More questions in the mail bag today! This one is suspiciously similar to a previous one, but whatever. Let’s go!
How does 1:1 time account for things that genuinely take months or years? I understand that we can simply take busy PCs out of play for the duration, but this seems unsatisfying.
It’s up to the player. If you play the wizard Frobozz, you have to choose between adventuring with your frens, participating in Sir Homer’s epic mass combat campaign, and researching a powerful new spell for three months. There are tradeoffs for each option.
What’s unsatisfying is never getting to do spell research at all because 12 months of real time only explores two weeks of game time, never getting to operate independently because your assumptions about rpgs preclude it entirely, and campaigns that blow up after six sessions. Bah!
Playing your other PCs for the duration is fun because playing D&D is fun. You don’t believe this, but if you play this way not only will Frobozz’s choice shape the campaign, but it will still be going when he finishes working up his all-new spell. That’s satisfaction.
Playing this way is also more resilient and anti-fragile. Maybe Frobozz is not the most interesting thing you could be doing in the campaign given what all everyone else is putting into it. Maybe you will try out playing a thief or a ranger and find out that it’s actually way more fun. Maybe after three months, you will be really excited to get back to you favorite character. Maybe some days it will be more fun to play one of these characters and not the others. YOU DON’T KNOW. But if you don’t invest in other play options, you will not have them available in the event of your main character getting killed.
So, think ahead. And get used to everyone in your group opting to not put all their rpg eggs in one basket. It’s an objectively better way to run a campaign. Not only is it sure to last beyond today’s norm of six measly sessions, but time and again this format has proven it can GROW your gaming group.
Note: Your question basically boils down to “why should my campaign be meaningful?” Gygax answered this in the DMG. Read it!
More answers for you today! This time, the question comes in from Brown Wizard Winston.
I was watching your post braunstein report on DunderMoose’s channel. How do you determine what each force has, especially with factions like giants?
In one case we had somebody playing a longstanding NPC. In another case, we had somebody running their usual PC. The forces at the various small towns were set when the region was first sketched out– including the leveled characters available. We had a new guy show up and I just gave him 200 orcs that didn’t exist. (Just like when David Weseley did it, you can always add more and not break a Braunstein!) Doucheland had to be made up with its player as it wasn’t nailed down yet. Dunder went nuts mapping his city. 90% of that Braunstein was already in our imaginations just from playing in that region for many sessions. I tweaked the numbers of OOB’s the players suggested and rejected some ideas, but mostly you can just look at your existing campaign and pretty well just turn it on.
What about opening with a Battle Braunstein? Any tips there?
Man, I set up my Braunsteins in already existing campaigns, so that is not my forte. Brovenloft and Broriental adventures BOTH went bigger than what could reasonably be managed. Decembork was much more formal, but maybe planned just a little too well. Based on past efforts, you’d want faction sizes to be no more than a few hundred normal men, say. 500 tops. Also watch out for god-like characters. 11th level wizards are plenty awesome as we have seen. Multiple uneasy alliances will always produce great player interactions.
Don’t run a Braunstein if you and your players haven’t mastered the relevant rules systems yet. This is, in my opinion, the biggest reason not to run a Braunstein outside of an already mature well-played campaign: you all don’t know how the easy stuff works yet! Braunstein play is predicated on not only the referee but also many of the players being completely fluent in the rules. Further, the referee needs to be seasoned enough that he does not panic when he ceases to know what is happening.
More questions in the mailbag today! First up, one from AlchemicRaker:
Does #BrOSR adhere to this passage, in regards to “The activity of players in combat”? Related, does #BrOSR delay character actions in combat when players dither? If so, has it worked particularly poorly or well?
At low level when PC’s die every week and with players facing impossible odds, I generally give them all the time they want to plan so that all of the loss and pain and carnage is accepted as being completely fair and entirely the players’ fault.
If we were strict on this rule, I predict that callers would need to be even more tyrannical and more domineering or else nobody would survive the early levels at all. Given that it is overly hard to kill mid-level PC’s, not playing this rule may actually break AD&D.
Next up is one from Sivor:
Have you ever used the used the Castle subtables around DMG 183 to generate starting Patrons PC? Or what is the framework for Patrons’ characters when they are created?
I have not used those tables at all. This is a grave error, as 1-in-20 encounters in an uninhabited area will be such strongholds and that should have occurred at least once in the past four years of AD&D RAW. Clearly a missed opportunity to awesome up the campaign! [Note: my PC encountered a castle generated this way when the guy that runs Macho Mandalf was refereeing. This rule DOES awesome up campaigns!]
As to how patrons are created, there isn’t a framework. IMO, if you are going to run a Braunstein with arbitrarily devised factions, it needs to be volatile, the action needs to be resolved before attention is lost, and the players have to be crazy excited about their roles.
Black Dragon Games has a very genuine and heartfelt question about how Real D&D works:
I agree with Matt that people have been heated about this, c’est la vie. But here is a question. A disclaimer: I’m fine with 1:1 time, I believe you can use it and run a fun and rewarding campaign, I understand it has “corner cases” but no more so than any approach. I also want to stress that this is a good faith question, not an attempt at a “gotcha”, I expect someone who does 1:1 will present a perfectly straightforward solution, I have a system I like so I don’t intend to switch, this is pure curiosity. Assume AD&D 1e as the system. My understanding of 1:1 time is that by session’s end you should be back to a neutral space, e.g., not in the dungeon, so some time before you finish the party will turn back, leave the dungeon, go back to their neutral spot (e.g. town) and then players will interact with each other and the DM during the week away from the table to do tasks, e.g., buying supplies, hiring henchmen, etc. If this is an unfair depiction of the idea then let me know, but as far as I understand it this is right. My question is this, I run a lot of seafaring adventures, Say we sit down for the session when Bhorga’s Mistake leaves port, for 3 hours at the table the ship sails the ocean, has random encounters per the DMG, then we finish the session. What happens next? Is the ship considered the neutral space until next session? Do you simulate random encounters for the week? Do you hand wave travel entirely? Again, I have no dog in any fight, but what would be the preferred procedure?
Here is the answer to what would be an outright baffling question to anyone reading the AD&D rules for the first time.
Let’s say the voyage takes 2 months and during the session you only play out half of that due to several fun random encounters. You now have 1 month to reconvene with this group and find a legit “safe base”. The PC’s are in a 1 month long time jail and you have some flexibility. Let’s say the players don’t reconvene for whatever reason. Maybe the voyage session sucks or someone got sick. The referee may opt to play out the rest of the trip by email or forum post so that this partially resolved scenario does not disrupt the broader campaign. Once the players make it to port, the referee is no longer responsible for dealing with this aspect of the campaign and he can pick it up again when player interest demands it. This means the focus of play is free to shift to wherever the most excitement is. Tremendous asset!
“But Jeffro,” you say. “You have fallen into my trap! If you can run the sea voyage this way and make it work, then why can’t you run a dungeon delve in the same manner and just pick up where you left off continually?” Gosh, that is not a nice thing to say to me. In both cases, however, you want to avoid having unresolved threads blocking the development of the rest of the campaign. The dungeon delves aren’t typically “in the future” and so have less flexibility for how you would resolve them. (Delves are generally one week in duration.) Awesome things like mass battles and long sea voyages are worth the headaches of weird time-related situations. The beer & pretzels set will not sacrifice the benefits of timekeeping for some random “delve of the week” session. So, “end session back in town” is the rule of thumb.