No Game Is No Fun

Arrg.

It's so difficult to orchestrate a game these days. The interweb seems to have failed me completely. I'll proceed to phone everyone later today, but the only possible time for everyone seems to be Thursday, and on that day traffic jam phobias keep Assaf at home. Arg.

Ars Magica: On the Hedge

So, we've finished with 4e. It's a good tactical game, but way too tactical-gamist for our tastes. Our games descended into a hack-and-slash dungeon simulation, and I and everyone else were sick of it.

So, we've moved to Ars Magica. And specifically to gaming a low-magic game, a game where Companions are boosted and Magi's power is diminished. I'm starting with On The Respective Merits of Twilight and Gloaming, and will continue from there. We'll see how it goes. I hope to have a long-running ArM campaign spanning some 20 in-game years in a few (one to two) real-world years.

4e D&D

We've started a 4e game. I started with Kobold Hall straight throught from the DMG, and continued with Keep on the Shadowfell. The next session we'll start really veering off, so I thought I'll pause and review.

One key lesson is that in hard fights (3 levels or more above party level), missing player characters really hurt. In easy fights the party will still overcome, it will just erode the party's resources a little more. But in difficult fights there is nothing less to erode, so it will end up killing characters.

Speaking of that - so far I've killed a fair share of characters in 4e, but I'm feeling that this is rather difficult. It takes a fear of TPK to get a character dead, a near TPK. The three saves and easy Heal check to stabilize mean that the chances of death are low. It's needed to kill the character a few times to get him to use up all threee saves. It's possible in theory to kill the character by more damage, but this is just mean. So I'm thinking death in 4e is going to be rather rare. And then there are Raise Dead rituals. So I'm thinking the only real threats are going to be getting sucked into some other plane (like in H1) or something, espcially at high levels. The occasional enemy that kills deliberately can be really annoying, however, so I'm gonna use that later in the campaign - a Lurker or Artillery that strikes and focuses on a single PC at a time, until he is completely dead.

The game itself is rather mechanical. I'm hoping to inject more descriptions into the next sessions, to bring things more to life. We'll see.

We found H1 to be too boring a dungeoncrawl, and I did a "magic gizmo brings you to full rest in an instant" thingie. I actually think that worked really well as a way to just push the plot forward, not making the PCs wait and rest in-dungeon. 

The problem of "we rest to restore strength" is definitely still there. After a few encounters, the adventuring day need to be over. I'll plan things accordingly in the far future (not now). I hate it when the PCs stop to rest for hours in the middle of the dungeon...

Next session I'll start a new storyline, based on Cthulhu tales and involving the fallen brother of Sovelissa, the eladrin played by Roy. It's really annoying Roy isn't there, as I think he'd both like the themes and the focus of the hook is on his character. Yet he's abroad. How annoying. Oh well. I'll just start things without him. There is plenty of Cthulhu ahead, all the way to level 13 or so.

Oh, we jump levels. We sped through the last level, and I thought we were better for it. Now we'll see how jumping lots of levels will work out. We passed through level 1 and on to 2 fair and quare, but then rushed to 3, and now we're jumping all the way to 8! We'll get to see some high-Heroic play in the two short adventures I'm running, and then skip to early Paragon tier in the next, ending this story arc. The next story arc would start at high-Paragon levels, and I don't have it yet... so far I've gone with published adventures, I think I'll need to improvise my own from that point.

The End

Campaigns die with a whimper.

After at long-last managing to start the Virtusaga campaign, and playing three full and enjoyable sessions, one of the players drew out leaving us too depleted to continue. Thus the experiment dwindled and died. I blame two factors:
1) The hours are inconvinient for the bulk of the ArM community,
2) The house-rules are scarily diminishing to the bulk of the ArM community.
Couple that with (3) - the ArM community is rather small, and what you've got is a failure.
A shame. I enjoyed the sessions, and would have liked to see the campaign grow and develop to play-out my ideas on the forest spirits, titans, et al. Oh well.

Our D&D 3e campaign also seems to have peltered out. With the new 4e books upon us, Poly is busy making characters and arranging games, and there is too little time to really finish the campaign. On the one hand, I'm sorry we won't get to play high-level D&D. On the other hand, things were getting so difficult to DM and play it might be for the best.

It is definitely time to move on to another game system. Is 4e it? It seems rather too mechanical and arbitrary to me. I think I would at the end prefer some other, sleaker, system. But I'm gonna test-drive 4e out, and we'll see how that goes. I'm gonna need to think up a campaign for that, though. Hmph. We'll see.

Nearly Halfway

The brief sessions are getting a bit annoying, and the feel of dungeon-crawling intensifies. Still, the party is making good progress. Finally defeating the hags in that long-protracted battle, they are now at level 8, and will soon rise to level 9, ECL 10. We're half-way through D&D.

This still leaves half of the adventure/D&D to go through, but if we maintain the current pace it won't take too long. We should be finishing with D&D 3.5 by the time D&D 4e comes out.

In the meantime the preparations for Virtusaga are going on strong. I'm nearly finished, and should solicit the game shortly. It does take up far too much of my time...

Fun Session

It's been a while since we had a good session. I'm glad we did have this last one, it was definitely a good one. From getting to kill Poly in such an amusing way to all the goofing around, it was grand. It's a bit unfortunate Roy couldn't play his character right, though, it would have made for some great moments with the pixie and Nor.

Also, Nor is too powerful. I'm not going to fix it, but still it's too powerful. All those double wand shticks pile up and up and the monetary costs don't matter. The end result is that he can whip out too much damage, too rapdily, whenever he wants to. Still, the damage output isn't that great that I'd be bother to fix it. I'm gonna let Amir have his fun...

Glad to have the adventure proceed. Next session should finish up this adventure, leading us to level 8 and the next adventure in the path... about half-way.

Sick

I had planned to scram two or so sessions of the Shackled City Adventure Path before going to the conventions. Instead, I've fallen sick and had to cancel two AND the conventions, and failed to submit my PhD proposal in the time I intended! Arrrgghhh!

Oh well. I might play SCAP this weekend, fate permitting. I also got to spend a lot of time writing and thinking of the upcoming ArM campaign, which is neat. Now all I hope is that I'll truly get better, and fast, as the doctors keep saying I would.