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- DM Ride-Along: The Final Touches of Kh’bai cont.
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28 October 2007 6:36 pm (0)One of the greatest obstacles my gaming groups and I face is time.
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- DM Ride-Along: Choices of History for Kh’bai
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20 October 2007 5:31 pm (0)While Kings Namadangken I and II represented recent history, their successor King Namadangken III would be the king that the player characters would be beholden to. I wanted him not only to continue an age of prosperity for the empire but also [...]
- DM Ride-Along: Background History of Kh’bai, Part 1
17 October 2007 5:29 pm (0)With my early map and a rough idea of what I needed from the world, I needed to flesh out the history of the Empire that the characters would adventure in. Early on, I knew the PC’s would be adventuring in the service of the King and Emperor of the nation of Kh’bai so [...]
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4 October 2007 4:11 pm (0)I was looking forward to writing adventures for only two players.
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1 October 2007 4:01 pm (0)As I do with all campaigns before they begin, I work from a handful of central themes. In designing what will be known as the Kh’bai Campaign, I had the added element of doing so on very short notice after our regularly scheduled game had to be cancelled. Dangerous Liaisons dvdrip With [...]
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The soul of a game. Some of us here at Basement51 have been talking about this issue for a bit now, so I think it’s time to share some of those thoughts. Some of you might be asking yourselves, “What does he mean by the soul of a game?” [...]
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11 September 2007 11:57 pm (0)Continuing our story from yesterday…
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With the mountains purged of fell giants, accursed elves, and the infected bestial tribes, we set out overland towards the massive forests of the fey folk and their battered faerie queen. In parting, we assured the giant-folk that we would [...] - Fiction: The Litanies of Redemption and Judgment pt. 4
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7 September 2007 6:39 pm (0)While my soap box has recently been used elsewhere for the purposes of discussing politics and criminal justice elsewhere, I dragged it back over here to the Basement to address Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons some more. While I’ve already aired my concerns about the upcoming edition, I would also like to take a [...]
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One of the greatest obstacles my gaming groups and I face is time.
The era of week-long gaming sessions during summer breaks or blowing off a symposium on Truth and Hegel to play Dungeons and Dragons all day are long gone. Bachelor Party Vegas divx Responsibilities and burdens like children, wives, and jobs relegate gaming to a much smaller niche of life than what it once occupied. But for the diehards, those steadfast weekend warriors still rolling dice while scribbling a grocery list on the back of their character sheet, the desire to play never seems to be diminished in proportion to available time. American Pie 2 move In fact, the same amount of imagination exists but gets distilled down into something more intense when the opportunity presents itself.
In the seventh grade I knew I would game more than half the nights of a given week and often get to play all weekend long. There was no shortage of opportunities to try out every character I ever wanted to play and every chance to devise any adventure that came to mind. Now, with only so many chances in a month to play, my choices seemed suddenly more constrained and important. As a player, I knew that the character course I charted would be played out over the coming year or two! And, as a DM, a campaign would stretch out in a similar fashion.
The journey to level 20 would probably take even longer than that once I took into account sessions would be cancelled for one reason or another.
I would love to propose the obvious solution: my friends and I should just play more! But it’s not junior high or college anymore and, even if I decided to regress my mind for the sake of gaming, I’d need to drag my gaming groups along with me. (And I really don’t want to hang out with any of their seventh-grade alter-egos!)
So, if I can’t slow down time out of game, the only other option was to speed up time in-game.
The Universal Speed Limit—
Third Edition D&D introduced a mathematically elegant system of balances that was previously missing from the earlier incarnations of the game. The experience point system in conjunction with the EL/CR system meshed very well to create balanced encounters and characters. Taking a moment to look at the numbers, though, a subtle deception reveals itself. A character doesn’t need 1,000xp to become 2nd level.
Thirteen to fourteen encounters is what it takes to become 2nd level or to go from 2nd to 3rd,
If a DM balances his encounters right, it becomes unnecessary to track experience points at all. While not as dramatic as saying, “I’ve got 99,000 experience points!” the same character might just be six more encounters from 15th level. It’s important to understand what the players at the table find rewarding and if they value those big numbers then a DM should hold to those numbers but, behind the screen, plan according to the “Magic Thirteen.”
“Do you know how fast you were going back there, son?”
Realistically, once all of the catching up with one another and ordering food and interruptions were taken into account, one of my weekly gaming groups that would meet in the evening would push through three to four encounters per session. In a perfect world, where we gather every week all year long and the party makes excellent, four-encounter headway they will have had 208 encounters at the end of the year. Using the Magic Thirteen, they’ll be 15th level after a perfect year of adventuring and it would take over three months more to finish a “Going to Twenty” campaign. Now take into account that the group will usually average closer to 3 encounters per session and miss at least one session each month… Then the party ends up at 9th level and it’ll be over two years before they see their characters from 1st to 20th and, let’s be honest, a campaign will collapse from old age long before then.
Breaking the 13EPL (encounters per level) speed limit starts looking tempting.
While the DMG suggests increasing xp awards by a percentage, it seems easier just to reduce the number of encounters that make a level.
Effectively, it amounts to the same thing. Using the latter, more realistic schedule from above for instance, a party getting a level every ten encounters would be 12th level at the end of the year of missing once a week and defeating 3 encounters each session. As for balancing treasure, that handy chart on page 54 of the DMG lets you know how much wealth is available to distribute among the reduced number of encounters with a little simple math.
Unsafe at Any Speed—
There’s a difference between doing 138mph across the plains of
Like any house rule, it matters a great deal what the players at the table are assembled to do. Some people may feel that too much of the sense of accomplishment is stripped away. As a DM you may feel that the players might become to focused on “counting down” the encounters to their next level without really stopping to smell the otyughs.
It can become a balancing act until the group finds its pace and there’s no reason a campaign can’t be designed with a speed limit in mind. While this concepts is encounter-centric, it becomes the DM’s responsibility to balance the role-playing aspects of the game that are just as important. A good story doesn’t necessarily unfold at the boosted speed limit of 8EPL and so the campaign or the speed limit will need to be adjusted accordingly.
Breaking the Magic Thirteen is a potential solution for groups that want a faster pace in order to enjoy the scenery of a 19th level world that they rarely get to see. But this makes the reduced number of encounters they will face that much more important. Each one of them needs to be memorable rather than feeling like some of the wandering/filler encounters that this approach is intended to do away with.
With the right group, like the one I described above that has all the desire to play they had at age 11 but without all of the time, a quicker pace allows for the same sense of accomplishment but also caters to the desire to pursue more campaigns and classes in a year of real time.
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