The fish-tailed guard hurled his final spear and shook his fist angrily, crying “Greiff Jener!” at the escaping adventurers. This was the Chief’s fault, this is what comes from trusting air-breathers.

This is the fifth blog in a series that seeks to make underwater adventuring a little more accessible.

Previous blogs have focused on advice, rules, and encounters. This blog is the first of several that will add enemies to challenge the party in an undersea world.

Elves, Aquatic

Sea elves are distantly related to their landbound kin. They are built for swimming and have webbed fingers and toes. Their skin rangers from silvery greens to yellows and their hair is the colour of seaweed: shades of green, brown, and yellow.

Legend says they once lived on land, on an oceanic chain of island in the fey realms. During the divine war that separated elf-kind into elves, drow, and eladrin the entire island chain sunk beneath the waves, forcing the elves turned to magic to survive underwater. Over several generations, the aquatic elves spread out of the fey oceans into the mortal realm, but they are still farm more common in those extra-planar magical waters than the more mundane seas.

Independent by nature, sea elves have few dealings with other races, especially those above the waves. They occasionally have reluctant dealings with nearby tritons or clans of lacotha, but seldom initiate the interaction. They primarily interact with the cnidari, with whom they share an affinity for magic. Sea elves prefer animals to other intelligent races. Dolphins and porpoises are frequently trained by sea elves, and used as both pets and beasts of burden. Large dolphins are sometimes even used as mounts.

Sea elves can now be found on both the mortal world and the fey world, living in temperate waters. They prefer shallow stretches of salt water, and bands of sea elves are typically found in seas or along ocean coasts, living among the forests of seaweed and kelp. Sea elves are nomadic and seldom construct permanent homes. When they do make permanent homes they construct them out of living coral, growing the buildings as much as building them.

Magical talents are common among sea elves, suggesting a stronger tie to eladrin than actual elves – although many are skilled with crossbows. Many sea elves practice the specialized school of magic known as “aquamancy”, which is most potent when used underwater.

Merfolk

The savage merfolk resemble humans from the waist up, but their lower torso is that of a giant fish. There are a number of different breeds of merfolk. Northern merfolk of semi-temperate waters are pale with light coloured hair and scaled fish torso with a horizontal fluke that resembles the tails of dolphins and whales more than a true fish. Southern merfolk of tropical waters have the dusky skin and dark fair with lower bodies that resemble the tails of sharks.

The origins of merfolk have been forgotten. The oral legends of the merfolk schools tell how they have swum the oceans since their race was created. Most merfolk themselves trace their origins to the primal spirits of the world, occasionally claiming to be the primal equivalent of angels and archons. However, some schools dismiss that origin and instead claim to have been moulded by the gods, while still others claim they were sculpted cooperatively by a god and aquatic primordial. Surface humans are more dismissive, either attributing merfolk to magical experiments or making extremely obscene and crude inferences to their parentage.

Merfolk are tribal, territorial, and xenophobic. They seldom have non-violent interactions with other aquatic races. They are suspicious and untrusting of other aquatic races, and even more hesitant when dealing with air-breathers. The surface world is an alien world to the merfolk; other aquatic races can survive short periods on land but merfolk can never exit the waves. Many sailors misinterpret this caution as shyness and mermaids have been the death of more than one seaman attempting to be friendly.

Coastal waters are the most common home of merfolk schools. They prefer reefs and the base of cliffs, where they are most likely to find underwater caves. Lava tubes and the like are also used as the foundation of shelter. Merfolk are hunters by nature, but many herd fish for reliable food. Their society is often semi-permanent, migrating and moving with the seasons and following the schools of large fish and whales. They are also patriarchal, with the mermen hunters dominating the mermaids.

Merfolk rely on simple weapons, often made from whalebone, stone, or coral. Spears are a common weapon of choice, as are simple reed blowguns. They often make use of natural weapons, using toxins made from poisonous fish and sea urchin spines as darts.

Tritons

Tritons resemble scaled humans with webbed hands and large flipper-like feet. Their skin is a vibrant light blue that becomes azure scales along their feet, forearms, and along their back. Their hair comes in shades of blue and green and is frequently kept long in both males and females.

Originally from the elemental plane, tritons were a primordial experiment copying the myriad humanoid creations of the gods, just as the archons were imitations of angels. Finding the chaos of the elemental realm inhospitable (and frequently lethal) the tritons fled to the mortal world. However, some speculate that the tritons did not escape unaided and the entire race incurred a debt for their escape. Others worry that they did not truly escape and were sent to the mortal word by their primordial masters for purposes unknown.

While friendly than other undersea races, tritons are still cautions of air-breathers, and limit their dealings with those from the surface. Even when surface folk are encountered, tritons rarely kill preferring to disable, leaving their opponents drifting in open water. They are more cordial with other undersea races, engaging in trade when possible. Tritons have an affinity with other sea life, and regularly train large sea animals as mounts or guards. Most triton communities are filled with partially domesticated sea lions, hippocampi, and giant sea horses.

Living in dark depths, tritons can be found in deep seas or in oceans far from shore. Tritons farm algae in brighter waters above their home and enjoy shellfish and crustaceans, having small farms of preferred animals. They build stone castles known for their unique architecture that takes advantage of the ease of three-dimensional movement. Most triton castles have long vertical corridors and high chambers with exits on multiple levels. Tritons have a feudal society, with a king ruling over small undersea kingdom divided into duchies and baronies that have sworn fealty.

Tritons are skilled at mounted combat, and have skilled aquatic cavalry, riding hippocampi and giant sea horses into battle. Tritons also rely on enchanted conch shells to generate a number of magical effects, such as bewitching the minds of opponents, deafening them with thunderous blasts, or calling sea animals for assistance.

Next time there will be the mysterious jellyfish peoplem, the cnidari, as well as the fish people. the lacotha.And maybe a few others like giant eels and sea lions.

This is the fourth in a series of blogs, designed to help you add a little moistness to your 4e D&D game. The first half of this blog provides a few examples of layers, with rules for those provided in the previous entry of this series.

Sample Layers

Below are a few samples of how a layered encounter map might be designed.

Shoreline

This is a simple three-layer encounter location.

The top layer of these maps includes a large beach along the side of the map and increasingly deep water along the other half. The 3 squares closest to the beach are difficult terrain and do not require Athletics checks, but creatures cannot move between layers in those squares. Additionally, creatures on other layers have total cover from creatures on the shore.

As characters move farther away from the shore they begin to swim, and start making Athletics checks when they are 4 squares from the beach. Once they are swimming they can move between layers and can target creatures on other layers normally.

The second layer is smaller than the first, with a steep slope on the far right squares. Creatures in a sloped square do not sink when they fail Athletics checks. This layer is close to the sandy beach, and the movement of combat is disturbing the sediment. All squares in this layer are considered to be lightly obscured.

The third layer is only slightly smaller than the second. The water on this clear and offers no concealment. Along the side runs the rocky shore, now a vertical drop.

This third layer can be modified with such features as small underwater cave. Other layers could include terrain such as coral or seaweed.

Iceberg

This is a very simple four layer encounter

The top layer is the surface of the water, with a small iceberg exposed on the surface, along with other floating chunks of ice.

The iceberg is solid but only partially above the water, so it provides cover (but not superior cover). Moving from the water onto the surface of the iceberg costs an extra square of movement. The iceberg itself has slippery icy patches. Creatures that move more than 3 squares must make a Moderate DC Acrobatics check or fall prone.

The lower three levels are similar, all underwater with the iceberg in the middle of the battlemap. The iceberg itself blocks movement and line of sight. The only variation between layers is the size of the iceberg.

The water around the iceberg is dangerously cold. Creatures that start their turn adjacent to the iceberg take 3 cold damage per tier.

At the DM’s discretion, the iceberg could be clear in places, and thus would not block line of sight.

The iceberg could also move as the fight progresses, acting and shifting cover. If a moving iceberg strikes a stationary character they must make an immediate saving throw. If they succeed they remain on their current layer but are pushed along by the iceberg. If they fail, they are pushed down a layer.

Whirlpool

This is a more complicated four-layer encounter location.

The top layer of this map is the surface of the sea. Dominating the middle of the layer is the opening of a vortex, sucking creatures underwater.

On this layer the whirlpool is burst 5 zone, 11 squares across. Creatures that end their turn on the outer 3 squares are pulled 1 square closer to the center of the zone and slide 2 squares clockwise. Creatures that end their turn on the inner squares are pulled down a layer.

On the second layer, the whirlpool is a burst 3 zone, 7 squares across.  Creatures that end their turn on the outer 2 squares are pulled 1 square closer to the center of the zone and slide 2 squares clockwise. Creatures that end their turn on the inner squares are pulled down a layer.

On the third layer, the whirlpool is a burst 1 zone, 3 squares across. Creatures that end their turn on the outer squares are pulled 1 square closer to the center of the zone and slide 1 square clockwise. Creatures that end their turn on the inner square are pulled down a layer.

On the fourth and lowest layer, the whirlpool occupies a single square; the whirlpool does not move creatures but counts as difficult terrain.

Sample Encounter

This uses the shoreline maps. That map can easily be cropped to three wide but short battlemaps, each covering a narrow section of the shoreline.

(This encounter does use monsters from the MM1, so remember to increase their damage before use.)

Encounter Level 9 (2002 XP)

Setup

4 sahuagin guards

1 sahuagin raider

2 sahuagin priests

1 sahuagin baron

The fight starts with the sahuagin baron on the first layer, swimming but visible. The remaining sahuagin begin the fight underwater: the guards and raider on the second layer, and the two priests are on the third layer.

Tactics

The baron swims out to open water where it can use its swim speed to greater advantage, goading the PCs to come and attack. Meanwhile, the raider and guards will await below, possibly throwing their tridents to strike the PCs, and acting as living cover for the priests.

The sahuagin, knowing they will be fighting at a distance, should have brought a spare trident. The tridents also likely sink, allowing missed projectiles to be recovered as the slowly descend.

Once the PCs are in the deep water, the baron will swim down, and join its allies on the second layer.

Features of the Area

Sediment: The sand stirred-up on the second layer, and grants concealment to targets on different layers.

Terrain

Under the waves there are dangers unknown on the surface, areas of unique wildlife and locations of power.

Under the waves there are dangers unknown on the surface, areas of unique wildlife and locations of power.

Dark Water

This is an area where the foulness of the shadow realm has tainted the waters, turning them black and foul. The water is sticky and thick, making swimming a challenge.

Effect: Squares of dark water are lightly obscured and creatures with a swim speed treat the area as difficult terrain. Creatures without a swim speed take a -5 penalty of Athletics checks.

Fey Algae

Infused by the living force of the arcane world of the Fey, this resembles pond scum only much more virulent and found in any aquatic environment. It forms thick clouds that blocks vision and clings to anything that enters.

Effect: Squares of fey algae are heavily obscured. Creatures that enter or start their turn in a square of fey algae take a -5 penalty to Perception and Stealth checks and a -2 penalty to attack rolls (save ends).

Geyser Jet

Similar to a thermal vent, these periodically erupt in a torrent of scalding water.

Effect: The DM rolls a d20 at the start of each round. If the result is 9 or less the geyser erupts; creatures in burst 1 around the geyser take 5 fire and acid damage per tier.

Jelly Bloom

These are massive schools of jellyfish, sometimes thousands of the creatures, which float through the water and act as a hazard to swimmers.

Effect: Creatures that enter or start their turn in a square of a jelly bloom takes 10 lightning and poison damage per tier.

Razor Coral

This sharp-edged coral seems harmless but is sharper than polished steel.

Effect: Creatures that enter or start their turn in a square of razor coral take ongoing 3 damage per tier (save ends).

Tangle Weeds

Patches of this seaweed have been known to drown divers and snare the unwary.

Effect: Creatures that enter a square of tangle weed must make a Moderate DC Athletics or Acrobatics check or be grabbed (until escape). The escape check uses the same DC, but with a -2 penalty on the check.

Thermal Vent

These chasms send out waves of heat, and legends say they are clefts into fiery regions of the elemental realm.

Effect: When a creature enters a square with a thermal vent they take 5 fire damage per tier and the creature is pushed up 5 squares.

If the encounter takes place on a layered battlefield the creature is instead pushed up a layer.

Undertow

A side effects of powerful waves, this is an underwater current that pulls people down into deeper and deeper water.

Effect: When a creature enters an undertow they must make a moderate DC Athletics check or be pushed down 5 squares.

If the encounter takes place on a layered battlefield the creature is instead pushed down a layer.

@john_harper

You know what I’ve stopped doing? Plotting. I’ve been at this place for many years now, but I’ve recently found words to express my thoughts.

When I say plotting, I mean I’ve stopped thinking of the games I DM as somehow being my story. I move away from creating a story that my players interact with.

I do it because it causes problems.  Stop me if you’ve heard this before.  DM creates a huge, epic gllobetrotting epic.  Players look in the other direction, chasing some other detail that the DM thought was  throwaway but the PCs are absorbed by.  DM pulls out hair.

I do it because, even though 4e feels on the surface like a game that depends on massive amounts of prep-work, in the end that’s not true.  4e robustly supports a game with stronger blends of improv and set-piece encounters.

I do it because I hate secrets.  Things that I hide from the players are potential wasted; If I have good ideas, I will use them, and create surprises and interesting situations that spark interesting play.

Lastly, because story really can’t be pre-made in a roleplaying game.  Story is what  happens after we play.  Narrative is generated by our table decisions and by the roll of the dice. Our games are our stories.  The players bring characters with goals and interests and histories, and the DM presents the PCs with situations, obstacles and danger.  The DM weaves together these elements so that we can generate stories through this deft interplay in this wonderful hobby of ours.

Yes, even in 4e (there’s no roleplaying!). Here are some thoughts specific to D&D.

Death by a Million Branches

Let’s look at DM plotting at a basic level:  I am making a story but as it starts it is a railroad.  Event follows event follows event. No choices.  Your players are going to hate you and quit your game.  To prevent this, you incorporate space for the players to make choices in.  But that space you carve out of your story?  That actually adds more areas for you to potentially fill.  What to do if the players go left instead of right?  Or they choose the dark side instead of the light? Under a “must have plot” model, you are making almost endless contingencies.

Where do you stop?  How deep do you go?  There’s always a point where you make the cut, but my personal experience has been that you always make that cut-off a little later than maybe you should.

Even if all you do is generate a high level story arc, you still have all this material that may or may not be used.  You’ve created a bunch of material that may not be touched or even thought of.

All these forks and branches, and for what?  The players are only going on one path — the one they choose. You should react to that, and build along the path they provide.

Here’s the Situation

What you end up designing then are situations.  How is a situation different from a story? The fundamental difference is that a situation imposes no outcomes and presumes no choices  whereas a story must, by definition, presume actions.

Here’s a story:

The adventurers hear rumors of a dragon roaming the countryside, terrorizing the  populace.  The players are asked by the mayor of the nearest village to stop the dragon.  They take up the task and then after much searching, they find the dragon’s lair, defeat the dragons, and steal his treasure.

Here’s the situation:

There is a dragon terrorizing the populace.  The mayor the nearest village has put out fliers with a large rewards for those that seek out the dragon.

In the former, there is a nice, strong flow. This to this to that. The problem here is that the game hasn’t been played yet.  The characters can bust loose from the story in so many ways, going “off the rails” at any point.

The situation on the other hand, eliminates that possibility.  It requires the players to take actions to pursue it, and then relies on the players taking actions to complete it.  The players say “hey, I need that money!” and the adventure begins.

The cool thing about the situation is that you can generate a few for each session, based on things that have happened before and/or tossing in new situations.

But I Need My Set-pieces

“But Gamefiend,” you cry, “I love me some set-pieces. I NEED set-pieces.  I’ve got this awesome dungeon full of traps that I need to build and spring upon players.”

Me too.

But think: what is a dungeon (or any site for that matter) but a bunch of situations?  I can’t talk about dungeon design at this moment, but I think the design of a site that the players choose to go to is a pretty safe bit to work on.

I need to reinforce that I’m not saying “don’t ever prepare a game in advance”. What I’m saying is “prepare less”.  Shrink that time of building endless scenarios and plot into building the framework for you next session.

What I’m about to say next is for players, so PCs? Line up.

Plotless? Oh, I meant “Player Driven”

You may think that if you play a more traditional plotted game, I am telling you “you are an awful DM” implicitly. Not even remotely true. I am advocating a style that I’ve been using.  If you like what you’re doing, please continue, whatever it is.  If you decide to move towards more “plotless” Gming however, make sure  you know that it means your game is becoming more player-driven.

Sort of obvious, right? It is, but your players need to know what is expected of them.  I’ve had games that died because I forgot to explain to players that they are the ones making things happen and I, as a GM, am simply “master of surprises”. The players pursue goals, they pursue the things that interest them and their characters, and I do my best to make it not easy.  But if players are looking at more traditional ways of playing D&D, they are expecting me to delivering the hook, the interest, the progression, and the obstacles (note to DMs…are you doing all of that?  Are you feeling burned out? This might be why).

You’ve got to be clear that the game is about the characters do, not about what the world builds around them. You can’t have more than one or two PCs “along for the ride”.  People have to make decisions, players have to agree to not just sit in a tavern and wait for adventure to fall in their laps.  The characters need desires, they need goals. The characters need the motivation to go after these goals and see if they can overcome the challenges you put in their way.

Sounds Like Fun/Crap.

At this point I’ve either totally lost you or you are total agreement.  It could be that this style is just not a fit for your play-group, or maybe you already do this (in which case you wonder what took me so long to write this). Anyone who I haven’t alienated,  let’s talk:

How are your games already like this?

How could  you have less plot, and more story?

What tools can you use in 4e to assist you in a more free-form game?

Like always, if there is interest in the comments I will discuss this more.

The Timelords, powerful Eladrin and Fomorians, destroyed space and time during their many wars.  All possible universe and epochs are undergoing Collapse.

Uhrwerk Stadt is the last stable piece of reality left.  The timelords send the clockforged out to “rescue” representatives from all time periods and realities.  Those they find and bring (by force if necessary) are kept in the clockwork city in  a large colliseum/prison.  The Timelords send these people through time to find the Blessed Anchors that can be used to restore reality’s stability.

You have been captured by the Timelords. They are sending you on a mission to find the Blessed Anchor, freeing you from your prison just long enough to hurl you through space and time.  Can you survive your mission? Can you help heal reality’s wounds and in doing so free yourself?

To go a little farther, the Timelords pluck people out of “anachronistic realities” (i.e. out of a 4e world) or a “richly unstable reality” (you guessed it — GW).  And now we are free to mix both of these up as we see fit!

And here were the ground rules:

Create either a 2nd level 4e character or a 1st level Gamma World character.

If creating a 4e character, note there are no magic items (using inherent bonuses).

Gamma World characters get alpha mutations but do not  get omega tech.

4e characters recieve Action Points, but get no surges.  Instead, all characters use the healing rules from Gamma World.

4e healing powers heal 2d6 hit points by default instead of the normal value, and no longer require healing surges to be spent.

Here’s what we had for characters:

We didn’t get too much combat in, as we had just a few hours to play, and there was a lot of intro roleplay  going on that I didn’t want to rush.  We roleplayed out interludes of the characters last minute on their home realities before the “Clockforged” –steampowered warforged drained of sentience– came to retrieve them for the Timelords.

In the one combat we did have the characters fought Black starspawn on the portal from Uhrwerk Stadt to their mission zone.  It was interesting to see the difference in characters.  They mostly functioned the same, but a Gamma World character with an overcharged  power can do considerably more than a 4e character with even a daily and an action point could.  That’s what it felt like, but one combat is not what I would call conclusive so I’ll try to run something like this again.

I think that the concept of Uhrwerk Stadt works well to frame the colliding worlds, and with a few changes (my prison world I made on the fly was a too restrictive) could be pretty darn fun mashup that I’ll revisit soon.

Have you tried putting 4e and GW together?  How was it?  Also, would you want to hear more on Uhrwerk Stadt?

This is the third in a series of blogs on Aquatic Adventures. This article provides some needed rules for underwater combat.

Layered Combat

One of the solutions for 3D combat proposed last time was layered encounters: multiple battlemaps each focusing on a single slice of the action.

Layers are an abstraction on standard combat, ignoring precise movement and distance in favour of a simple system that is easy to run. Instead of tracking elevation for each creature, there are multiple maps all stacked vertically. This is similar to having a combat take place in several small rooms, all adjacent to each other.

Despite being separate maps, layers are still treated as the same map or location for rituals and powers that target the entire battlefield. Creatures are able to see and hear across all layers unless blocked by additional terrain.

For ease of movement between layers, it’s a good idea to number the grid for identification, like as a chessboard – or the game Battleship.

As a default, layers are treated as being approximately five squares apart.

Moving Between Layers

• Creatures must move to adjacent layers.
• A moving creature appears in a square at the same position as the one they left or a square adjacent to that one.
• Creatures with a swim speed can move between adjacent layers as a move action. They do not need to make an Athletics check to change layers.
• Creatures without a swim speed need two move actions to move between layers. They must make an Athletic check to change layers.
• Creatures cannot end their turn between layers.
• Creatures provoke Opportunity Attacks normally for leaving threatened squares.
• Forced movement that moves a creature more than five squares can instead be used to move a creature between layers. The forced movement must still obey other limits (i.e. you cannot pull a creature on the same layer onto a different layer).
• Creatures that fail three Athletics checks in a row by 5 or more sink to a lower layer.

Attacking Between Layers

• Attacking between layers does not impose a penalty on attack rolls.
• Melee and close attacks cannot target creatures on a different layer.
• Ranged and area attacks with a range of 5 or less cannot target a different layer.
• Ranged and area attacks with a range of 6 to 10 can target an adjacent layer.
• Ranged and area attacks with a range of 11 to 15 can target up to two layers away.
• Each subsequent range increase of 5 can target an additional layer.

Skills

The skills chapter of the PHB and Rules Compendium includes all the DCs for moving in water, including treading water. This section adds a few more options for skill use.

Athletics

Skilled swimmers can attempt more while underwater than the frail or unskilled.

• Immobilized creatures can still make Athletics check to avoid sinking; they cannot move but can still tread water.
• A creature that does not move or make an Athletics check sinks 1 square at the end of its turn.
• If a creature succeeds on an Athletics check to swim by 10 or more, it does not need to spend an extra square of movement for the first square it enters.

Endurance

Only the hardy can withstand the crushing pressure of the deep sea.

Action: A free action made at the start of a creature’s turn

DC: The DC is based on the type or pressure. DC 15 for light pressure and DC 22 for heavy pressure.

Success: A creature can ignore the effects of deep sea pressure for the encounter.

Pressure

Water is heavy, and without magic the pressures of being deep underwater can crush an unprepared diver.

There are two types of pressure: light pressure and heavy pressure. In the open sea, light pressure is between 100 feet and 500 feet underwater (20 squares to 100 squares), while heavy pressure is 500 feet or more underwater (over 100 squares).

• In areas of light pressure, creatures without the aquatic keyword take a -2 penalty to Perception checks and all Dexterity-based skill checks.
• Light pressure can be ignored for an encounter with a DC 15 Endurance check.
• In areas of heavy pressure, creatures without the aquatic keyword take a -5 penalty to Perception checks and all Dexterity-based skill checks.
• Heavy pressure can be ignored for an encounter with a DC 22 Endurance check.
• Effects and abilities that permit breathing underwater do not bestow the ability to ignore pressure.
• Effects and abilities that remove penalties for underwater combat bestow the ability to ignore pressure.
• Creatures without the aquatic keyword that move from a depth with no pressure to heavy pressure (or the reverse)  in less than one minute, take damage equal to their bloodied value and are deafened (save ends).

Falling & Sinking

In many ways, sinking is falling, only slower and with no damage.

• Creatures sink 1 square at the end of their turn.
• If a creature fails an Athletics check to swim by 5 or more they sink.
• Immobilized creatures must still make Athletics checks to swim or they sink. Failure or success does not end the immobilized condition.
• Grabbed creatures do not sink unless the grabbing creature chooses. They can still choose to make Athletics checks to tread water.
• Grabbing creatures can either chose to sink with a grabbed target, make a single Athletics check to tread water for itself and the target, or use the target’s Athletics check.
• Restrained creatures do not sink, unless the DM rules the individual power does not prevent sinking. This does not end the restraining condition.

Next Time

On the next blog in this series I will provide a couple sample layers and additional terrain to use in underwater adventures.

How can this be, you say?  4e combat takes entirely too long, we need to speed it up! But do we?  More importantly, what are we trying to speed up? I’m going to address what I believe makes 4e combats take a while, but first I want to talk about what is not going to help you out.

Procedural tricks don’t save you nearly the sort of time you want.  There are many great tricks for running combats more efficiently, but let’s face it — these don’t  shave that much time do they?  They’ll save a little time, but I’ve yet to try one that offers notable speed improvements.  Note that procedural tricks don’t combine well for ultimate efficiency; I can’t use three different methods for running a combat to cut the combat time in half.

Combat will also not get much faster with most rules tweaks you do.  There is the classic halving tweak (half hit points of combatants), but in practice all that does is de-stabilize your game.  4e is built with certain hit point totals in mind, the whole game is built on a particular tempo of attrition.  You change that and you break up that tempo.  I’ve played with this rule several times and found it always lacking.  You can add more action points but that doesn’t quite do it either; action points are actually subordinate to accuracy so only certain party compositions can abuse action points enough to  make a considerable dent in the overall combat time.

So by my reckoning, trying to prune your procedures doesn’t work, rules tweaking doesn’t really work…what does speed up 4e combat?

Knowledgeable players.  Players who know the system well enough to make decisions quickly.  This is the only thing that I’ve seen make combat go fast in practice. When players come in with game plans and high system knowledge, they tear through combats.  Playing at GenCon’s D&D tournament 2 years ago with Mike Shea, his wife and Jake Fitch, we tore through multiple combats in around a half-hour.  We knew what we wanted to do tactically, we knew the system very well, we came we saw, we almost conquered.  Why we didn’t actually win is a whole other article, but can be summed up as this: the encountered we ran out of time on introduced variables that slowed our decision process and also introduced variables to eat up precious game time. But half-hour combats are totally do-able if you are “pros”.

But that’s not what you wanted to hear is it?  An RPG shouldn’t be about system mastery if you don’t want it to be right?  I’m all about system mastery in games I play but I actually don’t want to enforce that mindset on my players.  People play for all sorts of reasons, and for many people who are completely awesome to game with, this is not a goal they keep in mind.  I support their right not to know the system inside-out and to enjoy the roleplay more than the “game”.  I know I’m not alone with this viewpoint.  So what are we supposed to do?

The first thing to understand is that 4e’s default speed of “slow” during combat is actually a feature, not a bug.  4e combat is created from the ground up to be very tactical;  It offers more meaningful choices per round than any other game out there.  Where do I move this turn? What impact does that move have on my group’s turn? How do I spend that minor action, if at all?  Which of my multiple powers will I use for my standard and what effect will that poewr have on the fight and my group?  The list gets even more subtle and muanced than that, but my point remains: There’s a lot of stuff to decide each turn.  And that decision cost is where your time goes.  This is why tables full of experienced players go significantly faster than tables full of new players –the experienced players make better decisions faster. But let’s take a further step and we can see that games with Essentials characters also move more swiftly. In this case it is because the classes tend to offer less choices  per turn (not true of all the classes), so it speeds up the decision-making process.

Again, because 4e is designed to give choice, this isn’t something I would label a “bug” or “flaw”, though it does create problems for sure.  Recognizing this, we can see though that ultimate reason for slowdown is people making choices.  Now we can just people on time limits, but I file that under “procedural trick” and note that it just tends to encourage poor, time-constrained decisions which cost time because you have to make choices later to correct the rushed choices you made earlier.

I feel a little bit that this is something that WotC has steered us wrong on with fight design in the past,  only now starting to correct it in their more recent adventure design.  Older adventures were just brutal gladiator pits of fight after fight after fight. Story existed, but it was assumed that the story was mostly going to advance through fighting, encouraging the notion that 4e is all fighting all the time.  But 4e actually works better with fewer, better designed fights.

It is in fight design that we will actually create speed within our fights.  Encounter design is key.  We can’t make every player a 4e jedi master able to instantly move on his turn with the best choices, but we can build encounters that offer them improved situational choices that increase the speed of the combat.  Hey, I notice I can trigger a mini-avalanche and bury those henchmen in it…In the far corner there is an orb reanimating these skeletons…If I put my sword in the fire I can make it a flaming sword for the encounter…

The point is that you’re putting accelerants into the combat with a minor opportunity cost (don’t make it too hard or players are going to go back to their old standards) to make combat more interesting and also faster. Trust me, the characters are going to remember the time they leapt inside a water elemental to attack the creature’s “heart”, doing critical damage each time (true story, and fun fight).

Accelerants can be environmental effects such as terrain, but they can also be great places to work in off-the-cuff situational advantages. A player successfully bluffs a stupid ogre as a minor action and gets a chance to make his next attack versus the ogre’s will instead of AC.  Speaking the proper sacred blessing (successful religion check?) removes the insubstantial keyword from a ghost.

Where accelerants in your encounter can go wrong is having too many moving parts.  The temptation is to make it so a perception check needs to actively be made (or having high passive perception), then 2-3 steps must be taken to unlock the accelerant, then you can start using it. If you design something with this many (or more) steps, make sure it ends the fight and make it clear that it will do so! Otherwise, players will stick with the “safe” choice.  I find the best way to add such elements is to tie them into something the players are going to do anyway ( first successful attack notices something, or a character enters an area) and then abuse the heck out of minor actions.  Making a character spend 1-2 minor actions to activate your special terrain is the sweet spot. If a character really wants to do it right now, he can spend multiple actions to get it done. Otherwise he can take a standard action and not feel as if he’s “missing out”.

The next thing we’re going to do is build outs.  I’ve seen many different morale systems, but I think rather than leaving it to chance, you only need to determine a threshold for which combatants leave the fight.  A dragon may fly away when it reaches 3/4 of its hit points, or a group of soldiers may break when they are  halved in number.  Just determine the threshold and use it.  Morale can be done as the monsters fleeing, or what I like to do is a “finishing sequence”; the characters reach that threshold and then I ask them to describe how they mop up.  Players dig taking control of the scene for this and you get some interesting RP out of it. When you alternate that with just having monsters turn tail and flee, you get to keep the threat of all your monsters for most of the fight while getting rid of that ending standoff dance that sometimes happens.  I recommend setting your threshold for monsters leaving at about 3/4 of total strength.  Less important fights can have a  higher threshold, as you just want the “feel” of the fight anyways, not to run the whole thing in full.

This post is already ballooning in size, so I’m going to stop here.  I encourage you to share your thoughts, questions, and complete disagreement with me though.  Have you used these methods in your fights? Do you use other methods to speed up fights?  How well do they work?

First, I will speak about what I didn’t do:  closely review the adventure. This is relevant because this encounter was brutal.   I think it was even more savage than first encounter in the Dark Sun Encounters.  Surprise round hilarity and monsters capable of doing solid damage in bursts equals  a ridiculously  strong encounter.  Had I taken a more in-depth look and passed thee encounter through my sanity filter, I could have been more prepared to deal with it, toning the encounter done or leaving other mechanisms in place to make it easier to deal with. I didn’t though, but I was forced to improv a solution in the form of a dwarf.

The “pre-encounter” involved the players meeting a dwarf mage named Rallo.  He spoke with the players when their foes interrupted with an attack, and he was still standing  near the end of the encounter.  Rallo had no powers or abilities statted out, so was really just there to get beat up by monsters.  In round two I realized the players where getting ready to go down so I executive-decisioned that rallo would have powers, specifically, a one-shot auto-heal to help the players out.  This worked really well, as in the fourth round all but one player was face down in the sand. Rallo dramatically called for the players to not give up, and spread arcane healing energies over them.  This one surge was all that the players needed, and the PCs rose from near defeat to victory.   It was a tense situation that everyone enjoyed.  I was able to do it seamlessly so that it felt like something Rallo could do.

Tip: Take Ownership of Fun

This brings me to a point:  via the magic of the internets, I saw that a lot of people were pretty sore at WotC for that encounter.  There weere a lot of TPKs off of this encounter.  To that I say….take ownership.  If you are running a game, you are the CEO of fun at that period of time, not WotC.  I understand that the encounter was a touch unbalanced, but there are ways that you can make that encounter fun for everybody.  You try a solution like mine, or what about selling the TPK?  A dramatic, mournful finish can soften the blow of character death.  I’ve seen pickup games  where the GM killed all the PCs and concluded with “Ok, that’s over. Sorry guys!”  To me that’s just a wasted opportunity.  Even a TPK has a chance to be awesome.  Have the players discuss last thoughts of the characters.  Describe the consequences of the failure; what happened to the world now that the players aren’t there?  Make their passing felt.  Even though the players died that death will still have meaning and still be dramatic and awesome.

Whatever you do, don’t just accept what’s going on around you.  Don’t say “there’s nothing I can do!”  Of course there is!  As GM, you have access to the pulleys and levers.   Pull the right ones to make the game mean something.

As always, I run Encounters at Myriad Game’s Salem Store.

This game started with one returning player (hey Bob!) and three new players.  Two are totally new to 4e and one of them is an enthutiastic newcomer to roleplaying in general. Wooo, new people!  Everyone except the one returning player is pretty new to Dark Sun; I take a second to explain what Athas is like then sketch the basics of 4e to those new to the system.

We start with the Fleeing the Wastes skill challenge. I pose the question:  ”What are you doing to survive?” I then tell them to flip over their sheets.  No looking at your skills! I won’t let anyone look at his character sheets, but talk briefly with each player about what his characters do within the bounds of class or personality.  We get some really good answers, answers that I know we wouldn’t get when players are trying to match their best skill to the challenge.  Skill challenges are boring when you think of them in terms of what skills to use; skill challenges are exciting when you think in terms of what you want to do in the story.

One of  the new players, using Castri the elven ranger, keys right in on the nature-loving aspect of the ranger, tracking birds to lead them to an oasis.  The group only acquired one failure when the Barcan the sorcerer failed to channel the stars for answers.

After surviving the wastes, the adventurers find themselves face to, uh…flame? with a flame spirit.  They of course do the adventurer threat-test. “Does this thing want to kill us?”  After vetting the creature’s

non-desire to kill or eat them, the players speak with it.  With no voice, the spirit must speak by using shooting gouts of flame to fuse sand into letter-shaped pieces of glass.

Which of course brings me to the question I asked each player:  Can your character read? This is of course completely off track and not at all asked for in the adventure, but I think this detail helps players invest in who the characters are. Polling them, they decide that the gladiator and ranger cannot read, but the sorceror and the ardent can, leaving the pair to translate these glass runes.

After learning from the flame spirit of the Green Age (a time where Athas was lush and verdant), the conversation fades off a bit. A bit of banter back and forth gives the players a little history lesson, but I think that the lack of familiarity with the format –was this the one encounter? Where is it? Should we move on? — keeps the group from pressing into anything deep withe the elemental.  They aren’t sure what to make or do with this mini-encounter, so time to move on to the fight! The flame spirit dissappears and the kanks — giant Athasian desert beetles — attack, presumably drawn by the flames.

The combat goes well for the players.  Being new doesn’t prevent the player using Castri the Ranger from rolling incredibly well and dealing some insane damage. The kanks definitely threaten the players, but no one drops.  The two new players have a lot of fun, and I think that we might have some newly converted 4e players!

Tip: Narrate Combat

Something I do that I believe increases fun and makes pickup style games such as Encounters incredibly “sticky” is to invest heavily in combat narration.

What’s more fun?

“You hit for 24 damage.  The kank is bloodied.”

or

“The kank grabs at you with its pincers. You weave under the attack, and catch your weapon in its soft spot,drawing blood.  24 damage and the kank is now bloodied.”

I know which I would rather hear, and I know which players like better. The latter provides texture that players want to see and in my experience enjoy.  If you’re not narrating the combat, you need to start!

Here are some tips from starting.

• Use Your Body You don’t have to improv verbally.  It can be just as exciting, sometimes more exciting, to show  the players how the enemy ducks, lunges, calls forth ancient spirits, and dies as it is to describe it.  Don’t be afraid to just act out what’s happening.
• Ask your Players Don’t be afraid to ask your players what they do, but don’t let their participation decide whether there will be description in combat.  A player may not have anything in mind, even though they delight in what you describe.  Always give players a chance and encourage them to participate in describing combat, but keep the description going no matter what. Sometimes players won’t be used to this, but by the end of the session they’ll get into it.
• Action-Reaction If you’re at a loss to describe what happens, keep in mind the basic narrative element for an action scene.  Action, then Reaction.  What does the player do?  How does the enemy react to that?  If you ask your players what happens, then you’ve already got the first half.
• Keep it Short Don’t narrate for a minute for every miss and hit. Always go for impact over detail. I would say to definitely give the least time to misses, because you can alway turn them later (see below).
• Slow it Down Give turns where something big happens more emphasis in your narration.  When a player criticals or deals a lot of damage, talk it up.  If a monster does the same, give the monster a little descriptive love.
• Turn it Around Remember how I said to downplay misses?  It’s best to downplay misses so you can turn them around when big things happen.  If a monster misses and a player then scores a critical against that monster, you can then turn that miss into an event that leads into that huge critical.  If a character misses with an attack, then spends an Action Point to hit with a daily, the former becomes a setup to latter.

What tips do you have for making exciting running narrative for your combats?

Starting a Game

How to get a game started?  Pretty easy.  There’s already a ton of gamers on wave, so the process is simple.  Find the public wave “An Index of Wave-borne RPGs” and announce your game.  After you do that, invite some people.  Encourage them to invite people. You may consider making your wave public so people can stumble into it.  The warning here is that wave has absolutely no access control.  I personally don’t think of it as a problem at this stage, but when wave goes live, you’ll definitely want to think twice before opening a wave up to the general populace.

In general though, treat a wave like a party.  Once you’ve got the “venue” set up, get people over and have them bring people.  Not everyone can play, but you’ll have a built in audience to your wave who you can involve in other ways.  Having an active audience allows you to call in for replacements of people who have likely followed along with your story and can quickly get up to speed.  It also lets you do som interesting audience participation.  More on that later.

Four Waves to Rule Them All

I talked about setting up a “venue”.  What does that entail?  Well, you want to make a folder for the game, and then you will create four waves and place them in the folder.  Keeping any and all of your games compartmentalized like this will preserve your sanity and make overall work a snap.

The four waves you want to create are:

• an OOC (Out Of Character) wave –”Name of your Game OOC”. Here is where you can handle recruitment, character creation, and table talk for your game
• a reference wave  –”Name of Your Game Reference” Here you can place more background on your world and story, any houserules you use…think of it as a “style guide” for your game.
• The main IC (In-Character) wave –”Name of your Game” This is where the meat of your story is going to live.  All in-game posts go here.
• Combat Wave –”Name of your Game Combats”.  If you are using mapboard images, I’d suggest keeping another wave to hold them all.  Just place the title of the fight and the map you are using in a wavelet for each fight, and refer to that for fights in the main wave.

Dice

Let’s get to the crunch.  Any 4e game needs  dice.  Wave allows you to insert gadgets and bots into your waves, and surprise, some intrepid geeks have already built some bots for you.  Personally, I don’t like how bots work in general on wave.  They’re slow.  I attribute this not to the bot writers themselves but to the platform itself.  Wave is sort of buggy, but that’s what beta/preview implies.

What I’m doing at the moment is using invisible castle and having players insert the link  into their posts.  It’s simple, clean and works well.

If you’re dying for a bot though…may I suggest randomleetwenty@appspot.com ?  He’s a pretty cool little bot.

Combat

This is the elephant in the room, isn’t it?  For 4e in particular, where the game assumes a battlemat of some kind, you need to have something to use.  One of my buddies and players, Dan over at Save vs Geek, is working on an incredible gadget, Fighty.  Fighty will let you use Google Maps technology to make a “live” battlemap right in your wave.  We’ll be testing it out in at least one of the games we’re running, but until it is ready for public consumption, let’s assume the following options:

Gridless, pure narrative. I actually have something written up for this, but I cannot disseminate it to you quite yet.  Yes, I am annoying in that way, but please be patient.  You can certainly do this on your own though.  Just make sure the players are cool with it since you can  change the behavior of the rules dramtically. Certain powers can become very good and others, not so much. To keep confusion to a minimum concerning placement and positioning, use the napkin gadget that comes default with wave to draw quick diagrams. Until Fighty is ready for use, this is what I’ll likely be doing.

Numbered grids in Combat Waves. You could insert this into your main wave, but I suggest that you have a separate wave in which you keep all of your battlemaps. Numbers across, letters running down, and you’ve got something you can use.  If you put the map in your IC wave, you will have to keep scrolling up and down to move the combat along.  That is irritating.  If you have a seperate combat wave, you can have two waves up simultaneously (tip: Ctl-click on a wave to open multiples) and then you can track the positions on one wave while tracking the combat narrative in another wave.  Much easier and much less irritating.

At any rate, assume that after combat you are going to clean up all the mechanical “mess”, leaving only story behind.  Feel free to ask whatever is needed to run the combat because it’s easy to clear it out of the way.  No matter which method you use, you should have a narrative thread full of spells cast and swords clashed.  If you use action tags, it will be even easier.

Action Tags

There’s a lot more to post about how to maintain your game, but first I want to mention action tags.  This is a great way to reference mechanical, rules bit of your games in a way that’s easy to transfer into narrative.  Think of an action tag as  embedded “game talk”. Use an action tag by inserting the mechanic bit in a pair of square brackets like so: [Perception:26].

What does this do for you?  Well, it lets you turn that reference from game speak to narrative.  I used this example previously, but I’ll use again in its full context. In “Revenge of the Waves” we had the following:

Primus leaps astride the nearest giant and shifts back into his humanoid form. The warforged picks through the giant’s clothes with care, looking for any sign of anything strange or out of the ordinary. [Perception 26]

Which became:

Primus leaps astride the nearest giant and shifts back into his humanoid form. The warforged picks through the giant’s clothes with care, looking for any sign of anything strange or out of the ordinary. He sees some unusual markings along the neck of the leader, a strange glyph branded into the flesh. Primus also makes note of the scraps of metal plate adorning his shoulder and intended to be armor of some kind. It is the same brand of metal that the blade is made of.

There’s no need for a seperate post telling the player what they saw — just edit the post in-line!

Returning to combat, action tags are useful as well.

Khalil roars, then releases his frostbreath on the goblins [I'm hitting the goblins in b3, b4, and c4...roll 15,20, and 21 respectively, 10 damage].  He raises his spear and prepares for his next assault.

This becomes:

Khalil roars, then releases his frostbreath on the goblins. Two of the wretches freeze mid-warcry, while the last uses his comrades as shields.  The goblin snarls and brandishes his sword with renewed relish as Khalil raises his spear and prepares for his next assault.

Magical.

Color-coding

Another tip to help you manage the chaos that is wave:  Color code your players text and your own.  Choose a (non-black) color for your DM text, and have each player choose a color for their character.  Whenever you are posting in the in-game wave, each participant uses that color.  Black is the default, non-game color so you can make your action tags black, or people in your audience can quickly comment.  When you go back for maintenance later, you can pretty much eradicate everything in black as soon as you see it.

Pruning

This is the most important thing.  Your game is not going to look great and read well the first time through!  Set aside a time, whether it’s once a scene, once a day, or once a week, and edit out any non-story text.  You can also use this time to clean up grammar or spelling.  Snip snip.

Don’t give any thought to your OOC wave.  That is general gabber and is meant to be noisy.  Focus all your energy on keeping you IC wave nice and free of mechanics cruft.

Schedule

Because a wave is non-linear, setting a posting schedule that works for everyone is much easier.  If someone gets busy and falls behind, you can always leave him in the background in a scene.  He can catch up and insert his posts later.

If you are a late-comer to a scene though, don’t make everything warp around what you’re doing.  It’s your job to fit what you are writing into what is already there.  You need to fit yourself into what everyone else already did, not change what happened entirely.

Since a wave can run like a chatroom as well with it’s live updates, consider scheduling times with the players to chat in realtime to resolve combats or handle dialogues.  That will keep the game moving at a pretty brisk pace.

Audience Participation

Two great things about having extra people that are not playing in your wave are:

• You have possible replacements if a player no longer wants to participate.
• You can illicit comments and votes on story decisions from the audience.

If you want to get crazy, you can let the audience decide an NPC’s reaction to the player’s plea for help, or what’s behind that rock.  The possibilities are endless.

Can I Has Waves?

Those are the tips I have for you now.  I’ll have more for sure.  Tomorrow, I will tell you how you can get a wave invite of your very own. Stay tuned!

Want to speak to me on wave?  quinn (dot) murphy (at) googlewave (dot) com.  I’m mostly harmless.

Special Thanks to the PCs in my “Revenge of the Waves” game, as a game without good players, err…sucks. You’ve kept it fun, and I expect more of the same.

Aaron Broder (Allgeektout)

Asmor (Encounter-a-Day)

Dan Clery (Save vs Geek)

Ethan Duty(At-Will )

Wyatt Salazar (Spirits of Eden)

I’m not here to tell you that it will change everything (it will) or that you should get on immediately (you should).  I’m here to tell you that wave can let you play the most incredible play by post style games you can think of.  Unable to keep a schedule for face to face games, or having difficulties with getting people together in the first place?  Wave is your friend.  Like the thought of a play-by-post or play-by-email 4e game, but can’t reconcile the implementation of such games?  Wave is also your friend in this.  It’s going to change everything (didn’t I say I wasn’t going to say that?)including the way we play.

What’s a Wave?

Let’s start with the most fundamental bit.  What’s a wave?  Is it chat? Is it e-mail?  Is it a wiki?  Is it a forum?

Yes.

Really, if you’re not tuned into the exact nature of what a wave is, do yourself a favor and check this out. I’ll wait.

This is a gaming blog, so let’s fast forward and talk about what a wave can do for your game.  Why is it better than doing a play-by-post game?  What makes it so special?  Why is gamefiend frothing at the mouth?

I’ve no answers for you on the frothing, though last I checked it was some sort of condition.  What makes wave so damn special? That, I can tackle.

I’m running one wave game now (“Revenge of the Waves” if you’re on wave), and looking to start another soon.  Here is what I’ve learned from a few weeks of pretty heavy immersion.

A Wave is Non-Linear, but Sequential

You know how a play-by-post (PbP) runs.  The GM posts something, then players post,  the GM responds, players post.  Even though stories are sequential, a linear medium like a forum or an e-mail or even a chatroom fits like a poorly-tailored jacket on your story’s sequence.  It works, but the shoulders droop, the sleeves are a little too long.  The logistics always involve some basic form of time travel unless you are stalking your thread/game with utmost vigilance. You either have to write in micro clips to let other people hop in, or write large blocks of text to cover every. fricken. contingency.  It makes the process of telling the story a non-fluid affair.  I’m not saying that PbP is bad –I’ve done it and enjoyed it — but it does have its limitations.

Now imagine that when the GM posts, you can post a comment from your character within the scene.  Or when your character talks, the GM can interleave the NPC’s response in shape to your dialog.  The shape of the game is completely different.  You’re no longer looking at call and response.  You have a persistent yet fluid gaming experience.  GMs and PCs can put their responses and actions where it is appropriate instead of where it has to be by the nature of the medium.

It looks something like this:

The blue text is the GM.  The players wrote their posts earlier that day, and I came in and inserting my posts in later.  Imagine that in a play by post.  I would have to do some wrangling of text just to reply, and I could never really get that naturalistic flow that wave allows me so easily to have.

When you tear down the scaffolding and read it later, it reads just like the story you were trying to create.

A Wave is Story Scaffolding

As excited as I get about the non-linear nature of a wave, what really revs me up is this:  A wave is easy to edit. Wonderfully, spectacularly easy.  Double click in a post and select edit, and there you are.  Why is this important?  well, for starters, never forget that the prime goal (past having fun) for a game is to tell a story.  What gets in the way of a story? The rules.  What do we need often to tell a good story?   The rules. A typical PbP is littered with the artifacts of the rules, interspersed between otherwise compelling bits of character dialogue and storytelling.  Wouldn’t it be nice if that could just…disappear?

It can.  I’m going to cover conventions for running your own wave game later, but for now take a look at this:

Primus leaps astride the nearest giant and shifts back into his humanoid form. The warforged picks through the giant’s clothes with care, looking for any sign of anything strange or out of the ordinary. [Perception:26]

Standard example of what you might expect to see, correct? But ten seconds in google wave turns that into:

Primus leaps astride the nearest giant and shifts back into his humanoid form. The warforged picks through the giant’s clothes with care, looking for any sign of anything strange or out of the ordinary. He sees some unusual markings along the neck of the leader, a strange glyph branded into the flesh. Primus also makes note of the scraps of metal plate adorning his shoulder and intended to be armor of some kind. It is the same brand of metal that the blade is made of.

I saw the skill the character was trying to use (Hi Asmor) and transformed that into the results of the roll. As a GM, I can go back and interpolate the results of a skill check and transform it into narrative. With active pruning of your scenes, there is no trace of a game, even though you used a game to get to the story.

You can use this “scaffolding” around the structure of your story and tear it away so all that’s left is for people to witness the beauty of your story.

And it gets better.  “What if I want to see something that gets deleted later?”  Wave has a nifty playback feature that lets you examine the history of a wave from beginning to end.  Every wave is a miniature Wayback Machine.

I hate to mash metaphors together, but if you really want to make a strong use of waves, you also need to understand that a wave is a draft.

A Wave is a Draft

How self-referential is that?  Writing a wave is like the writing process itself?  It’s a touch strange but it’s really true. A wave is never “done”.  While you may go back and add an extra e-mail or post on a forum to clarify or add detail, you can’t change what you put out there.  What’s sent was sent, so you better do all your fact-checking and response totally up front, because you cannot change what you did once you hit “send” or “submit”.  If you’ve got a blip, you can change it at any time.  If you can change it at any time, why not make it the best it can be?  If you don’t make it perfect at first, go back and make it better.  If you have all this game rule jargon cluttering up your nice scene, chop it out.

The way that your wave starts is most certainly not the way your wave has to end.  The final product should be a fine piece of story that you and your players created.  You can expect to go through a revision process and strip what doesn’t need to be there.  My players and I refer to the process as pruning, and is basically a semi-regular maintenance.  Waves can get messy, so you must maintain a basic vigilance in making sure they are what you want.  Revise, revise, revise.

Running a Wave Game

“Blah blah blah, gamefiend.  How do I run a game in wave?”

First you have to be on wave. Once you’ve conquered that, it’s pretty easy…and also something I’m going to cover in Part 2.