What do you do when a teenager wants to play Evil?

So I managed another quick round of Play the World in YouMedia today. While, according to the others present, quite a few had expressed interest, most of them had just gone across the street for a meal and to study. Bad timing. So I hung out with a few boys recording a food-related podcast and built a few beginner/NPC characters while I waited. With around 45 minutes to go before I had to be elsewhere, the Tiefling-rogue player showed up and wanted to play.

He found himself in the Royal Guard breakroom again getting lectured by the commander. He was instructed to take another guardsman and go see if he could track the escaped golem from last session.

The other guardsman was one of the NPCs I'd just made, a gruff spear-dwarf named Gurka. They headed back to the Temple Quarter of town, where Rylie (the player-character) seemed a little at a loss as to where to start. She went into the temple of Fharlangn (AKA a very busy bar complete with piano player in the background), where the patrons and bartend were reluctant to assist because she and the dwarf were basically cops. Then she approached the Temple of Thor, but the dwarf, a follower of Thor, had to take the reins here. They spoke with an aged, squeaky, forgetful High Priestess, got permission to explore the cemetery, where the melted lock had been given a fine replacement, and found evil-smelling footprints of their quarry.

A few hints and finally an outright Knowledge check helped Rylie realize the darkness spell the golem had used to escape last time was akin to her own natural Tiefling magic. Her quarry was another tiefling.

At this point, Rylie decided to climb to the highest point around to see where the golem might have run to. Gurka dissuaded her from physically using her claws to climb the temple, and instead she climbed the steps to the top of its belfry. Then her player asked if there were trees anywhere about.

?

...

"Um... there's what looks like a sacred grove within walking distance."

"We go there."

So, yeah, this is how I GM. What do the kids want to see? OK, it's in the game.

Off they went, got a little ways in, and encountered a bunch of unhappy tree sprites. Rylie climbed a tree, but rolled badly, fell off, and got to be Gulliver-with-the-Lilliputians for a bit. I think the player just wanted to climb tonight?

Then the Druidic priestess of the grove turned up. She, too, was a Tiefling! With fiery eyes and a desire for vengeance against all that lived, for yet undetermined reasons.

Why does her evil plot involve an iron golem, normally something no druid would touch?

No idea.

A few rolls later, she had used her darkness spell to ensnare Rylie and draw her deeper into the grove and away from her companion. In the center was the golem. The druid explained that she was trying to take over the city and offered Rylie (already a Boxed Crook) a place at her side as an evil henchman.

... The player accepted.

For those who don't play RPGs, this is generally NOT DONE. 

But at the time, since this was a one-on-one game, I allowed it. Rylie murdered the dwarf NPC to seal her pact with the druid, at which point I announced that she had become evil and was now an NPC under my control. The player will be warned not to tell the other players what happened when he turns up with a new character next week and the party is asked to investigate what happened to two of the Royal Guard. I explained afterwards that, when part of a party of other players (which he wasn't at the time), Evil alignment is generally disallowed simply for the sake of cooperation. This will be key in summer, in fact, when the Summer Reading theme is Togetherness.

I pointed out that if he wants to play evil, there are other games to do it in. Warhammer and 40K is a fine choice. He expressed eagerness to try, and was surprised and curious to learn that, hey, libraries can get free Warhammer stuff now. So if he's the only taker next week again, I know what to do.

What do you do when a teenager wants to play evil?

You introduce him to gamer crack.

I am going to Recon 2023 in Kissimmee tomorrow. Next time, a convention-and-loot report!

Pre-DnD With Rookie Teens

Work, as you can probably tell from the gap between posts, has been very busy. I have a special event to plan (at least one I know about, since it's skygazing), interviews to prepare for (I'm one of the interviewers), and a whole bunch of calls and arrangements to make. I did consider painting miniature 3d printed astronauts for the program, but the first ones were too small and I dunno how many larger ones we can print in time.

I am looking forward to Recon 2023, my first wargaming convention, the last weekend of April. Provided I take enough photos and notes, I should get half a dozen posts out of it.

That said, last Wednesday was my first session of the library's new teen tabletop gaming program, which I hope I can keep going for once. It will be a mix of simple RPGs and wargames, depending on interest. Two of my coworkers will be able to back me up on the roleplaying, but I'm the only one with any interest in miniatures. I had three takers from the YouMedia teen tech lab for the first try.

The session was 90 minutes long, cutting off right at that point. (I had to be on desk, and one kid had to go home. As usual when there's a limit on these things, we had to stop midgame, but you'll see how I handled that shortly.

It was encouraging to see one of the teens bring his own dice bag.

We spent more time than I hoped in character creation. Even the cut-to-the-bone style of Play the World (describe a character, pick five to seven skills at +1 or +2) isn't intuitive to anyone who hasn't played before. Here you can see them paging through volumes of the D&D Young Adventurers' Guides for guidance. I can confirm that they help, but it still took more than a few minutes

It would have been quicker to have them select some ready-made sample characters, but there is something about the character-building process - the army-building process in wargames, too - that still feels like play. It's creation, and since these games are all about creativity, I think the time spent was worth it. I will have some prebuilt characters in future, though, for anyone who just wants to play out of the gate.

One player - the one who used Yugi-oh cards - was still a bit disgruntled that the monsters he'd randomly picked had been beyond his ability to control, so I broke out a list-by-challenge-rating from the back of my 3rd Edition D&D Monster Manual and suggested that we only pick randomly from the ones of CR1 and under. (For non-RPGers, this means ordinary humanoids and small-to-medium beasts.)

He had started out building Thor and Iron Man, before the rest of us convinced him that this game was fantasy, not supers. It still gave me ideas.

As an example of my adventure encounter design:

The "temple quarter" of our City of Adventure.

I tossed three dice onto a small sheet of paper. They just happened to land in a triangle. So I drew three temples - Thor, god of dwarves, Yavanna, goddess of halflings, and Fharlangn, god of travellers. In the crossroads is a plinth (a word I had to define for my high-school-age players) containing a stone statue that looks like Iron Man.

See? Free association for the win.

Our characters:

• Rylie Asgard, female Tiefling Bard. charisma +2, Swindle +1, Underground Connections +1, Cane Sword +2, Keen Hearing +1, Manipulation +1. Mysterious and larcenous type who we agreed had been arrested and "agreed" to join the Guard for the remission of her sentence.
• Twilight Glowstone, half-elf female sorceror. Socializing +1, Creativity +2, Distraction +1, Chaos +1, Spells +2. Cheerful, flashy magician type.
• Albertie, human sorceror/fighter with magical pack of monster-summoning cards. Archer +2, Fighter +2, Basketball +1, Music +1, Dance +1, and Actor +1. (We compromised on a popular fantasy sport to be named later, though allowing him to change these is another option.)

Twilight's pic, on back of character
sheet. I gave her player extra XP.

Once they built their characters, they all met up in the break room of what I call The Queen's Own Troubleshooters and described to them as the Royal Guard SWAT team. Their first NPC encounter was with the commander of the team:

"Imagine a Marine DI in medieval armour, shouting in your face."

I've used him before, and while he's long been nameless, I have been reading Tanya Huff's Confederation military sci-fi series this week. When I discovered Torin can also be a male name (it means "Chieftain" in Irish Gaelic) I decided to name him after the heroine, Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.

When the Yugi-oh player wandered off to talk with a friend, I decided not to wait for him. Time was pressing, and we'd already spent too much time character-building. In came the sergeant. "ON YOUR FEET, soldiers! There's an animated statue running around the Religious Quarter, HANDLE IT!"

I was gratified that one of the players stiffened to attention. Off they went, and I described their entry into the encounter area. The Temple of Thor I described as of classic church style, heavy stone and a steeple. The Temple of Yavanna was a food hall bustling with halflings, or would be if everyone wasn't hiding. And the Temple of Fharlangn was basically a coaching inn.

With a little prodding, Twilight approached the Yavannans, who looked the most welcoming and had a worried halfling out front beckoning to them. She explained that the statue on the central plinth had suddenly, inexplicably animated, and had wandered down the southeast road towards the Thorian cemetery. Rylie wandered towards the cemetery and heard shuffling and thumping noises. They investigated, and found that, on the northwest-facing side of the triangle, there was no gate. Rylie immediately squirmed under the fence (I did not allow her to use an "Underground Connections" bonus, but it was a nice try), while Twilight found the locked, iron, barred, spiked gate on the side facing the Temple of Thor. I loosely sketched it and their positions, as well as the shuffling noise of the animated statue in the far corner. They could not see it, as there were lots of headstones, sarcophagi, etc in the way.

The encounter area - the cemetery
attached to the temple of Thor.

At this point, Albertie's player returned. He was a little stunned when I announced he had been in the latrine, missed the mission briefing, and the Sergeant was now hollering at him to get down to the Religious Quarter, "ON THE DOUBLE, MISTER!"

He talked to the priest of Thor, learning more about the situation and directions to the cemetery gate. He and Twilight used magic to melt the lock. Unfortunately by the time they had it open, Rylie had crept far enough into cemetery to find the monster, and when it roared and advanced, she panicked a bit. When her spells failed to affect it, she tried using her Tiefling ability to gather darkness about her and hide, but a bad roll caused it to fizzle. So instead, she ran for the gate, just as her companions were coming through.

There was a tangled tussle, characters grappled and threw each other, and the monster kept on coming towards them. At this point, a coworker called to warn me it was time to be on desk, and the fighter's player said he had to leave.

The session ended without a conclusion as I abruptly announced that the mobile statue had suddenly spouted its own darkness spell and escaped. I then informed the players that their characters would return to base to report what had happened to their sergeant - but told them to add either a new skill at +1 or +1 to any skill, as XP. Twilight's player got two, partly for great roleplaying and partly because she'd drawn her character on the back of her mini-character sheet.

Whether they all come back next week, it was a fine test of the concept of quick-build, quick-play. It wasn't a good idea to break off mid-encounter, but we spent only about half our time on the actual adventure. I only hope the XP was enough to make them want to come back and see what happens next.

If not, I've just discovered that Florida commemorates Confederate History Month in April (!?!) and I have half a mind to run the Battery Wagner game I've been planning, with a little, ahem, pre-lecture on how black troops fought like mad for freedom and democracy...

Playtesting XD20

After weeks of coaxing and beating around the bush with the teens at work (who would generally prefer to be doing techy things in the library's tech lab) I finally got one of them to build a fantasy roleplaying character and playtest XD20 with me.

XD20 is Dragonlance author Tracy Hickman's pared-to-the-bone version of Dungeons and Dragons. This one has an interesting character sheet that focuses more on imagining the character than on determining his stats. In particular, there are three questions to answer that not only help create the character but provide ready motivations for play, and would be useful in any game. 

Once my player realized he could make anything he wanted ... he wanted to make a Yugi-Oh character. 

Now Yugi-Oh is not a game or story I know anything about. I don't go in for collectible card games. But there is something in allowing players to start with their favorite universes when devising characters. I've done it myself when creating NPCs and entire armies for Warhammer - my go-to Imperial Guard regiment was basically Bill Slim's 14th Army in 40K, complete with bush-hats and kukris custom-made by Eureka Miniatures. Stereotypes and popular culture are good for one thing - they engage the mind, providing shortcuts to the nature of personality and even images in the mind's eye.

Our hero for tonight's session is a 1st-level mage with a curious ability. He owns a magical pack of cards that summons monsters to fight for him.

I decided that the game mechanism for this would be: whenever he draws a card, a monster will be selected at random from the DnD Monster Manual, and he may use its abilities, at the cost of his magical Stat, which will fall with repeated uses. He may dismiss the monster at will, and it will disappear into a veil of magical sparkles.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a Monster Manual handy. I had Monsters and Creatures: A Young Adventurer's Guide by Jim Zub.

Now, I'm not saying this isn't an awesome book (and series!) But it does tend to focus on the larger and more dangerous critters of the DnD-verse. Read on to see.

Our hero stands outside a dark cave, which he is told contains monsters and treasure. What will he do?

He draws a card. I opened the book at random:

Before marching into the clearly dangerous cave, he had the banshee howl into it. There was nothing within, though the howl was reflected back out the cave into his ears, and a door at the back of the cave was shattered, revealing a tunnel.

Hoping to have something else investigate the tunnel, our hero summoned an:

This turned out to be a very large owlbear (did I mention I watched Grizzly the other night?), which could not get into the tunnel at all and was rather disgruntled. Our hero marched down the tunnel. He triggered an alarm trap and goblins at the other end started shooting at him. He used his backpack to shield himself, advanced to the end of the tunnel, and summoned a:

Which barely fit in the smallish cave, and automatically squashed the five or so goblins within, their nest, and their treasure. Our hero got the spoils - a bloody, messy cave and some coins which, having been mashed against the walls, were no longer legal tender.

XD20 does not do XP; the players level up when the GM says so. But I think our hero has learned some valuable lessons about using his newfound powers...!