30 DODND Day 11: Favourite Adventure that You Have Run

I’m sorry; I simply cannot answer this one with a D&D campaign.  By far the most entertaining adventure I have ever run was the Pokemon RPG – The Kanto Chronicles.  This has probably been evident due to the number of posts I’ve written about it so far.  It was done with a homebrew system made by a friend of mine, based loosely on Final Fantasy.  I took the party through an adventure taking place 700 years before the events of Blue and Red Version.  It is the only campaign I’ve ever completed, which is really good to have done (we finished about two weeks ago), and had one of the most complex storylines I have ever created.  I’m really quite proud of it.  One of the most impressive elements of the campaign though has to have been the players.  Those guys created a fantastic party, tearing themselves apart through assassination, running two separate groups thoroughly confusing and manipulating every major power to serve their own ends, and ultimately reuniting at the last possible moment to my complete surprise to save the world in a totally shocking and creative manner.  Oh, and then they killed one of them, all together.  It was a delight to run.

            Technically, I guess this is the adventure not the campaign that was my favourite, so I need to be more specific.  My favourite adventure within the campaign, therefore, would have to be the final adventure from The Kanto Chronicles: The Savage Day, where the two parties ran to the Psychic Gym to face the final battle.  It was, as I said, truly surprising in so many ways.  Dramatic, full of twists, and a fitting climax to a year-long campaign.  I loved it.

Situational Ethics: Team Rocket, Slavery, and the Pokemon RPG

I’ve talked a lot about the Pokemon RPG I’m running now, and I think after this I will hold off for a little while, but it was suggested that I should write about the ethics of the game, and I think it could be interesting.  If nothing else, it will be a nice summary for the players.  The campaign has taken the party to each of several groups involved in the greatest conflict ever to hit Kanto (remembering that this is 700 years before the adventures of Ash Katchem).  The debate over who to side with raged so violently within the party that we have had to split into two groups just to accommodate the results of their decisions.  So, I would like to tell you just a little bit about how this conflict has shaped up, so you can decide which side you would come down on.  I’m not sure where I would side if I was playing, to be honest.  Prepare for a deluge of Plot!

A few years prior to the start of this campaign, Vincent, current leader of the Ground Gym, discovered the existence of Aprikorns, mysterious nuts from the west which, when used properly could control a Pokemon and cause them to serve you.  Unhappy with the poor standard of government exercised by the Elite Four and the very disparate Gyms, he decided that Kanto needed uniting under a single banner – his, naturally – and he now had the tools to succeed.  So he created an army in secret, giving each of his gym members Aprikorns to train their own servants with.  Believing in order at all costs, he recently sacked Cerulean City with this half-human, half-Pokemon army, capturing two Gym leaders and cutting Brock off from the world.  The world trembles as they await the next actions of the most dangerous force in the world, united under the new banner of Vincent’s family – Clan Rocket.

Image by TheDarkHell - DeviantArt

As for the Pokemon, by far the most intelligent and the most powerful is Alakazam.  He has been the secret force behind the strange conflict-free zone around Celadon City, created in response to the Grass Gym’s vow of pacifism.  On the other hand, he also organized and permitted the haunting of Lavender Town by a horde of Ghost Pokemon, forcing the entire population to evacuate.  Most terrifyingly, he is currently in sole control of the Psychic Gym, being the only being capable of understanding and containing the tragedy which befell the gym’s members when they abused their power and lost their minds.  Even Sabrina is little more than a soulless husk, after trading her own soul for more power.  Alakazam keeps the members contained, to prevent them from harming the populace.  All of this has been to create a single political statement: Pokemon are intelligent, powerful, organized, and can be negotiated with.  If he had simply shown up on Brock’s doorstep asking for an audience, he would have been hacked to pieces.  Now, he has the respect required to negotiate a permanent peace with the governing bodies of Kanto.  He is also, however, somewhat distracted by Vincent’s army, as are the rest of the gym leaders.

So, here are the sides:  Vincent and his Pokemon army sitting in Cerulean City, with Koga on his side, but too far away to be much help.  He has a few other allies, but I can’t mention them just yet.  On the other side, you have Brock, Blaine, Gaston (Misty’s replacement), and Sabrina (emissary for Alakazam) gathered in Vermillion City.  Vincent is seeking a new world order, where people no longer fear Pokemon as they are controlled and servile.  Alakazam is seeking a respectful peace between humans and Pokemon, where neither harms the other, and also wants the Aprikorns destroyed.  Brock, Blaine and Gaston just want the war to be over, Vincent to be stopped, and the world to return to normal.

The party on the Vermillion side of things just visited Cerulean City to see what Vincent was up to.  They left somewhat confused as to which side they should be on.  Vincent is treating the people well and rebuilding the city conscientiously.  He is though, also creating siege weapons.  Out of character, the players are realizing that for the world of Blue and Red Version to exist, Vincent must logically win, because Pokeballs do exist, and they are made from Aprikorns.  But Vincent is from the Ground Gym, and is the head of Clan Rocket, which must be the predecessor of Team Rocket.  So for the future to occur, Team Rocket has to win.  At least, that’s how they are beginning to see it.

I’m quite proud of this campaign to be honest.  It’s complicated, and there are a lot of players (NPC and PC) moving about the place all the time.  I have to keep track of the movements of at least 20 NPCs to know what is going on in the world.  I understand if this summary wasn’t very coherent, but I am keeping it as condensed as I can.  But yes, where would you stand?  Vincent is a little dictatorial, but still polite and has a good point to make.  So too does Alakazam.  The Vermillion Army seems to just be trying to keep things safe.  At least, these are the positions as they are appearing to the party at the moment.  They may well change over the weeks to come.

Long Division: Doubling the Party Rather than Splitting

So a little while ago I posted about the Pokemon RPG I have been running and the problems we ahve encountered.  The most significant problem was that the party had irrevocably divided, separating in to two opposing groups.  I thought it might be worth posting about the result of the decision we made, so you have a little more of the story.  After some discussions, the group has opted to create two full parties rather than divide time up or sacrifice a group.

This decision was only partly due to a desire to follow both sides of the story and to maintain their characters.  A major factor was the lure of character creation.  Given the option to create new characters, new stats had been written up before decisions could be taken much further.  Since the players now are far more familiar with the world, creating new characters was an interesting challenge for them, and all of a sudden, the decision had essentially been made.  The new characters must be played.  So now we switch.  Every week we swap between the good-ish characters who are aligned with Brock, Blaine, Sabrina, Alakazam, and Gaston (Misty’s replacement), and the morally questionable characters who are aligned with Koga, Vincent (Giovanni), and a few other mysterious entities they are not familiar with yet...

We have now had a session with each group since the divide, and it’s going relatively well.  Both groups are poised to investigate Cerulean and Lavender respectively, and the next session for each should be filled to the brim with adventure and plot (I hope).  What is more important to me is that both groups seem to be relatively cohesive.   I asked that the new characters would be generally in line with the party they were joining; I really REALLY didn’t want another split.  Two parties are quite enough.  They are each working together relatively well, although the MQ party nearly fractured at the start as two characters met by trying to commandeer the same vessel.

I like this setup now.  It’s complicated, and I have to try and keep them both on the same timeline; having one group several days ahead of the other really is not conducive to coherent plot.  This hasn’t proven too difficult so far, but it may do.  What it does mean though, is that between the two groups, the players a) get to explore different moral paths, seeing the roads they could have taken and b) get to be involved in much more of the plot.  As there are several factions in this conflict taking place, there are a lot of things going on which the players may never be aware of.  For instance, they are only now starting to notice the problem with the Elite Four, and there is a mysterious stranger who the party will be meeting again very soon.  Yes, I am letting things drop for the benefit of the players that read this.  Good times.

Anyway, it requires extra management but the two-party system is thus far proving rewarding.  I can’t wait for both groups to continue, as things are getting exciting, and hopefully I will improve as a DM as a result of all of this.  I did realise while writing this that if I had been more on the ball I could have just pretended like this was the plan all along and not looked as incompetent.  We live and learn.

Pokedex Entry: The System behind the Pokemon RPG

So, as there is curiosity, it shall be satisfied.  The system I am using in the game I described on Monday was developed by John, a friend of mine as I said for a game I joined over the summer – the only campaign I have ever finished.  He even made an end credits video!  Awesome.

That campaign was based on Final Fantasy, hence most of the references in the system.  In his you could choose your race and your class (the idea of a Moogle Warrior became something of an obsession).  In mine, because everyone was human, the classes remained, but I replaced races with gyms.  Basically, your character starts with stats obtained by choosing a class and a gym, which each come with a set of stats pre-set, and then add the two together.  Simple.  Makes character genning pretty fast.  Levelling up, you gain points, you spend them on either stat boosts or skills.  Cross-classing is totally fine, but those skills are more expensive.  You can get really good combos that way though.  Taking Quick Hit from the Warrior class and Quick Pockets from the Thief class and you have yourself one VERY fast character, for example.

Skill checks go off of a d10, where you want to roll below your relevant statistic (your strength to pick up a boulder, etc.).  Anything that doesn’t appear obvious or looks too difficult to be so easy relies on DM discretion.  Because Strength-10 isn’t hard to achieve in this game, skill checks are an issue in the system, and one I’ve been working on by asking for a d100 roll and setting a DC that is relevant, but not directly tied to their statistics.  I’ve tried a few other things too.  We’ll see.  Bluffing is particularly awkward to handle, but we’ve worked through it so far. Jonara Planarwaste, I’m looking at you here...

Combat, as I said before, works on a counter-based ATB system.  You have a cooldown between 1 and 10, and everyone puts their counters in a pot simultaneously and acts when they have no counters left.  Agility is a VITAL stat in this game, as we’ve seen people unable to act before the combat is already resolved.  Hilarious though.

With my game specifically, one of the biggest problems is simply because it is homebrewed, and therefore I have to write the Monster Manual myself.  I’ve got a notebook where I’m getting through them all, but there are 150 of them!  And I’m leaving some out! (Porygon, Voltorb, and Electrode obviously don’t exist.  Pokemon trading doesn’t exist, so Gengar, Golem, etc are also at least rare) It’s a slightly exhaustive process, but I’m getting there.  Almost at 100 I think...

Oh yes, probably one of the more interesting features of this system is the simplicity of its equipment.  Weapons have levels of quality, corresponding to the dice you get to roll – d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and the elusive d20 weapons.  Armour gives a multiplier to your defence – x2, x3, x4, or x5.  Beyond that, you can have whatever weapon or armour you like.  A d6 dagger has the same effect as a d6 greataxe.  A x5 Leather Armour has the same effect as a x5 Plate Mail.  It can lead to some jarring experiences, but it basically means that your characters can be more stylised.  In other systems, if you want to be the best warrior you have to use certain armour, certain weapons.  Here it doesn’t matter.  You can use tonfas, daggers, warhammers, scythes, or your fists without needing a whole separate set of statistics just for your weapon.  Of course, there are upgrades, special weapons, and other interesting things.  But generally, you can have fun with how your character fights.

It’s a simple system, and that can lead to problems when you try and do something complex, but in general it’s easy to learn and fun to play.  At least I think so anyway.  Well done to John for creating it!

Gotta Catch ‘em All – My Pokémon RPG

I love Pokémon and I’m not sorry.  It’s a great franchise that continues to entertain me today as it has done for the past twelve years or so.  The standard line of games has been solid and enjoyable, the card game was decent enough, and the anime was hilarious.  I’d like to talk about the games for a little bit, and then mention my current project.

My dad was a little concerned when he asked what the games were about back when I was playing Blue and Yellow (I never chose the Red or Gold games... Blue, Silver, LeafGreen, and Sapphire for me!).  He didn’t appreciate the idea of me enslaving animals and making them fight each other for fun and profit.  I followed his point even then, but as you learn especially in Yellow, the Pokémon LIKE fighting.  Ethics from our world don’t apply as strongly because these clearly sentient creatures make the choice to fight each other, and seem to require human guidance to achieve better results through superior training and tactics.  Odd world, but awesome.

The games are all fairly straightforward, although Sapphire was a little tricky at times to figure out where to go next.  Collect badges, beat the Elite 4, and take down an evil group and your rival in the process, thus saving the world.  It’s fulfilling, and they got better and better at driving you forward from one quest to the next.  Each game also brought in new innovations which made the games increasingly more entertaining.  One of my favourites has been dual-Pokémon battles, where you fight two at a time.  It works well, and I’d been hoping they’d bring that in much earlier.  The experience bar, the expanded world (especially having both continents in Silver/Gold), dual-battles, berries, VS Finder, and so many other little innovations has ensured that not a single Pokemon game has disappointed me so far.  Sapphire was a bit too short for me, but the main quest is by far the most epic EVER, and I loved it.

About 9 months ago, some friends of mine asked me to create a tabletop campaign with two requirements.  First, it had to be dark and gritty, something a bit more serious than the standard D&D oh-we-just-got-the-law-on-us-again fun times.  Second, it had to be based on a game-world they were familiar with.  A few weeks later, I presented to them the game I’m still running, The Kanto Chronicles.

700 years before Ash Katchem met Pikachu, Pokéballs had not been invented.  Where Professor Oak gave Ash a Pokémon to defend himself in the wilds against those raging wild monsters, back then people were given swords and chainmail.  There is no such thing as a tame Pokémon.  While most of the major cities still exist, the roads between them are plagued with monsters, and trade is difficult.  The Gyms still exist, but to train warriors rather than trainers, and are full of different fighting styles, from the defensive Rock Gym to the shadowy Poison Gym and the mysterious Psychic Gym.  The Ground Gym in Viridian has been largely closed for a few years now and the Grass Gym disbanded when Erica embraced pacifism.  Also, no one has seen any of the masters of the Psychic Gym for a long time now either, although no one can fail to feel Sabrina’s presence in the city.

In short, Kanto is experiencing dark times.  Half the gyms are non-functional, and the remaining ones are spread out and fiercely independent from each other.  In the midst of all of this, the Elite Four, the group of the greatest warriors in the land, make a call for the first Inter-Gym adventuring party to be formed, bringing together warriors from each gym to work as a team, to try and bring a sense of unity to the land once again.  Most gym leaders feel this is a joke, and so the choice of warriors for this party is not quite what might be termed ideal.  Meet the party for the adventure.  It’s all downhill from here.

I’ll tell you more about what the party have done so far another time, but what do you think of the concept?  We’ve been having a lot of fun with it.