cat /proc/claus

This is a game report for my 1.5-monthly Saturday 4E campaign. (It ended up much longer than I hoped :-/)

The group is currently Lv 7, formed by two defenders (Bigo the Shifter Warden and Solomon the Half Elf Fighter), two strikers (Midori the Eladrin Rogue and Adum the Dragonborn Barbarian), Sincearu the Gnome Bard and Charlie the Human Wizard. They are currently part of an treasure seeking expedition organized by Xor, a crazed explorer, to the forgotten island of Ludus. Ludus is currently inhabited by a number of savage tribes, but it is covered in the ruins of some Meso-American like civilization, which is claimed by each of the tribes to be their “precursors”.

Part 1 - of Love and Rust Monsters

In the last session, the group defeated the Snakemen tribe, which threatened the territory of the group allies, the Dragonborn tribe. Now they were exploring the nearest of two great ruined cities in the island. After exploring the surface of the city for a while, they found a secret passageway to the underground in what they presumed to be the ruins of the palace.

The passageway was blocked by a giant cockroach - the size of a large dog - which was resting atop a large pile of residuum and rust. It didn’t seem to show any reaction to the group, so they decided to charge the creature. A rust monster in 4E has few HP, so they were able to kill it before it managed to flee into the passageway, but not before it managed to rust the weapons of Adum and Bigus a little bit - panic insued, specially when the group noticed the rusted remains of a magic door in the passageway, and guessed that there would be a whole nest of these things down below.

They ventured forth, and found a very large room (25 squares across), with plataforms in the borders and dry pools in the middle, full of ruined statues, roots breaking from the roof, mushroom grooves, and debris piles. But what caught their eye that about a quarter of the room was partially blocked by large piles of rubble, resembling a giant nest of cockroaches… and behind that rubble, the largest pile of residuum the magic users of the group had ever seen before.

The fight happened in two parts. At first the closest rust monsters charged at the surprise metal meal - then they retreated when they realized that the walking meals were biting hard back at them! Their nest had many entrances and exits, so when the group came charging after them, they were able to attack them from two different directions. Inside the nest there was a Dweomer eater (lv 11), a young rust monster swarm (lv 9), and three regular rust monsters (lv 6). Flanking allowed both defenders to shine, Solomon tackling the regular monsters, and Bigus blocking the path of the Dweomer eater. There was a bunch of interactive objects in the scenario (the vines could be climbed, the mushrooms could be kicked for spores, etc), but most that happened was the warden activating one of the spore clouds by mistake, and the Dweomer eater bull rushing the warden into a pit so that it could get its paws into the bard’s juicy songblade (the only time where the monster’s “dissolve item” ability actually worked - they kept missing with this attack).

In spite of losing a magic item, the group was pretty happy in looting the Rust Monster nest - it had a full level’s worth of residuum. Sincearu put it to good use by “object reading” the big statue in the center of the room, and learning more about the former inhabitants of the abandoned city. They were dark skinned humanoids who built the city all at once using bestial labor. The statue represented some sort of living leader, and the last sentient being to come close to the statue was a murderer in yellow robes.

Part 2 - This is why you should clean up your temple, young man!

There were 6 corridors leaving from the big room. Three of them on the south wall looked the same, and three of them on the east wall had each different drawings around them. The group picked a corridor with holy symbols and symbols of gods and goddesses. They followed the corridor for quite a while, and arrived at another badly ruined room. They determined that this room was the interior of the pyramid they saw aboveground, and could not find the entrance before. The room had also the same collapsed tunnels they found on the surface, which Adum the native Dragonborn had previously identified as belonging to the dreaded “land shark”. Scared of a creature who could bore such large holes in stone, they proceeded with care.

In the center of the room there was an altar with uncontrolled arcane energies coming out of it. Charlie and Adum approached the altar while the rest of the group stood back. As she tried to manipulate the energies of the altar, its precarious equilibrium was upset, and a strong gravitational wave started sucking everything into the center of the room. This also attracted the Bullete, which was sleeping in one of the collapsed tunnels, to investigate.

The encounter was a Bullete (lv 9 elite) with a “Gravitational Hole” (trap) modified to shoot some weak lightning at the nearest target (players and monsters alike). The bullete’s ability to move underground made for a fun fight, as it burrowed right past the defenders into the soft, unprotected Midori in the back, scaring the hell out of her. The group eventually got its act together as they gathered in the center of the room, the Wizard, Rogue and Bard standing on top of the altar as the tanks circled them. As luck would have it, Solomon and Adum started rolling a series of criticals which finally dispatched the hard skinned monster. One of those critical hits activated Zharib Falcon, Solomon’s artifact weapon, making him see again the mysterious woman in white, beckoning to him from the corridor at the other end of the room.

Part 3 - Thinking with the other head.

Having defeated the beast, Sincearu set up again to use the “object reading” ritual, this time on the broken altar. They see images of priestess making some sort of ritual over a man in yellow robes with his hands and feet tied down, and the image of the bullete hitting the altar after the temple had been abandoned, and breaking its delicate magical balance. After that, they decide to follow down the corridor where Solomon had his visage. This leads to a bare earth underground passageway, which continues for 6 hours, with a few exits to the middle of the jungle aboveground in the way.

After resting and continuing down the tunnel, they arrive at another pyramid temple, many times bigger than the previous one. This one has a smaller pyramid inside, upon which a ray of sunlight hits. The mysterious woman in white is on the top of the smaller platform, and calls Solomon to her. When Solomon brings her the artifact, she reveals that she is a spirit trapped inside it, which was created by “the gods of the earth”, the entity that was born out of the world itself, and was not bound either to the Primordials or the Outer gods. She explained to Solomon that the mission of Zharib Falcon is to free the material planes from the influences of those not born from it, be it of divine or demonic origin. It warned Solomon that demons were preparing to invade the kingdom where they came from, and urged him to become a Paladin of the Earth. Solomon accepted, and changed his class (a move I had discussed with the player in advance).

After the pyrotechnic display was over, they left the giant pyramid and found themselves far to the north in the jungle, very near the mountains they only saw at a distance back in the Dragonborn village. The group decided to head into the mountains…

Conclusion

It was a very satisfying game. I put a lot of preparation in the adventure, and it paid off, even though the group skipped most of the underground dungeon I had made them, and headed straight to the exit. Well, those other 5 corridors will still be there when they decide to return from the mountains… if they return! (insert evil laugh here)

Things that worked:

• The players had genuine reactions to the bullete, because of the foreshadowing from previous session, and the rust monsters, because of the natural hatred of players to these creatures.
• I really liked how the bard player liberally used the “object reading” ritual - it is a interactive way for the players and the GM to decide what kind of expository info they want, and how much of it they want. It also allowed me to add some of the information that the players had skipped by going straight to the temple. Expect more “readable objects” in the future.
• The Warden player was missing during this session, but the wizard player managed to control both characters just fine - it gave me more confidence to run games with a player missing without having to worry about rebalancing everything.
• The encounters did not take too long, I think I really got my hand right with encounter balance this time. The flanking rust monsters were nice
• Solomon having his class change satisfied both the player who wanted to try a new character, and the GM who wanted to keep continuity in the story.
• I tried ChattyDM’s suggestion of preparing a “Game Synopsis” and asking the players for suggestions. Bigus’ and Solomon’s players jumped right into the idea, and I was able to mix their suggestions into the adventure.

Things that did not work so well:

• The players did not use all the toys that I left in the Rust Monster encounter. Maybe they were a bit out of the way and not so obvious?
• The Bullete encounter was a bit too easy, because I put the bullete too far away from the trap, and the players managed to disable the trap before facing the monster. Have to keep in mind movement rates next time I use hidden monsters.
• The Solomon Scene would have worked better if I made all players be able to see the phantasm girl inside the big temple. Or if I had decided to pull that player apart from the table for that scene, although I hate doing that.
• On the same line, I should have left the phantasm girl to appear only after the players had cleared out the dungeon, if they missed the temple passage, instead of the first time they got to the temple.

Today in the University meeting my professor told me that my pre-thesis defense will consist of an one hour presentation, followed by an one hour Q&A session. Since my Master Thesis presentation 2 years ago here in Tokyo university was a paltry 20 minutes, I was both relieved and a bit apprehensive. I was thinking that maybe one hour was a bit too much (I was expecting more like 40 minutes), but talking to Y I realized that among the three techniques and two problem I will have to explain and discuss at length, one hour might even be too little. Anyway, I’m breathing a little easier now that I know exactly how much time I have available - now I just need to do the work. I just wished they would give me the damn deadline already so I could prepare my schedule better.

Also, In today’s meeting we had visitors from another laboratory which presented to us their research on DNA computing. DNA computing is a sort of wet computing where you use the chemical reactions between DNA strands as the processing units. They were explaining their work in developing an AND gate with DNA. To be honest, I was not very impressed. I had heard before of wet computing before (maybe chemical computing?), and in my mind the state of art in this was a bit more evolved. But in their presentation, one AND operation would take more than one hour to complete, and they would need to do the experiment from scratch to change the data inputs. I wasn’t very convinced (although the rain might have made me grumpier than usual). Either you try to emulate electro-mechanical computing, but do it faster, or you get some new operators to do different stuff (like quantum computing). Could someone enlighten me about what I’m missing here?

In other news, RPG game tomorrow, and I got a pretty neat series of encounters for my players. Report coming from Sunday on

I bought the New Super Mario Bros Wii this last thursday, the day it was launched here in Japan (for some reason, the Japanese lauch was delayed when compared to the US or Europe). In the Launch Day, the Yodobashi Camera shop at Akihabara had a giant line with more than 300 people in it. On the other hand, the Book-Off just a block away had the same game at a 20% discounted price, with NO ONE in the line. Take that, Efficient Market Hypothesis!

The game is really similar to New Super Mario Bros DS - a revival of the first Super Mario Bros (the Nes one), with a bunch of technological enhancements. They have 5 extra “powers” - a Helicopter suit, which makes Mario jump high and float with a flick of the Wiimote, a Mini Mario suit, identical to the DS one (high jumps and running over water), an “Ice Flower”, which makes mario throws ice balls, which freezes enemies, a penguin suit, which throws ice balls, slides on enemies, and swims better, and good old Yoshi (which now is able to float a bit in the air when jumping). Mario can “stomp” while jumping, and he can also “triple jump” - if you press the jump button just as you finish your previous jump, the next one will be a bit higher.

With all these different powers, the game is not very difficult. I managed to get to World 8 in one night. I used the secret “world gates” found in worlds 1 and 5, but even those were not very difficult to find. The last stage of world 8, in particular the boss fight actually took me quite a few tries. This leads to another “innovation” of this game - if you fail a single stage more than 8 times in a row, the game will offer to show you how to beat that stage. It can clear the stage for you, if you wish, but a stage cleared like this isn’t counted towards game completion purposes. While clearing the game is not that hard (and I got a bit disappointed when I got to the end because of that) - COMPLETING the game is another story. The secret items and passages in some of the stage are very cleverly hidden - even if that is not apparent from the first world - my second “complete out” run of the game is going quite slower.

In terms of graphics and eye candy, I found the game to be full of nice touches. The enemies and creatures on the screen react to the music, jumping and dancing in tempo with the notes. The in-game minigames are fun, even if limited. You got the “memory game” for getting items, and a “hit the baloons” games for getting lifes. You can also be asked to replay some scenarios to save Toady, and get a few more item/lives out of it (you have to carry him with you, and thus can’t use specials/run through small places). I wish they had extra mini games, like New Super Mario Bros DS, but alas, it is not to be. In fact, as far as I can see this game does not use the internet for anything at all, which was a bit of a let down.

On the other hand, the main novelty of SMB Wii - up to 4 players simultaneous cooperative play - is really worth it. You can play with 2 to 4 people at the same time on each stage, just like in the normal game. If anyone dies, their player will be returned to the stage in a few seconds (unless they run out of lives) - the stage is only over if everyone dies at the same time. The players can get in each other’s way, jump on each other’s head to reach higher, or carry each other over their heads. With two players at the same time, the game actually gets easier (in spite of what Penny Arcade said), mainly because if one player dies at a tricky point of the stage, the other can wait until the previous player returns. However, with the full four players, everything changes. 4 Players is just TOO MUCH, and the game becomes a fast paced race to get away from whatever can kill you before the other players can kill you first, racing first to the end of the stage else you get too far on the back and get killed by the other players who darted far ahead. You can kill your buddies with impunity - if you manage to remember who are you in the middle of the madness on screen. Really, it is that hectic, and we went through 3 or four continues by the earlier half of world 1. The coordination required makes SMB with 4 people far more difficult than with 1 or 2 - specially for things like small platforms and sequences of jumps, that it got me curious to see team competitions of the game.

All in all it was well worth the trip to Akiba last week Now to get a few more controllers to be able to play Super Mario Madhouse whenever a lot of people gather at my place.

Today I read two pretty amazing articles from ChattyDM, in which he describes how his skills as a RPG DM have helped him in his teaching job (and vice versa). Part1 - Part2 . I think this post really resonated with me, because it made me reflect about what I like in teaching, and what I like in Dungeon Mastering. I think I could extend the ideas presented there by making the connection between something else that I like - organizing events/parties, and preparing adventures/campaigns. I like brainstorming for group activities, and I think I use the same process for these as I do for brainstorming set piece encounters and scenes in my adventures, for example, but before reading those articles, I never really made the connection.

I get a lot of cool things from reading Chatty’s blog. One of those was the “Swords and Sorcery” D&D retroclone, which I had the chance to play with my Brazilian group today. Instead of re-running the great dungeon in the “Quick Start Guide” from scratch, I decided that I would expand the dungeon as it was left by the Daydream group last time I played it with them, in a sort of “consistent world between groups” system that I always wanted to try my hand at. It worked pretty nicely, because the group really got immersed in the changes left in the world by the previous group!

The group was composed of a Fighting Man, a Spell User and a Cleric (I didn’t allow humanoids, because I don’t really like the S&W version, and I want to work on my own house rules for them). The group decided that they were kids from the village near the ruins, and got some money recently from working themselves as hirelings for other groups and wanted to use their earnings to assemble their own expedition. They were heavy on the “character roleplaying”, and insisted with me that they only wanted to hire hirelings which were young kids, because they thought regular mercenaries would not respect them. I rolled a few village bullies and misfits, and the result was a small gang of the worst of the village, that wanted to try and explore the dungeon by themselves after hearing of the riches that the previous group of professional adventurers had gotten from it.

After a little more amusing RPing in the village, which included a visit to the local grumpy witch (who was grumpy because of the forceful haggling of the previous group), they headed down to the dungeon. They turned some undead in the first room, and explored bravely deeper and deeper, door after door. While they were heeding my warnings about the dangers of old school D&D, and had a hireling prodding the floor for pit traps in front of them with a pole weapon (I loved how the player convinced the minion to do that - “You need to poke the ground to see if there is any hidden treasure below the rocks!”), the “4E spoiling” showed up a bit by their bravery :-D. Eventually they got to the “Windy Room”, which I had modified a bit by making the trap cause 1d6 damage to characters who were blown against the walls.

What happened next was deserving of a scene in an Indiana Jones movie - except, without Indy. The entire group sees the room full of “treasure”, and “no danger”, and decides to get in, all at once. When they all enter the room, the windy trap picks up, and throws almost everyone to the walls. The Magic user instantly breaks his neck and dies, along with another hireling, much to the horror of the Fighting man’s player. The surviving members struggled against the wind do get out of the room as fast as they could, then they decided to quickly leave the dungeon with the bodies of their comrades.

The game ended around here. Two of the players were willing to go back in (including the MU player, who had just rolled one of the surviving hirelings into PC-dom), but I could see that the third player wasn’t really that into it, so we did some board gaming next.

The “all groups explore the same dungeon” idea worked really well, but since we won’t get much time to continue playing S&W (since we still have to finish our 4E campaign), I’m not really sure when I’ll be able to pick up on this dungeon again. I could try to start a third group, but with dreaded January closing in fast, that is just not possible.

Also, in spite of the lack of updates, I haven’t completely abandoned the ETD project yet. I had some serious optimization issues earlier this week, when I tried to implement some routines for painting walls. I’ll have to read the python tutorial carefully, because I’m almost sure the function is slow because I’m using some Java-isms or C-isms when I could use some more efficient data structures without much fuss. Expect a more detailed report soonish.

They say that for every problem there is a solution which is simple, elegant, and wrong. I found mine today while working on ETD, and I also find the correct solution (which is also elegant, although a bit less simple).

One of the rules of the “Tower Defense” games is that you cannot completely lock the path that the enemies take from the entrance to the exit of your maze. This path may be as long as it takes, but it must exist. In my implementation, I’m writing in each cell of the path the cost to go to the exit, so that each enemy does not need to calculate their exit paths all the time. Then I have to have a “locking detection” routine that detects if placing an aditional tower in a given location will lock down the maze or not, to prevent that tower from being put.

My first idea was to see what are the distance values of the cells the new tower is going to occupy. If those values were not repeated anywhere else in the maze, that means that that path is a bottleneck, and cannot be blocked. Thinking this solution for a bit while showed that it was wrong (exercise to the reader :-P). The new solution is thus: The entrance and the exit of the maze bissect the surrounding walls into two groups. I give each of this group a flag, and I check each tower when it is put down to see if it connects to one of the groups. If it does, I give it the same flag as the group. If a tower connects BOTH groups, then it means that it blocks the path from the entrance to the exit. I only have to deal with the special case of “island” towers, by giving them a third, “neutral”, group flag, which is painted 1 or 2 when one of the groups reaches the island.

I have not finished implementing the above, but I have implemented most everything else that I needed from the map. I did not have as much time to program today as I had yesterday because I used the bright sunny day to walk around a little bit, clean my home (including washing the dreaded bath), and meeting my friend Dionisio. All in all, I had about 4 hours to hack away at ETD today, and I think I managed quite a bit in this time. Tomorrow I’ll finish implementing the maps, then a bit of tower logic, then link the genome with the tower and the map I hope!