Yesterday I started a new campaign set in my City of Bones setting, which I was looking forward to. We ran through a few basics and rolled up characters, and went straight into it; the characters were all new recruits of the local thieves’ guild, sent to complete three tests in order to become full members. Of the three tests, they choose to visit a tomb first… and in no time at all, one of them was dead, another crippled, and the Priestess and Thief carried on, encountered some skeletons, failed to turn them, and everyone was quickly cut down.
TPK.
It was a bit of a downer for all concerned, despite– overall– an enjoyable couple of hours and a good test of the ACKS rules. Afterwards, we had a discussion as to why it all went so wrong, and came to the conclusion– obvious in hindsight– that it was all down to how the players were approaching it.
We’ve been a group for a few years now, but all that time has been playing 3.5 or Pathfinder, and the players have got use to playing with those systems, with the power expansion, encounters that are often more balanced than not, certain expectations of what to do in an encounter (i.e. kill everything).
I’m use to the Old School approach of caution, preparation, fleeing to regroup and come back later; checking for traps with 10′ poles, wind-up toy dragons, and relying more on player description of a character’s actions rather than mere dice rolls; bringing along hirelings and henchmen, using tactics. My Monday night group have quickly become experts in this style of play, which is not surprising since they were all brought up playing in this way (and my dad taught me, and now he’s back playing with us, which is cool). They’re veterans really.
The Sunday group is out of practice. They’ve been wrapped in cotton wool, and not use to the harshness of Old School play. I’m thinking I should have explained it a bit more to them, but I forgot that they might not now how it worked; my fault, and a mistake I shall rectify before we start again next session in two weeks time. Really need to send them a copy of the Primer, which should help get them into the right frame of mind.
Has this happened a lot with other groups, especially with veteran gamers who have brought new blood into their Old School games? How’d you handle it, and get them to get into that frame of mind? Any advice?
Getting them used to rolling everything in order, with a mere 3d6, was a bit hard too; and amusing when I offered them the choice of rolling for hit points or having the maximum, and them opting to roll, and the fighter getting a measly 1 hit point (he went down first, and died first).
Ah well, live and learn.
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Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2012-06-22
June 23, 2012 at 03:00
[...] Old School Play, New School Thinking = TPK [...]
yle of the dead
June 19, 2012 at 23:36
Hi, I was playing the Priestess in this game. It’s something of a tangent, but I want to attack a couple of the ways Old School and New School are commonly represented. (I’m fed up with these terms already – the division in terms of playstyle seems somewhat artificial, as apart from extremes the rules don’t force you play one way or another).
First, there is the idea that New School games only rely upon dice rolls, which in my experience is not the case. For example, in a recent 3.5 game our party came upon a mine entrance in a hillside during a rainstorm. Hesistating at the darkened entrance, we saw some coins and clothing just inside the mine and the DM had the characters at the front make Spot checks. A reasonably high roll led to my character getting the impression that something was wrong. We lit a torch (using my tower shield as cover from the rain) and threw it in – and the monster lurking within (with treasure in its entrance-encompassing jaws) spat it back out.
One might say the Spot check is completely pointless – the treasure itself is a give-away. Which is true once you get the general idea that such things might exist, but not so much if you just started playing. The DM used the Spot check to draw attention to the possibilty of a problem, without just telling the players what is up. This is good for the game because it lets the players rely on the ability of their characters (which is empowering), but doesn’t take away the fun of dealing with the situation.
Thinking about this in a Old School way however, one has to throw lit torches into every cave entrance because a sensible monster might think to do away with the treasure altogether. And that’s my problem with the Old School approach, it can lead to endless delay and caution (how much is enough?). Look at the example of trapfinding in the Primer – the thief character finds a pit trap by using water from his waterskin. Nothing is reported which tips off the player that something is up (unless he is reading the DM), so is he really checking every stretch of corridor with water? It’s clever, but he’s rather lucky to perform the right action at the right time.
Second, there is an idea that Old School systems promote roleplaying, which I think could certainly be true in terms of describing what one is doing. However, the more brutal rules often found in such systems don’t tend to support thinking too heavily about a new character’s background and motivation, as they are quite likely to come a cropper. One tends to resort to archetypes which makes things feel more like a game and less like roleplaying.
In regards to this specific game (which I enjoyed quite a lot), I think our deaths were mainly caused by player error, but also by our not being calibrated to the game system. Perhaps we’ll do better next time :)
burnedfx
June 19, 2012 at 08:36
I believe it is more intuitive to play in an “Old School” manner, than it is to swallow the weird notion that the world somehow revolves around a character. For instance, two of my players are 10 and 13. They started at 8 and 11. Other than explaining general rules and such, I have never addressed “How to play Old School” with the girls.
In general the “Old School” method is the same method most of used on the playground; they same way we used our imagination as kids.
It is not so much teaching a person how to play “the right way,” but more about reminding them how they used to play as kids.
The primer you mentioned is a good step.
theskyfullofdust
June 19, 2012 at 15:08
Good points. There have been times in the past where I’ve had to remind people that, rules aside, your character can do anything, and as the DM it’s a judgement call. As a player I’m always just trying to do stuff, and letting the DM tell me what rules I need to follow to succeed (or fail).
John
June 19, 2012 at 06:16
Hi,
is it possible that they thought they could do the mission because you gave them the mission? Did they want to be thieves or did you want them to be? I just think that for a first adventure in a game I had never played before and my DM said (via NPC) “go find this thing” then I would go and find it, trusting that this first adventure would be a cakewalk.
Perhaps if you said “what do you want to do?” then they wouldn’t have known how safe the thing they picked was and approached it more cautiously.
Still, a fighter with one hit point, he is probably better off dead!
theskyfullofdust
June 19, 2012 at 07:42
Well, we did discuss how they wanted to start, and the guild was just one option and that was the one they choose. I take your point about the test, and the expectation that they could succeed; they have three tests in all, two thefts and the tomb; it was up to them which one to deal with first, and they had a week to complete everything, so they had time to retreat and regroup if necessary. But yes, giving them a mission for their first adventure does imply they can succeed easily, although they could of if they had been a bit more prepared, maybe.
Hard to tell really. We’re giving it another go, with a different start, and at least we’ve all learned from our mistakes :)
Andrew
June 18, 2012 at 20:40
Yeah, I had a similar experience, but with 2 TPKs in 3 hours…
http://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/two-tpk-in-3-hours/
theskyfullofdust
June 18, 2012 at 22:59
Two! Blimey.
fictive
June 19, 2012 at 12:49
I think I got away with it because we were “testing the new system” and not just playing to have fun, or beginning a campaign, or anything like that.
Yeah, we “tested to destruction” on that one.