. . . Reflecting on ACKS

So, we’re four sessions in to our Dwimmermount game using the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System. (Latest session report here: https://sites.google.com/site/manglingacks/home/campaign-journal/session412915#) Here are some random thoughts I have on what we’ve seen so far:

* Old-school leveling is tough, especially for new-school players. The player running Sydow the cleric is having a particularly tough time with how unspecialized his character is. Partly, this is an issue with the cleric. Every other character type has something to differentiate it at first level: the thief has thief abilities and backstab, the fighter has bonus damage, the shaman has a totemic animal, but the cleric at first level seems like the poor man’s fighter–able to wear heavy armor and use decent weapons, but without anything to really differentiate it as a class. In comparison with the shaman, particularly, the cleric seems a less pleasing choice. Admittedly, clerics can turn undead at 1st level, but that is such an adventure-dependent ability compare to the other classes, that it hardly serves to differentiate the class. At least they level quickly.

* The shaman’s python is a beast. While it only has a tiny number of hit points, my dice seem to have a really hard time hitting it, and its ability to put out 1d3-1 + 2d6-2 damage in a round (avg. 5.5, max. 12) makes it more deadly than the party’s fighter with a longsword (avg. 5.5, max 9). Plus, the fact that it can deliver 2d6-2 damage per round without a “to hit” throw after its initial throw is devastating single-target damage.

* After playing 3e-5e with their minimally ranged Burning Hands spell, the party was happy to see how much area the ACKS version of that spell can cover.

* Our thief’s player noticed an oddity in the way players can reserve XP for their heir. It seems like you could have an heir come into play with more XP than its predecessor if there are henchmen involved. For example, if a 1st level fighter and her henchman bring back 2100gp from the dungeon, then she will gain 1400XP, and her henchman will gain 700. She will pay the henchman his share (typically 15%), so she will keep 1785 gp, and the henchman will gain 315gp. If she then spends all of her money carousing, she can reserve 90% of the amount spent as XP for her heir. Thus, she will have 1400 xp, and her heir will have (1785 x 0.9) = 1606 xp. She could die as a 1st level fighter, and her heir could start as a 2nd level cleric. Am I missing something in these calculations?

* Combat is quick and easy. While there are enough tactical options to keep things interesting, the fights are quick affairs–even with a ton of henchmen and enemies.

. . . Preparing to Judge ACKS

So, the Manglers had their second session in Dwimmermount last night. A record of the action in the second session can be found here.

In this post, I wanted to share a bit about what I’ve done to prepare for this campaign beyond reading the campaign setting and trying to understand the rules.

One of the first things I did was to prep my GM screen. I have one of those screens with plastic sleeves where you can insert your own paper charts. I combined that with the first few pages of the ACKS GM Reference Table by gregoj at Autarch. (I’d link to it, but the Downloads links at autarch.co haven’t worked for months. Luckily, I had the file on my hard drive from a year or two ago.) I copied all of the extra pages in this file and put them in my notebook. Mainly what’s in the screen is what’s important for exploring and combat, and all of the merchant/campaign building stuff is in the notebook.

I also decided to take Gygax’s advice and pay strict attention to keeping track of time. So, I created this sheet and laminated it, so I can write on it with a dry erase marker. (The Expo ultra-fine markers are really nice.) It has some reminders for how long torches and rations last, as well as markers for rounds*, turns, hours, and days. I just write down the start time/date at the top and then update the current time whenever the party rests. Otherwise, I treat it like an abacus, mark rounds until those bubbles are full, then mark one turn and erase the rounds. Keep marking turns until an hour has passed, mark the hour and erase the turns, etc. There’s also a big space for me to make notes. (I think in this image, I had listed all the loot the party was trying to sell and how long until their torch burns out.)

(*I changed rounds to 1 minute each, instead of the ACKS standard 10 seconds. It just makes bookkeeping easier.)

The other time-keeping implement I created is the calendar. This took far longer than it should have because I started creating it before I finished reading the adventure, so I hadn’t noticed that there is actually a description of how time works towards the end of the book. So, I created a whole bunch of month names and day names and created a calendar using an Excel template, then realized that the book tells me that there are 13 months with 28 days each. Oops. So, I decided to just put the calendar into a Word document instead of trying to make it actually look like a calendar. Because I’m a bit obsessive about random things, I got it into my head that having the weather for each day would be pretty awesome. So, that took me to Weather Underground’s History pages where I picked my own town (because the weather mirrors what I think the weather would be like around Dwimmermount’s heavily forested/mountainous region) and the year 1980 (for no particular reason) and started copying/pasting weather into my calendar. It took a while, but now I know the high and low temps as well as the general weather conditions (rainy, fog, snow, etc.) for every day for the next year of the campaign. And I can track healing, long term conditions, birthdays, henchmen contract lengths, etc.

I also decided to create a deity specific spell list for my player playing a cleric of Typhon. This lists all of the tenets of the religion and the spell repertoire for each level. I used the same tenets for the priest of Typhon listed in Dwimmermount, but made some of them more suggestions than strictures. I figured that clerics were given more latitude than the priests–similar to the difference between Knights Templar and Catholic priests. For the spell list, I used the lists in the ACKS Player’s Companion to get a sense of how many spells per level would be reasonable, and then went through the Divine spell list and picked the spells that seemed right for this particular deity. I initially started with the following spreadsheet, but then realized I didn’t really need to figure out every god’s spell list unless they became pertinent:

My final prep act was to find an 8″ x 14″ landscape orientation binder. I had printed the adventure 2 pages to a page in landscape orientation, flipping on the short side, so a regular binder wouldn’t work right. Finding a landscape orientation binder was tricky. Apparently, they are mainly used by engineers and architects and people who can afford to pay $35 for three pieces of cardboard covered in plastic and some metal rings. Finally had to order one from Walmart for store pickup. Still overpriced at $13, but worth it for my sanity during play.

So, two sessions in, how’s all this prep working out for me? Hmm, let’s call it a work in progress. . . . I think that the utility of this stuff will become more apparent as I get more acclimated to the rules, but right now, it’s just more stuff to keep track of. I’m not sure that I’ve mentioned the weather to my players yet. And keeping track of time is effective, but right now I find myself saying, “Oops. Haven’t updated time for two rooms… let’s make something up.” I think time management, in particular, will become quicker as the campaign progresses, and the motions for checking boxes become second nature. Right now, the fiddly bits are the hardest part of the game for me. Keeping track of torches, time, rests, when to check for wandering monsters, rooms cleared, etc. is all a lot right now before the rules themselves have become second nature. Compound this with the wealth of information in the adventure–when areas were built, what their construction materials were, what factions exits, etc. It all adds up to a lot to keep track at once. But I have faith that the prep work will pay off in the end.

Next time, maybe I’ll talk about how the ACKS rules are going for the Manglers right now.

. . . Creating ACKS characters for Dwimmermount

So, the Rotgut Manglers have recently started a new campaign set in Dwimmermount using Adventurer, Conqueror, King System. We’ve never played this rules set before, but we like the way it looks.

Our first session was mainly about character creation; although we were able to play a little at the end. I was a little surprised at how long chargen took. For an old-school game, character creation took about 3-4 hours–with only 4 players. Rolling stats (where ACKS uses the roll 3d6 six times in order of stats, repeat five times, and pick the best set method) was quick, but then deciding on classes took a while; with the group trying to optimize their party, my players took a lot of time to figure out classes. While that was mostly the fault of my players, the number of proficiencies were a bit overwhelming, and the rest of the character creation time was spent picking proficiencies. My players gravitated mainly toward those with obvious game implications–healing, fighting styles, etc. It will be interesting to see how much of a role the other proficiencies play in the game, and whether the less obvious choices are chosen as the characters gain levels. Ultimately, we wound up with a shaman (python totem), a cleric, a fighter, and a thief. I had put a limit on 1 elf and 1 dwarf in the party, but no demi-humans were chosen. (I’ve always thought that old-school race as class rules–along with attendant level caps for demi-humans–were a good way of limiting the number of demi-humans in a game. And that seems to partially be the case here.)

One interesting effect of random systems–and I think I mentioned this back when I reviewed Dungeon Crawl Classics–is that randomness sometimes provides a freedom to be creative. In this case, much of the story of the characters can come from the randomness of character generation. While there are obvious questions to answer about the really high and really low stats of characters, the random element that struck me this time was starting money. I opted to not use the templates provided and to ask each player to roll 3d6x10 for their starting gold. The fighter’s player rolled a 17, starting with a whopping 170 gp, and being able to buy pretty much anything he wanted. The cleric’s player, on the other hand, rolled a really low number (a 6 I think), starting with enough money to buy some non-optimized armor, a holy symbol, and a weapon, but not really enough to buy clothes or other exploring accoutrements. Without even writing a backstory for these characters, the table was already coming up with explanations for this discrepancy. The fighter was determined to be a lower-ranked son of some minor noble. The cleric’s background was still left undecided at this point, but the possibilities that the low income suggests coupled with the character’s proficiency in judging help to paint a possible picture. Perhaps he judged unfavorably against a wealthy family who had him stripped and chased out of town. The random dice rolls can spark imagination as we seek to explain the chaos.

This time around, I haven’t been encouraging my players to create detailed backstories. I’m not sure about how deadly ACKS combat can be, but if it’s true to its old school roots, then casualty rates at low levels are significant. So, there’s not much point in having the players create elaborate backstories only to die an hour into the first session. Instead, I’m going with a “campfire” approach to backstories. Every time the characters rest, I’ll ask one of the players to relate what their character reveals about himself around the campfire. So, over time, each character will start to develop more fully, but also more organically. (Nothing is more disturbing for me as a player than to create an elaborate backstory about how awesome my character is, only to have that character persistently plagued by poor dice rolls, turning him from awesome into a blowhard who claims to be able to do more than he really can. Better to let the dice rolls help to determine the character.)

Later this week, I hope to explain a bit more about the kind of prep work I’ve been doing for this game. (For example, this campaign web site.)

. . . Looking Back at 2014

Another year come and gone. It wasn’t a bad year for gaming around here, but it wasn’t the best year either. Mostly, we settled into a new routine with a virtual player–it really doesn’t seem like an entire year that we’ve been playing with a virtual Robert.

Last year, I commented that these were the things I wanted to improve. Let’s see how I did:

*More gaming with family/friends.
Over the summer, we played a good bit of Straw, and King of Tokyo, and a couple of games of Mice & Mystics, but never had the kind of sustained gaming I was hoping for. My oldest son and I played a game of Duell and of Crocodile Pool Party, and my wife and I actually did manage to play one game away from the Manglers when we played Jammer Up with friends. Overall, 15 games played with family this year. Some games may have been missed in my tracking. (I started using ScoreGeek on my phone to track games, but often forget it’s there.) That’s down from 24 games last year, and that makes me sad.

*Continue to paint.
2014 was a horrible year for painting. In 2013, I painted 53 minis. In 2014, I painted 8…

*Adjust to life with a virtual Mangler.
This was, on the whole, easier than I thought it might be. Communication during the week remains the biggest struggle with having a player in another state, but the actual game sessions work reasonably well. Google Hangouts probably isn’t the best program to use, but it’s let us keep playing with Robert with relatively little fuss. Billy takes pictures of necessary handouts and e-mails them to Robert, and we trust Robert to make his rolls fairly. The only difficulty is making sure that we don’t overlook Robert’s input during the game. It’s harder to pay attention to non-verbal cues from a virtual player, and I imagine it’s somewhat frustrating for Robert to not be able to see all of the players due to our limited number of cameras. Robert also ran a short-lived campaign using Roll20.

*Two more campaigns.
I wanted to run two games this year–The One Ring and Adventurer, Conqueror, King. We played 17 sessions of The One Ring and I’ll be starting Dwimmermount using ACKS next week. However, as I predicted, the arrival of D&D 5e meant that we had to play the new flagship system. I ran the adventure from the intro box set, and then Colt picked up DMing duties to run Tyranny of Dragons. We’ve played 11 sessions of D&D so far, and are all enjoying it. Colt’s game will continue into 2015, with he and I alternating DMing duties as work/school demands.

Other Numbers and Thoughts
This blog was horribly maintained this year. I only had 7 posts, and they came in clumps at the start of the year and in the summer.

The Manglers played fewer board games this year. We had 35 gaming sessions this year, and only 5 were for board gaming. We played The Doom that Came to Atlantic City, Smash Up, Shadowrun: Crossfire, and some Magic: Commander, Overall stats finished like this:

Billy 4-3 (9.3 / 1st  / 57%)
Colt 1-1 (2 / 3rd / 50%)
Paul 1-6 (1.2 / 4th / 14%)
Rod 3-4 (5.25 / 2nd / 43%)

Another good year for Billy, but a pretty bad year for Paul. (But he’s been doing well on the Warhammer FB circuit, so maybe that’s where his mojo has been focused.)

The Manglers only played three RPGs this year, the aforementioned The One Ring and D&D, and a Call of Cthulhu one-shot for Halloween. Overall, we played 30 RPG sessions, and had a full group for 20 of those sessions. Paul remains the workhorse of the group, only missing 2 sessions.

. . . Tracking D&D Stats

So, the Manglers played the second session of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen last night. Another solid session where we fought some kobolds and cultists, saw our bear get beaten by a half-dragon, and ended the session by splitting the party in the worst way imaginable: the ranger in deep cover with the cultists, my paladin captured by the cultists, the druid wandering around as a raccoon, and the sorcerer hiding in a cave with a handful of rescued prisoners. Next session should be interesting.

During this session, I started keeping track of our hits and misses and damage, as well as how often we were hit. (I suppose that my time spent using Excel to figure out if my paladin was more efficient with a Greatsword or sword-and-board made me a little stat happy.) Our characters are all 2nd level now. The druid spent most of his fights in bear form; the ranger fights with dual short swords; the sorcerer mainly casts cantrips; and my paladin mainly uses a greatsword. (I didn’t really track when people switched weapons–I think a couple of the druid attacks were with dual scimitars; I attacked once or twice with javelins; the ranger shot some folks with a longbow; and the sorcerer at one point dropped a 23-hp sleep on some kobolds which I didn’t count, since it’s not real damage.)

Here’s what I figured out (with highest in each category in red):

	Druid	Ranger	Paladin	Cleric/Sorcerer
Offensive Stats
Hits	7	6	6	7
Misses	15	7	2	1
Hit %	32%	46%	75%	88%
Damage	69	44	56	42
Avg. Damage per Hit	9.857143	7.333333	9.333333	6
Avg. Damage per attack	3.136364	3.384615	7	5.25
Max Dmg. Dealt	14	9	11	10
Defensive Stats
Times Targeted	27	10	10	0
# of Hits	19	5	7	0
# of Misses	8	5	3	0
% Hit	70%	50%	70%	0%
Damage Taken	163	19	39	0
Avg Damage Taken	8.578947	3.8	5.571429	0
Max Dmg. Taken	21	5	9	0

So, the druid wins in terms of damage dealt, average damage per hit, damage taken, average damage taken, and max damage taken. The numbers are, however, a little skewed because the druid had one combat against a half-dragon–a really dangerous battle that skewed some of the statistics. For example, if we remove that battle, the stats look like this:

.	Druid	Ranger	Paladin	Cleric/Sorcerer
Offensive Stats
Hits	6	6	6	7
Misses	8	7	2	1
Hit %	43%	46%	75%	88%
Damage	55	44	56	42
Avg. Damage per Hit	9.166667	7.333333	9.333333	6
Avg. Damage per attack	3.928571	3.384615	7	5.25
Max Dmg. Dealt	12	9	11	10
Defensive Stats
Times Targeted	19	10	10	0
# of Hits	13	5	7	0
# of Misses	6	5	3	0
% Hit	68%	50%	70%	0%
Damage Taken	83	19	39	0
Avg Damage Taken	6.384615	3.8	5.571429	0
Max Dmg. Taken	13	5	9	0

Overall, the stats show a nice consistency among the 3 melee characters (although the hit % for the paladin and sorcerer are a bit odd). As an afterthought, I looked at damage per round (in rounds where the character attempted an attack), and there was some difference there. (Druid: 5.75, Ranger: 5.5, Paladin: 8, Sorcerer: 6). Anyway, make of the numbers what you will.

Some things that the numbers do bear out:

*bears are really tough and can take a beating at 2nd level
* the sorcerer is really good at avoiding melee
* my paladin gets hit a disproportionately high amount (for reference, my guy has a 16 AC and the bear has an 11, and yet I was hit 70% of the time and the bear roughly the same amount
* two weapon fighting was miserable this night. No one hit with both attacks in the same round

. . . Playing D&D 5th Edition

Our merry band heads down the Sword Coast.

So, I’ve run a few sessions of D&D 5e using the Starter Set, and found it entertaining. But now, the youngest Mangler has stepped up to be the DM for a new campaign, running the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. (Or, as I will now be calling it the Horde of the Dragon-kin.)

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Kobolds, steamrolled so hard they are just flat blobs of red.

The Manglers have put forth a paladin (my character), a druid, a ranger, and a cleric/sorcerer to tackle the campaign.

In our first session of the campaign last Thursday, we showed up at the town of Greenest as it was being ransacked by kobolds, cultists and a big dragon. We charged in and steamrolled the first few encounters–kobold bodies laying everywhere–some getting face-melted by the cleric, some getting death-from-aboved by the ranger. (None being bothered in the slightest by the poor druid’s Pass Gas spell–or maybe it was Poison Spray?) We rescued some villagers by taking them to the town’s keep, and then things took a turn for the worse when we tried to get back out of the keep.

ZOMG RATS! (Yes, that’s my pally running away in the background–“to get some torches.”)

A couple of rat swarms nearly flayed the skin from our bones, and then kobold slingers took their toll and got their first KO of the evening. Trying to plug a hole in the keep’s defenses elsewhere saw more of us being KO’d by cultists and kobolds. But we didn’t die. Then the dragon showed up again.

Luckily the ranger had some bow skills, and his well-placed arrows drove the beast away–but not before it had smashed half the keep’s archers. By then it was the dead of night, and we hoped to just go to sleep, but no. Back out of the keep to protect the city’s grain supply. Our ambush was barely effective, but we avoided the counter-ambush, and some very careful hit-n-run tactics (and the druid’s newfound ability to Bear UP!) helped our cause. But running low on HPs, and out of spells, we tried a desperate gambit to buy the loyalty of the mercenaries fighting alongside the cultists. (One perfect Persuasion roll later.) They agreed to our idea, and turned on the cultists, and left the field with our bribe. Now, we’re stuck at the mill, with about 20 hit points among the 4 of us, no spells, and running low on ammo. It’s gonna be a long night.

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I have to say, I love this game. I haven’t felt this excited about D&D since the first few levels of 3rd edition. I’m redesigning my character sheet, making spell cards, contemplating sword-and-board versus greatsword, and debating exactly how V,S,M components work with the “free” environment action economy. The combat runs quickly; there’s really no need for a DM screen except for conditions; the DM has his/her authority back to make calls; and there are kobolds to be killed.

I can’t really review the adventure much because so much of an adventure depends on GM choices, but I can say that this first session felt heroic and stressful and made me really feel the pain of resource management. With no long rest in sight, some of us might die in the next session, and it’s never really crossed my mind that the adventure failed to “balance” the encounters. The game gives what it gives–random encounters and all–and you take it, roll the dice, hope for 20s, and try not to let the thoughts about what class you’ll play if your dude dies get too strong.

I predict a long life for Hieronymous Drakeslayer III, my leg-breaker turned paladin. I’ll keep you posted.

. . . Playing “The Doom that Came to Atlantic City”

So, last night the Manglers were down two players, and I decided it was time to force a new game upon those who showed up. (I recently finished a massive clean-up of the game closet, including cataloging most of the games, so I was itching to try something I hadn’t played.) So, it was time for The Doom that Came to Atlantic City. 

The Box that Came from Cryptozoic.

I got this game from Cryptozic by way of Kickstarter. The game’s creators hired Erik Chevalier to run their Kickstarter for the game. He took in $122k and then disappeared with the money, as far as I can tell. Luckily, the folks at Cryptozoic Entertainment–who were completely unconnected to the Kickstarter–decided to publish the game and fulfill the rewards from the Kickstarter to the best of their ability. So, the Manglers were able to give Lee Moyer and Keith Baker’s game a shot (with cool minis sculpted by Paul Komoda).

The premise of the game is that each player is one of the Elder Gods, and you’ve been recently awakened by cultists. Your goal is to return to full power and destroy the world–or at least, Atlantic City. The game is based on Monopoly–similar board, Chants cards (I see what they did there), and roll and move mechanics. There are some amusing shifts in terminology: you get to pass Mi-Go instead of Go, and you get Banished instead of going to jail (which, as in Monopoly, can happen for rolling doubles multiple times in a turn). In your turn, you attack other players, destroy houses, and try to open  six gates (by destroying all the houses on a property) before everyone else. There are a few twists: each player has a “Doom” card that gives them an alternate way to win, and each player’s avatar can acquire powers that make it easier for them to attack, defend, cycle cards, destroy houses, etc. 

The game took us about two hours to play, but that involved some outside discussion and some rules checking. (There is a serious misprint on one of the property cards and some missing rules about when Banishment occurs.) However, BGG provided answers and we were able to play on without too much trouble. We did keep forgetting a few rules (like not being able to get rid of your last cultist voluntarily) and misinterpreted one rule (thinking that the count for rolling doubles carried over between turns).I think that games that last around an hour are definitely possible. 

Cthulhu rounds the bend, followed by Hastur, followed by Nyartlathotep.

The beginning of the game plays much like Monopoly, with each player moving his elder god around the board accumulating property (by destroying houses and placing gates). It is a bit random, with everyone taking what they can. It doesn’t cost anything to try to destroy the houses on a property and place a gate (which can be done once both houses are destroyed), so property acquisition is a bit faster than in Monopoly, and the mid-game comes pretty soon.The game begins: Cthulhu followed by Hastur followed by Nyarlathotep.

In the mid-game, players start to accumulate the cultists, houses, gates, and/or cards they need to fulfill their victory conditions. As elder gods gain more powers, deciding when to attacck each other becomes a bit more strategic, and as more gates appear, the pace of the game speeds up. (If you start on a gate, you can move to another gate before moving the number rolled, so establishing a good gate system that lets you cycle through the Mi-Go space seems imperative.)

The end-game comes quickly. Once we realized that players were in striking distance of their victory conditions, the game only lasted a couple more rounds. In our game, there was definitely a bit of a piling on effect where we all tried to stop the player that seemed most likely to win, and it felt a bit like Illuminati with everyone pulling out all the stops. This makes for a tense and aggressive end-game, which may not be to everyone’s liking. (But, also seems true to the spirit of Monopoly where everyone comes away mad.) In the game’s favor, all three players were within one turn of winning at the end, so it stayed competitive throughout. I felt a bit like we all played like we were Cold War powers, stockpiling cultists and cards for our end-game run at victory, so when someone came close to winning, there were tons of cards played to stop him. I imagine that if we had used cards more in the early game, we wouldn’t have had such a card-nuking effect at the end.

Overall, I liked the game. The components are awesome, including well-sculpted minis for each of the Elder Gods and wooden meeples for cultists and houses. The board is suitably evocative for a tongue-in-cheek game of eldritch horror and real estate, and the cards have a likable, cartoon-y style with amusing flavor quotes. I want to play again and see how the next game goes. It doesn’t feel like a game of deep strategy–there’s a lot of luck here (rolling dice for movement, attacks, destruction) and random card draws for winning conditions and powers. But it’s not meant to be such a game, and I thoroughly enjoyed wrecking Atlantic City and establishing the new age of Hastur, Hastur . . . . 

Other Reviews:

• Jonathan Liu (GeekDad at Wired)
• The Innocent at Space-Biff!
• Joel Eddy at 2d6.org