Death of the Campaign

 Over the last several months of running Traveller, I've started to notice a pattern in my gaming habits that conflicts with a long-held assumption I've had about styles of gaming and my own preferences. It's forced me to take a serious look at what I want and get out of this hobby.

As a fan of old-school games and things like classic D&D, I've often been a staunch defender of the whole long-term process of characters leveling up over time and getting really enmeshed in an extended campaign. The time it takes to get from 1st to "Name" level being essential to really making the PCs part of the world and for the players to get invested in the setting and what's happening there. There's no substitute for "putting in the work" as they say. It's not that I disagree with this now, but I believe I am at a point in my gaming style, as well as of an age, where my priorities are shifting somewhat.

Lately, I find that I am far more likely to experience burn-out on campaigns that last for months (or longer). This is especially when I GM, but has happened as a player, too. I realize that by some grognardian standards, a 6-12 month campaign is hardly "extended," but when you factor in all the games over the years that have crashed and burned after only 1-2 sessions, I think sustaining one for the better part of a year or more is certainly at the longer end of the curve.

When I went on my game-purchasing spree last year, I originally had the idea of getting at least one published campaign for each system. While Runequest lacks a full campaign (presently), it does have several compilations of scenarios. The thinking was to reduce the workload for me to run the different games and have enough for players to do for a good long while in each game.

The reality has been a little different. While I count myself lucky that my group has really been enjoying Traveller and have gotten engaged with the setting and the campaign, I'm struggling as GM to maintain the energy to prep and run it, even with published materials. My enthusiasm for the campaign has waned over the months and I fear I'm going to need a real break from it soon, which, as experienced gamers know, often means that it will never get picked back up again. Because of this, I've been trying to push through,hoping to regain some momentum. Sadly, that seems to not be happening.

So where does this leave me? Well, for one thing, I've learned something about myself as a GM and a gamer, so that's good. (I guess?) Secondly, I know I will need to make the call about the current campaign at some point, and third, I should focus on shorter, more episodic games where there are frequent "stopping points" to let one wrap up and have some closure before moving on. We had a moment like that in the Traveller campaign right before we shifted gears into the Drinax campaign. Perhaps I should have taken it. Perhaps the open-ended, long term campaign is not for me any more.

Live and Learn.

Garycon XIV: A Tale of Two Cons

 So Garycon finished up a little over a week ago and I have thoughts.

TL;DR: Not my favorite year of attending. There were issues, not all of which were the convention's fault. But the con seems to be moving in directions I'm not a fan of.

The verbose version:

Due to some issues at the hotel, some rooms that were being renovated were not ready in time for the convention. As a result, several of us were bumped out of the main facility to alternate lodgings at Timber Ridge, the Grand's 2nd hotel on the property which is their waterpark location. The accommodations were fine, but it was not walking distance and one needed to drive or grab the shuttle. To be fair, the shuttle staff were prompt and polite, but it was an added hassle to get to and from one's room. As I said, this was not the event's fault, it was the hotel's. Nevertheless, instead of a room with two queen beds, we ended up with one king and a sofa-bed (guess which one was mine).

Day One (Thu): I started off with running a couple Traveller sessions to earn my GM badge. Both went well, but left me pretty wiped out. So much so I ended up bowing out of my evening game that I was going to play in. 

Day Two (Fri): My early game was canceled by the GM (who ended up unable to attend), later in the day I got to play the sci-fi horror game Mothership. I backed the new edition on Kickstarter so getting some actual at-table time in the system was nice. I spent a little while in the exhibit hall and picked up one or two little things for my kids. 

Something I noticed about myself at this con was that, being an early riser, I was running out of stamina by early evening. Some of that is no doubt due to being socially distant and virtual for the last couple of years. I had slept poorly on the sofa-bed the night before, so I bowed out of another game (minis wargame) as it was supposed to run until midnight. 

Day Three (Sat.): I played an early Cthulhu game run by the excellent "You Too Can Cthulhu" group. Seriously, if you are at a con where they are, sign up for one of their games. Top Notch! Because I really wanted to try the BBQ place at the Timber Ridge, I went back to the room and found Empire Strikes Back on TV to watch as I ate brisket.

Day Four (Sunday): I played a great little game of Star Frontiers. Afterwards, my friend I was rooming with and I had some lunch then headed back to Milwaukee and the airport and home.

So! The good? The games I played in were all pretty fun, both my GM-ing sessions went well, and I got to see some folks I almost never get a chance to talk to outside of Garycon.

The bad? I realized that I don't like playing all day and well into the evenings for multiple days in a row. And given the expense of flying, car rental, and hotel, it makes little sense for me to go for less than the full convention, which means it's harder to justify going. In past years, my reasoning had been that it's the only con I travel to in any given year, so the cost and effort were easier to accept.

This year? Well, that brings us to the "Two Cons" issue I alluded to in the title. 

Garycon has changed a lot over the last several years. It's grown significantly in size, resulting in the venue change, and become more tiered, with different level badges costing up to $1000 each! These features aren't really new, but have been affecting the experience for a while, so I felt they deserved mention. Higher tiered badges increase access and give priority for event registration. This seems fair enough, but it also leads the staff to focus a lot of their efforts on these VIP guests as opposed to the overall con experience for the majority of attendees.

Secondly, it seems that the pandemic has accelerated the rise of virtual gaming, whether it's Virtual Table Top platforms like Roll20 and Foundry, or people watching others stream their games via Twitch, etc. "Shows" like Critical Role and many others have become a big part of the current tabletop gaming scene. It would appear that the powers that be behind Garycon have decided to make an earnest effort to woo some of these groups to making Garycon a definite part of their own "brands." I don't have anything against streamers, whether it's a publisher using the platform to promote their games or gamers making their own content, it's all fine to me. An unfortunate effect of the convention focusing so much effort on currying favor with the streamers is that the original, old-school population of attendees seems to have been getting de-emphasized more and more. There's not something super-specific I can point to and "There! That's it!" but I was not alone in expressing feelings along these lines at the con.

All this being said, I have to say that while Garycon is still a fun time, I think I'll be bowing out of it for the foreseeable future for reasons that are as much my own issues as with how I feel the con is being presented nowadays.

I'm a Travelling Man

 It's 2022! How did THAT happen?!

Greetings to anyone who still checks this site. I am still kicking and gaming. I hope everyone has kept safe and sane during all the craziness. I haven't posted much as late because my group and I haven't been playing much D&D. I've been running the group in a new (to me) system for the last 8-9 months.

 

Science fiction gaming is a genre we haven't done much with over the years, so it's an interesting departure. We tried playing classic Traveller back in the day with the little booklets, but beyond the character generation rules (which are a lot of fun), we never really seemed to get a proper game off the ground. Currently, I am running the group through one of Mongoose's published campaigns, The Pirates of Drinax. We've been using online tools like Roll20 to meet and play.

Last year, finding myself with little face to face gaming and a lot of time on my hands (for some reason), I set about picking up some new games and trying to learn them. Of course, true to my grognard roots, I ended up with the latest editions of three games that had been around for decades: Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, and Traveller. 

 

Thus far, I haven't sprung CoC or RQ on the group, though I have run a demo adventure over Discord for some folks on a one-shot server, and I've played a few games of 7th edition CoC. It's been great fun. 

I will also actually be making the trek again to Lake Geneva next month for Garycon. Hopefully, there won't be any "public health issues" to screw that up. I am not a good traveler (See? One 'L', so you can tell I'm not referring to the game. ;-P ). I mislike flying and I am not a fan of being away from my home and family for any length of time, but I generally have a good time at GC. Perhaps I will see some of you there. If anyone is still reading this, that is.

Moldvay Musings XVIII: Encounter Distance

Greetings! It's been a little while, but  I will try to be a little more consistent with my postings.

What with COVID-19, the end of the world, and everything, I have actually been playing D&D fairly regularly via Discord and Roll20. I started a very basic Keep on the Borderlands run for my group using Labyrinth Lord/AEC rules. Nothing exceptional to report, but it's been fun dusting of a classic like that.

Now, one of the little quirks of BX (as well as some other editions) is that distances and ranges (not Areas of Effect) are converted to yards in the wilderness (as opposed to feet indoors). More on that in a bit.


After a couple of wilderness encounters (some lizard folk and a random run-in with some giant boars), it got me thinking about the encounter sequence, specifically distances. In BX -and by extension LL- when there is a random encounter, the DM is supposed to roll to determine how far apart the party and the monster(s) are when they notice one another (assuming the terrain/floorplan doesn't dictate otherwise). In the dungeon, this roll is (2d6) x 10 feet. In the wilderness, it is (4d6) x 10 yards.

The changeover mostly makes sense. In a typical dungeon, the party is not moving very fast. They usually have very limited light, in unfamiliar territory, often tight quarters, etc. Ranged weapons are limited by low ceilings and crowded conditions. Outside, you can arc a shot much farther. [Though since taking up archery, I can say that the ranges in D&D for targeting a single, mobile target are ridiculous (e.g. bowhunting). Extreme long range with a modern compound bow in those circumstances is 70-80 yards, and that would be with severe penalties. But I digress.]

One of the pitfalls of encounter distance is that it can lead to an encounter getting stalled before it starts. In the case of the boars, the party's ranger spotted the boars over 200 yards away. This gave the party ample time to pepper them with spells and missiles as the pigs closed the distance. The party's druid slapped an Entangle spell on two of them and things ended fairly quick after that.

Now, I know that if this had been a straight BX game (no druids) and the random distance had been closer, things could have gone very differently. So I am not faulting the party or the rules. That's just how the dice go sometimes. In fact, I think the players were very wise to minimize their risk. It was a random encounter with creatures that typically carry no treasure. The risk/reward ratio was not in their favor here.

The DM may want to take a moment when setting up such an encounter to think about a few distance-related factors, especially in the wilderness. 1) Does the range that was rolled make sense? Maybe there are terrain features that make is unreasonable (tree cover, uneven ground, etc.)  2) Will these features affect things like movement rates, line of sight for spells, cover from missiles, etc.? 3) Remember that the implication is that, unless one side is surprised, both groups become aware of each other at the start of the encounter. If either side is surprised, the distance is reduced to a maximum of 40 yards (X23), so surprising an orc patrol 100 yards away is a no-go.

Because of things like this, I highly recommend going through all the steps "behind the screen" first and figure out the logical way to set things up before beginning to describe the situation to the players. The encounter in general will flow much more smoothly.

Baby Steps

The adventures are nearly ready. Mostly it's a question of cleaning up my "cocktail napkin" notes into coherent paragraphs. There are one or two maps that need doodling as well.

I painted! As I mentioned on my long-suffering painting blog, some minis received pigment.

Lastly, I've agreed to run a short Roll20 game for some members of the Fantasy AGE G+ community. It's just a one-shot, and it's virtual, but dammit! It's gaming.