When the cluebat fails.

I know it's been a long time since I lasted posted an update, but I need to get something off my chest.

If you read my last post, you'll know that I was starting off a high-level Pathfinder campaign for some  characters. Well, it's going really quite well. But my last session, things went a bit odd.

The characters had decided to go and rescue a city that's in the middle of an internal coup attempt (thanks to the machinations of one of the groups of bad guys in the campaign). They teleported into the castle, had a few moments to orient themselves, when... BOOM! The floor basically exploded underneath them, the ceiling collapsed, and they tumbled into the dungeons.

The first thing they heard when they started to recover from their fall was someone somewhere complaining that "if you'd just waited ten more minutes, nobody will be able to prepare for the other attacks!"

So, imagine my surprise when, after finding the bad guys who just blew up the castle (in my traditional NPC naming style, they were Guy, Fawkes, Gunn, Pahdr, Trey's son Enplut) and learning where other attacks were due to take place...

They did nothing.

Seriously. Absolutely nothing. Well, they decided eventually to go and fight off the dragon that was tearing down the city gates, but I gave them half an hour of real time before the temple got hit, and another twenty minutes real time before the waterfront got dropped into the river.

Fortunately, it hasn't derailed my plot, but I'm still a bit baffled about the decision to not try and do anything at all to save lots of innocents.

"You should have just asked 'Do you want to play Gelf again?'"

Due to some recent unfortunate events, my weekly Pathfinder gaming group got a bit shaken up a couple of months ago: One of my friends, who was actually my co-GM in the campaign he'd designed, decided that he wanted to take a break from regular RP.

Now, that's fine, really. I don't think anyone would (or should) begrudge someone else the decision to stop gaming, whether temporary or permanent. The only problem I had was that he was the GM of the game we were playing. Okay, co-GM. But it was his campaign world, his overall plot. I sort of took a bit-part role, filling in some blanks with ideas that I thought were cool. So when the setting designer and chief GM gets burnout partway through the campaign, what do you do?

Well, I had a few options, really - and they were very much my options, since I'm the only person in my gaming group who feels confident enough to quickly pick up the GMing ball and run with it:

• Continue the adventure.
• Start a brand new campaign.
• Do something a bit different.

The first of those wasn't really an option for me, since I had no idea where the adventure was going: we were literally half-way through an encounter when things went pear-shaped and he decided to call time on his GMing (and playing).

Now the second isn't a bad choice. I even had a campaign in mind that I'd been bouncing off some of my fellow players for a few weeks. I'd done a broad-strokes examination of a world, knew how I wanted things to kick off (vaguely), but hadn't really written anything pertinent down, like details - I'd have to work damn fast to get that one working.

The third option, though... well, now. That's a pretty broad statement, taken just as it is. Fortunately, a few of my players had been helping me out with a bit of playtesting for an upcoming Pathfinder product: Mythic Adventures. I'm a big fan of high-level play in D&D, and I was looking at how this new set of rules worked when added to 20th level characters. So, every few days, we were running a purely combat scenario (in a fairly scientific fashion) with some characters that I made up. One of those characters was a guy named Chemlak, who may or may not be my favourite ever RP character (I'll let you guess), and may or may not have been carefully converted from 2nd Edition AD&D (which was the last time he was actually roleplayed), through 3rd Edition, 3.5E and up to Pathfinder. And I'd come up with a 20th level version of Chemlak's partner-in-adventuring, Gelfar, for one of my players. The other playtest characters were quickly generated to fill out the party, and we were having a blast fighting insanely high-powered enemies and tearing through them like nothing you've ever seen.

You can probably see where this is going.

Chem and Gelf (as we tend to call them), had long-ago (in the real world) retired from adventuring (somewhere around 1994, if you're keeping count), but they remain ever-present in conversations, reminiscences and jokes.

Only one real question remained: Could I quickly (I had less than a week) come up with a plot outline for even a short adventure that could challenge these characters?

Umm... HELL YES!

The last thing that happened to Chem and Gelf was that they established a small town in the middle of nowhere. They had friends, followers, and (fortunately) some unfinished business with some enemies.

I had to get busy. Really busy. I sketched up my plot outline, checked it for gaping plotholes, and ran it through the "what would Batman do?" process. It looked solid. Easy hook, nice way to bring in the new characters, and some pointed reminders to not allow the long-established characters overshadow things.

I just had to sell it to my players.

First, I got my wife on-side. That was surprisingly easy, actually. She'd never had the chance to RP alongside Chem at all, but loves to hear stories of his adventures and background. Then my other players - maybe I'm a bit of a coward, but I wanted to get everyone accepting the idea before I pitched it to Adam, who played Gelfar. Well, the general consensus was "sounds like a laugh, as long as you're sure you can manage it". Yeah, I'm sure.

Then came the REALLY hard sell. I grabbed Adam on Skype, and explained my reasoning for not wanting to launch my "next campaign" because it would take a long time for me to get the details I need down, of not wanting to try to continue the current campaign without the lead-GM. I explained that I had a high level plot idea, and that it would be great to take the playtest characters out for a spin in a real adventure.

His reply was the title of this post.

Damn, I can be long-winded for no good reason, sometimes.

Well, Life has Certainly Moved On

It's been almost 2 years since I last said anything here, but I've never forgotten that I have this blog and that I really should use it more often.

While I can't promise to actually do so, please be aware that I have every intention of posting here more often. So much has happened since I last posted that my life doesn't really even feel the same as it did back then, but overall everything is better than it was.

So, on to the more important topics: What Roleplaying am I doing these days?

Well, my Wednesday night gaming sessions have settled on the Pathfinder RPG and I've been sharing the GMing duties in that. I'll write a proper post explaining the campaign and how it works later. It's a lot of fun, but I'm getting the impression that it's starting to reach the end of its viable lifespan - but it's been going for a LONG time, now, so I'm not unhappy with that at all.

Still RPing in City of Heroes, though the news that the game is closing has put something of a damper on that for me. I do indeed wish all of the efforts to save the game in some form the very best of luck, and will be helping out in whatever limited means I can.

Other than that, not a lot going on, though I am hugely excited about D&D Next. I'm signed up for the playtest, and I have had the opportunity to run a couple of games using the system, and I will be honest: It kicks 4E's arse out of the park, and it makes 3.x look like an exercise in accounting rather than roleplaying. I will also share more detailed thoughts on it at another point in time.

That's all from me for now, folks. Hopefully I'll speak to you all soon.