Stealing, By the Numbers (III)
Map of Warcraft's Shadowfang Keep
The courtyard of Shadowfang Keep, in Warcraft, is full of worgen, wolves, and undead servants. This was the first major change I made to the setting: given what I’d already decided about the two factions squaring off against each other, that simply wouldn’t work. Furthermore, the players would just have experienced two fights; a third one here would postpone the roleplaying encounter by another hour or so, according to my rule of thumb, and I wanted to get there fairly early.
I’d been considering putting a nightmare in the stables, with saddlebags that were a bag of holding, in a nod to the game; I discarded that idea. I took all of the enemies out of the courtyard, replacing them with the ghostly sentry crossbowmen I’d mentioned in my previous post, and a single dead worgen feathered with several bolts. I also eliminated the worgen boss Razorclaw the Butcher, since he didn’t fit in my Dungeons & Dragons version of Shadowfang Keep. Instead, I placed two ghostly servants (wraiths) in the kitchen area; these were unfriendly and suspicious toward the PCs, but not immediately hostile. The characters could attack them, and win fairly easily, but it would negatively impact the encounter that was to come.
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Barbarians at the Gates
Wizards of the Coast released the barbarian playtest article in Dragon a couple of days ago. This was originally scheduled for September, then pushed back a month. As of this writing, it’s still free, but it’s scheduled to switch to Insider subscribers only at some undefined time this month, so hurry and grab it if you want it. (Edit: Apparently it’s going to remain free. Good news! It really is a terrific article.)
The class is rather interesting. It’s another striker, this time based on the primal power source — they draw on animal and nature spirits. Purists might not care for that flavor, but I rather like it.
Barbarians are quite tough for strikers — they have as many hit points as fighters, and only one fewer healing surge. However, they’re a little squishy. They have proficiencies in only light armor, and neither Dexterity nor Intelligence is a primary stat for them, meaning their armor class will be relatively low. Mitigating that, many of their abilities grant them temporary hit points, making them even more damage-absorbent.
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Stealing, By the Numbers (II)
Map of Warcraft's Shadowfang Keep
With the outline for my new players’ excursion to Shadowfang Keep complete, I next moved to what we used to call “stocking” the dungeon: placing monsters, treasure, and other elements inside and developing a map key.
To begin with, I needed to decide how long I wanted to make the dungeon. That seems a bit odd, given that I already had a map, but as experienced gamemasters will know, the size of the adventure area has little to do with how long it takes the players to explore it. That’s mostly determined by the number of encounters — a large map with very few encounters can be cleared in relatively little out-of-game time, while a small map with many encounters can take multiple game sessions.
I find a good rule of thumb is an hour per encounter. Some will take more, some will take less, but it tends to work out. Furthermore, in fourth edition, a character will gain a level after about ten encounters. I decided that Shadowfang Keep should be about ten encounters long, to allow each character to level up. That gave me a rule-of-thumb of ten hours “clear time,” or two to three sessions.
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Stealing, By the Numbers
One of the most useful pieces of advice new game masters often get is: steal. Take elements of myth, literature, movies, and anything else that you like, and find ways of using them in your game.
Recently I had an opportunity to demonstrate fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons for a couple of old friends, none of whom had ever roleplayed heavily. Most of them were, however, avid fans of massively-multiplayer online games. So given a session to try to hook them, I decided to steal from an MMORPG. Specifically, from World of Warcraft.
I didn’t have to think too hard about what to steal. My favorite low-level instance in the game is a castle infested by werewolf-like creatures and the ghosts of its former inhabitants… and ruled over by a mad wizard. Kind of stereotypical, maybe, but I love it.
My new players were going to Shadowfang Keep.
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Dread: Worst Mechanic Ever?
This one needs a little background. A little over a week ago, while reading d20 Blonde, I came across mention of a horror role-playing game called Dread, which featured a unique mechanic: task resolution by playing Jenga. (Not to be confused with the other horror role-playing game Dread, which uses 2d12, and which was published several years prior to this Dread.) (Edit: Some further digging reveals that, while the other Dread was published first, this Dread seems to have been created and used for convention play first. Not that this matters much, really — just for the sake of accuracy.)
My immediate reaction was not favorable:
A Jenga tower? Really? That’s got to be the worst mechanic I’ve ever heard of. Nothing like killing a character because the player is physically clumsy… or has a nerve-related ailment.
This was, however, apparently a unique reaction. One of the responses put it this way:
The threat of the tower falling (even if you’ve got shaky hands!) is part of what builds the tension in the game… In fact, as the tower grows and become more precarious, you’ll see the players physically scoot back from the table because, even if you accidentally knock the tower reaching for a drink, you’re [sic.] PC bites it.
As the story progresses, the danger of dying increases with each pull… and the atmosphere grows more and more intense. It’s a beautiful thing.
Additionally, I received several admonishments not to judge the game without playing it. Well, fair enough. I decided to see whether my group would be interested in trying a game, using the quickstart rules available on the website. They were.
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