Goooooooood Morning!

With Gary Con just a week away, I have been putting the last touches on the table top adventure version of “The Castle of Blackwood Moors”. Expanding the combats so they will work for a group of adventurers instead of just one. More treasure. Reworking traps, yadda yadda.  I am just redoing the outer bailey at this time since in the four hour blocks of time I am given at GaryCon, I do not think anyone will get into the Inner Bailey… but who knows what players will do.

One example of this, are the vines that grow on the outer walls. In the solo adventure, they only did one Hit Point per round of combat  (two, if you rip them out of your skin) since it is up to that one player to carry enough healing and the skills they had to choose from were limited. With a group however, there are now a diverse set of characters each with their own skillset. A typical group has a a few talented people for combat, some for healing, some for sneakiness and so on. In addition, if you reach zero hit points in the solo version, no one is there to bandage you up, so it is game over. In the group version, some one can assist you if you go unconscious and because of the wide variety of skills available to a group as I mentioned, the survivability level edges a bit higher.Because of this, the vines now do 1 to 3 hit points of damage, that does not seem like a lot, but it changes the dynamic quite a bit. If a healthy character starts off with 9 hit points in the solo version, they know instinctively they can climb 8 rounds before they use their last hit point and go unconscious. That same character will be a little more nervous knowing they could be at that last hit point in just 3 rounds in group play, and therefore be a bit more careful.

One of the great things about randomness in RPGs is it constantly provides that element of suspense.

I did not think of it until right now… but I should have made a graphic for this. Ah well, I am sure I will discuss this more in the future (since this kind of thing is fascinating to me) and I will try to make it a bit more presentable.

Getting ready for my flight back to the Wisconsin (where I heard they had a huge snow storm and I missed it *sad face*). Until next time folks, have a great day and try to do something nice for at least one person you know, I am sure they will appreciate your thoughtfulness.