Behind the Screen, Badlands #2

It was our first full length session.  There were quite a few things I noticed.

The Treasure Economy:  one of the things I really always liked about the first few versions of D&D was the importance of treasure.   Up until  AD&D 2e, treasure was the main source of XP.   I wanted to put focus on treasure as a campaign goal, but at the same time I wanted it to be a bit more interesting.  The way most people played AD&D in the old days, you just piled up the treasure, and maybe spent tons of it for level training, but many people even skipped that expense. 

I will give 4e a little credit for making treasure be spendable in a useful form for magic items, even though I really hated the philosophy of "treasure packets", i.e., giving the PC's the amount of treasure they "ought to have" at a given point.   That really just rubs me the wrong way in a variety of directions. 

What I wanted was for the players to have to make real choices about spending their treasure.   The various levels of maintenance, for example, will reward spending in that area with better hit point rolls.   Spending money on hirelings is of immense benefit, of course.  There are also a whole series of herbs and herbal medicines which can have a big impact.  Magicians of all stripes can spend money on scrolls or the equivalent right from the beginning, and the expense is significant, but not out of reach.   So, on the one hand these various expenditures have immediate utilitarian pay offs.  All of them may result in a more successful expedition.   However, the players have to balance that with the spending of treasure to get experience points.  Money spent in this area not only helps advance the character in level, but develops the character's personality (like Apollo's mom expenses and Bosco Tripod's fashionable clothing) and will eventually help to develop the setting and the character's place in the setting.  But, the main thing is there is a real set of choices, a real set of decisions to be made.  For me, I think that is an important part of a long-term campaign. 

I'm really happy to see those choices impacting right away.  The expense of the wergild was money that could have gone to maintenance, hirelings, equipment or experience, but it was essentially lost, but it was necessary so Bosco Tripod and Rig could return to Portchester.  At the beginning of next session, for another example, the players are going to have hard choices to make about levels of maintenance.  Some may regret experience expenditures already made.   There may be some tough decisions about whether to cut prospective hirelings in for a treasure share (I mean fighting hirelings, not the assorted torch boys and pack haulers they've gotten so far).  

Beefcake:  it is interesting that this session we had a wizard, a thief and 2 clerics.  No fighters at all, and a fighter was missed.   They really needed some beefcake and they should really get some for next time.  At the beginning of the session I'll draw 1d6 cards for available hirelings at Bastardville, with any luck some of them should be either first level fighters or small groups of mercenaries.   It would make like easier if they got some hack-burger helpers.  Because even Angry Steve with his ten-foot pole was somewhat useful in the wasp fight, because he added to the "gang-up" bonus.   I had thought that Octavius' 2 war dogs would have been more useful, but they made the classic mistake of running up to the large group of enemies, while leaving the rest of the party behind.  That never works.   Maybe they'll be more useful next time.

Gibbering Roderick, a.k.a. the Great Cornholio.  He was interesting and turned out to be useful too.  The party realizes that he is some sort of highly impared cleric, but haven't deciphered the nature of his quirks yet. 

Parsnak's Treasure:  I loved setting this adventure up.  It was so cool taking Marlon's lodge and expenditures from the previous campaign and making them into a "dungeon" and  treasure for this one.  I was a little disappointed that they didn't open Dengwur's skeleton box on the table, but it was probably for the best as the skeletons inside might have kicked their asses.   It was in that Return of the Trolls campaign that I first tested the spending for experience system, and this adventure shows how that system really ties character into setting.  If I have the discipline and don't succumb to gamer ADD, I'd really like to keep developing this particular setting over time, rather than creating a fresh world each time we start a fantasy campaign.  Being able to revist things developed by the players makes the setting come more alive.

Oh, My, God, It's MONSTROSO!  boy, going to AD&D 1e combat is quite a shock.  After playing d20/3e for so long and playing 4e and Savage Worlds, it's quite a jar to have such a hard time in combat.  Man, the lack of modifiers makes it really, really hard for players to hit AC4.   Even AC6 and AC7 require some effort.   It takes a bit of getting used to. 
        The rolling of hit points randomly makes things interesting too.  In 3e, they suggested that you use average hit points, in 4e the dice disappeared completely.    It was fascinating to me that the giant wasp was 4 HD and had 30 hit points, while the Lion was 5+2 hit die and had 13 hit points.  It makes the world that much more surprising and, well, dangerous.
        It was some good luck that the White Stag succombed to the sleep spell.  Otherwise it might have put a wold of hurt on the party, although it was about as dangerous as the wasp.

Danger:  that's something I noticed too, just how dangerous everything was.  In Slipstream it was just shy of impossible to die.  If you use the -10 hit point rules (optional in AD&D1e,  mandatory in 3e) it really is quite rare for anyone to die.   I wanted things to be more dangerous than that.  So, I plotted a course between super-old school  0 hit points equals dead and the -10 rule.  I used a system whereby you have about a 1/3 chance of dying if you reach 0 hit points.   I used a similar system for Return of the Trolls, but we had a generous "throw a chip for a re-roll" system that made it very rare for someone to get a deadly wound.
         Those re-rolls were the biggest bug of Return of the Trolls.  In fact, I wanted to get away from re-rolls as much as I could.  We've been using them so much in so many games, and I've found that they really take away much of the sense of risk.
         The risk was back and it was more than evident this session.   It was what I wanted, but nevertheless it will take some getting used to in practice.   Part of the reason I played my solo-game was to get my self desensitized toward killing characters.  I figured that if I risked (and as it turned out killed) my own, it would be easier to smash others.  Again, I think it makes the game more exciting, but it does take some serious getting used to.  
        I was really hoping to avoid a TPK the first real adventure, and through the poor rolling of the wasp, and the sleep spell of Apollo managed to do so.  But I have to harden myself to the possibility that someone, apart from Jason of course, who manages to find the way to die in any system, will get killed now and again.

Herbs and Poison:  the various herbal concoctions I put in the gear book give a chance for a second saving throw against various deadly effects.  I am a bit uncomfortable with the deadliness of poison, luckily they had 2-5 days to treat the giant wasp poison and they could save 2 party members.   But, I have to stop being a baby about it.  I was thinking about allowing the chance to get a re-save with herbs to be automatic if the herbs were treated with a CLW or Bless spell.  That might be all right, although it does kind of make Slow Poison spell redundant.