2d6 Damage

Dante's recent post on the appropriate amount of damage a thrown mug could inflict reminded me of a time back in our college days of gaming.

During a break one night, some of the guys were flinging dice around the room out of some golf locks they had found at Walmart. Surprising to us all, the walls of the room were not immune to thrown weapons, and a diamond shape was imprinted on the wall from the corner of a d6, and a second d6 had left a small mark.

We all appreciate how much damage we can do in-game by rolling our dice, we should also raise awareness of how much damage dice can do to us. We've all all seen the warning-d4-can-damage-your-foot shirts. We need to take it a step further. Maybe we should consider a warning-thrown-d6-can-scar-your-drywall cross-stitch sampler. Or a warning-multitude-of-d20's-on-the-floor-can-be-as-slippery-as-marbles poster.

If we don't tell the world how much damage our polyhedrals can do, who will?

Behind the Screen: The Great Tavern Mug Debate...

Well... it wasn't exactly great... but even still this scenario did cause a bit of contention within our group and it illustrates an excellent example of how impromptu DMing can sometimes cause some issues.

What happened:

Well, to put it succinctly... one of our player characters (Bat Loaf, I believe) did something uncouth in a tavern and started a fracas. In the resulting fray, one of the patrons blindsided The Loaf with a thrown beer mug.

Since this was taking place outside of initiative, I simply arbitrarily selected an amount of damage (2d6) and applied it upside Bat Loaf's head. Someone noticed the die roll, since I was excited and didn't hide it all that well and it caused some discussion as to whether or not the damage was subdual and how I picked 2d6.

The Resulting Argument:

The argument that someone was trying to cause harm was easily enough won, but there was a lot of discussion about how much damage a thrown, broken beer mug would cause. If I remember correctly, there was a certain measure of punishment involved in selecting that much damage for such a mundane thing, however if you think about the breaking glass and resulting shards it might've been somewhat close to correct.

After a few iterations of hearing the tried and true "you're the DM and you can do what you want but..." argument, I think we compromised by backing off the damage a bit. Has anyone else experienced momentary gaffes relating to situational damage when you've been made to create something on the fly?

Let's hear some stories... it always pleases me to read others sharing in my pain!

Some Things are Inevitable

With my crazy work schedule right now, the creativity has been sucked out of my brain. So, I've been going back through my archives to find stuff that I intended to post and never finished.

Sometime last year, Yax posted a list of things which are inevitable. Here's my list of additional laws:

1. The DM will unveil a significant plot hook at the end of the night when everyone has had too much sugar/caffeine to have sufficient attention span to retain said important plot elements.
2. The DM will roll dice for no reason.
3. The wizard will either die early in the epic battle, or he will outlive everyone else and take down the Big Bad with a 1st Level spell.
4. When characters have money to spend, they won't be in a town with a sufficient marketplace to find what they want to buy. When they are in a town with a good market, they won't have money to spend.
5. When you really need to roll well, your dice will betray you.
6. When players choose to cooperate with the DM and follow what they assume is the expected path, it will never be the path the DM wanted them to take.
7. The one time the party doesn't have a rogue is the one time they need one.
8. Ditto for a cleric.
9. When you finally find some awesome treasure, it will either be: a) useless to everyone in the party, like a cloak only usable by an outsider, or b) cursed, but no one in the party has a Remove Curse spell.
10. You will stumble across undead when no one has any undead-appropriate spells memorized. (This may be related to #8).
11. After you have finished equipping the party with mounts, you will suddenly be required to travel by sea on a boat that cannot accommodate your horses.
12. The one time it would be useful to have a bird scout ahead, the ranger will forget s/he has an owl for an animal companion.
    

Why must this always happen?

Yesterday, I was informed that the Hollywood sludgebucket has struck again. This time, their mark is one of the more charming movies ever to take on the topic of artificial intelligence gone wrong... Short Circuit.

Filmstalker reports that they intend to remake this movie, with some of the original cast returning but they don't say who... either way, I am not optimistic.

What's this got to do with gaming, Dante?

Well... on the surface, not much. However, once I started exploring why I was upset about this news I started thinking about a few things relating to gaming. Several members of our group were present during one of our more successful campaigns, and many times since then I have been tempted to do an additional chapter... a new campaign with some of our old favorite characters.

Whenever I bring up this topic among those players, it usually meets with mixed results. Sometimes they are excited about the prospect of revisiting their old characters and taking them on new adventures. I think this same motivation forces movie execs to think that this type of film remake is a good idea... on the rare occasions where its not all about the money, I am sure that it is done out of a desire to take these (sometimes) classic characters out for another spin.

Vanir often plays the counterpoint that things are never as good the second time around. I have to believe that this sentiment is true in most of the cases... it can never be as good the second time around, film remakes involving good chemistry and great characters often fall flat, and things like this are never a good idea.

But the notion sure is fun. There's a certain part of me that really hopes Hollywood comes to its senses before they go all Planet of the Apes on this thing, but I'm fairly certain they won't. Oh well, chalk another up to economics. *sigh*

My belated introduction to D&D Miniatures...

Over the weekend, SR and I hosted a houseguest in one of my old college buddies, Boyle. He brought with him this magnificent trio that you see (parts of) above, along with the rest of his collection of D&D Miniatures to show me.

Wow, you're late to the party, Dante.

Why yes, yes I am. I had originally purchased a starter set of miniatures when they first came out because I wanted them to augment my D&D campaigns with. Unfortunately, money was tight and I didn't end up getting too many that were directly applicable to my setting so I threw them quickly back into the starter box where they resided for many years.

Luckily, when Boyle produced his miniatures it was exactly two days after I had recognized that starter box in the top of my closet and made note of it, so down it came and before long we were creating our parties and having some fun.

It was better than I anticipated!

I'm not going to lie... when I first got the miniatures a few people tried to convince me to play the game that goes along with it and I rejected that idea on the premise that I knew the D&D combat rules and anything based on that was probably far too complicated for me to actually ENJOY. Could I play it? Probably, but rules lawyering is a pursuit best left for SR as she enjoys the ancient art of being right.

Boyle is one of my dearest friends, and I could never tell him that I wouldn't at least try it... besides... there were adult beverages involved so it couldn't be that bad, right?

Right! I have to say the simplified rules, coupled with some familiar D&D characteristics made the experience immediately recognizable and fun. It also helps that my starter set happened to include a Medusa, which I understand is somewhat sought after. I'm sure there are a few of you that are kind of sick reading that, sorry!

Regardless, we played several rounds but I stopped short of playing any scenario involving the dragons pictured above, since I was barely having any luck at all with my meager starter set.

From what I can tell, much of the stat blocks that I have seen related to the D&D 4th edition seems to approximate the simplicity of the miniature rules, so I have hopes that all combat will take place in similar fashion as the new edition hits. The only thing that bothered me a little was the rules for routing and running... it seems to me that shouldn't be so much determined by a die roll but I understand that miniature games are based more solidly in concrete rules so I can tolerate that minor annoyance.

It was a really fun evening, special thanks go out to Boyle for bringing his stuff over so we could give miniatures a try!