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Designer Journal 8: Easter Eggs Galore |
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 One of the coolest things about the tournament this year, is that there is one area that only one group will be able to go to. This was something that was tossed around at the end of last years tournament. Though we've created an adventure where every adventure will be unique, it was kind of cool to have one place that exists all to itself. For this adventure, that place is Thurvia and its run by last year's Iron DM Iron Dungeon Master Barista, who has crafted an exceptional adventure that only one party can experience.
I probably shouldn't be saying this, but there is also an easter egg in that adventure that is solely available to this one party. It provides a great benefit for party members, but is both hidden in the adventure and requires some unique skills by PCs to uncover. The team that gets to go to this are is the first team that finishes their characters and selects that location. It was one of the test groups favorite adventures.
With Gencon right around the corner, this is our last designer journal. We have a few helpful easter eggs in this as well. First, this year we're introducing iron-pregens. These are not your normal pregen. We still encourage players to build their own characters (and bring a 10th level character to the tournament), but for those who don't mind taking a small point loss they can receive one of our pregenerated characters. Like all characters they need to be on our official character sheet, however, more importantly, they require the player to choose their own skills, languages and spells. Of course, you also need to provide the name, height, weight and basic background of the character. We also allow you to choose 7 mundane items to further make the character your own. Even with the points loss, a complete character was too much an advantage to players, especially ones designed by Iron DMs. So we asked our playtest players to develop them, and they chose to make 2 variants of the iconic classes (cleric, fighter, rogue and wizard).
There are again 3 acts in this adventure (actually 4 but we combined the first 2). Remember to pace yourself without metagaming. The DMs will be tough on role playing this year. Also, don't get too sidetracked. We provide sevreal open area places, a few with places that have nothing to do with the adventure, there there for time wasters.
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Designer Journal 7: Cinematic Combat and Timing |
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 The biggest thing we will introduce to this tournament is cinematic combat.
Cinematic combat is a method for determining the outcome of a combat in 5 minutes. It composes of role playing and description accompanied by a D20 roll. It has gone through a few iterations and the final iteration was inspired by 4e's single player skill roll (what I like to call dice fest palooza). Of course, we've pathfindered it up to a very enjoyable mechanic that does not feel too gamey and encompasses the spirit of role playing. luck is factored in, but more so, your roleplaying skills and creativity gets to shine. It works real simple. You describe everything you're doing or you want to do in the combat and roll a d20. Feats, skills (you have ranks in), abilities and spells should all mesh into your description. The next person does the same until a round of rolling has occured. The DM then describes the result. Players won't even receive rules on this mechanic. What you will know is that when a DM asks for a roundtable of rolls and descriptoins of whta you are doing, you better bring your A game. Cinematic Combat helps us bring a full mini campaign arc to you, where we can have real combat for the major combats (no less than 4) and still bring you epic combats that pits you vs armies of enemies (think god of war). The playtest groups love it, and if you're a metagamer, you're going to have areal tough time with it. Like we've said before, we feel there's already a tournament for the metagamer (and a whole system designed for that style) and our tournament is going the pathfinder route of traditional role playing meshed with awesome combats. So far the two groups, mine and boston's, have gone through this thing 5 times a piece. The groups have either finished 20 minutes before or after the finish mark. The key I'm hearing is to remember you're playing a tournament, but don't roleplay your character like you're in a tournament. You can buy items between adventures, but is it worth the time it is will take out. You may get the chance to level your character through or take a rest, but those both have in game time allotments that could hinder you if you are not pacing well. Finally, do not think because you are the weakest character fighting wise, you don't have a chance at winning. You'd be surprised how far pizzazz can get you. |
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Adventure Designer Journal 6: Playtesters Advice a: Character Creation - Streamline your character creation |
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 Me and another DM have been throwing in encounters through our "normal" campaign all year trying to figure out if it worked, average damage and all that good stuff. This week we started actual play tests of whole parts, and one of the most surprising parts was the character creation session.
It took my group 2 hours to make characters and Big boston's group 90 minutes. We aren't alloting anywhere near that much time in the tournament, so, like a focus group, we talked to everyone to figure out how we could streamline the process. Both admitted as much, that there were some small tweaks we could have done which we're incorporating, but a large part was on them. Instead they wanted to give people who played it some advice, as they are sure they could have cranked out characters in 45 minutes easy if they had followed their own advice. This is a collective set of advice 1. Set your mind on playing classes that you know how to play. In both parties, because they are our normal groups they aimed to play things they had never played before and had no idea what did what. They chose items and feats that they kept having to refer to notes to figure out how they worked and kept asking the dm for advice. In both instances it slowed down everything. 2. Work together- Boston's group didn't talk much at character creation except to brag about their character. My group talked a lot about magic items. In both they left out key elements such as having anyone with the survival skill and anyone who could provide any help finding and disabling traps. 3. Focus on the Task at hand- Try not to let the conversation go off topic and don't forget the details. 4. If you're reading this don't forget that you can bring a 10th level, epic paizo point buy character with you and be prepared to level it to the appropriate character at the con. 5. Dont be a min maxer. This is some post playing advice. The obstacles that they have, some require more knowledge of how you can play any character effectively as opposed to getting an extra +1 or +2. My groups combats found that the non-sneak attack dealing rogue was a the MVP of the encounters where as Boston's was split between a cleric and the fighter. 6. You can only use Paizo pathfinder books, but try to limit your book searching to the minimum. Too much time was spent passing books around. Well that's straight from the horses mouth so to speak. Next week we'll have comments from the first act. I already have a ton of notes i took during it and i am sure a lot will be helpful. |
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Adventure Designer Journal 4: Bring a level 10 character |
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We are intentionally putting this information in this article for those players who are strong supporters of the tournament. If we had one major problem last year it was that we screwed up the leveling process. We underestimated the time to 20 minutes and some players took an hour or so. This came up to our table in December and it was unanimous that we would overhaul the leveling process. First, we would only allow the core books, given this is pathfinder a new system and that there are only core books. Of course we are allowing both beta and the official buil ds. We are also allowing players to use normal 3.5 core characters if they only have the core books. Because these characters are underpowered than their pathfinder counterparts, players may receive a feat every odd level (just as pathfinder). This may change if we can get our hands on player books to use for the tournament. By limiting the books we do what we set out to do was have players depend on themselves, not exotic races and overpowered prestige classes. We also decided to tell all players to bring a level 10 character to the tournament. This does not mean that the adventure will be for level 10 characters. As a matter of fact all players will have to level their characters to the designated character level, which will be told at the con, however, those who visit the website will get a big bonus to time for that. Regardless the adventure begins 35 minutes after character creation, however, players may delay the beginning to finish their characters. This time, we're only asking one player to provide a brief 2 to 6 line writeup of their group. This will have to include the secret background ingredient we provide . |
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