Gambling Mechanic for your Online OSR Game

A great roadside attraction thrills your fantasy players. The promise of unexpected boons and banes from carnival games is a thrill not unlike gambling. Most tavern encounters and back-alley interactions are spiced up with an odd game of chance or ridiculous custom being played out. In a FTF game going “all-in” with a game of cash poker can be done in real time if the DM and PCs agree. While not necessary, the “game-within-a-game” has not uncommon interest for your average gamer. Just like a mass combat encounter where the DM and players through down miniture armies and work out the fight with a table-top wargame, so to can gambling games be so straightforwardly delivered.

Not so online. The DM can’t whip out a deck of cards and start dealing, all the while laying out house-rules. Falling back on the hobby’s early improvisational roots, you can roll out both use real gambling games to play for a winner. Online, not so much.

Besides the physical barrier to play, if some PCs are in to gaming while others want to move on to other goals this can cause disruption in play for everyone if the games of chance take too long. I therefore conjured up a quick way to resolve exotic card games while retaining a reusable mechanic which gives the thrill of hitting a payout!

For my occasion I came up with a poker game called “Dragon Master”, and resolved it thusly; any PC who wants to play a hand must put up an ante. This is added with all other antes to give the starting “pot”. The DM decides how many additional players are so the number is correct. Now each PC must Save vs. Poison to get a playable hand, a hand worth betting on. If not then the PC looses their ante and must wait for another round to play. The NPC’s the players are gambling against never roll for a playable hand. This set up is completely player-facing. If only one PC is gaming against others than rolling for a playable hand is straight forward. Roll your Poison Save till you succeed. Pay the amount of antes equal to the number of hands you were “dealt” before you stayed in.

Now the PCs declare their wagers and roll to win. This is resolved with an attribute roll. The PCs are free to choose from Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma. Both the DM and any active PC players roll a d20. Winner is the highest number without going over their chosen attribute. Rolling over your attribute represents folding, losing in a showdown, however the PCs and DM want to role play the encounter. There is nothing in the way for any amount of role play PCs want to do because the final dice roll always gives you the winner.

I give my PCs xp for every bit of cash they win, even if they loose it all in following hands. Nothing sharpens a card player like taking a few beatings along the way! The improving saving throw with character advancement complements the idea of a more experienced traveler and adventurer getting mre playable hands. Face it, good card players are more than likely to have had a wide variety of wordly experiences, and PC level is a good representation of this in game terms. The d20 throw against attribute counts both the edge a character may have with high numbers while at the same time these flat rolls can also throw surprises!

So, to recap;

1. Place your ante.

2. Roll save versus poison to continue, or loose ante.

3. A saved ante now must be wagered on, PCs still in declare their wagers.

4. Roll d20. Highest number without going over attribute wins.

5. Repeat.

Into the Dark: Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips Summarized and...

Into the Dark: Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips Summarized and...: What follows is a second attempt to briefly encapsulate the tips and principles for designing adventures presented by the inestimable Bryce...

Monday, July 25, 2016

Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips Summarized and Explained (Mark 2)

What follows is a second attempt to briefly encapsulate the tips and principles for designing adventures presented by the inestimable Bryce Lynch in his singularly fantastic adventure review blog, Ten Foot Pole. This is basically the same as my previous postsummarizing the principles from Bryce's reviews of The Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat, but with some minor edits to improve the felicity of expression (ahem).

Bryce Lynch’s Adventure Design Tips

Summarized and Explained

1. General Tips: The 5 C’s

1. Color: The referee should give brief but evocative descriptions of locations, monsters, NPCs, and treasures. Avoid the vague or generic.

2. Context: In order for their actions to be significant and purposeful, players must generally have some information about the likely consequences of their actions, such as likely reactions of monsters or NPCs.

3. Choice: There should be more than one course of action available to players in order for the adventure to continue. Avoid choke points—both literal choke points in the physical layouts of dungeons and other locations, and figurative choke points which require a unique decision or solution in order for the adventure to proceed.

4. Consequences: Player actions should be allowed to make a real difference in the adventure and in the campaign. Avoid a set storyline or sequence of events immune to player interference.

5. Creativity: Related to (3) and (4), reward player creativity by allowing them to pursue unanticipated courses of action or to produce unanticipated consequences, rather than restricting player action and player creativity by setting up arbitrary constraints in the location layout or course of events.

2. Hooks

6. Don’t rely on a single hook; use multiple kinds (treasure; reward; magic; glory; political power).

7. Create a rumor table with hooks and color.

8. Hooks should appeal to the players, not just to their characters.

9. Hooks can and should be complex or nuanced, such as working for an evil NPC or working for rival factions.

10. To support sandbox play, dungeon, town, and wilderness locations, monsters, and NPCs should all have hooks.

3. Locations (Dungeons, Towns, Wilderness, etc.)

11. Location descriptions should be terse (not verbose) but evocative (not boring, obvious, or generic).

12. Only include background info that affects gameplay; avoid long descriptions of irrelevant info.

13. Rooms should have features that players can interact with to produce meaningful consequences. Give concrete descriptions of secret doors, traps, etc.

14. Floor plan tips:

             a. Multiple routes (vs. choke points or linear, one-way paths).

             b. Multiple entrances and exits.

             c. Multiple stairs per floor.

             d. Open spaces with balconies, galleries, and ledges at various elevations.

             e. Pools and rivers that connect different rooms or levels.

             f. Bridges and ladders.

4. Monsters and NPCs

15. Create interesting, believable motivations for monsters and NPCs.

16. Create factions of monsters and NPCs, which leads to a dynamic, interconnected strategic situation.

17. Give players the choice of allying with, attacking, trading with, or having other relationships with monsters and NPCs.

18. Create schedules, routines, tactics, or orders of battle for monsters and NPCs.

19. Wandering monsters too should be given motives, goals, hooks, and tactics.

20. Avoid standard monsters. Failing that, describe standard monsters in a non-standard way (e.g., don’t just name the species).

21. Give evocative descriptions of monsters. Give concrete descriptions of their appearance and activities. Go for the telltale sensory detail, rather than the generic abstract trait. Show, don’t tell.

Example: Instead of stating “One of the guards in the camp is a cruel bully,” say “The burly Manfred takes a leak on Tobias’s bedroll, and then snatches Tobias’s roasted chicken from his hand and quickly gobbles it down.”

22. Use truly evil monsters to evoke a Sense of Terror.

5. Treasure

23. Treasure should be valuable enough to motivate players and to make the challenges worthwhile.

24. Non-magical treasure should relate to the setting and give clues or information about monsters, NPCs, locations, etc.

25. Avoid standard magic items.

26. Give evocative descriptions of magic items. Give concrete descriptions of their appearance and how they must be manipulated to produce their magical effects.

27. Use magic items to evoke a Sense of Wonder.

6. Format and Functionality

28. Include reference tables:

a. Rumor/hook table.

b. Monster/NPC table that lists their main traits, motivations, location, etc.

c. Room/building table that lists the rooms in a dungeon or other keyed location.

29. In published modules, put maps and monster stats on separate sheets so they are easy to refer to in play.

30. On maps, use keyed symbols to indicate standard features (e.g., lit/unlit, locked/unlocked, secret, trapped, etc.), rather than a verbal description in the location key.

The Rom'Myr Drawing pad

I've picked up the pen in an attempt to draw my way out of VTP paying for game art. Matter of fact my soon to be released first ever OSR module is stacked with my drawings. These are not them. Drawing practice consists of sketches from my online OSR Dying Earth Campaign. Here is a mix of PCs and NPCs, very few pictured worked so far considering the amount of NPC interaction the group has had in ten sessions.

Don't use Camtasia and Review Opportunities for the Interested

AA03 Purging Woth Nrld Oekwn's Muddy Hole is now in the editors hands, the Lulu files completed, proof ordered to inspect layout and graphic design issues! When final draft is uploaded I will want to offer PDF copies for interested reviewers. Richard Leblanc gets his own copy obviously. I used his illo's and stats for several monsters from Big Dragon Games CC1 Creatures Companion. 

The inclusion of creatures from this OSR packed bestiary guarantees your players will have some surprises. Nothing chills a player more than confronting a brand new species of monster! 

So, if you see yourself actually using this short adventure for an upcoming crawl I am happy to distribute. Email me at jay-at-vanishingtowerpress.com.

In other news; 

The audio production of my last live game session is complete, at least as far as I intend to take it. I should have just stripped the audio like I did at first and be done with it. Time involved properly editing an audio project is a time sink like you wouldn't believe. Camtasia is nothing special except a two hundred fifty price tag! There are solid, free screen capture and video editing software choices. Search around and review. You will find something which suits your needs easily.

With AA03 mostly in the bag work can resume on Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery. My work that is. Daniel Hernandez is still working on his fantastic line illo's but the previews he has sent me are amazing! Adventure drafting and setting guide drafting are the predominate work right now. Everything is now kind of assembled on a cork board of lines like a police investigation. Slowly you see parallel paths of work start to merge towards a finished product. Like driving a new road and suddenly finding yourself at your destination. 

Winter 2019-2020 looks to be a busy season for VTP releases, to see some of these long-simmering projects become adventure books for you to use!