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Archive for June, 2024
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June 26, 2024Idea – Multigroup Hexcrawl
June 23, 2024Thinking about how FromSoft games work, socially, I had an idea that might be fun for people who are deep into hexcrawl play. A middle ground between the shared world campaign vs. the “we’re all playing in parallel” of organized play events.
Set Up
Start with 3 or more GMs and play groups playing the same hexcrawl appropriate game. The GMs coordinate to create a hexmap of a region and a couple of dungeons each (obviously, coordinating on power scale, tone, etc.). Include in every dungeon and maybe 1/3rd of the overland hexes, a Unique Encounter and mark it as such. (Or, I guess you could all buy the same module/adventure to work with, but you’ll still want to coordinate what the Unique Encounters are).
If you want to add more GMs with their groups in the future, you certainly can, though they might not get to add as much. Perhaps, due to scheduling, maybe one player has to move to another group, that’s fine too.
Parallel Play, mostly
Each group plays in their campaign, using the same map, dungeons, etc. What happens in one campaign doesn’t impact the other campaigns, except for Unique Encounters and Communication:
Unique Encounters
This can be monsters, traps, treasure, etc. The key point to these is that when ANY of the groups deal with/solve/loot the the thing, it is resolved for ALL the campaigns. So, if one group manages to get the Crystal Sword Artifact of the Spiral Tower, they’re the only group who has it. If one group defeats the Merciless Dragon of The Howling Chasm, it’s no longer in any other campaign either.
Communication
The play groups may communicate with each other between sessions (I’m thinking forum or Discord or whatever social media/listserv this mega group is working with). They can give advice, talk about what they found in one area or another, warn of traps or certain monsters etc.
Respawn
The GMs should decide on a real world recurring time for the monsters to respawn on the map; once a quarter, twice a year, seem like good options. Monsters respawn, unique encounters don’t. If a party is in the middle of an encounter at the end of a session, the monsters they’re currently fighting do not respawn, but everything else does.
Endgame
Set up all the groups with 3 big goals that must be achieved; it doesn’t matter which of the groups does this, but collectively the goals must be accomplished in total to (fulfill the prophecy, save the world, escape the weird region they’re trapped in, whatever). Perhaps the groups decide to each attempt one of the goals, or they try different methods against one that seems more troublesome to see what strategy would work best.
The Play Goals
- Communication + Respawning monsters means groups can forewarn each other and build better strategies, collectively
- The GMs can work together to build the region and encounters but only have to track the Unique Encounters between each other, which is a ton less bookkeeping than trying to keep a persistent world.
- Monsters respawning also means the GMs can wipe clean most of their world notes on a regular basis.
I’m not sure I myself would have the patience to definitively commit to a long term campaign like this (I say, as I’m 1.5 years into Errant…) but I know a lot of hexcrawl fans love both West Marches and long games, and this could be a fun way to get some cross play while reducing book keeping for the GMs, and give the groups immediate reasons to start cooperating by sharing information.
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Informed vs. Uninformed Tools
June 19, 2024I’ve been mulling over more about the ad hoc GM thing, not because “Oh noes we went outside the rules” but as much as “when/why” and I think it highlights a general truth about cultures of play and design.
Uninformed Tools
Historically, a lot of RPGs would throw 18 different ways of doing things at a GM with… no meaningful advice about why you’d choose one over another. You see this sort of evolve further into “games are toolboxes”, except, if we’re gonna follow that analogy, people with toolboxes understand what those tools are for and how to use them – screwdrivers for hammers works poorly. I’m defining this as Uninformed Tools.
It forces GMs to have to either learn through trial and error, or digging up lessons learned by others (but not included in the text itself!), instead of simply having it there as best practices. Or, perhaps, you could say the expectation is that you’ll be steeped in play and have absorbed a lot of this before you GM, though, having grown up around this kind of space for decades, I found it to be unreliable and a bit frustrating for clarity in coordinating play.
Informed Tools
In contrast, I’m thinking of another part of Apocalypse World that rarely gets talked about – the “Always Say” section:
- What the principles demand.
- What the rules demand.
- What your prep demands.
- What honesty demands.
Or really, what the GM chapters attached do with it. The key point here is that there’s a lot of factors you can use to decide what happens in play, and because the GM’s directives are clear and well designed, you know to what general purpose you’re using everything, and then the place and time of which takes precedence is easy to decide in play because you’re informed to the final goal. It’s sort of a positive use of “You’ll know it when you see it” but this is Informed Tools – you have solid principles to make those decisions on and can explain why you’re choosing one over the other.
Notice, this too, has a thread of the Rulings not Rules idea, but most importantly helps you know what you need to stay aligned with the goal of the game (or, at least, make knowing choices to divert to a new goal, if that’s what you’re trying to do).
Ad Hoc / Digging out your own Principles and Agenda
So functionally, what has been sticking in my head this whole time has been slowly peeling out my own GM Agenda that I’ve subconsciously been operating on. Fundamentally, that “Always Say” is playing a part though it’s clear some different principles are at work (being a different game & genre, of course).
I think somewhere in there I’m operating by a principle of “Errant has some chores, but don’t add more” – I make the players track encumbrance and consider stuff like Exhaustion, but I’m not going to make them do fights that I know the outcome of. There’s probably a larger, general principle I run all games by, “The players’ time is at a premium”, especially with 2 hour sessions.
Anyway, the key point in digging these out is so I can better understand how I want to run things going forward, be it the ongoing Errant game or other games.
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Stakes is Low
June 18, 2024I’ve been thinking a lot about some recent Errant sessions I’ve run. I did a couple of ad-hoc decisions which feel important because they’re probably going to get repeated in future play and sort of how left field they are from parts of the game, or even the last year and a half of sessions run.
Random Encounter as Multiple Choice
For the most part, random encounters in Errant are fun and worthwhile. You do a bit of strategizing in choosing caution vs. speed, whether on a hexmap or in a dungeon, and it ties a bit into encumbrance too. Fights, are typically 10-20 minutes so it’s not too bad timewise, either. (And, at least running around on the map, many of the encounters are people, so you already start by rolling for renown/reputation, and the party is mid-level, so most random bandits are going to start backing down right out.).
Anyway, the other night, we roll up some Cutter Frogs. It’s been maybe 3 sessions since they last fought them and while the frogs did a nasty number on everyone’s armor, it wasn’t too tough to beat them. I know it’s going to be a blow out victory for the players, and isn’t worth the 10-20 minutes of combat.
So for the first time, I elect to skip the encounter. Not “it doesn’t happen” but instead of using the rules proper, I change it to a multiple choice for the players:
A) Spend a spell to just win the encounter
B) Suffer 1 round of attacks from the enemies and you auto defeat them in melee
C) Avoid the encounter
The Why
There’s a choice, and there’s some resource cost as well so it’s not completely uninteresting, but the combat would not be interesting enough to fully play out. I still think a lot about this 19 year old post from Vincent Baker about the idea of rules in the text, principled decisions you make following the logic established in the rules in text, and ad-hoc stuff completely outside of it.
There’s been a couple of times with other relatively low stakes goals in actions, I’ve just said “ok you spend 2 Exploration turns” or “you’ll take a point of Exhaustion to do X” and I think this is fine, it’s just an interesting point that I’m keying in on a principle of “here’s where we skip randomness, just a pay a resource” when the stakes are low. It’s not completely free, it’s just that the cost of the action (to the player, to their risk tolerance) is lower.
Generally, I’m adverse to eliding system for a game that is doing great things, though I think this is also a true issue for a lot of games; auto-success is sometimes spoken about, but that’s also generally uninteresting by itself. Auto-success with a choice, or a cost, is a nice step just above that, but below getting deep into it.
Anyway, I’ll have to think about this a bit more. It’s great that it “feels right” and “seems like a good solution” but I’m thinking there’s more to pull from this, to make it more functional than “GM’s Whim”.
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Deeper in the Game 