By this question, I mean:
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
By this question, I mean:
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
I modify them on the fly - add an encounter here, drop one there, depending on the condition of the characters. I want to challenge them, but not kill them, and if I run the AP stock they have absolutly no chance in hell of survival.
I'll also be adding a "hunt down the rod of seven parts" component to the game once they are high enough level to handle the problems that causes.
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
Minis and a Grid - though I used minis in second edition also, so...
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
yep, my games are as combat-heavy. I both add and remove combats, depending on what the PCs can handle at the time.
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
the deadliness has created that lack of investment. All but one of my players are on their second or third character (one's on her fourth).
I warned them that it would be hard, and I woudn't be pulling any punches, but they aren't being very smart about resting, regrouping, and tactics yet. If they keep this up, I'm expecting a TPK every session, starting in the Spire of long Shadows. If it gets there, we'll probably stop the campaign because that's not really very fun for anyone.
1) What I mostly modify is the hooks. I see the hooks given in the adventures as generic hooks to use if you can't come up with anything better. So I come up with more personalized hooks that focus on the connections the group has made and interact with the plot development. I also try to thin out the dungeon crawl aspects for more plot oriented, role playing aspects.
2) We use minis to help keep track of who's fighting what bad guy, but we play 2nd ed rules, so no grids or battlemats.
3) I lessen the number of encounters, definitely, but not necessarily the numbers of bad guys. Meaning, I'm more likely to have the group fight 10 bad guys in one encounter than two bad guys per room for five rooms
4) Some characters are more developed than others, definitely, but that's a reflection of the experience of the players (two experienced, two newbies). Death isn't a permanent thing the way we play, so that's not a deterent to character development.
1) I've "personalized" certain details (adventure hooks, ties with NPCs and bad guys, added NPCs) and I've modified the combat encounters to better suit the party's abilities (usually to make things tougher). But I consider those two aspects a normal part of DM'ing, so I'd say that I pretty much run the adventure as written.
2) We use D&D miniatures and battlemaps. I use a laminated D&D Miniatures map and write with the water-cleaning A/V markers. I've also used battlemaps from the Fantastic Locations sets and some from Dragon/Dungeon magazines, and the Paizo Map Packs.
3) My players go through most of the encounters (they have missed a couple of rooms here and there), but they don't always opt to fight. But I would say that my game is fairly combat heavy.
4) There is quite a bit of roleplaying and character development in my game. They still work on their character's personalities and goals while maintaining a character build that will survive the AP.
Some of the talk around the table concerning character development includes statements of how surprising each character has become. The players make changes to what they first envisioned, partly to fit better within the party, partly to be able to live until the next level, and the outcome is different than they first thought.
And it's fun to see the outcome.
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My group just finished the Whispering Cairn. I ran it pretty straight with mostly cosmetic changes. I am using Kindoms of Kalamar ('cause I'm weird like that), so I changed the Church of St. Cuthbert to the Home Foundation and instead of the clerics of Wee Jas guarding the boneyard, it's The Order of Light. The church in the garrison is the Temple of Armed Conflict.
My one big change for WC was to make Filge a Dread Necromancer from Heroes of Horror. I strongly recommend this change. It make the encounter much more interesting.
I do the usual mods for a campaign, i.e. flesh out the bits the PC's show an interest in as they go along. I have taken out a few minor bits of fluff here and there, to remove a bit of grind and shorten a couple of dungeons, but also put in plenty of extra pieces here and there too, based on my PC's goals, backgrounds and actions in the campaign. We run with a grid etc, as usual. The amount of role-play has been no less than usual, perhaps even more than usual for the players involved, mostly due to the excellent hooks in the campaign that I've built upon here and there as they catch our interest. Yes, it's combat heavy, but that's D&D for you, there's still plenty of non-combat adventuring and role-play to be had at our table, that's something the players and DM need to encourage. For a while early on, I was a bit too quick on pressing the PC's into the next dungeon, but after soliciting player feedback I've reigned that in and given more time at the table and by emails for activities outside the combats. We're all enjoying it a lot, and my players can't even tell where one adventure begins and another ends, as I blend it all together and give them plenty of choice in what to do next (with the right hooks and PC goals etc, they pretty much always choose the next adventure by themselves).
This is a good thread and a thought-provoking question. My answers are as follows:
1) The only thing we modify is some adventure hooks, tweak/add some NPCs, occassionally drop encounters that seem unfairly matched or illogical, occassionally add random encounters (especially when traveling from place to place). But I agree that this is generally within the bounds of "regular DMing" so I personally view it as running the campaign "as is".
2) We use miniatures and a battle mat. Like Tiger Lily, we play 2nd edition. (on a side note, TL, exactly how do you use miniatures without a battle mat?).
3) I would say that the adventures are pretty combat-heavy and this is satisfactory to the players. As the campaign has progressed (from HoHR on...) there's been more temptations to modify some of the combat scenarios (or drop them altogether) to prevent TPKs. We'll see how it goes.
4) I was surprised how attached the players have become to the players. Some have tossed over their decades-played characters and declared the AoW characters their favorites. Death is mostly temporary in our game multiverse so this is exceptable. Character development has been deep and well role-played. Each character has their own motivations and foibles. They've developed well and I look forward to how they will progress.
It's been fun. I can't wait to finish up and tackle the next adventure path!
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By this question, I mean:
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
I have changed most of the modules in one way or another so that it opened up more roleplaying opportunities for the group. There are some big characters in there (Lord Smenk, Filge, Kullen etc.) that I really wanted to play with. However, I have kept all combats in there not removing any. In fact, I drastically augmented the Encounter at Blackwall Keep. I wanted to do this so the PCs would have a little bit up the sleeve coming into the Hall of Harsh Reflections and the Champion's Games.
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
Mini's and grid although some combats I deliberately have freeform as suits. Mainly with our group's 3000+ mini's though.
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
I have mainly added things, or using the suggested augmentations at the back of each module. So far I have only lost two characters out of the eight featured so far.
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
Our group loves both roleplaying and combat. I have significantly added to elements in Diamond Lake as well as Greyhawk to faciliate this. The group has a lot of "enemies" and they're loving it. In terms of developing personalities, I have several characters in my group that are quite complex and not from the cookie-cutting school by any means. Everyone tries to develop their characters and ahs quite an attachment to them. In fact one of the character's that died is about to be brought back in Greyhawk, the player loved the PC so much, they're willing to sacrifice two levels to the rest of the party to bring them back.
Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
I just started a AoW campaign on a play by post site, I most modified things cosmetically to be in my own setting, as I don't like running in established campaign settings. The party is only beginning the Whispering Cairns, but I give posting experience and let people vote on the best roleplayers every two weeks for extra experience on top of what the adventure gives, so most the party of eight is at level 2 already and they just got to room 7. I use battle maps, but I don't use minitures as its an online game. The characters are each heavily tied to my diamond lake (called Silverfall in my setting) and there has been alot of roleplaying (including the death and retirement of one character due to in party differences).
That being said, I am planning to start another AoW campaign in soon tabletop, and this one will be HEAVILY modified, as the players have decided that they want the setting to be in a industrial desert setting, so I am taking some elements from Iron Kingdoms and I am thinking I am going to have rebuild the AoW adventures from the ground up almost, also I will be using some rules from Ghostwalk to allow PCs to still play after death until they can get their bodies to a cleric for healing. It will use minitures, and hopefully have heavy roleplaying, and depending on the size of my group, I may add adventures to help keep the parties levels together.
As written? Yes--like other DMs I've added a few bits of fluff, random encounters, and modified plot hooks, but changed nothing drastically.
Minis and battlemat? I don't really have a miniatures collection but use quarter-sized tokens (plus a bunch of tokens supplied by Dungeon and Dragon over the last few years) on the puzzle-fit dry erase battleboard set I bought earlier this spring for all but the simplest encounters. I found this added a lot to several of the encounters, most notably the kenku maze in TFOE. We play 3.5, but I've found myself making occasional ad hoc rulings to accommodate verisimilitude and the desire for cinematic heroism, with the agreement of my player. (I'm running the campaign as a one on one with my son).
Roleplaying/combat heavy? Yes to both. The AP is set up nicely to give breaks between dungeon crawls every third of fourth session, and we typically spend a whole session roleplaying then. Several of the combat oriented encounters have involved or been replaced by roleplaying as well. For example, my party killed only the chief and the lieutenant (plus Ilthane's kobolds) in the lizardfolk lair, and would have let the two leaders live if they hadn't treacherously attacked while the party was in the throne room negotiating a prisoner exchange. We had lots of fun roleplaying Diamond Lake in between TFOE and EBK, and some interesting moments as the party began to be suspicious of the doppelganger who replaced the party wizard (a DMPC) in HOHR.
add/remove combats? So far, I've run all the encounters written into the AP (halfway through HOHR) except those that the party bypassed. I have added random encounters from the charts provided in the appropriate adventures, as well as a couple of special encounters inspired by how things have developed. I boosted Kullen's gang one level and had them ambush the party on the way to EBK because Smenk knew they had dirt on him (involvement with the cult in Dourstone Mine) and wanted to silence him. I had a tiefling assassin sent by Bozal Zahol break into Allustan's alchemical lab (used by the party wizard) to try to steal the worm samples. And Filge, whose arm was cut off by the party paladin in their first meeting, made an appearance inside the Greyhawk city gate, pointing the PCs out (unbeknownst to them) to the doppelgangers so they could track the party. Filge now has a nasty undead graft, courtesy of Zyrxog, and will be making another appearance soon. In Zyrxog's lair, I think. I've got a number of extra elements planned for the future, particularly SOLS, which will be a little harder to get to than portrayed in the original adventure.
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
More than I anticipated, actually. There's been some stuff I just wanted to try out (investigating Smenk's house, only to find him murdered, etc.)
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
A horde of minis, a dry-erase tabletop, and two battlemats. We're working (slowly) towards a projector setup.
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
Removed a few, or lowered the number of opponents. Just takes too long to play out the combats.
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
Very little roleplaying. None of the original party have survived, and one player has lost three characters. Now that they've reached the level where they can afford/cast Raise Dead, hopefully that will change, but they seem to enjoy trying out new character builds. I hope to get them involved with affiliations once they hit Waterdeep (tomorrow night). This could lead to some intra-party competition, if things go the way I hope.
I warned them that it would be hard, and I woudn't be pulling any punches, but they aren't being very smart about resting, regrouping, and tactics yet.
Not that I think it's a bad thing, but isn't it pulling punches to skip encounters based on the party's condition?
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
Other than throwing in the occasional non-AP encounter (I threw in the lizard-man situation in the abandoned house once just to keep my players on their toes), I've run it fairly stock. The only modifications I can think of are those to how the NPCs are played - I'm making them my own, naturally, and they're likely not exactly how the AP thought they'd be.
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
I use an old, BIG battlemap that I use water-soluble markers on and paint the miniatures myself, customizing the PCs and using whatever I can find for bad guys. Without the maps, you lose a lot of the functionality of several of the feats (which were designed with maps and miniatures in mind).
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
So far, the group is in Three Faces of Evil and they've obliterated the Hextorians in their temple. It was close, with some thought toward a TPK at one point, but that was due to the way the players approached the situation (giving the villains plenty of time to cast all of their power-ups and not trying to knock the statue down so as to gain access). It didn't help them that a Silence spell took out their Sorceress...
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
We're into TFoE, as mentioned, and have lost one character (to the Grick in the Whispering Cairn - he had the magical shortsword, but never bothered to use it since it hadn't been identified - to them, it was just a Masterwork Short Sword...). Therefore, I am getting a tremendous amount of RP from my players, and I'm rewarding them with copious amounts of RPXP after each adventure. I started them one level higher than the AP calls for in order that they would be more hardy and likely able to survive such encounters. The payoff is more RP. I have a journal going on here which portrays a lot of their RP, so take a look at "Graven and the Battle Babes" (corny title on purpose). ^_^
Syrinx
By this question, I mean:
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
1) Not really. I made up Manzorian's items that he trades for the Rod of Seven Parts, and I had the ranger's pig animal companion eat some illithid tadpoles and gradually become an abereant pig, but other than that I've stuck to the script.
2) With all the combat, we use minis and a grid. We do a lot of aerial combat too, and we like it to be as precise as we can.
3) I remove some of the lower-CR combats that would just be tedious and have little or no XP reward.
4) They definitely invest in a background. They all had stories to tell how they ended up in Diamond Lake. The cleric was a field medic with the garrison, and the wizard was Allustan's apprentice, for example.
2) We use miniatures and a battle mat. Like Tiger Lily, we play 2nd edition. (on a side note, TL, exactly how do you use miniatures without a battle mat?).
We just have them sitting in the middle of the table, facing me. We use them for keeping track of marching order, who's gone into a room and who hasn't, who's running up to melee range and who's hanging back for ranged attacks, who's fighting one-one one and who's being double teamed by the bad guys, etc. We don't have "rules lawyers" as the folks on the boards think of the term, so the scale isn't an exact science. Yet it still helps me keep track of what character is where, who's in the line of fire, etc to make logical and fast rulings during combat.
As a side note... my gaming group started using miniatures every game, regardless of who is DMing, because of one player's nasty habit of doing things like this:
"I open the door and go into the room."
"You fall into a pit trap just inside the door."
"What? I didn't go in, I just opened the door!"
It was either get a tape recorder or use miniatures. Minis are more pleasing to look at in the middle of the table. :)
(on a side note, TL, exactly how do you use miniatures without a battle mat?).
If you go back to the old style miniatures wargame antecedents to D&D, most miniatures rules specified speeds in inches based on the scale of the miniatures, and you measured with a ruler or tapemeasure in the desired direction of travel. I suppose lots of people who played 1e using miniatures did things this way--when I was in high school we used miniatures (when we could afford them) in much the same way Tiger Lily describes, but before that, I remember playing (ca. 1976, I was about 11) a miniatures combat game--a friend of mine had somehow gotten ahold of a typescript set of rules that covered the basics of initiative, movement, melee, ranged combat, etc., and we would set up and run battles with plastic cowboy and Indian figurines, knights (I brought a goodly collection of these back from England with me at age 10), modern "army men," and just about anything else we could get a hold of. We used legos, lincoln logs, and whatever else came to hand to build the sets and would spend all afternoon running our mix and match battles, with no attention to historical verisimilitude whatsoever.
If one wanted to do away with the battle board, it wouldn't be that hard to run battles this way using 3.5e. It would lose some of the legalistic precision that is the hallmark of 3.5, necessitating more ad hoc DM judgement calls about things like squeezing and cover. It would also eliminate some of the simulacrum feel of putting everything into a grid and forcing everything to operate accordingly, if players were willing to abide by the DM's rulings.
1) I heavily modify certain encounters to make it setting specific, but I don't drop or add encounters before a game (sometimes I do in-game, based on how the party's doing).
2) We use minis a lot; I tend to bring out minis more than necessary just to break players of metagaming. "Ooh, the minis are out! Combat's coming! Use up all those short-term spells!" After they almost TPK'd once or twice doing that, they learned.
3) We keep about the same level of combat that's in the module, but the players are good about finding ways to beat many encounters without combat, which I encourage when possible.
4) We have quite a bit of roleplaying, but it's often passive roleplaying as opposed to hours of staying in-character. I made a point to add in quite a bit of extra story content for each individual character, to give each of them some time in the spotlight. With all the extra stuff that happens between modules, we often take one or two gaming sessions just to transition between adventures and take care of the extra stuff.
Okay, Tiger Lily, I think I understand your application. When my group first started using mini's we used them pretty much as you describe. It didn't take long to employ my quilting mat (convenient 1 inch squares) as our default battle mat. The problem wasn't so much rules lawyers (we don't have any of those in my group) but with the huge benefits especially when a scenario is set in an oddly shaped natural cave, etc. Uniform geometric rooms are easy to envision and work with but the more unique the setting the more useful the battle mat becomes. I highly recommend the battle mat, especially for prolonged battles set in unusual places. The flooded room in HoHR with the invisible stalkers and the diagonal planks, for example, was so much simplicity (not the battle but the logistics and player tactics) when it was right there before the players' very eyes.
Anyway,... just a suggestion. Using the mini's even in their simplest form is still a good thing,IMO.
1) My Age of Worms is pretty extensively modified from the modules as written. I've replaced important NPCs (Eligos got booted for a different and more morally ambiguous scholar from my previous Greyhawk games, Dr. Thanatos), changed the roles of key NPCs based on how the party interacted with them (Filge is the party's close ally, although he's on the run from Smenk for working with them) and I've liberally added subplots (ransoming a PC from Smenk, hunting down kegs of Redhand Stout infected with slow worms in the Free City).
2) Yes, minis (dice or LoTR Monopoly pieces, usually) and a grid (laminated posterboard with squares in, although that's starting to get a bit grungy).
3) My games are generally a little less combat heavy. That is to say, I'm more likely to remove a combat with little bearing on the big picture and make a more important fight later on a little more difficult than to add new battles. Although I am a fond practitioner of the occasional random encounter.
4) Plenty of roleplaying, as much between party members as there is with NPCs. All of the characters tend to interact strongly with each other - there's been plenty of emnities and arguements along with the good-natured camaraderie. The majority of the characters are well-developed to differing degrees, and they tend to evolve and grow through play, which is always a good thing.
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
Not much. I have used a psionic version of Zyrxog, but mostly I have run the campaign as is.
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
I use minis on a battlemap.
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
IMHO the adventures are not combat heavy at all. They have a very good almost 50/50 mix of rp and combat and that has been my experience five adventures into it. Don't let all the dungeon maps fool you, there are plenty of chances for rp in this campaign. I don't add or remove combats, but the PCs have avoided some (by choice or chance).
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
Lots. The PCs interact with NPCs more than each other though. The player of the healer is pretty involved in his character and has developed quite a flirtatious, sexually suggestive personality, while the dwarf is a glory hog. The others don't roleplay character personality as much, but they do interact with the other characters on a regular basis and make rp decisions.
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
1) I use pretty much the adventures as is...
2) I don't use minis (basically cause there's no more room on the table due to the incredible amount of junk food, beer, and pop that my players bring), but I do use a magnetic dry-eraser board with a permanent 1 inch grid on it. With this I use magnetic letters and numbers (you know, the colored ones we used to have when we were children...) to represent the PCs and NPCs. I only draw the immediate area where the fighting takes place.
3) Like I said, I tend to use the fights as is...
4) That differs according to the players. Some players really develope their backgrounds and try to role play, and others just come for the hack-and-slash. Best of both worlds, I guess.
Ultradan
1) Not really. I made up Manzorian's items that he trades for the Rod of Seven Parts, and I had the ranger's pig animal companion eat some illithid tadpoles and gradually become an abereant pig, but other than that I've stuck to the script.
A pig animal companion!!! I *love* it! Was this your idea, or the player's idea? Very cool and different....
1) do you modify the adventures (other than coverting them to a particular setting)?
Not really. Like others, things develope. The PCs are building a keep in Diamond Lake. I keep having to develope a GP value for things in dungeons that were supposed to be nailed down.
2) do you use minis and a grid? Or is your AoW game more free-form like previous editions of D&D?
Yes! You have to. If you don't use a battlemat, use a tapemeasure.
3) are your games as combat heavy as the modules are? Do you add combats or remove them?
I don't remove them. Sometimes the PCs come back for combats they missed. Sometimes I add combats made up of D&D figures.
Note that a party of 7 is best so add NPCs if necessary.
4) Is there a lot of roleplaying in your game? How about between players? Are character's personalities well developed, or does the deadliness of the AP lessen players' desires to invest heavily in their characters?
I started out rewarding them with start equiptment for creating
characters that were fugitives from Keoland. Two of them created long lost brothers who were half dragons and inherited
sword canes that I turned into Weapons of Legacy.
As for deadlines, I allow at least one week between modules.
This allows them to order custom items, read special books,
and take special training. Look in Dragon magazine and on these
topics for role playing opertunities. Some NPCs have joined the party.