World Wide Wrestling!

I got to run World Wide Wrestling recently, it was a lot of fun. Its a "powered

by the Apocalypse" games, uses the same bones as Apocalypse World and Dungeon

World.

My wife's character sheet 

Wide Wrestling website.


In addition to your Stats (Look, Power, Real, and Work), you have an Audience

rating, Heat with every other character, and you get Momentum and spend it

through a session to improve rolls. It looks like a lot of moving pieces but it

flows pretty naturally once you start playing.

In our gaming group everybody has at least some experience with professional

wrestling so they had some great ideas. The best and scariest part of * World

games is depending on the players to bring everything to life. The DM (or

Creative in this case) has guidelines for running everything but you need lots

of input from your players for it to work. I'm a control freak sometimes, so its

always scary going into a game like this but my group did great.

I won't go over too much rules stuff, you can find lots of info on the World 


I started off the session by saying that this was a league with lots of money

behind it, so they did lots of big international shows. Also the head of the

company was dodging extradition to the USA. I passed around the gimmicks and

gave everyone a few minutes to flesh out characters while I went over some of

the rules.

Here was the roster we came up with:

The Horseman--A 7' tall guy in black riding gear and a pumpkin mask. Completely

silent. Entrance is the lights go out for a few seconds while a bell tolls, then

he appears in stage when they come back on. Finisher is a clothesline called

"The Head Chopper". (Gimmick--The Monster, role--Heel)

Pinot Noir--A woman in full length gown and masquerade mask. Gown can be ripped

down to a matching swimsuit. Drinks wine during her entrance (while Muse plays),

and during matches when she's bored. Finisher is the double bubble--a flip off

the top rope landing sitting on the opponent's face. (Gimmick--The High Flyer,

role--Babyface)

El Borracho--Drunkard in striped pants and mask. Chugs beer before and after

matches. Entrance music is Pasame La Botella, an upbeat reggaetón song. Two

signature moves--Swallow the Worm is a sharpshooter submission, and Under the

Table is a double underhook DDT finisher. (Gimmick--The Wasted,

role--Heel)

The Fabulous Boy Williams--An up and comer with attitude, comes out to Pantera's

"Walk". Wears black shorts and boots. Signature moves are the Run and Stun RKO

and a Stone Cold Stunner as finisher. (Gimmick--The Golden Boy, role--Babyface)

Heinous Dave Haney--Per the player's notes: "Flashy, ego, tough, tan, glittery."

Walks out to Born This Way with color-coordinated shorts and sunglasses. He throws

the shades into the crowd (whether they want them or not). Finisher is the

Nutjob, a low blow while the ref is distracted. (Gimmick--The Technician, role--Heel)


We then asked questions to establish Heat, which works similar to Bonds in

Dungeon World, creates connections between the characters. Heinous Dave and

Fabulous Boy Williams were in a tag team before Williams got a solo push. El

Borracho gets into fights when his beer disappears backstage. The Horseman has

been a mentor off-stage to some wrestlers, but terrifies Heinous Dave. Pinot

Noir helps out Williams but feuds with El Borracho.

We took a break so I could book the matches. I decided to do single matches with

the Heels set to win, then do a surprise tag team match at the end so the

Babyfaces could get revenge. Like any good role playing game sessions, things did

not go exactly as planned.

Pinot Noir and El Borracho started off after each got a chance to cut a promo.

Pinot Noir didn't roll well on the Cut a Promo move so I upped the stakes and

made it a mask match. Her reputation and mystery was on the line. El Borracho

tried to humiliate her at the beginning of the match by ripping off her gown,

but ended up tripping over it and leaving himself open. The hook of the Wasted

gimmick is that they get high/drunk and screw things up, but the audience eats

it up. Pinot Noir was booked to lose, but El Borracho was so drunk and off-

script that she pinned him just to end the match.

Heinous Dave cut a promo in between matches and got dragged behind curtains by

The Horseman. Players can spend Momentum to interrupt others even outside of the

ring.

Next match was The Horseman against an NPC, so I mostly let him narrate how the

match went. He was good at taking blows and choke slamming, like other giants.

He put on a good show against the MEGAmerican, a patriotic masked wrestler (lots

of masks), then finished him off.

Fabulous Boy Williams talked a lot of smack towards his former tag team partner

before the match, and Heinous Dave Haney returned it. The players were getting

used to how the rules worked with the narrative and were interrupting each

other's moves more by this point. Heinous Dave was booked to win the match, but

outside interference caused them both to get disqualified.

At this point I announced a 3-person Tag Team match between the Heels and

Babyfaces (including MEGAmerican). It was a chaotic mess, which felt perfect.

People interrupting constantly, even double interrupting, struggling to reach a

teammate to make a tag, personal feuds making people break the rules...it was

great.

I think I was able to keep the spotlight moving around and give everyone fair

time and creative input during the matches, which is the real challenge of

running any * World game. Hopefully we will be playing again soon, continuing

the feuds and developing a story.

Underdark Release Adventure 2016

For the third year in a row I ran some D&D at the Underdark release party. Underdark is a barrel-aged stout from a local brewery. They have different D&D-themed art every year and do a big block party for the release. I posted briefly the first year I did it here.

The character sheet is a stripped down basic D&D character at 7^th level. I took the idea from Dungeon Robber to just have one ability score good enough to give you a small bonus, and skills, saves, and spells are all handled by a d6 roll. Four classes and 6 races, everything fits on one sheet. I used Microlite 74 for a spell list (http://microlite20.org/)  . Its great for a pick up game with lots of drinking.

I had been planning on running this since they announced the event, but I was stumped for what the adventure would actually be. The week of the event, I saw this tweet:

#dnd community dungeon fun. With 140 characters create a room you would find inside an abandoned goblin brewery. pic.twitter.com/5dIIymRySh

— Grand DM (@Grand_DM) February 2, 2016

I fired off two ideas right away, and decided that for Underdark I would be running The Abandoned Brewery of the Goblin King.

The event went well. Several people from my casual gaming group showed up, including one friend who had moved away but came back just for this event, and another acquaintance who I didn’t even know played D&D before. I had the three stalagmite towers outlined on posterboard and cardboard on solo cups for the higher levels to make a 3D playmat (and since we were outside, tape to hold it all down).

One of the challenges of these events is to improv a lot and keep it moving for as long as possible before the chaos of the surroundings and increasing inebriation of myself and the players pulls everything apart. We made good progress until it started raining and had to pack up in a hurry. Characters had funny names like Porter McStein and Bud Lightning, or the orcs Blarthok and Gronk.

I’ll post up the whole dungeon soon, but I’m hoping to finish the adventure at another get another so no spoilers yet. Here’s how the party went through the dungeon:

Ground level: the party has traveled for days through caves to the 3 stalagmite towers that house the abandoned brewery. I asked the players for rumors they had heard about the legendary last batch of goblin ale still in the dungeon.

Middle Stalagmite: Piles of moldy barley and wererats. Anyone getting near the mold got hit with berserk spores, causing some inter-party fighting. An otyugh was hiding as well, and the party had trouble attacking it in unison.

Level 2: Giant glass tank with a sea serpent and Lolth’s Crown. Bud Lightning the cleric dove into the tank to retrieve the crown, only getting a scratch from the serpent. A walkway went to one of the adjacent towers.

East Stalagmite, level 2: A furnace for heating water, still operated by two coal golems. The wizard Kraken held them in place with Web.

Level 3: Every character had to name a horrible drink to enter this chamber (lots of inventive ideas from players). An obsidian dome littered with diamonds and a pedestal with the Mind Flayer’s Goblet were inside. When someone tried to grab the goblet, the two-headed Dragon Witch that had been hiding invisible used his breath attack. Two players had to leave right before combat, so somebody else took over, rolled their saving throws, and both PCs died. Everybody fled but they had the goblet.

Level 1:  A huge tank with cracks was full of skeletons, but the PCs didn’t mess with it.

They were about to storm the last stalagmite when it started raining. One thing this adventure reminded me of is not to spend too much time on crunch during prep, because half of the fights were bypassed in some way. Looking back through my notes I also forgot a few things, and honestly it was early in the adventure so I can’t blame the beer. Oh well. 

North Florida Avengers: the Dark Side of the Moon's Mightiest Heroes*

I have a Thursday night beer and boardgames group that occasionally dabbles in rpg games, and the irregular Marvel Super Heroes game I run has actually been more common than my supposedly bi-weekly Dungeon Crawl Classics game.

The group started as the Northeast Florida Avengers, based out of Jacksonville, the town we live in. Half the fun is letting the players role-play inconsequential stuff between themselves. They are based out of an office at a strip mall on a highway, they drive a Volvo to adventures and started off as generally ineffective. Over time they've developed their powers in play (thanks to the ingenious Power Stunt system and my lax enforcement of Karma expenditures for stunts), defeated the corrupt Tallahassee Avengers, and managed to overcome anything I've thrown at them.

They defeated a demigod from Atlantis and stole his magic trident.

They defeated hypnotized heroes and a giant robot controlled by The Hisser.

They defeated an alternate reality Sinister Six with the help of Thor.

They defeated the Hisser and the rest of the Tallahassee Avengers when they summoned the Dread Dormammu.

In the most recent session they travelled into space and explored a shattered asteroid prison, known to the resident alien on the team, Starbucks Jones from the Andromeda system. I used this amazing one page dungeon to great success. I've tried to tie sessions to particular characters. In the alternate reality where the Sinister Six had taken over Jacksonville, the team's powered armor hero The Shack was that reality's Spiderman. When Dormammu was summoned, frat-boy turned native american spirit champion The Seminole had visions of warning (though he barely understood them because he doesn't speak the language).

Humor has been a huge part of the game. Everybody is ridiculous. Rex Powercolt is a superstrong shapeshifting mutant that is dumb as a bag of hammers and tries to mate with alpacas. Dr Mighty Mirror buys billboards around town to promote himself (slogan: "You've heard of me"). El Capitan is the only conquistador who found the Fountain of Youth, but hundreds of years later he's an old man in sweats who forgets things. The Shack has slowly been upgrading the team vehicle, so now they have a volvo that can fly in space (and has heated seats).

They've come a long way even though we don't play that regularly. I'm very forgiving with power stunts to expand their powers and I let them raise ranks somewhat arbitrarily. Their name changes to reflect their growth as well. Recently they parked the remains of the interstellar prison asteroid on the lunar surface so they can call themselves the Dark Side of the Moon's Mightiest Heroes. Assuming Black Bolt of the Inhumans doesn't say otherwise. ;)

The Portal Under the Stars

First session of Dungeon Crawl Classics last night!

I told everyone ahead of time that we would be creating four 0-level characters for the first session, and spent a little bit of time explaining the high death count, stripped-down rules, and sword & sorcery weirdness that defines the game. I allowed 4d6-L for ability scores, but still required they be in order (no rearranging) and stuck to random rolls for everything else. We even rolled on the random name chart in the back for PC names.

Some of the more interesting characters were Llambachis the orphan with a rag doll flail, Tharaskis the farmer with a hen, and Cambellio the caravan guard in the spider man suit (it might have been just the miniature, we never confirmed in-game).

We ran the Portal Under the Stars from the DCC rulebook. It wasn't as deadly as I thought it would be, but I might have run it a little too easy. Only two PCs died, so I told the players to pick two each to promote to 1st-level for now.

The napalm-spewing statue was fun. I think its supposed to just attack for 5 rounds in a row and run out of fuel, but since I initially described it as rotating slowly (about 180 degrees per round), the party spent a lot of time running around in circles keeping behind the arc of fire. So when somebody tried to disrupt the fire blast with a torch I let that disrupt the trap, but the character got burned to death in the resulting explosion.

Nobody touched the crystals in the pool, which was funny because they weren't dangerous unless they got greedy and damaged the floor too much. The clay army wasn't too difficult because they destroyed the skeletons on the top level, which meant the 7 generals were already disabled.

And they got a lot of loot for 0-level characters! Some quality equipment, and two demonic magic items. I made the snake-demon's horn a link to Demogorgon. The Prince of Demons was destroyed in my Savage Tide campaign years ago, so if they take him as a Patron they'll be able to summon his avatar, a shard of his destroyed form. I made the alien force in the crystal ball Tsathoggua, one of the Mythos gods. He's from Saturn and helps sorcerors apparently out of boredom, it seemed a good fit.

They also freed the crystal people, who returned to life in sunlight. They're an ancient race of humans who will need to adjust to a new world but could be an interesting role-playing opportunity.

I'm going to let several months pass to explain how everyone trained up to their new class abilities, and flesh out the world some more.

Castle Ravenloft

I played Castle Ravenloft as a one-shot using Dungeon World rules. I have both the original I6 Castle Ravenloft adventure from first edition, and the 2nd edition version House of Strahd. They're very similar, I had both on me just in case and borrowed from both.

The group was people I normally play beer and boardgames with. We play rpgs occasionally, but except for my wife none of them have played a proper D&D campaign before. One guy at this session had only played a tabletop rpg once before. The point is, it wasn't too serious, and people were open to the narrative structure of Dungeon World because they're not used to mechanics-heavy games anyway.

Since this was a one-shot, I had to streamline things to get stuff done. Everybody picked a class and filled out their character sheet without too much trouble (one reason I love DW, its easy to grok even for beginners). Everyone described their character and then we did the tarot card reading from Madame Eva. Then a riderless carriage arrived to take the party to the castle. The paladin declined both the tarot reading and the carriage as dark magic, but to move things along I said the party could knock him out and put him in the carriage.

Here's the characters we had (again, not too serious):

Detta , daughter of Calypso - Pirate

Uther the Lightbringer - Paladin

Belatrix LaStrange - Witch

Bryan "The Elf" Johnnson - Bard (human, not an elf)

Wesley Snipes - Vampire (with man-servant Ryan Reynolds)

In the past I've let silly names and such get on my nerves, but I've come to embrace it. Its a silly game to begin with, shooting fireballs and monsters and such, and if it makes the player happy, then great. Also, two things tend to happen: either the player realizes how silly it is during play and lets it drop, or by treating it as normal it becomes accepted and less silly.

Most of the session was exploring the castle. We used a grid and minis, not for exact movement and tactics, but its a great visualization tool. And the castle is slightly complicated in layout, so its better to have a map drawn out. The first few rooms have some ominous gargoyles but they don’t attack right away. There’s organ music drawing the characters to a hall room set up with a feast. The Count himself appears to be playing the organ, but when Uther attacked it was revealed to be an illusion, and all the food was rotten. The wine was good though, and Belatrix helped herself to a lot. THEN the gargoyles attacked. Two of the players had never played DW before but they got the hang of describing actions pretty easy. I really like how I can change up mechanics and tactics based off of player description. When Uther just attacked, its Hack and Slash, but when Detta wanted to tumble behind the gargoyles she rolled Defy Danger and just dealt her damage after it succeeded. I decided the gargoyles would pile on Uther since he was out in front, so even though they were getting killed off at least one of them just dealt damage while he was swarmed.

This was a one-shot, so to make the “mark XP on a miss” mechanic mean something I allowed them to level every time they got two XP. At one point, one of the players was hoping to miss in the middle of a fight so he could get a cool advanced move, but it didn’t happen.

One of the clues from the Tarot card hinted at crypts below the castle, so the group took a spiral staircase down as far as they could. Uther decided to go off on his own on the main floor, finding a chapel in ruins. He picked up a silver raven statue, a holy item of some type. Then he spotted two glowing red eyes watching him from above and…failed a Defy Danger check. So cut back to the main group, who had found dungeon cells partly submerged in water. A teleportation trap put Ryan Reynolds in one of the cells but he was quickly freed, and another prisoner, Ivan, was freed as well. Nobody trusted Ivan, but he seemed harmless. Uther returned to the party with foggy recollection of what he had seen, and eager to press onward. 

Further ahead in the dark was an old torture chamber, half-submerged, with a platform and thrones. Presumably to watch people being tortured? Detta started climbing on the platform just as several rotting hands raised from the water, and the group found zombies all around them. As they were hacking into them they realized that the disembodied limbs were fighting back. A Spout Lore roll discerned that the bodies would keep fighting until they had taken so much damage that the dark magic animating them could no longer sustain them. Wesley had one hand dig into his shoulder, only releasing when he tore off the zombie’s head. Uther tried channeling divine force through the silver raven statue, and a flash of light drove away the zombies. Meanwhile, a great wolf had snuck up on Detta on the platform. When Wesley tried communicating with it as a creature of the night, it actually spoke to everyone in an accented human voice, then disappeared in a cloud of fog. Strahd had visited them.

They continued into a room with locked doors and a “throw a gem in the fire” puzzle that they figured out right before the iron skeleton statues in the room attacked. They continued on to the crypts, an enormous room (it took up the entire dry erase mat) dotted with small tombs and hallways to greater tombs. They mostly ignored the smaller tombs and got separated by a portcullis at the king and queen’s tomb. As Bryan Johnnson waited outside three hellhounds approached. He climbed on top of a tomb as the rest pushed the gate up. Strahd appeared again and grabbed Uther in a choke hold, then used the charm he had placed on him earlier in the chapel to make him attack his allies, though he ended up being more of a distraction than a threat. Belatrix had found a red amulet earlier and noted that Strahd was wearing a similar one, made by the same hands. This was enough of a tie to use her thorn attack to pester him from a distance. The escaped prisoner Ivan turned out to be a werewolf loyal to Strahd, but Detta shot him with a crossbow with a silver medallion tied to it and he fled. Detta also distracted the Count by attempting to stake him with her own peg leg. Yep, pirate. It only did 3 points of damage so didn’t get his heart by a long shot, but was enough to make him withdraw. 

I was worried about time at this point but felt like we could accomplish a little more so pressed on, and it worked out wonderfully. They recovered the Sunsword from Sergei’s tomb, took a different door from the puzzle room and found their way upstairs in the study, where they found the Tome of Strahd, describing his sad story, and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. Knowing that the object of their search was in a high spot, they found a staircase up the tallest tower. A distant thudding turned out to be a supernatural heart near the top of the tower, and the whole structure started tilting wildly back and forth as a strange creature of Strahd’s necromantic magic chased the group of the stairs. A hybrid abomination of a werewolf, a gargoyle, and a giant spider, it was knocked down the stairs as Detta used the Holy Symbol to blast the heart with sunlight.

At the top of the tower Strahd was waiting, next to several open windows as a storm raged on. Uther attacked with the sunsword and Wesley with claws, and Strahd threw them both around like rag dolls. Bryan hammered the abomination with sonic attacks while Detta finished off the heart with her rapier. Uther was picked up by Strahd and thrown out of the window, landing far below on another tower…with the Sunsword, the weapon best suited to fight the vampire. Still, he was overwhelmed by superior numbers. A rapier strike brought him to 0 hit points. He could have disappeared in fog, but I ruled that the strike went through his heart and pinned him to the wall. Since the Vampire class says a staked heart keeps you from rising, and vampire legends aren’t consistent about a wooden stake, I figured that was enough to keep him down. Just to be sure, Wesley tore Strahd’s head off with his claws. Sergei’s ghost brought Uther back to group and he destroyed the body with his sunsword.

Not bad for a one-shot! I’ve never actually had all of the items from the Tarot card reading come up in play, but luck worked in everybody’s favor. Everybody was really focused, even though most of them weren’t very familiar with the Dungeon World rules. One thing I love about casual RPG players is they just want to have fun with the game, they don’t get too hung up on rules. They also trust me to run a fair and fun game, which helps. 

Some notes on individual characters:

Detta was the Pirate class. Her peg leg was a “look” she chose off of the character sheet, and DW encourages you to embrace the fiction, so her trying to use her own leg as a wooden stake was awesome. She used her “fight like a pirate” move in almost every combat, we found it easy to work in her using the environment to her advantage and actually encouraged her to do more than stand there and attack. Her “sea legs” move helped in the rocking tower too. We kind of skipped over the Bonds part at the beginning of the session, but she filled hers out and used it to role-play her interaction with other characters.

Uther the Lightbringer—okay, the player of this character has a habit of challenging the other players in the group and being a little annoying on purpose. He’s the “lets open two doors at once” or “lets split up” player, but he knows not to push it too far. Which works perfect for a stereotypical Paladin surrounded by Chaotic characters (the only other Lawful character was the Vampire). He played along well when I had to be heavy handed with the vampire charm, or knocking him off the roof.

Belatrix LaStrange was the Witch. I LOVE the Witch class but I feel like more than most classes it needs a conversation with the player about what it can do, specifically the Hex and Thaumaturgy moves. Funny enough, most of the time Hex backfired by hitting another party member or targeting an undead creature in disguise. Also, she used her Skinchanger advanced move to turn into an elephant, which is not what I think of when I think Witch. But at the same time, it wasn’t that effective in a tight castle, she mostly just picked up things.

Bryan "The Elf" Johnnson, using a variant Bard class that’s more about inspiration and less about “magic music”. So he encouraged Uther to use his bare hands while being swarmed by gargoyles, which was perfect because his sword wasn’t effective at that range and he got a +1d4 damage. Also the name—its a human Bard, he just goes by the nickname “The Elf” because its easier to get gigs this way. This player likes to dick around and has a very dry sense of humor, so he’ll push the story in weird ways.

Wesley Snipes…the vampire who doesn’t have sunlight as a weakness (jaywalker). He was disappointed he couldn’t choose “black leather trench coat and sunglasses” as gear. He could choose a trusted manservant instead of an actual weapon (since he had claws anyway), so he named that guy Ryan Reynolds. It was funny but not distracting, honestly. And this guy had only ever played an RPG once in his life before this, so he did a great job playing his character, picking up the rules, staying focused, and helping build the story. The thirst mechanic didn’t come up much, mostly because I forgot to have him start with 1d8 points at the beginning of the adventure, and he didn’t take much damage to heal. 

Three of the classes we used were from Awful Good Games, you can find their products here. 

Dark Lanterns: Dragon me Down

The most iconic looking dragon breathes...chlorine gas?

This session was a while back, the write-up has been sitting around waiting on me. One of our players had a change in his work schedule and a new player joined, so it looks like we'll be playing a new campaign instead of continuing this one for now. More on that later. So what happened in the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil last time?

One of the cool things about the Crater Ridge Mines, which is the majority of the adventure, is that its a giant ring with two gates, so there's lots of options in terms of where to go. Rather than keep pushing past the Earth temple, the group decided to go the other direction and follow some mine cart tracks.

One side tunnel had some chewed on statues, petrified gnolls. A cautious scouting attempt confirmed that it was a basilisk, and they closed the tunnel off with a Wall of Stone.

Near the end of the tracks, the party was attacked by a green dragon. It got off one breath attack before the ninja goblin got it pinned with repeated Stunning Fist attacks. Checking out the dragon's lair, a fiendish girallon was summoned as a protector. It really tore into the ranger, but was put down.

No shit. Seriously, read a book sometime.

I had mixed feelings about this session. The players felt threatened, which hasn't happened much, but they still took down everything fairly easily. The basilisk was bypassed, the dragon was stunned most of the fight, and the girallon only got close because the ranger elected not to trip attack with its chain for some reason. I'm usually a big fan of player's defeating a threat through smart play, but honestly I was really bored most of the session. The girallon fight was the most fun, and that was just a back and forth slugfest.

Dark Lanterns: Xorn Scorn

We're playing Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil again for the first time in a couple of weeks and I never recapped the last session.

The big fight against the Earth Temple wasn't a huge challenge but wasn't a cakewalk either. One of the side tunnels before the temple had a group of centipedes that were labeled as the pets of one of the evil clerics. The party ninja tried luring the bugs to fight the temple, but I figured since they were pets of the temple they wouldn't attack, but they didn't add much to the challenge of the fight either. It didn't really become an issue, but here's another weird thing about 3rd Edition. The ninja player's reasoning on luring the bugs out was "they're Vermin, they can't be controlled", and when they didn't attack the bad guys another player said "he must be a Vermin Lord." 3rd edition is incredibly Simulationist. Everything has an internal logic, and while that can be cool at times, at other times it can derail a DM's idea. The NPC cleric didn't have a prestige class to control Vermin (which is a game term for the Type of monster, not a generic word), I just decided he wouldn't be attacked by his own pets.

The only thing that kept the fight interesting was that the players split up to take down different threats instead of piling up on one at a time. One cleric went down right away, but the second troglodyte cleric was incredibly buffed up by magic and was tougher to take down, and the chain fighter was having trouble fighting a Xorn that did lots of damage.

After the head cleric and most of the trog cultists were killed the Xorn disappeared. The group decided to sleep in the temple and I wasted too much time checking if the Xorn could coup de grace a sleeping PC. I need to just start playing looser and faster, and hope the playstyle works. One of the weeks when we couldn't get everyone together we played a Dungeon World one shot using a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure. I felt like we got a lot more play in that one session, even with creating 3 "0-level" characters per player. I need to crib more playstyle stuff from Dungeon World.

Another thing is I need to modify the adventure a bit to be more challenging. I was loathe to change much because this was a flagship adventure for the release of 3rd Edition, but I'm playing with three optimizers and they're plowing through some of these encounters. I don't think the Earth Temple was designed with an Enlarged chain fighter in mind. More ranged combat and some thought to tactics will help, I think.

Dark Lanterns: you CAN keep a bad trog down

We've been playing the 3E Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure for a few weeks now. So far the group has uncovered cultists of the Elder Elemental Eye (Tharizdun) around Hommlet, and found the Temple of All-Consumption in the northern mountains. All the PCs are agents of the Dark Lanterns, the espionage branch of kingdom of Breland. Everyone is stealthy and has a licence to kill.

We met at a player's house this time instead of my place because I didn't feel like cleaning a bunch of stuff and kicking my wife out of the front room for the evening. Everyone was a little late but we started fairly quickly. I decided to bring just the bare minimum of books needed, and I took the time to go through my minis and counters for everything that might come up for the whole adventure. I just dumped everything out of my stormtrooper lunch box onto my carry bag and was able to grab what I needed fairly easily as it came up.

The group had made their second attack on the main gate last week, where they finished off the reanimated guards from the first attack and the troglodyte cleric who commanded them. They decided to head North in the caves, towards the Earth temple. This part of the temple is a series of mines and caves in the rim of a volcano that blew its top a long time ago.

The goblin assassin scouted ahead as usual, but failed to get a death attack on a large troglodyte wielding the Sword of Earth. The trog called a cleric and an earth elemental from an adjoining cave while the assassin PC went down another hallway, eventually luring some trog mooks to join the fight. The spiked chain ranger dominated the battlefield like he always does, tripping everything within his Enlarged reach.

The fight reminded me of one of my 3E pet peeves--the sheer number of modifiers and attention to petty details. I liked how 4E had combat advantage, and multiple conditions didn't make it stack. Sure, its more "realistic" that being prone AND flanked makes you that much easier to hit, but on the other hand we have a 10' tall elf with a 20' spiked chain in a 10' wide hallway where he can attack anybody with no penalty. Sure, that's realistic.

Also, at one point I had the earth elemental try to push the chain fighter back to give his allies some time to get up, and it was a mess of multiple checks, "does he have the +4 from the correct feat?" (because gods forbid the monster wasn't built properly), and debating whether he would provoke an Attack of Opportunity from a different combatant...all so the elemental could spend his whole turn pushing someone 5 feet and not dealing damage! In 4E it would have been Damage + push one square and move on.

I'm trying not to let all this get on my nerves too much, but its obviously bothering me a little bit. Part of it is just that I feel like I have no control as DM because every detail of combat has a specific, overly complicated rule and everyone knows the rules inside and out. I can't just make a judgement call and keep things moving quickly, and it becomes draining.

We were still able to do more than just one big fight, as a manticore was dispatched fairly easily by the ranger who just joined the group. An earth mephit was likewise quickly taken out, and we wrapped the game up there. I've been having allergy issues, and I didn't want to try to push on through the sinus headache that was building at the end of the night.

I think we have a fundamental difference in playing styles that's causing me some frustration, but I think I can get over it. I need to prep more to keep things moving faster on my end, and that will also help me challenge the PCs more. Right now everything's been a cake walk. Really, the "toughest" part of any of the fights has been hitting the NPCs, as trog clerics in full plate have ridiculous armor classes.

The big Earth Temple fight is coming up soon, that should be interesting.