I was hoping that the whole blogfest thing would kickstart a new burst of inspiration and motivation. It kind of worked. A few words here and there in a variety of projects, mostly an article on comedy gaming that's been in the works for ages. But that does mean that I've left all my blog followers with nothing to read right here and now.
One of the things that I've been thinking about recently is DunDraCon. I've already made my hotel reservation. The convention hotel tends to fill up quick, so we actually missed it last year. Thankfully, the DDC website has a section for people who want/need to roomshare. It also saved us some money since my wife and I only had to pay for half of the room.
But there's always the question of what to run for the convention.
I could always run Jaded City, the adventure in the back of the book. I've done it for years and it generally tends to go well. But the book has been out for 5 years (released May 15, 2010) and it might be time to come up with something new. Which means pushing my brain back into Oz mode, dusting off some old inspirations and coming up with something new.
One idea that's been kind of poking at me is the idea of having everyone in the Royal Palace in the Emerald City for Ozma's birthday or some other social function, but then a horde of Winged Monkeys flies in and wrecks the place. It's a great sort of starter scene that gives players something to immediately respond to, but I've never been able to figure out what comes after that. And with the Winged Monkeys already appearing in the Jaded City adventure, I don't want the idea to become overdone.
Another thing that has been particularly interesting to me of late has been the Oz dungeon crawl. I don't know that I could ever get into the whole kill-loot-repeat loop with AiO (and the system is designed to rebel against that), but as I've experienced old school gaming I've picked up the idea of the "story told over space."
In an old school adventure, you are not handed the story. You might get some clues of what the story is when the old man in the tavern gives you a map, but that's not guaranteed. Instead, you discover the story like a hunter tracking game. You move through the dungeon finding traces that the thing driving the story has left behind. The lazy version of this is finding diary pages all over the place that directly explain certain things. But a well done adventure in this style can convey a lot of that through other means, like map layout, monster and treasure choices, and a number of other things.
I could run The Castle of the Mad Archmage. I've got the AD&D and Pathfinder versions (I'm currently running the Pathfinder version.) With my whole "better note-taking" methodology, I could run a new group through the dungeon as it appears in my home campaign after being modified by the actions of my players. Then go home and watch as my players discover the remains of things that they didn't do in the dungeon.
One of the things that I've been thinking about recently is DunDraCon. I've already made my hotel reservation. The convention hotel tends to fill up quick, so we actually missed it last year. Thankfully, the DDC website has a section for people who want/need to roomshare. It also saved us some money since my wife and I only had to pay for half of the room.
But there's always the question of what to run for the convention.
I could always run Jaded City, the adventure in the back of the book. I've done it for years and it generally tends to go well. But the book has been out for 5 years (released May 15, 2010) and it might be time to come up with something new. Which means pushing my brain back into Oz mode, dusting off some old inspirations and coming up with something new.
One idea that's been kind of poking at me is the idea of having everyone in the Royal Palace in the Emerald City for Ozma's birthday or some other social function, but then a horde of Winged Monkeys flies in and wrecks the place. It's a great sort of starter scene that gives players something to immediately respond to, but I've never been able to figure out what comes after that. And with the Winged Monkeys already appearing in the Jaded City adventure, I don't want the idea to become overdone.
Another thing that has been particularly interesting to me of late has been the Oz dungeon crawl. I don't know that I could ever get into the whole kill-loot-repeat loop with AiO (and the system is designed to rebel against that), but as I've experienced old school gaming I've picked up the idea of the "story told over space."
In an old school adventure, you are not handed the story. You might get some clues of what the story is when the old man in the tavern gives you a map, but that's not guaranteed. Instead, you discover the story like a hunter tracking game. You move through the dungeon finding traces that the thing driving the story has left behind. The lazy version of this is finding diary pages all over the place that directly explain certain things. But a well done adventure in this style can convey a lot of that through other means, like map layout, monster and treasure choices, and a number of other things.
I could run The Castle of the Mad Archmage. I've got the AD&D and Pathfinder versions (I'm currently running the Pathfinder version.) With my whole "better note-taking" methodology, I could run a new group through the dungeon as it appears in my home campaign after being modified by the actions of my players. Then go home and watch as my players discover the remains of things that they didn't do in the dungeon.
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