Although I often run RPGs without miniatures, I find them useful for new players, games with children and - especially - for games with lots of players. The third category often comprises the first two, making miniatures and floorplans especially useful.
Last weekend, I ran two games - the first for first-time players (my colleagues) and the second for my kids and their friends. I used the same scenario: a dungeon-crawl with an intro stolen wholesale from Jack Vance's The Eyes of the Overworld.
For the first game, we used the second edition of The Black Hack. I loved running this. The player-facing rolls keep everyone involved, and the system's nicely intuitive (basically, everything's a d20 attribute check). I was very impressed with how the new armour system works. The degradation of armour's much easier to track than in the first edition, and gives the players lots of risk/reward decisions to make.
The Whitehack game was a blast too. It remains my favoured version of D&D for campaigns, because it allows a bit more subtlety and because there's a little more parity between players and NPCs. While I love The Black Hacks' dice-burning system for armour, traditional armour class allows you to fiddle around with monsters a bit more. For example, in Whitehack, I occasionally confront the PCs with brass automata who have AC 10 but only a single hit point each. That makes them tricky opponents without being overwhelming, and involves no bookkeeping whatsoever. It might be hard to achieve the same in The Black Hack.
I did, however, import The Black Hack's usage dice into Whitehack. These are very useful for rations, ammunition and the like. They ensure that resource management and uncertainty remain core parts of the game.
For both weekend sessions, I used hand-drawn floorplans. These are my preferred option for miniature-based RPGs. They're quick to make, they afford much more design freedom than commercial tiles, and they're 'what you see is what you get': if I've drawn a troglodyte hide staked out on the floor of a room, then that's what's there when the PCs enter.
Drawing out the floorplans means that the 'master map' can be very sketchy. I started with a rough scrawl and then drew out a clearer fair copy once the floorplans were finished. The advantage of this approach is that all your effort is visible for the players (and the crudeness of the GM's map makes it almost unintelligible to players should they happen to glimpse it.
I add 3D terrain where I have it, but I draw it in quickly in case I forget or misplace the scenics:
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| With ... |
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| ... and without |
In the second game, we had eight players. The party split up, with two tackling the lower entrance while the rest headed for the orc outpost above. The floorplans were a huge help here, as it was easy to coordinate the action and for the players to visualise (eventually) how the two parts of the complex connected.
Another advantage of floorplans is that they speed things up. It's easy to glance at the table at the end of each turn and work out how far unseen monsters attracted by noise or scent will advanced through the dungeon. And of course it's far faster than drawing out rooms and corridors on a mat as you go.
What impact did the different systems have upon how the scenario unfolded, if any? (Beyond the varying experience levels and age mindsets of the players.) Did your monsters differ significantly? I do like The Black Hack's use of the one stat to define each facet, but ponder whether the sacrifice of all intricacy is worth it.
ReplyDeleteI love those floorplans!
The biggest difference was really the size of the parties: three vs eight. The eight-strong group split up a couple of times.
ReplyDeleteI do find Whitehack slightly better for varying the challenge of monsters. Although both games derive all their monsters around hit dice, it's easier and more intuitive to turn the dials on Whitehack monsters. That's because you've got AC, AV and HP to play with (as well as saving throws).
So, in the second game, the evil wizard (actually a mindflayer) had snakemen for his guards whereas the TBH players faced a cohort of blue-nosed hobgoblins; the kids had fought those in a previous adventure. Given the greater number of players, I wanted the snakemen to be much more of a challenge than the hobgoblins, so I increased their Attack Value to 15 (the hobgoblins had 12 - standard for two-hit-dice creatures in Whitehack). But I kept the hit points the same. The reverse would have been harder to do in The Black Hack; I'd have had to give the players a modifier to their defend and attack rolls, which would have made everything a bit fiddlier - especially for new players.
Basically, in Whitehack you derive monster stats from HD, but it's easier to turn the dials in different directions (a heavily armoured and deadly monster with very few HP, for example - like an armoured construct with a delicate mechanism within its armour). That's a bit harder or less intuitive to do in The Black Hack, with the lack of armour class the main challenge. So I think it's fair to say that monsters in TBH have slightly less "mechanical character"; you need to use special abilities for that.
Again, that's why I prefer Whitehack for campaigns, where widely varied monsters and differing challenges are important, but love The Black Hack for one-shots, where the main focus is on attrition. That's where TBH's new armour dice really shine - players are forced to choose whether or not to burn them not knowing when they'll next get a chance to rest and repair.