Thriller Killer!

Okay here's attempt #2! I posted my thoughts on Thriller Killer last Sunday but it was just so scattered and long that I felt tired just looking at how wordy it was.

So here's the just of it. Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of sitting around a coffee table with some great friends playing the part of three single-dimensional characters adhering to stereotypes that one might find on a college campus. I played the parts of:
-The campus-drug dealer
-The super sheltered, super religious freshman who basically labels anything secular as being of the devil
-The pretend student that everyone sees on campus grounds playing ultimate frisbee and flag football that gets invited to all of the keggers.

Now let me get this out in the open, I am not a fan of the horror-slasher genre and all that I can recall off the top of my head involved a bit of the first "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer". So aside from a couple of things like racial tropes, I'm pretty oblivious to the whole thing.

Your characters are pretty much dagger fodder until you get to your last surviving character. Rules are simple and quick and what I loved about my experience is that it was all role-play and when you're rolling D6's, there's weight to it as someone is probably going to get effed up...or dead. "Character sheets had six lines.
1. Name
2. Stereotype
3. Unwise (how likely he/she will end up doing something stupid)
4. Unlucky
5. Undone (how easy it is for the character to freak out at the sign of danger)
6. Unharm (basically your hit points and a cool mechanic that involves your killed character transfering their starting score over to another surviving character with bonus Unharm points given out at the GM's discretion for creative descriptions of their death, resulting in your last survivor being pretty epic on the Unharm charts)

On topic with the Unharm points transferring to other characters, until someone is on their last character, the GM doesn't have to roll any dice and all rolls are made by PC's to avoid the cruel fate of stupidity, luck and lack of nerves. Once a player is down to his/her last character, only then will the GM have to roll on his abilities, that I believe are also the same "stats" types that the players have.

The biggest thing that I got out of the experience was that it truly felt like a group collaboration. And while having a character die prematurely might've been frustrating, there were many instances where you just want to set your guys up for trouble. What did I learn about B-rated slasher horror movies from this? It doesn't matter how far you run or drive off, the bad guy will follow you there, you can't win by shooting the murderer with a gun and that female characters always look sexy regardless of the circumstances that they're in.

Zero prep time on the players' parts as the longest part seemed to be for us to come up with names for our victims. Matt our GM, had three lines of notes for his prep. Easy as pie and if you're out for quick and twisted fun, I highly recommend Thriller Killer.

Mothers Day Won...Oh And Thor

So we had originally planned to have our next Mouse Guard session take place today. Got the Facebook event set up, people clicking that they would attend and then TING, Matt recalled that it would be Mother's Day. Not wanting anyone at my table to potentially lose the running for son or daughter of the year, I called the session off. I took care of my Mothers Day "festivities" on Friday as my mom, flew out to my sister's place for her vacation yesterday.
Happy Mothers day to any moms who might read this post.
I saw Thor yesterday. Let me say that I enjoyed it. There were many lines that had the theater laughing without turning the movie into an all out comedy, the costumes and visuals of Asgard were absolutely gorgeous, Natalie Portman is hot and while the story didn't have a ton of layers to it, it just works. One thing I couldn't help but notice was whenever Thor, Sif and the Warriors three were all on the screen at the same time, I imagined to myself that this would be what D&D might look like as a film. Particularly in Paragon and Epic Tier.

Take care my friends.

D&D 4E & Essentials

Now I know that the bulk of the good folk who skim my blog don't play D&D 4E. Regardless, after flipping through Heroes of Shadow at my local store it was weird to see a book that had character options laid out more like Essentials but without that tag on the book AND in the large hardcover format.
I'll be honest, my initial reaction was screw you WotC, you've now resolved to lying to your customer base by trying to sell an Essentials book to a non Essentials fan. I've picked up the Essentials Rules Compendium as it's the 4e rule set with all of the eratta. I haven't read anything from the Essentials DM Kit or Monsters Vault and am not sure how they might differ from the "standard" 4E DM Guides and Monster Manuals from a mechanical stand point.
Is the Essentials line really 4.5? Not really. I see it as Wizards trying to make roping in the new guy less intimidating and with "simplified" leveling up that I guess is more akin to 1st Ed(?). Unfortunately, it seems like the end result was mostly just another line in the sand to be drawn for many. Personally, I've only experienced Essentials at Wednesday Night Encounters. The folk who play it love it. I've enjoyed it when I do go out to play. What needs to happen is for Essentials to stop being viewed by the players as another game but as another way for Character Classes to advance when they level up. But from my personal experience, I've never seen or actually heard about any table that has a combination of players who've built their characters from the Players Handbooks AND the Essentials books. The guilty forces in my opinion? The mindset of the optimizer/power gamer.

Mouse Guard: Making The "Mundane" Terrifying

Oh look, it's raining. Meh oh well, just means it'll be depressing if I have to go outside. Well, to a mouse, that same rain drop is now the size of a basketball ball. Everyone has a concept of the dangers that are present in Mouse Guard because we simply take the things we know about "nature" and make it much much bigger. It makes for a solid foundation unlike the fantasy or fiction elements that fill our fantasy world. From a GM perspective, it's great to know that everyone at the table will probably know what I'm talking about since most of it is based on reality. This awareness came about as we talked about some of the over the top settings that have shown up in D&D and my friend Erin talking about how easy it is to just to do stuff in Mouse Guard whereas if presented an open sand box in Cartoon Action Hour she wasn't sure what all was available to her in the world of ________ (insert name of made up cartoon world).

It's The People At The Table That Keep Me Doing This

I'm sure most of us have gone through periods where you just don't care about the games you're running and prepping for that next session feels like doing homework for a school assignment. I've been in that mode since January. Happened to me in D&D after Christmas and that ended. I thought about just dropping Mouse Guard before it even started when it became so hard to schedule that first session. Fortunately for me, two of my friends' enthusiasm to play kept me from just scrapping the idea. We finally all sat down to play after over a month of rescheduling. I'll be honest, up until the moment that we started to play, I was just kind of there. But once we started role-playing, I might have been the happiest guy in the world.
Sure, prepping for a game can be a huge chore but to be able to escape into a make-believe world with them for a few hours makes it all worthwhile.

What Happened Today? Mouse Guard Happened. My Impression.

Sunday Sunday Sunday! I've been wanting to play Mouse Guard for quite awhile now and today it took place. I woke up, got ready, headed to the grocery store, went to my LFCGS to hang out for a bit with two friends who were playing Hordes before the store opened, picked up a friend and then off to the host's home. Haha actually, everyone who lives in that house (four people) is playing Mouse Guard; My buddy, his younger brother, his girlfriend and her best friend. To round out the patrol; two friends whom we know through the LFCGS.
Erin made us a delicious brunch and after doing some finishing touches to our character gens, we were ready to play. While I've never ran anything as a DM/GM outside of D&D 4E, I was very pleased at how easy Mouse Guard is to prep. You essentially have the following things you can throw at the Guard Mice; Weather/Seasons, Wilderness, Other Mice and Wild Animals. The book recommends pitting two of the four at the patrol and have some twists on stand by. And when you scale things down to a mouse, EVERYTHING can be terrifying when a drop of rain is the size of your arm and Turtles are larger than tanks.
While the party had good skills in its ranks, it was primarily was formed around getting as much drama between the players with much opportunity to cause trouble through curiosity, being naive and douchebaggery. Fortunately for us, playing with your characters' goals, beliefs, instincts and against them are beneficial to earning rewards in the Mouse Guard system. Heavy roleplay is highly encouraged in the mechanics itself and not being rules heavy and quite flexible in most areas. Those who are playing purely for character development, plot and atmosphere will not have to be afraid of a ton of rules crunch to play. The thing I found odd, is the amount of times that we had to flip through the book to check things out when you realize how few actual rules the game has.
I had a lot of fun and it was great to be playing and not having half of the table try to break the game through the biggest uber combo that could come out during combat or making skill test versus obstacles.
Playing out combat without the use of minis much to my surprise, is actually something I really enjoyed. All in all, a great experience and I'm looking forward to play again in two weeks and Erin's going to make waffles. I could go into details of the session but overall I just wanted to commit to getting my thoughts of the feel of the game.

Mouse Guard RPG
Pros:
-quick session prep
-reward system really encourages roleplaying
-passing AND failing skill checks contribute to advancing
-non-gamers can have a blast playing without having to learn a lot of rules
-conflicts easily turn into nail biters (in fact I was going to hold back and my players had to remind me that they're playing mice, and it was my job as the gm/ controller of the world to be constantly kicking the crap out of them)

Cons:
-conflict rules can feel too abstract at times
-from a D&D 4E background, I have to be careful not to let things potentially turn into a skill challenge by throwing out rolls against obstacles
-conflict's inherent rock-paper-scissors mechanic is neat but feels awkward and makes it hard to want to do multiple types of conflicts at once

Are One Shots The Way To Go?

I had a discussion with a friend last Friday about gaming. He DM's the Heavy Metal D&D campaign that I played in from level 1 to 10. That campaign is still going strong. I mentioned to him that I was feeling pretty blah about RPGs. Kris responded that I should stick to one shots. Why? I'm in the zone when I'm passionate about my games or a certain aspect of it, and it really shows. When filler takes place, I'll just coast through it and play it out almost like taking care of formalities. Couple that with my extreme frustration with plot if player attendance isn't regular, it makes the thought of a long campaign seem like an ideal. The idea of doing one shots or campaigns that are done within three sessions do indeed make sense. I get to play out fresh ideas quickly. Cycle through player rosters and no one has to feel like they're giving up every other Saturday or whatever for an unknown amount of time. But the trade off... you don't get to build that level of character bond and backstory where it almost feels like you just got dumped by an ex when the DM kills your character.

Today, I go to my friends' place for brunch and we'll create characters for Mouse Guard while watching Buffy. We'll see how long we play this for and I have no clue what the scheduling for sessions will be like as only two of us have Monday to Friday work weeks. Regardless, I'm excited to get this going.

2011 Gaming Resolutions

I'm noticing fewer and fewer New Year Resolutions being made among people that I know. I've personally never bothered to make them, but since I have a blog, why not.

My goals for 2011 gaming consist of:
1. Paint all of my Guild/Malifaux miniatures
2. Build a gaming board with full set of terrain for Malifaux
3. Play at least one game with my Anima Tactics stuff
4. Launch my Mouse Guard campaign
5. Assemble all of my Legion of Everblight miniatures
6. Actively read and post on the forums and blogs that I frequent instead of just wandering aimlessly through them and wasting precious time.

What're you guys planning to do this year?

Dinner Really Does Make A Difference

Yes, it's been forever since I've posted anything on this blog but in my defense, I've been really busy at work, went on holidays last week and playing instead of writing. Knowing that bloggers like Christian over at Destination Unknown makes lunch/dinner for the good folk at his game table. I wanted to get into that hanging out while eating side of things. Now I'm not talking about snack and liquor runs before sessions. I wanted proper meals. My group at this point does not prepare dinner but once everyone gets to the place of gaming, we leave in my van and go have supper. It's been really good especially with one of our players being new to the group and we really get to know each other outside of the game environment.
A huge perk is that the games run a lot smoother. Less emphasis on snacks being an interference while playing, we seem less distracted and long drawn out rabbit trailed stories show up less and less as I believe we get a lot of the need of personal chit chat done at the dinner table. Oh and no in the middle of a lull spot where someone goes "Who wants to order pizza?" and then you lose 20 minutes to figuring out what toppings you want, looking for phone numbers and gathering cash for whoever's chipping in.

Playing Monsters Straight Out Of The Book

Do you play monsters as they're written straight out of a Monster Manual or Bestiary? I don't know what it is but since I started DMing, I never really liked using anything that was in print as is aside from you know...Kobold Minion, Kenku Warrior, etc. And if I used a stat block straight from a published monster that would be of relevance, it was always reskinned to look like something else.
This comes from my inability to leave things alone but later on, I really liked how it made metagaming harder for other players who also DM or just happen to own all of the books. I also understand their powers and abilities a bit more as I had to actively take part in selecting what would be kept, ditched and added.

Oh and if you haven't seen "How To Train Your Dragon", you should do something about it. ^_^

If You Can't Beat Them. Join Them. 15's!

So there's been a bunch of "top 15 games that have influenced or inspired me" blog posts floating around lately. Well here's my list based on what first comes to mind when I think of the word "game" that doesn't involve me chasing a ball around or running.

1. Dragon Strike
2. Chess
3. Space Hulk
4. Necromunda
5. Warhammer 40,000
6. Warmachine/Hordes
7. Gloom
8. Cutthroat Caverns
9. Street Fighter II
10. Yoshi's Island
11. Need For Speed Underground
12. Sonic The Hedgehog 2
13. Dungeons & Dragons
14. Yetisberg
15. Poker

Are DM's Really That Hard To Find?

My good friend Matt had his birthday party on Saturday and when we were outside smoking cigars, a few of us began chatting up D&D. I realized that though each campaign were sharing a bunch of the same players from the pool, there were six or more different campaigns represented there.

A lot of these offshoots are the result of players wanting to take a shot at DMing and one player is part of a group that cycles through a different DM every session in some sort of rotation. I had seen the videos below just before I started DMing as I was looking for tips on the subject and am now wondering, among your local circles, are DM's/GM's such a rarity and are so many people that reluctant to take up the position when all you really want to do is play D&D?

I love DMing more than being a PC in most cases. Why? Because every turn feels like it's still partially my turn. How about you?

Good Bye Heavy Metal D&D Campaign

Last Monday night marked my last session in a weekly D&D 4E campaign that I was playing in. Weekly sessions combined with it being on Monday nights were taking a toll on me. Instead of just bailing, I wanted to finish Heroic Tier and the story arc before claiming back my Monday evenings for myself.
My character Memphis Green had died the week prior and while I wanted him to go down heroically, I was hoping it'd be against the big bad that we were introduced to in the very first session. For my newly created character, I came up with Huggles X.
A quick improvised burial was arranged for Memphis Green in the same place that he fell. He's laid on an arrangement of rocks and wrapped in the blankets from his adventurer's kit and then set ablaze. Just as his remains burn and the elven shape collapses, Skull notices Huggles getting a lot heavier while sitting on her shoulder. The little dragon hops off and primal energy begins to emanate from the ground and vines begin wrapping around Huggles forming a larger humanoid shape. The dragon familiar's face is the last thing to get enveloped and the transformation completes with what look like black and green eerie descent chitinous plates. He then bends down and picks up Memphis' old hat, places it on his head and pulls the brim down.
For this character, I stated him up as a Dragonborn Ardent. Why? Tiny was sick so our healer would be missing, so that responsibility would fall upon me. Not to mention that going from five players to three would make things a little harder. Yes, having heals is a good thing.

We charge through the great doors into the room where Babagya waits for us. Fully ready, fully prepared and she begins summoning her Zombie Turtle minions. She's is wrapped in a veil of darkness and gets into our Paladin's head a few times. She literally crawls into his head, causing harm to him and denying the rest of us the option of hurting her as we'd be forced to club on our Paladin unless he himself forces her out of his mind. Aside from her veil of darkness, the ability to summon minions and attacks that cause status effects, she wasn't a very "strong" character.
When the last blow connects with her, she cackles and laughs that she was the last of the Colossi which prevented a dead god from coming back. She had to be killed by those of pure intent (though I question that as we were trouble makers whenever we were left in cities). The big kicker that really got me was there that there was no apocalypse themed magic book that her death cult were after. She orchestrated the theft in the great library that would hire us to retrieve it so that we would kill off the colossi and in the end, her.
When she draws her last breath, the ground shakes with the floors splitting open and spilling out grey and pink flesh. Lando had the fireball, Indiana Jones had the boulder, we got brains growing. Our characters hop onto thier flying broomsticks and attempt to GTFO! A great skill check took place where we came up with fantastic ways to navigate through the halls of the dungeon and outrun the brains and the swarms of goblins running for dear life.
Alas, we failed the skill challenge and all turns black. When Skull and Triptych awake, they find themselves just in rags on a Drow airship. Their equipment are gone, Huggles X, Bruce Fitzyu, Brooke and the Chicken Hut are nowhere to be seen. When they look over the deck of the ship, they see that they are part of a massive fleet of airships, carrying away a huge land mass containing most of the city of Sternum. In the background, a massive skeleton with muscles slowing growing upon it as the dead god slowly comes back to life. Skull and Triptych sail away into the Astral Sea.
It was a blast and an awesome ending to Heroic Tier. I felt saddened that I would not be continuing in this adventure as I could not commit to the schedule. It really felt like watching the ending of a good tv series for me.

Paranoia!

So this fine sunny Sunday was spent predominantly indoors. Totally worth it. I got to try out the game Paranoia and had a real blast. Each player controls a Troubleshooter who is a clone with an assigned classification (but also part of a secret society organization) that is sent about the setting of Alpha Complex to find trouble and shoot it in order to preserve the perfect society that The Computer has created. The game is over the top, loaded with the screw your neighbor factor as you try to carry out your assigned functions, secret agenda, sabotage and flush out the other players to expose their acts treason to The Computer.
Teamed up with booze, newly purchased toy guns, quesedillas, cigars and sushi afterwards, I'd say it was a Sunday well spent.
If you're interested in playing a tongue and cheek humor rpg, definitely give this game a try.

"Limit Breakers" in 4E

I had mentioned previously that I had introduced a Power Meter/"Limit Breaker" mechanic into Paper Legends. It really was a double edged sword. The plus side is it keeps players paying attention when things are turning into a grind as they're anticipating when they can unleash a Daily Power with all of the perks going off. The down side, it creates one more thing to track in an already mechanic heavy game (especially if you have a bunch of effects floating like saving throws, buffs, penalties, on-going damage, etc.)

The nine circles on the upper right corner represent 1's. Each circle on the colored strips on the left represent 10's.

30+ points allows you to use Daily Encounter Powers

60+ points gives you a +1 to hit bonus when using the Daily Power

120+ points allows you to spend a healing surge and gain 1/2 surge value in hit points.

200 points automatically grants you max dice rolls for damage or healing bonuses, etc. Acquiring points caps at 200.

*The bonuses stack as you clear different levels. The Power Meter resets to Zero the instant a Daily Power is used in an encounter. The damage or healing from the Daily Power do not contribute points to the Power Meter.

Players gain points for dealing damage, taking damage, and by healing. So basically when their action actively effects HP, they accumulate points.
Examples:
*Thor does a Twin Strike with his bow and does 7 and 9 points of damage to his two targets. Thor gains 16 points.
*Bellows receives 20 points of damage from an enemy attack. He gains 20 points.
*An area of effect attack via blast or burst do accumulate. If your blast hits 4 targets and you roll, 12, 20, 14, 9 for damage, you gain 55 points on the Power Meter.
*Damage is still rolled for minions. It's not your fault that they're too weak to feel the full effects of the face beating.
*A healer will gain the value of hit points recovered by his/her healing power. Even if done to multiple allies. The recipient of the healing do not gain points.
*Popping a Second Wind does gain points for the Power Meter.
*Taking ongoing damage does gain points to the victim.
*Making an attack that does ongoing damage does not give points as the player is not actively causing the damage anymore.

Why did I introduce this mechanic into my game? It felt like something fun to do. I wanted to play D&D like a video game in a sense and a Power Meter seemed fitting. It also takes away some power gaming elements and brings a new element of strategy to the party. No first rounds where everyone unloads their Daily Powers and it also makes it harder to use Daily Powers on back to back turns by the same player.

My biggest joy from this mechanic was the anticipation of the players to wrack up all of those points in order to get all of the bonuses along with getting all emotional when they agonize over whether they should use the Daily Power that turn vs holding back as they're not far from gaining another bonus. The players had fun and it helps deter the grind feeling in the late game as they're still actively ticking away on their cards and waiting for that glorious turn when all the bonuses go off with an already more powerful than normal attack. They really make Daily Powers seem even more special and it's really something when they get to 200 points and then fudge on the roll.

Is this mechanic for everyone? Nope. Is it perfect? Nope. But my friends around the table had fun with it and that's what counts. It would also have to be scaled in Paragon and Epic Tiers.

D&D 4E - The Tabletop Video Game?

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been busy. Work, sketching, playing games, going out and to be honest, the drive just hasn't really been there as of late to blog.

What I do want to talk about is, the shift of my view on D&D 4E. I started my venture into tabletop RPGs with 4E. From what I saw skimming through books and hearing about in the previous editions - mostly 3.5 and Pathfinder references - the aspect that I didn't like were the blandness of encounters for non magic users as 90% of the time, it seemed like their only option was "I swing at him with my sword, axe, etc". This is the double edged sword. While mechanically it's boring, the responsibility of keeping one's imagination going is left to the DM and player.

I have never played an MMORPG before. My incline to 4E probably comes from the tabletop wargaming side of things. Now while I do enjoy roleplaying, I realize that the majority of the time, my experience with 4e is that of a narative encounter. And that's cool. 4E does combat really really well. Unfortunately, when I look at the mechanics that they tried to sum up for other things like skill challenges, it generally seems very very clumsy. Once again, it comes down to the story telling abilities of those at the table and imagination along with our own little house rulings in hopes to veer off from what seems sluggish to us game mechanics.

So with that being said, I've been drawing more and more inspiration from video games for Paper Legends. I intend to make it feel like a game. My players know this and have been gung ho about it. I've implemented a power meter that gets racked up as players dish out and take damage. Hand out RP bonus power ups in the form of coins and sometimes crazy stuff happens that doesn't quite make sense but we can do it because it's a GAME. While it can be a cop out for reasoning, it definitely gets the imagination flowing.

So far it's been great and with this particular group it works. All but one of them have played or are playing MMORPG's, tabletop wargames and/or Magic: The Gathering. We come together to collectively play out a story of Die Hard in a fantasy-ish setting.

I'm writing this post because awhile back I felt a bit frustrated with trying to get more story elements into our games and trying to coax a bit more of it out of my players. I got over this after talking with one of my players while going to McDonald's when I realize that I should be playing 4E to its strength and accept that most of our players were not natural actors or storytellers. I'm hoping to play to their quirks and if I put the right hooks out there, maybe they'll pressure me to come up with more plot twists.

I do want heavier roleplaying opportunities to come up and I'll let that grow on its own or I'll search for it in other systems like Mouse Guard or Cartoon Action Hour.

Paper Legends: Session 3.1 "I Choo Choo Choose You"

A month and a half has passed since the Firebugs dealt with Thalos Calgaron. With no real assignments aside from trivial little surveillance jobs, the group spreads out doing their own thing. Thor Frostfang continues to win in Fireman Tim's arena generating much buzz and keeping the gravy train flowing. Vincent Moren, pleads with Ayana and she agrees to turn the deceased Puppy's into a Zombie Kobold. Ulfr trains with the Rangers to expand on his tracking skills. "Dave" and Bellows work with R&D on prototype equipment along with Bellows receiving new arms to replace the set that Vincent dismantled. Korgath builds his congregation to Helmuth, god of gambling and "other good things" in the arena and establishes him as the patron deity to many of the fighters.

Fireman Tim assembles the team for a new assignment. A wyrmling was recently sold in a secret auction to a wealthy individual and the Firebugs have been hired to be the insurance policy. Not comfortable with the standard security that might be on the train and wanting to keep things low key, the Firebugs will have to sneak on board the train unknown to all including the train's crew. With no more information than the time of departure, the cargo and that the carriage which the precious cargo will be transported in is modified with special shock absorbers, the Firebugs are left to figure out how to handle the rest on their own.
The group heads to the train yard to survey the area. With being so caught up in the pit fights, Thor decides to take his time and enjoy himself with his new lady friends that he met at a local bar and inn. After the "festivities", he sneaks himself onto the specified box car and after getting bored, he heads back to the hotel. He knows his way in and will return tomorrow well before departure time.



Ulfr's does the old "sneak on board as a worker" routine. He wanders in casually, checking out the shift schedules for the next day and steals the largest set of railroad work attire that poorly covers his Goliath frame.

Vincent Moren purchases pig iron and alchemic fire before making his way to the rail yard's office building by which he buys his way onto the train by bribing an employee to sneak him on board. With plans taking shape, the Firebugs wait for tomorrow's departure.

I Am Not Dead. Just Been Busy And/Or Distracted.

I'm so far behind on session notes or little snippets of bright ideas due to fiscal year end with work. In July, there was only one day in that month that I did not stop into the office. But I'm on salary so no literal overtime pay. I'm just going to take some Fridays and Mondays off here and there to make long weekends and not eat into the vacation pay.
So between that, being tired and playing games, it hasn't left much time dedicated to blogging. I'm hoping to remedy this soon. So I'll be putting things up this week.

Happy gaming! You'll get your fix of Kok'ed Dice soon. I promise. Serious. I'm on a horse.

Missing Players = Plotting & Getting Cool New Shiny Things

So last night, only two of us out of six PCs ended up at the DM's place. Two gave notices that they had family functions ahead of time. One made a last minute cancelation 15 minutes before we were suppose to start and one didn't show up.
Our DM wanted to try and scale down the encounters and still play but we came to the conclussion that the effort has been put down to play a proper session. So let's wait to play a proper session with the intended amount of people. We ended our last session entering a new city so we decided to plot out what kind of trouble we could get into.
We played around with some random event generator tables and tweaked it a bit to the three of our likings and flavour to fit what our characters would be up to.
After the initial disappointment that we wouldn't be "playing", the night still ended on a positive note. Skull (Holly's character) has now lit a portion of the city on fire and Memphis (my character) is on the down low as the watch are looking for him after he was conned into a shady business venture.
Details are still being penned out and we were also rewarded cool magic items which I'm still coming up with some back story for it.
What started out as a bummer still proved to be a fun couple of hours and we even got to do a little bit of trouble shooting for a cool mechanic that I am planning to implement for Paper Legends. To tell you the truth, I think that our next session will have a much richer story than what was originally planned as Holly and myself got to pull our characters from first to third person perspectives and partake in the actual shaping of the setting outside of actually playing it. Hopefully that little extra bit of depth and connection that two of the PCs have will bleed over to the rest of the party. Now to see how it actually plays out. Happy gaming even when not actually gaming.

Beast Companions, Familiars & Other Tag-Alongs

I think that having companions in D&D run properly as an actual skill to do well. They can bring enhancing mechanics, liabilities for the party and possible flavour to the game. I personally feel that they really need to be played with character along with some hints of backstory and cues that lead to development. I've seen equipment with more personality in some cases.
My premier experience was from the first ever campaign that I got to play in. Our Wizard had a Falcon Familiar that he would use to channel his powers through. Outside of encounters, this thing rarely ever showed up and aside from when it was mentioned that he was using the falcon to cast _____, it wasn't much more to me than a tiny based mini that sometimes sat on the battlemat grid. Nothing against the player of the Wizard as he's a really great guy but was just not taking advantage of the roleplaying possibilities that this bird could have brought to the table.
The next one that I would have the pleasure of "meeting" had absolutely no game mechanics whatsoever. In that same first campaign set in Eberron, the Dwarf Warden went into the slums of Sharn and hired an Orc hanging around some street corner. This Orc would become his minstrel hired for more than two shinies and the DM even came up with some basic songs that he would sing. On many occassions when Volstag the Mighty (Dwarf Warden) was doing something or our DM was describing what Gorsh (the stupid Orc) was up to, I would catch myself singing his songs at the table. He added a ton of flavour to our sessions and prior to my leaving that campaign, I was even thinking about taking on the role of Gorsh as my Changeling Rogue was now staying in a kingdom posing as the recent secretly murdered king. Mechanic wise, Gorsh had nothing in terms of rules and was never presented on the board even though in most cases he was assumed to be in the room when fights broke out.
The shortest lived companion I would see came from the first Session of Paper Legends. Ulfr was originally created as a Beastmaster Ranger. The rules behind how the beast companion worked in tandem with the Ranger proved way too limiting and frustrating for Ross that all the coolness factor behind having a panther following you around town was lost. Ross ended up letting the cat die in the middle of the session and retooled his Ranger's fighting style. The only thing that would've saved this panther would've been character attachment. Or maybe not.
I've seen a couple more show up but they were in store games with players coming and going that they meant absolutely nothing to me.
Here's my current favourite example of a tag-along. In the first session of Paper Legends, Kris's character, Vincent Moren decided to keep the Kobold that they had interrogated as a pet and named him Puppy. I had this Kobold killed later that night and it drove the character into a frenzy. For the third session, Kris had requested that Puppy's body be reanimated and I agreed to have an NPC do a ritual making him into a Zombie Kobold. Puppy has proven to be amazing story telling element in and out of combat situations to where this Zombie has more flavour than many PCs. Very funny (or sad), especially when you consider he doesn't speak or really do much of anything aside from follow Vincent around and make sandwhiches. I myself might have as much attachment to Puppy as Kris does as we're always talking about different ways to justify Puppy's preservation from you know...decomposing, etc and how we'd like him to evolve. When interacting with NPCs, they're always trying to figure out what's up with "that smelly thing". Puppy makes for great conversation starters within the world of Paper Legends, prepares sandwhiches (we've actually house ruled a Daily Power out of this) and allows Vincent to shows his "tender" side as he is a very OCD and self-centered character until Puppy is put into danger.
Now for our newest Familiar. In the campaign that I'm playing called "On The Bones Of Dead God aka Heavy Metal D&D", which is DMed by Kris that plays as Vincent in my setting, our Sorceress recently acquired a Dragon Familiar. This to be named tiny Dragon is the half-brother of our Drow Sorceress. Her mother, the Queen of Spine is married to a Black Dragon after having her previous husband assassinated. Don't ask me if this little guy was hatched or birthed and we met him as he snuck up on our party following Matilda (who prefers to be called Skull) in order to protect her. Holly has played it up that Skull is repulsed by the little guy (mostly due to the concept of a Drow and Dragon breeding)and my character, Memphis Green(a gun toting Elf Seeker) has been interacting with her Dragon Familiar more than she has. Kris roleplays on behalf of the little guy (thank God as I do not want to see Holly talking to herself when trying to be both characters)and I hope that during this campaign, even though the Familiar makes Holly's Sorceress more badass, he will actually be more attached to my Seeker.
In summary after a long ramble of my experiences and using many brackets, I just want to say that these tag-alongs in an RPG can be so much more than "items" to your PCs. They are characters just waiting to be explored, especially when you realize that they're going thru hell and high water with your party.