Tuesday, 24 December 2024

In which I compare fantasy TTRPGs to peanut butter

During a recent discussion about GMing at events, I was explaining that I don't run D&D, but will do Pathfinder 2. Which lead the other party to believe that what I like is a really solid crunchy ruleset as opposed to something lighter or more narrative. Which isn't the case, of course. Most of the games I run are rules-light and/or narrative focussed games. And that got me thinking about peanut butter.

I'm aware that there are two main types of peanut butter - crunchy and smooth - but I don't actually like peanut butter. As such, it was somewhat baffling for me to discover that there are people who are absolutely dedicated to one type of peanut butter. I've read stories of children all but disowned by their parents for liking the wrong peanut butter, and vile aspersions thrown at the romantic partners who tempted them into incorrect peanut butter loving ways.

Pathfinder 2

Legumes aside, Pathfinder 2 is a crunchy game. For pretty much anything you want to do, there's a rule that covers it. If you want to treat someone's wounds in PF2, the game will tell you what skill to roll, what level of training you need, what DC you need to hit to succeed, what equipment you need to do it, how many hit points it restores, what happens in the event of a critical or a fumble, how long it takes, and how much time has to pass before your subject can have wounds treated via this method again. Plus there are a variety of skills feats and magic items that can modify these details.

Whatever character class you're playing has a set of rules all of their own, which makes them mechanically unique, and makes for interesting combats where you can put your character's kit to use in a solid tactical game. Which means to get the most out of the game you're going to have to put some effort into learning what your character can do and how to effectively use their abilities.

But for the GM, that crunch actually makes it easy to run because there's almost no ambiguity in the rules. The base rules are clear and pretty simple and any complexity is normally coming from the player characters who should know what their abilities do. Online tools mean when I do need to look up a rule it's at my fingertips in seconds. Meaning I don't have to spend much brainpower on it beyond reading a monster's statblock, leaving me free to flex my creative muscles instead.

Dragonbane

Dragonbane is not a crunchy game. If you want to treat wounds, it tells you what skill to roll and how many hitpoints you get back and that's pretty much it because that's all you need, and that's one of the more detailed rules. There are no DCs or modifiers or feats or magic items involved.

Which means it's pretty smooth on the players' side. Pretty much everything comes down to rolling against a skill. All you have to deal with is your character's heroic abilities, which can largely be summed up in one sentence, and you don't have a lot of them.

But it's also smooth on the GM's side. There's not a lot of rules to worry about, and it's rare that something can't be dealt with just by picking a relevant skill to roll. When the monsters appear, all I really have to do is read their statblock and then roll to see what they do. Meaning that again I don't have to spend too much brainpower on mechanics and can focus on creativity.

While these two games are radically different in pretty much everything except genre and dice, my experience of running them has been fairly similar.

D&D

In peanut butter terms, D&D is neither crunchy nor smooth.

To my narrative-loving brain, it looks like it's claiming to be rules-light, focussed on the story, roleplay heavy kind of game, but as someone who actually plays and runs rules-light games, I can see that that's not true. It's full of lumps like DCs and spell slots and levels.

But then there's that other side of me who loves a bit of tactical combat, deciding how to move around the battle board and what abilities to deploy to help bring my team to victory. And from that point of view, D&D feels very bland and textureless, with nowhere near enough to get your teeth into. None of the characters I've played felt particularly interesting to play.

So D&D is neither smooth nor crunchy peanut butter, but lumpy. It's trying to do both things at once, and not doing either of them well, meaning that there's a tendency for house rules to either filter out the lumps or add back in the missing crunch. And typically, all of that ends up falling on the GM, which can lead to burnout.

Conclusion

I'm confident that there are plenty of people for whom D&D is exactly the right amount of lumpy. But I also know that there are people out there struggling with the complexity of the rules, and people frustrated with the combat, who could be having a much better time with a different kind of peanut butter, whatever type that might be. If you give it a try, you might find there's a whole new nutty experience waiting for you that's going to transform your gaming sandwiches. And if, like me, you don't actually like peanut butter, there might be a revelation waiting for you amongst the jam and chocolate spread.

Then again, perhaps it'll cause your in-laws to blame you for the destruction of the family and accuse you of using witchcraft to corrupt their child into incorrect fantasy gaming preferences?

I really don't understand why peanut butter is such a big deal.

Wednesday, 4 December 2024

Dragonbane: Shadow Over Gloomshire 2: Halls of the Blood King

I had such a good time running Shadow Over Gloomshire for MK-RPG that I wasn't ready to let go of it, despite the party having completed the main adventure. I'd dropped enough hints about who was behind everything that went down in the graveyard that I was pretty sure I could continue the adventure for another 8 week block.

Which became a 7 week block when damn near everyone was ill on week 1, including me.

Mazikeen's player had to drop out, and so the mighty paladin was replaced by Luna Bane, wolfkin demon hunter and massive Viktor Drakos fangirl.

Week 1: Into The Mines

There were still a lot of ill people, but I was well enough to run and two players made it to the club so off we went. I decided that most of the party were incredibly hung over after celebrating their victory with Gloomshire ale, and only Kaine was well enough to get up and enjoy a breakfast of crow bacon. So he was the first person to get to meet Luna, and watch Viktor's desperate attempts to avoid her by hiding behind Maeve.

Then came the actual mission, based on one of the many handy hooks provided in the scenario - talk to the shopkeeper Greb and try to ease his troubles. Meaning Kaine and Luna got sent out to the silver mines to recover Greb's six dead friends and bring their bodies home for proper burial.

The two made good use of knowledge skills, meaning that they arrived in the mine covered in the entrails of the stygian wolves they'd killed on the way in, meaning the thralls merely shambled slowly towards them rather than immediately charging. By the end of the session they were back in Gloomshire with a cart full of dead dwarves.

Week 2: Rescue Mission

With most of the group now recovered, it was time for the main plot to start unfolding. Councilwoman Auda Voss, now convinced of the team's skills and courage, asked them for help recovering her son from the Van Walden mansion.

At this point I knew I was going to need a map. I'd previously asked around for suggestions for OSRish vampire mansion adventures, and Halls of the Blood King by Diogo Nogueira was the name that kept showing up. Reasonably priced at £5.95 and with cartography by the ever-reliable Glynn Seal I decided to give it a shot. While written for Old School Essentials, I was confident that I could swap out the monsters for Dragonbane creations. The plot would need a little tweaking to fit in with the scenario we were playing, but I knew what needed to change and how I was going to make it work.

The party arrived at the mansion and immediately ran into my absolute favourite NPC of the entire campaign: the gate. I absolutely loved playing that gate.

"I'm going to have to bite you now."
Luna jumps rapidly backwards, away from the gate.
"Curses! Foiled again."

Week 3: There might be a vampire

Auda Voss was delighted to have her son back and handed over the offered reward. But over a meal of turnips, he revealed that he thought there might be a vampire in the mansion. So Voss offered them another mission - dealing with the Van Waldens once and for all. This time the reward was a bit more concrete: if they could clear the mansion out, they could have it.

So back they went to the mansion, with a leg of pork for the gate, who chewed it up enthusiastically. This time rather than going straight to the basement they began a sweep of the ground floor, finding servants' quarters before unexpectedly running into some guests. Two vampires, an orc and a mallard, both looking for the dining room. It was becoming clear that there might be a few more vampires here than anticipated.

They next encountered Princess Cornelia, after some unexpectedly virtuoso piano playing from Grimduck opened the secret door to her room. A friendly chat revealed that she was also a vampire, and the guests were here to celebrate her being welcomed into the Van Walden family as a replacement for Konrad the disappointment. Except she was having second thoughts.

Week 4: The lay of the land

Luna's player was unavailable, so Luna remained deep in conversation with Princess Cornelia, while the others continued their search. Notable event included finding a very unpleasant chest of drawers lined with teeth, which they nevertheless made use of to make vampire disguises for the less toothy party members. They managed to unenthrall some of the guards and sent them home after getting a comprehensive list of the vampire guests present - besides those they'd already met there were a dwarf, a halfling, a human and a frog.

The adventure includes a list of vampire guests. They don't all work exactly as written for Dragonbane, but after I'd rolled a random selection of them and assigned them all different kin based on names and descriptions, we had a great cast of weird vampires ready for future encounters.

Week 5: There really are a lot of vampires

The six golden bathtubs in the bathroom were really selling the otherwise rather unpleasant mansion, but it wasn't long before Dr Crumb had something new to occupy his enormous mind: the different death animations of different vampire kin. None of that was in the adventure, but when shortly afterwards they staked the halfling vampire and I described him deflating like a punctured balloon, which then got interpreted as him zooming around the room, this became a whole thing.

With most of the human staff either dead or rescued, it was time to brave the dining room. And there they found Liss Van Walden, in conversation with two guests - the human and the frog.

The vampires from Shadow Over Gloomshire are terrifying opponents, so I decided to use the frog kin from the bestiary for the frog vampire, and drop ferocity to 1 for the two humans. Even so it was a very close fight. I rolled for Liss's seduction attempt rather than having it auto succeed, which added some comedy when I rolled a demon and Liss was instead smitten by the intense fluffiness of Felis the cat person. Which didn't stop him almost getting bitten to death.

This did provide more data for Dr Crumb. Human vampires disintegrated into dust; frog vampires exploded, showering everyone in frog bits.

The party decided to rest after that, and having just discovered the games room (and given the games master free choice as to what she wanted to play with them), this took the form of an entire shift playing Twilight Imperium.

Week 6: Sexy people

After noping out of the library at the sight of the blood red spider webs, the party was ready to head upstairs. But not before the return of Luna, who was now convinced that Princess Cornelia was absolutely wonderful and they should do anything she wanted.

The upper floor soon brought them to a room full of very attractive people of various kin, lounging on cushions and inviting the party to join them. Fortunately some of the party passed their will rolls, found their way past the illusory wall, and dragged the others with them. So they'd done some comprehensive looting before Ernst Van Walden showed up.

Ernst was very rapidly taken down before he could bite anyone, and his guards ultimately proved more of a challenge. Once again they managed to unenthrall one of them, and then moved on to the final confrontation: Konrad Van Walden. Who turned out not to be a vampire at all, but a demon summoner, who'd summoned his own pet blood demon with the intention of demonstrating to his parents just how much of a disappointment he really was.

Which was all happening in a room full of fabulously valuable porcelain dolls, which Grimduck was frantically attempting to remove from the room before any potentially damaging fighting kicked off.

Week 7: Finale

Konrad's monologuing didn't go exactly as planned, and being a fairly weak human rather than a powerful vampire, he didn't last long. His demon proved rather tougher, but a phenomenal display of magical power from Halvelda finished it off.

Now there was just a bit of tidying to do. A planetary display turned out to have the lock fitting the key they'd found in the basement earlier, which turned off the house's evil decor, allowing them to use the stairs as normal. The orc vampire confided in them that he was working for Princess Cornelia. An earlier attempt at poisoning the blood soup with holy water had finally paid off, taking out the dwarf vampire. And the mallard was convinced to leave. But as he stepped outside, they saw the first rays of the rising sun, heard a shout of "Oh quack!", and were now in possession of a rather nice statue.

Princess Cornelia rewarded them for rescuing her beloved porcelain dolls and went on her way, reminding them about the spiders in the basement. And so they finally went back to the library, pushed the webs aside, and descended into the court of the blood spiders. The party immediately decided they didn't want to fight them, and attempted to persuade them to leave. It took a few attempts, but they were eventually convinced to relocate to the old temple in the graveyard. So under cover of darkness and some very large skirts, the blood spiders were escorted to the graveyard to meet their new friend: Bones, the gravedigger and MVP of the previous adventure.

Finally the party were able to enjoy their new property. While now largely bare boards, they did still have the six gold bathtubs. And most importantly, the gate.

Conclusions

Translating an adventure from OSE to Dragonbane had its challenges, and took more effort than running the original Shadow Over Gloomshire adventure as I had to make a number of changes to fit in with the ongoing story. That said, it's a really solidly written location with a great map, meaning I only had to worry about details like the location of the major NPCs rather than everything about the story.

If, like me, you don't care for most OSR systems but would like to try some of the adventures, give them a shot with Dragonbane. This one in particular is well worth the effort. Levels aren't much of a concern as you'll be swapping out the monsters for similar creatures from the Dragonbane Bestiary. The one important thing to change is treasure - the gold amounts in Halls of the Blood King are wildly over the top for Dragonbane so I replaced them with random draws from the treasure deck, specific treasure deck items, and rolls on the Shadow Over Gloomshire treasure table.

I'm wrapping up the campaign for now, as we've managed to tie off all the loose ends from the previous block and I'm keen to run some Pathfinder 2, but I'm not ruling out a return to Gloomshire some day. The adventure includes enough hooks to potentially introduce more adventures. I've also spotted that  Robin Fjärem has published another adventure and that looks perfect for a short block. The campaign might be over, but I'm far from done with Dragonbane.