Travel and Gaming

With holiday travel in full effect, I've snuck a few items into my bag for the hoped for moments of quiet that sometimes manage to happen late at night, in spite of a house full of people.

I've packed:

• Rory's Story Cubes
• a standard set of 7 polyhedral dice
• print out of the 9Qs from JF at SoloNexus
• my d30
• 3 additional 6-siders (for some reason, i prefer the experience of using a die with pips when rolling up characters)
• Dungeon Words (d30 edition pocket mod)
• Wilder Words (pocket mod)
• mini deck of cards
• a sharpie
• a pencil
• a dead-tree notebook
• netbook loaded with hundreds of pdfs

It sounds like a lot, but it all fits in the netbook's sleeve.

As it has turned out, I haven't had a chance to do any solo gaming, but a friend did run a d20 on-the-fly game wherein we, the PCs (a goblin "speller", "a pixie fighter, a goblin fighter and an imp "speller"), had to save the dragon from the princess.

I'll spare you the details - it was fun, and funny, but probably one of those "you had to be there" type games.

Saturday Night Spare Time Dungeon Crawling

Saturday night, I had some time to spend gaming and I set about testing an idea I had for a new random dungeon generator. You know, because there aren't enough of them already available on-line. 

This was my third test, and the first in which I tried to generate something larger than a handful of rooms. I was rather happy with the results - I generated two levels of a dungeon with multiple entrances/exits, and a variety of points up and down. In fact, of the two levels I generated, both have unconnected areas that can only be accessed by passing through the other level. 

I hope to finish the write-up and post it later this week.

I also managed to squeeze in a USR dungeon crawl to clarify for myself the pros and cons my approaches to magic with that system. Scott at The Trollish Devler, and author of USR, posted his thoughts on a magic system the other day - worth a look if you enjoy the game!

With regards to the dungeon crawl, I rolled up 3 characters (fighter, halfling and a magic user) and a hireling (using "shifted dice": a d6, d4, d3 rather than a d10, d8, d6) to enter the dungeon using USR and my b/x conversion. 

Rather than generating a map or using tiles or even using the method I posted last week, I closed my eyes and pulled a Rory's Story Cube from its bag, rolled it and then made up an encounter based on the image. Each encounter used a new cube. If I got through all nine, I'd have found the steps down.  

If I ran into any issues where I wasn't sure of something, I used the ever reliable 1d6 "yes and" method:

1 "Yes and" [fill in the blank]

2-3 "Yes, but" [fill in the blank]

4-5 "No, but" [fill in the blank]

6 - "No and" [fill in the blank]

I got through 6 encounters(to be fair, one of them was a totally peaceful encounter with some helpful treants) before I needed to pull the party out back to the base town. What loot they had gained was spent resurrecting the fighter (he was struck down by a stone golem) and healing. The party's halfling was the hero of the hour - deadly accurate with his bow -  while the magic-user was just about useless unless he was throwing his daggers (and he only had two of those!). 

The last point illustrated very clearly the potential problem with one of my approaches to magic!

Lunch with Risus: The Anything RPG

After reading Spacejacker's post entitled "Solo RPG?!" over on Tiny Solitary Soldiers, I realized it was time to stop saying "I want to give Risus a try" and just do it. So I did.

With about 15 minutes of prep time I was up and running on my lunch break Friday.

In Risus: The Anything RPG, you create your characters using cliches that you invent - the rules provide some examples in case you get stuck. Cliches function as sort of a mix of class/attributes/skills/professions (depending on what gaming system you're used to). Creating my characters consequently took the longest part of setup and that was primarily settling on my cliches.

Ultimately, I decided on 1 PC and 2 hireling NPCs. The PC would use the 10 dice build suggested in the rules, while the NPCs (in my mind, the equivalent of 0-level D&D b/x humans) would have 5 dice:

• Blorg Runetreader: Barbarian(4), Thief(3), Con artist (2), Gambler (1)
• Reginald the Sickly: Torch bearer (3), Farmer(2)
• Otto Headinstein : Treasure bearer(3), bar room brawler(2)

Great,now what kind of adventure? 

Given my penchant for dungeon crawls, that part was obvious, but I always like to have some kind of plot, no matter how thin. Enter, The Big List of RPG Plots (from the Risus folks too!). Skimming the long list, an idea jumped out at me (not on the list but a variation on "Man hunt" i suppose):

A monster has been killing livestock and recently killed the son of one of the townsfolk. Some members of the town watch tracked it to it's lair, but only one returned and he died from terrible wounds before he could tell anyone what happened. Justifiably, no one is in too much a hurry to go up there, but the livestock continues to be slain and it's only a matter of time before another towns person. A reward has been posted for the head of the thing and that's good enough for you.

For the adventure itself, I used a combination of Rory's Story Cubes, RPG Labs Solo Story System (which yields "yes and", "yes but", "no but", "no and" results. I would have used Mythic but I didn't have it with me) and a set of "tables" I made up on the fly.

By way of example:

The party descends into the lair, it's cool, dark and smells of decay.

(Roll story cube: parachutist. I decide this means an attack from the ceiling)

Unbeknownst to the party, they are being watched by a 6 foot diameter arachnid who is feeling a little peckish. Without warning, the giant crab spider drops on the party (using the Solo Story System, I ask, "Does it land on anyone?" and I roll "no but" which i take to mean it gets a surprise attack. Rolling a d6 1-4 Blorg 5- Otto 6- Randal. I roll a 6 and it attacks Randal.

Here I need to stat out my giant crab spider. I go with Giant Spider(3), Biter(2), Grappler(3). Why? I figured Giant Spider covered things like traversing walls and ceilings, being poisonous, making scary clicky sounds but i wanted it to have two distinct kinds of attacks - grappler because of its gigantic spidery legs!

Combat in Risus requires both sides roll - loser takes a loss of die to the cliche. Ideally, your character has an appropriate cliche. If not, fret not, the rules account for that too.

The spider in this case rolls 3 dice for its Grappler cliche, but what cliche will Randal use? I figure Torch Bearer covers things like lighting fires, holding his arm up for a really long time, etc. But being a farmer, he'd surely have had to wrestle a steer to the ground right?(as you can see, I know nothing about farming), so he'll use Farmer.)

The spider attempts to grab Randal with it's long furry legs but Randal, having been chased by chickens, geese and an angry bull or two, dodges, and as he does so, wields the torch like a club and hits the spider.

(The spider's grappler cliche down to 2 dice. I decide to roll initiative like I would do in most RPGs I've played. Blorg et al will roll as a team - an optional rule in Risus - which means they use Blorg's appropriate cliche and then roll against theirs, but only submitting 6s. For Blorg it's his 4 dice Barbarian cliche The spider rolls 3 dice - giant spiders are quick and intimidating!

Initiative to Blorg and company.)

Blorg charges the hideous beast and swings his sword and strikes the spider, the blad crunching through the hard exoskeleton (spider down to 1 die for its grappler cliche). Otto tries to join the fray, whiffs, and is hit by the spider. Amazingly, Randal swings for the stars with his torch, and he kills the spider (at 0 dice in any cliche, the combatant is out of the fight - I rule in this case it means they killed it). 

Wiping the spider goop off of his hands and tunic, he mocks his party-mates,"Who's sickly now?" (W00t!)

(I ask the story system "Do we find any loot?" and get a "yes and it's gold!")

Rummaging through the debris in the room, on a decaying, bodiless hand, Blorg sees the unmistakable glint of gold in the torch light. Encrusted with sapphires and intricate engraving, Blorg, with the deserved confidence earned by years stealing and skulking around the seedier parts of the city of Sirus, assesses that this ring can fetch (roll 1d10) 80gps on the open market.

And so on.


All told, I explored two rooms, some length of hallway, rolled 4 story cubes, and then got beat down by some goblins. Blorg may be dead or he may be a prisoner - Risus, by not using any hit points, allows for this kind of cliff hanger without any special rules for it.
 
The game was surprisingly engrossing. While the system i came up with to generate the dungeon on the fly wasn't anything noteworthy, it worked and supported the game play. I had a blast sketching the dungeon, rolling the story dice and wondering just what I'd encounter next. Making up rules and tables as I went worked just fine. It was an opportunity to be creative on the spot and rely heavily on my imagination - it was play, pure and simple.

Risus will definitely get more play time. Coming up with cliches is a fun game in itself even. I also  look forward to trying this low prep method again - probably with the D&D B/X characters I rolled up back in September or so!