take this, thereby skipping three more encounter areas and saving valuable time on the clock.

[by this point, Ken was pushing the group pretty sternly to press forward...he did a good job keeping the players on track and moving when they might have otherwise dithered and screwed around. This is good stuff: even though adventuring parties are an "egalitarian" group of equals, it is HELPFUL to have a take-charge voice in the group to organize and focus the group. Of course, the downside is such a voice can lead an entire group into serious trouble (choose your leaders wisely!), but usually it's better to have SOMEone step up than have NO ONE. Such has been my experience and it was certainly the case in this session]

As the mountain path led down to the southern, swampy part of the lake turned bog, the party encountered a pair of shambling mounds, wisely decided against using lightning on the things, and managed to battle them to the death, even after multiple PCs had become entangled in their depths. Onward they pressed, up the mountainous river road towards their final destination. 

Three mutated, starving brown bears were the next thing encountered on the road, only one of which was real (the other two illusionary). In hindsight, there probably should have been more illusions in the adventure to add to the "dream" quality of the thing...but the players never figured out an earlier wall of fire was an illusion, and they avoided several illusionary encounters by taking their backwoods path. I don't know...I guess my version of DL10 suffered somewhat in execution, too. They killed two of the "bears" and charmed the third which (by random roll) turned out to be the only non-illusionary one. They gave it food and sent it off into the woods before proceeding on. 

The elf king's fort is 100% based on Tolkien's Mirkwood elves, including a large gate in the side of a mountain, an underground river, wine cellars, etc. No big deal...just pointing out what a hack adventure designer I am. The gate, an enormous carved thing of massive cedar logs that seemed to writhe and move, was actually two illusionary mimics that, if engaged with for any length of time, would ensure that the dragon was awake and well-prepared (spell-wise) for the PCs depending on just how long they futzed with the things. The party went to go "check the doors for traps" (which would have been disastrous for them) but Sabine stopped them and simply knocked the doors open, thereby allowing the party the possibility of surprising the dragon in its den. This, in addition to her liberal use of her staff's paralyzation ray and other timely spell-casting, was what made me give her the nod as "MVP" for the session.

The dragon was not surprised (that I recall), nor (unfortunately for the party) was it sleeping. In my home game it had been sleeping (40% chance, rolled in front of the players)...which enabled the thief to move silently up to it and backstab the thing. Whereupon it woke up and killed half the party (including the elven princess) before being taken down. No such luck for my Cauldron players, but at least it wasn't invisible, shielded, and setting giant globes of darkness around the hall.

The party wisely split wide to prevent its breath weapon from decimating them, and charged it from multiple angles, the more fragile members of the group hanging back and weaving spells. It was at this point the other party members noticed the thief had a luck blade ("You have wish spells?! Use them!"). The thief immediately wished the dragon was dead and promptly disappeared. 

[see PHB p.94 for an explanation]

The princess (a fighter/magic-user) cast haste on the entire party which, amusingly, could have ended multiple lives as it required each PC to make a system shock roll versus aging...but luck was on their side and everyone survived. The dragon was taken down without a single life lost, and the person who grabbed the orb away from the king (Ken? I think so) had a high enough personality score that the PC was able to control it. Total victory won!

Schibbi (playing the princess) asked if the thief reappeared. Why, yes, he did!

SO...a big fat score was had by the party. Then Schibbi actually asked if his character could marry one of the other party members thus getting some sort of dowery (and extra loot score!) from the elf king. I couldn't believe someone was trying to backchannel my own secret victory condition! I decided that even suggesting such a thing was worth a shot and getting the "doubled score" (although I would subtract the portion from the party's loot as a 'wedding gift'). 

However, first the would-be spouse had to impress the father of the bride. "Which character are you going to marry?" Well, the half-elf seemed obvious...plus he had a solid charisma score with a +15% reaction bonus. Dice rolled...abject failure (perhaps the king objected to his profession as an assassin?). I gave the players one more chance to impress...either the human fighter or the human cleric (both had excellent CHA scores), but I can't remember who they went with. Didn't matter. Another % roll in the teens and the King was having none of it. 

BUT...plenty of loot and a fine score for the party, putting them firmly in 4th place with a score of 462,001. If they had succeeded in the marriage proposal, they would have ended up in 2nd place with nearly 742K (the winners of the tournament DID succeed at the marriage proposition...the only group that did...and finished with a final tally of nearly 785K...just 2,328 points shy of the maximum possible score). A very fine run, in my opinion.

Prince gave the session only a *** (out of *****) rating on his blog, which seems about par for the course (he gave me the same score last year). I'm okay with that. This was a difficult adventure to write...not in terms of monsters and treasure and maps, but in terms of tone and theme. I wanted the thing to have a "slow burn" quality to it...a gradual feeling of "ramping up" (helped by a gradual "whittling down" of resources), leading to a nice little climax with a type of dragon I don't often use (not that I "often" use dragons, but green ain't my favorite of the five colors).

The thing was effective enough, but the illusion bits didn't really "bite" the way I wanted, and the thing felt...almost...a tad "soft." A dragon goes down QUICK when piled on by eight adventurers. And no dragon should feel like an easy out. But it's hard to measure how many player deaths a group can sustain and still have an adequate chance of success. 4-5 PCs against a beholder turned into a TPK when playtesting Horn of the Eye...but that was a party who'd lost their wizard. These types of things are difficult to account for, as you never know how the dice will fall.

However, I do know this: when I am a DM, I play intelligent adversaries in ruthless fashion. If the adventurers had happened upon an awake, prepared dragon, their lives would have been much more in jeopardy...much, much more. HIgh level spell-casters (especially with minions), spell-casting dragons, powerful demons and undead...these things can be absolutely punishing to ill-prepared, tentative, and/or indecisive players, especially those unable to cooperate with each other or think up quick plans on the fly. My HOPE is that these tournament modules test that mettle in the players. AND (of course) I hope they have a good time in the process.

A couple more words:

I am already considering what I want to do for next year's Blackrazor Cup...I actually have quite a few ideas jotted down. Calithena (aka Ignatius Umlaut aka "Sean"), the illustrious producer of Fight On! magazine has graciously offered to collaborate on the adventure; I'm going to touch base with him in a couple weeks. However, I've already decided that the next adventure will be a return to the site-based (i.e. "dungeon") style of the first two BRC adventures, and that it will have a slightly different method of scoring, which will require individual players to "step up" and take a bit out of the hands of DMs. The current working title is Into Light And Darkness (although I also liked the ring of Dead Elf Station). This one will take place in that vicious green inferno known as Oregon. 

Just so you know.

The other thing I wanted to say is that I know several people would like copies of these tournament adventures and I AM in the process of publishing them; I hope to have at least one or two available at DriveThruRPG by the end of the year. As they become available, I will post a notice about it here on Ye Old Blog...I know that there are folks who are anxious to run these at their home tables, and that makes me very happy.

All right, that's enough. Happy trails everyone!

Back From A Land Of Fire And Ice

I'm writing this Thursday morning, but I'm probably posting it around...mm...Tuesday? Wednesday? After all, I had a series of five Cauldron posts to get up on Ye Old Blog.

But right now, Dear Reader, you are time traveling with me, back to the past. The day is Thursday, October 15th. Where you are now, in the present, I've already had a full weekend back in Seattle, already coached another soccer game, attended church (I hope!), had my kids back in school, back at the grind, etc. Life 'round these parts are, as they say, "back to normal"...as you are reading this.

But for me, in YOUR past. Well, I just got back to town yesterday.

Iceland is a beautiful country...but I can see how it might not be everyone's cup o tea (at least, not in mid-October). For me, it was lovely...kind of a sepia-colored version of Hawaii's "Big Island," but with high winds and glaciers instead of daily sprinkles and lush greenery. The prices are about the same.

Haha! No disrespect intended! I'm not a big "beach person," but my wife is and she LOVED Iceland, and was talking about making it an annual trip. Right up until we learned that its hundreds of active volcanoes could blow up half the place at any time and the 60mph winds had shut down the highways we needed to travel to get back to the airport (and, man, did they shake our little bungalow Tuesday night! Glad we decided against the "glamping" igloos!).

No, but it was wonderful. Great people, great food, great scenery ("majestic" would be a better word), great hiking. And lovely, lovely relaxing hot springs and spas. Oh, man. My family got there on Friday...I met them Monday afternoon after four solid days of rough riding in Germany (truly, it felt like Germany and ridden over me...). But after entering the warm embrace of my family...and then entering the warm embrace of the Blue Lagoon...all the physical and mental stress of the past week slipped away. Not even the icy rain pelting my mineral facial mask could diminish the comfort of the soak, or the steam of the "volcano" room. Hell, I haven't had a good cold plunge since I was in Kyoto (Japan) circa age of 17...I forgot how refreshing it can be to overload the nerve endings on occasion.

[a rather large selection of gins, as well, but I only sampled one as I was "drying out my liver" after Cauldron]

Yeah, I'm spoiled. But I'm not going to allow the guilt from my privilege to detract from what was a really nice (and very much needed) micro-vacation. It was good, I am blessed, and the credit card will be paid off eventually.

The viking culture stuff was great, too, of course, though I wasn't there long enough to check out the museums (or Reykjavik at all, really). Mostly we just hiked waterfalls and glaciers for a couple days. Saw "the world's only live lava show" that was pretty good. Wish I'd seen that BEFORE writing my Horn of the Eye adventure, as it would have had some impact on how the magma fields worked (SPOILER: pretty much the same as they did, but humans don't sink when they fall into a lake of lava, the lava being far more dense than the buoyant human body. ALSO: while steel DOES heat up, like a heat metal spell...faster, in fact...it has a higher melting point than lava, so should really just turn red-hot, depending on the heat keeping the molten rock in its liquid state). Really good, interesting info there...probably something for a future adventure.

No, the worst thing I can say about Iceland (the winds didn't bother me a whit) was the DRIVING, because of the absolutely draconian speeding laws and radar cameras stationed all about the island. I am a lead-foot driver and I fully expect to receive several thousand krona worth of fines and tickets in my mailbox in the next few weeks. I was white-knuckling it most of the time...the only stress I had in Iceland...trying to maintain their 90 and 70 and 50 kmph speed limits at all times. And it's not like there's any traffic...it's about Montana level out there. Ah, well. I know the Europeans are diligent in tracking down malefactors like myself (I've received speeding tix from Spain in the past). The amount we end up paying their Transpo department will directly affect how soon we make it back, I'm sure.

[yet another reason I prefer Germany, really]

But OTHER than that...a stupendous time and a welcome relief, making the journey home to Seattle quite relaxing. I wasn't even stressed/worried about the extraordinary long lines at customs to exit the country: having already experienced them on the journey east, I knew that Icelandair would hold the plane for us and still, somehow, land us at SeaTac on schedule.

And they did.

: )

The last and only other thing I have to say about Iceland (other than it was great and everyone should check it out once in their lifetimes), is that climbing the cliffs, being with my family (Diego and I had a LOT of discussions about the events at Cauldron...he was especially intrigued by all the Chainmail battles), it put my mind in the peaceful, joyful state that conjured up a new, fiendish idea for next year's Blackrazor Cup Tournament adventure. No, it has nothing to do with Vikings, trolls, glaciers, or volcanoes...nothing at all to do with Iceland, in fact. But the calm serenity of the place gave my mind the space it needed to percolate. And when that percolation happens, well, good things (good ideas, that is) can arise out of it. "Spontaneous creativity" in a way that doesn't happen when chatting with an AI chatbot.

[the latter, I find, actually stunts the creative process. But maybe that's just me]

Okay, that's enough...just a short one for today. Next post, I'll discuss the tournament adventure, somewhat in depth. Hope everyone is having a restful, relaxing week.

Cauldron Day 4: Falling Back In (Semi-)Good Order

Sunday morning. I woke up, looked at my phone, and saw that it was 9:20am. This was solely by the Grace of God. I had not set an alarm when I went to bed or...if I had...I had somehow slept through it.

It took me a few moments to orient myself, remember where I was, understand what I was looking at.

Uh-oh.

One of the reasons Cauldron runs as well as it does is its fairly strict time table. People are, of course, welcome to let their games run long, but the meals are going to start when they start (and stop serving when they stop). People are welcome to tarry in the dining hall enjoying each other's company, but then they might miss out on joining a session block. There's no pressure, but the train runs as it runs.

Looking at the time, I'd already missed breakfast and I was on the verge of missing the Awards Ceremony, which was scheduled to begin at 9:30am. What's more, it had been made abundantly clear (multiple times) that we had to be completely packed and vacated from our rooms by 9:30 so that the club was not charged extra money...while Cauldron proper ran till 2pm with a final session block in the gaming hall, our quarters needed to be turned out. 

Somehow...adrenaline I suppose...I pulled myself from the bed and hurriedly packed everything in my room into my suitcase and backpack. I had no time to shower or stretch...hell, I didn't even have time to brush my teeth. I don't remember putting on my clothes (perhaps I'd crashed in them) but somehow I ended up fully dressed.

However, there was another reason for my panicked rush: the Awards Ceremony. As the guy in charge of the Blackrazor Tournament Cup, it was my job to tabulate the winners and read the results. Shit, I was supposed to present trophies...I think. I mean, I had expected to get up on time and go over all this with the tournament organizers while sipping my morning coffee. Instead, I'd nearly slept through the thing!

Fortunately, I had been keeping up with the scores as DMs had provided me with them and already had a spreadsheet going (I'd also made myself cheat sheets for quick calculations). I had everything finished and slid my laptop into my pack just as Thomas came by knocking on the doors to get any stragglers out. I was down the stairs and to the dining hall (where everyone was already gathered) just as Settembrini was finishing up the other award categories and introducing the Blackrazor Cup trophies. I heard him say:

"Is he here? Oh, he is! Good...just in time!" 

And then I was on.  Jeez, what an embarrassment!

Staggering my way through the crowd, I was able to recount the scores. This year's participants were, overall, quite successful: six of the eight made it to the end with at least part of their party intact, and five of the groups ended up with scores in the 400K+ range. Oh, and "only" two TPKs...I'd actually expected more (my group had the possibility of a third but...well, we'll get to that!). Overall winner went to the German-language group who really went hard at cleaning out the place. With a grand score of 784,917, they nearly hit the maximum limit of 787,245...and they weren't even satisfied with that (asking "What did we miss?!" even as they were being handed their trophies). Wow, kids...you won, all right?

: )

But while the general mood was celebratory, I was feeling...pretty rough. I'd been handed my morning carafe of decaf coffee, but I had to have two or three shots of "regular" first, just to stay standing. Oh, man. Recovery from being "over-served" is usually one of my stronger traits...but it requires SLEEP for the magic to happen, and the less-than-four hours I'd gotten was not going to cut it. As I mentioned earlier, my intention was to get into Keith Sloan's Forgotten Grottoes of the Sea Lords. Having talked to Keith during dinner (and expressing my difficulty in getting onto the sign-up sheet) he advised me: "Just crash it." Unfortunately, I wasn't in any shape to crash anything. Maybe a car, if I'd been driving.

[too bad, because from what people said afterwards, the Sea Lords game was especially killer]

Instead, I wolfed down some of the leftovers from breakfast (especially the fresh veg) and then made the rounds to look in on the various tables, still gaming hard into Day 4: Attronarch with his giant table, Grutzi with his neverending cheese runs, Andrew (of Britain's Grellcon), Keith, Justin ("the Particularist")...I wandered and sipped coffee, and took photos (which I will not share here) and shook hands and said parting words. Spent some 30-40 minutes outside talking youth soccer strategy with a fellow con-goer (sorry, man...I can't remember your name!); apparently, people read my blog.

I had hoped to bid on one of the special "Cauldron hoodies" that the organizers had worn, but I missed the cutoff the night before (too busy trying to run a game while blind drunk). So I was terribly surprised and pleased when I was gifted with one as a parting gift. 

These people, man.

I took it all the way up till 2pm...mainly because Alex and Grutzi and I had arranged to take Prince back to Frankfurt with us and the game he was playing in went all the way to the end of Cauldron. Before I get to that (not much to say, as I was barely conscious on the car ride), I have a few specific things to say from this last day.

I missed almost the entirety of the awards ceremony, and it was not until much later that I learned which player won the Cup of Demise (Svante) and the Most Valuable Player (Niklas), neither of whom I think I met during the convention. Certainly I don't remember putting their names down on my evaluation sheet, which was the basis for these awards as well as the Best DM trophy, deservedly won by Melan.

Of course, MY votes for these awards didn't count anyway, as I had failed to turn in my evaluation for the tournament (despite being diligent about filling it out)! Getting caught up in the dinner, the auction, the drinking, and the late night gaming, it had completely slipped my mind...although I did give the sheet to head data collator ("Blut Und Glas") sometime after the awards ceremony had been completed. Would my eval have made a difference in the scoring? Possibly. I had different MVPs listed for each of my game sessions (not because I wanted to, just because it worked out that way), so the most that could have occurred, I suppose, would have been a tie, if only one point had separated the eventual winner.

As for "the Best DM:" Blut told me that (as per usual) the criteria had changed yet again this year and that the judging was based on how influential/connected the DM's adventures were to their home campaign (or something like that). Well, my adventures were ALL connected to my home campaign, and most had direct impact on my setting:

Blood on Blizzard Pass: the Master was a potential ally of the Dragon Queen (the PCs discovered papers discussing the proposed alliance). 

Assault on Sky Fortress: the Queen's "doomsday weapon" could be captured or destroyed, impacting the war effort.

Horn of the Eye: the beholder was another potential ally of Tiamat, but because of the players' (successful) subterfuge, bad blood might have been stirred up between the entities.

And even the tournament adventure has an impact the war, since the recovery of the Orb of the Elder Wyrm can shift the balance of power to the Red Empire, while the ending of the elven diaspora in Colville will have profound importance for the allied forces.

The Jewel of Demogorgon adventure was set three years AFTER the war's end, but it is still connected to my campaign (and its background story being connected to the rebuilding of Pullman), but it had no current influence on the campaign as it currently stands. It would have an impact on future Cauldron events, however, as I used it as a precursor to my (eventual) Revenge of Demogorgon adventure. 

So...would any of that have made a difference?

Ha! It honestly doesn't matter; I am quite content with the results. Melan has been showing up and putting in the work (and excellent work it is) for the last four years and he is welcome to feather his cap. In fact, I'm indebted to the guy: he did me a solid by autographing my copy of his Gamemaster's Guidelines that I purchased at this year's Cauldron. Didn't have a chance to crack this beefy tome until I was resting in a secluded cabin in Iceland (ah, Iceland...that's a whole 'nother post), but it's probably worth a review. I'll get to that eventually, I'm sure (yes, plenty of blog fodder here).

I...

I'm starting to wonder if it is still the gaming that draws me to Cauldron. I mean, absolutely the gaming IS the draw...if there was no gaming, or if they decided to run 5E or something, I would stop coming (there ain't enough free beer in the world, people...). But I think the highlight of seeing these people, these special, special people, has become my main impetus to buy a plane ticket to this little gaming convention, halfway around the world.

Seeing Michal ("Bifi") and Sonke and Mike (Sipior) and Prince and Grutz and Setti and Alex and Tamas and Chomy and Iudex and Michele and...well, hell, all of you. Lynch and Eric and Theo and Parti and Philipp and Premier and Toby and Mitch and Fred and Walid and Soren and Schibbi and Butch and Lutz and, and...

You know, I met a LOT of new people this year. Missed seeing some guys like Orlando, but was happy to make the acquaintance of new folks like Joseph and Daniel and Bruno and Steve. And so many lady players this year! It was so great to see so much female participation with Eria and Charlotte and Sabine and Estelle (of course, Estelle...). I'll try not to sound condescending, but I'm used to playing at a table with a member or two of the distaff...women enjoy adventure, too, after all...and this was the most I've seen (or had the chance to play with) at Cauldron in three years. Great to see the womenfolk throwing down with the boys...I love that!

All the faces, old and new: this is what I'm going to miss next year. I knew, going in, that I would not be coming back in 2027. Just far too much on the schedule (school-wise/kid-wise) next October. I knew that it would be two years (at least!) before I'd have a chance to get back to Cauldron. But six 4+ hour sessions of high intensity gaming and three Chainmail battles...well, coupled with my sporadic home games, that should be enough to slake my gaming thirst for a little while. Maybe even for two years, if I can get a little bi-weekly thing going. Maybe.

But not seeing you folks? Any of you? For two years?

Heck, at least in 2024 I was able to share a beer and a burger with Prince in Amsterdam (and what did we talk about? The upcoming Cauldron that I would not be attending that year). Do I need to swing by Budapest in '27 and visit the Magyar horde?

As I said: I'm beginning to feel like the draw of Cauldron is not (first and foremost) the gaming.

*sigh*

Yet more sentimentality...jeez-louise. This is what happens when you're on the backside of 50, kids. You get all mushy about stuff. I'm certainly not talking about GAMES anymore...time to bring today's Cauldron discussion to a close!

Mm. I got nothing.

I've got TWO more posts planned/in the works. One will be about Iceland. The other will be about the tournament module. After that, this blog will be back to business as usual (whatever that means).

I'll leave off with the same words Setti gave me as I left. "You know what you mean to us," he said.

Yes. And I hope you all know what you mean to me.

Later.

One more trinket from
the crafty crafters at Cauldron.

Cauldron Day 3: Battle Fatigue

Serious gaming can take a toll on you, depending on how intense it is. Running the same scenario more than once, or a single long scenario (say six hours instead of three) isn’t the same as running multiple scenarios in which you, as the DM, have to reset, reorient, and refocus to a new premise, a new situation, and new player characters. Doing it over and over again, over multiple days, can be grueling. Usually, at the end of a three-day Cauldron, I’m checking into a hotel and sleeping for 20 hours before boarding a plane back to Seattle. The jet lag, the short turnaround, and the copious amounts of alcohol probably don’t help much.

This year, though, Day 3 wasn’t bringing breakfast, a last session, and a welcome respite. No. I had a whole ‘nother 24 hours of gaming. Got up, showered, dressed, and off to breakfast before my first morning session. Stretching exercises and deep breathing was having less impact and a diminishing rate of return.

Saturday Block I: Horn of the Eye

When I was a kid…and I mean, waaaay back, before I played AD&D proper…I wrote an adventure I called “Labyrinth of the Beholder.” It was a typical, kid-type adventure: a big mess of a maze, with plenty of funhouse monsters sitting in rooms ready to get killed and looted. At the center of the adventure, waiting like Theseus’s minotaur, was a beholder…taken from my first Monster Manual, despite the fact that we were still playing B/X and had yet to realize AD&D was a different thing (we thought “Expert D&D” and “Advanced D&D” were the same, you see?). It was one of the highlight adventures of my early DMing career, meaning it gave both me and my players some memorable stories. As a teenager, I’d tried to recreate it like a 'real AD&D adventure module,' but while I drew the map (I still have the map, actually), my endurance with writing modules was pretty thin in those days. I found a page (along with the map) that had three encounter write-ups (by hand, in pencil)…all pretty terrible. That’s as far as I got.

This year, I decided I’d recreate the thing…as a location in my campaign world. Kind of a Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth if Iggwilv was still kicking around the Prime Plane…and if she were a beholder, getting regular tribute from the locals. Set in the Seven Devils mountain range of (western) Idaho, I wrote it up and playtested the thing back in April with my kids right before Spencer left for his chef job in Japan. It was a great success and, while it ended in a TPK, it actually felt a little soft to me…a full party of eight players, avoiding bone-head mistakes (like purposefully antagonizing a pyrohydra) would probably succeed where my own group had failed miserably.

Or so I thought.

This one’s your typical, “iconic” (sterotyped) subterranean cavern complex, with lava lakes and fungi forests (is there a bottomless pit? I might have left that trope out, but it would definitely fit). Flinds (from the Fiend Folio) are the main minion of the beholder (who has a name, but I’m not going to look it up right now since I’m not wearing my reading glasses as I type this anyway)..he also has a fire giant lieutenant, there are a couple trap rooms, various other minions of a lawful evil bent. There’s a grell in one part which I found to be fairly useless in play-testing…I left it in anyway because, you know, grell.

The party was well-organized and advanced cautiously after descending a couple hundred feet in a lift of brass and iron. Past the stone causeway (wide enough to drive a wagon) over a lake of magma. Surprised the first guard post, murdered the hell out of everybody, then sent the thief ahead into (what turned out to be) the den of a pyrohydra. Uh-oh.

Full retreat not fast enough, party dropped a portcullis on the thing and then butchered it, but the thief player needed a new character (duh). More caution, then started wandering the wing populated by the flind minions. Three more fights and a lot of dead flinds later, they picked up a nice treasure chest and a couple magic items including a ring of fire resistance…handy in a land of lava pools. Good play from the party included ample and strategic use of a scarab on enraging enemies.

Good mapping (yes, Charlotte, the mapping was good) allowed the players to find their way back to the hydra den where they stashed the chest before proceeding back into uncharted territory. Avoided the wing with the fire giant, fortuitously skirted another flind guard post (thus avoiding an alarm) before finding themselves at yet another cavern filled with lava, this one with tall stones of basalt allowing for crossing…in single-file only. Sent the new thief (I think) forward only to have his way barred by four salamanders rising from the lava…no attacks, just questioning, but he didn’t speak salamander and he decided to back off, unmolested. Fighter/magic-user put on the ring of fire resistance and used comprehend languages to converse and understand their speech (even though he couldn’t speak it). Figured out they were asking what tribute the party was bringing to their lord and master and that they’d better have something good or they wouldn’t be allowed to continue.

Magic-user, meanwhile, was turning invisible in order to scout ahead. F/MU came back, gave the MU his ring who then dashed across the columns, unbeknownst to the salamanders (I should note…and I explained this to the players…that hanging out on the path where the temperature of the lava is around 1200 degrees centigrade causes the equivalent of a heat metal spell if you dilly-dally more than one round inside the cavern). Magic-user found a trap down a side passage beyond the cavern…a deadfall that crushed the hell out of him…but he managed to stagger back to his companions for some much needed healing

A bunch of confusion at this point, with a lot of players voting to do different things. The halfling decided to use his oil of etherealness for more hardcore scouting. Fighter/magic-user wanted to fly to the other side of the cavern (over the salamanders heads), while half the party was considering making a sprint to the other side and/or fighting the creatures. The invisible magic-user took the scarab of enraging enemies that they had used to wipe out the larger flind mobs and moved out into the middle of the path, figuring he would use cone of cold (while still invisible) if the scarab didn’t do its job. He had to go to the middle of the path because of the range of the magic item (4")...about halfway out.

[the use of the scarab was not an attack that would end invisibility]

The scarab only worked on one salamander who was promptly dispatched by its comrades. Declaring actions, the cleric decided it was now time to make a mad dash to the other side, while the magic-user declared he was casting cone of cold. The cleric ran into the invisible magic-user (overbearing attacks) and knocked the wizard into the lava while knocking himself down; he was then grabbed by a salamander tail and constricted. The fighter and ranger next raced out to help (in single file), only to be subsequently grabbed as well. Having no resistance to heat, after two rounds of constriction the heated metal of their helmets caused both warriors to succumb to unconsciousness, while the cleric simply died.

The F/MU next cast charm monster on the lead salamander, which was then attacked by its comrades while the dwarf, having already imbibed a potion of speed, shuttled unconscious companions back to the safety of the cavern entrance. The lead salamander slew a companion before being slain himself, and the party was able to polish off the last one with (I believe) the dwarf...the latter having removed his helmet. Unfortunately, he still sustained severe, disabling burns to his body for the rounds of melee he spent in combat with the thing.

In the meantime, the halfling finally went ethereal (the oil not taking effect till three rounds after application), and decided to scout ahead while the party waited for their companions to recover from their heat-induced comas. I tracked the duration of the potion and he spent so long wandering the caverns on the other side that his etherealness eventually wore off…just as he managed to stumble his way into the beholder’s presence. Somehow, with a quick wit and a “00” reaction roll, the halfling was able to convince the beholder that he was an envoy of the dragon queen sent to broker an alliance based on tribute, slaves, and monument erected to the beholder’s greatness. This was deemed sufficient by the Eye Tyrant and the character was allowed to leave, taking the beholder's message of acceptance back to Tiamat. “Don’t get eaten by the [black] pudding on your way out!” it called after him.

He found his way back, explained what happened to the party, and they all decided to get the hell out of Dodge, retrieving their small chest of treasure on the way. A very nice run, in my opinion.

[EDIT: Lutz, aka Der Oger, was my nod for Most Valuable Player]

Saturday Block II: Jewel of Demogorgon

Time for a little more "personal history:" as a child, before I’d ever held or seen a D&D book of any kind, we used to “play D&D” at recess, pretending to be “fighters,” “assassins,” and “magic-users”, arguing over who got to wield “Blackrazor,” and fighting “Demogorgon.” Once I discovered that this D&D game was an honest-to-goodness, real thing...and after I had my own copy of Basic D&D and the Monster Manual and knew what an adventure module was (thanks B2!), I asked my friends (the ones who had first hipped me to this D&D concept) if they knew of any adventure that contained the Prince of Demons. They said, yeah, there was one called something like “Revenge of Demogorgon.” I spent many years looking for this module before deciding it probably didn’t really exist.

For Cauldron, I wanted to run a high-level adventure, and decided that I would craft my own version of this fable…something I probably should have done years before. However, for the life of me I couldn’t come up with any legitimate reason why Demogorgon would want “revenge” on a group of snot-nosed adventurers so, instead, I penned what amounts to a high level "heist" scenario.

As with Sky Fortress, this adventure was only finished in the last few days before I left for Cauldron; it was never play-tested. When I first decided to do it, I had expected it to be the capstone piece for my seven-adventure mini-campaign. I’d also planned on running it in the Saturday Night block where there is no four-hour time limit. Now, however, I had it slated for the afternoon session with the idea that, if it proved to be too long, I could continue to run it after dinner in the Night block…a two-parter, in other words.

First thing’s first: as I sat down at my table after lunch, I was surprised by a player (Theo) passing through asking if I was going to join their game since no one had signed up for my session. What?! This was exceptionally odd, as (to this point) all my tables had been full. What the heck had happened?

I went down to check the sign-up sheet and it was nowhere to be found. Thought that was pretty odd…until a helpful person informed me that session sheets with no takers were simply removed out of the assumption the DM would withdraw their offering.

[later, I had at least one or two people tell me they would have LIKED to play in my game but they felt it was “too high level” and they did not have enough experience playing to feel comfortable. 12th is too high? Sheesh!]

In the end I did have a few players…five or six…who took pity on my empty table and allowed me to run Jewel. I thought the adventure played pretty well, but it was very difficult for the number of players we had…the Abyss is no joke, even for characters in the 12th-14th level range. That being said, it WAS quite long, especially as the premise was tricky to explain, and we had to do some re-calculations of armor class and whatnot due to magic items being less functional on the outer planes. Still: we made it roughly halfway through the adventure, even with a pair of novice players in the group, and when I offered to run it after dinner, they all agreed to come back (except for Ghoul, who was running his own adventure in the Saturday Night block). 

So…I guess not everyone was tired of dying in my games?

Puts hair on your chest.

Final feast/dinner and the annual auction followed, and this was a great time, as always, with much generosity of spirit (and currency) all around. Bidding was fierce, as was the drinking, and my favorite local spirit (a bottle of Rainier Mountain Fresh Gin) was popular enough that I only consumed a third of it myself, the rest being passed around in exchange for palinka, hazelnut liqueur, wine…you know, the usual. I didn’t get any of Estelle’s chartreuse unfortunately (especially disappointing as she ended up at my gaming table afterwards!) but perhaps next year. On to the Night Block!

Saturday Block III: Jewel of Demogorgon (cont.)

I actually ended up with six players at the table after I’d had five (-ish?) at the previous session…just not as many DMs were running games that night (only seven in fact, although one was Bruno’s 23-player OD&D extravaganza) and players were looking for empty seats. I did my big table last year, but I find it tough to run AD&D with the same amount of proficiency and attention I like when there are more than eight participants. Hell, seven is about the perfect amount, but eight gives you extra bodies to slay…you lose one or two PCs from a 6-7 party and the game can quickly go all “death spiral” on you. In my experience.

But, hey, I’m being coy, and I know it. I don’t really want to say anything about my Demogorgon adventure because I actually REALLY like it…and the thing needs some fine-tuning. Despite the map fitting on a single page (unlike most of my dungeons this year), it’s pretty beefy, pretty elaborate. No, the Prince of Demons does not actually make an appearance (unless the players do something very, very wrong) but I really like how I decided to handle the Abyss, and this particular layer. Also, the scenario itself...breaking into a Demon Prince’s stronghold while he’s away, hoping to loot his “Hoard of Spite” without getting caught...is a good one. Spoiler Alert: the players did not find the Hoard (although they got all the way to Demo's audience chamber: a heroic feat in and of itself) but, even if they had, I don’t know if the juice would have been worth the squeeze. As I said, the adventure needs fine-tuning. It was a really ambitious design and I needed more time with it than what I actually took.

Saturday night, I called the game at what I thought was a pretty decent stopping point, but there hadn’t been enough treasure (by my standards) up till that point (I’ll work on it). Plus, let’s be honest: I was pretty hammered by the time we were finishing up, and it had to be after 3am (or 4). I packed my bags, found Prince and Soren embroiled in their usual, last night political discussion, and got into it with them, continuing well into the wee hours of the morning in our usual, jovial fashion. 

And I mean…wow. For once I saw the backside of Prince staggering away (he’s usually the last man standing at these events). But then I looked at my watch and saw the local time was 5:40am, I realized I might have made a BAD mistake. I headed off to bed, in as straight a line as I could walk. 

Not very straight.

[Jewel of Demogorgon may well may make another appearance at a future Cauldron; if it does, it will be in an updated and upgraded format]

[oh, and one last MVP nod...Walid, sometimes called "the Cruel," was my nomination for this round, with his good use of a robe of scintillating colors helping the party immensely]