Henchmen Are the Opposite of Dissociated Mechanics

These would make great minis for henchmen.

During arguments about whether game/edition X counts as a roleplaying game, people like to say that you could roleplay Monopoly. This is intended to end the argument, but I think it actually points out the way that roleplaying depends on a correspondence between something in your own personal experience and the situation you imagine your game-token to be occupying.

It’s easier to roleplay Monopoly than The Game of Gaining and Losing Points Due to Random Motion across a Regularly Demarcated Perimeter. The mechanics of both are identical; the difference is that Monopoly gives you imaginary things to manipulate that are easy to associate with things that have meaning in your life. (I’m talking here about money and real estate; the top hats and poodles remain inexplicable.)

Dungeons & Dragons is and always has been, among other things, a game of resource management. The great thing about old-school D&D is that the resources it gives you to keep track of are so often concrete and meaningful. It’s vivid and compelling to imagine having your last torch burning your fingers as you try to find an exit from the underworld, or taking your last swallow from a waterskin beneath the burning desert sun.

Hit points and spells are more abstract. Owing, perhaps, to long practice, we are usually able to associate these game variables with things that make sense to us. Nevertheless, when people want to make a “more realistic” version of D&D they often start looking for alternatives to fire-and-forget spellcasting and complaining about how it takes more sword thrusts to kill a high-level fighter than an elephant. I think this is because hit points and memorized spells start floating loose from anything we can have real-world experience with.

Healing surges and martial daily powers are a step further dissociated from the players’ concrete experience, and for many people that’s a step too far towards The Game of Gaining and Losing Points Due to  Random Motion across a Regularly Demarcated Perimeter.

When I ran Blackmoor Dungeons at Gen Con, I gave each player some henchmen to control. In one session, the players positioned their henchmen and heroes around a door and then went storming in to meet a roomful of poisonous spiders. When they pulled out again, sealing the door with a wizard lock, I said: “Okay, you left three dead henchmen on the floor inside. What were their names? There are two more corpses on this side of the floor. What are you doing with the bodies?”

Henchmen are the opposite of dissociated mechanics, and I love them. They’re a game token that’s more easily commodified and spent than a PC. At the So-Cal Mini Con, in the first fifteen minutes of play I probably killed a dozen henchmen, immediately illustrating the lethality of the situation and depleting the players’ resource without having to take away anyone’s sole means of interaction with the action of the game.

Broken swords and bulging-with-gold backpacks are also good, concrete resources for game management. But, being  people, players are interested in stories about people. The great thing about henchmen are that they create events in play that make for interesting stories. Will the souls of the abandoned henchmen come back to haunt the living? What might the families of the others do when their corpses are brought back to town? How do the survivors find the courage to keep descending despite the loss of their comrades?

The problem with dissociated mechanics is simple: you can’t tell stories about them. “We lost four henchmen” is more satisfying than “we lost four healing surges” for the same reason that “you landed on my Park Place hotel, pay me $2,000” is more satisfying than “your random motion earned me two thousand due to my investment in the penultimate gradation.”

In case this post makes a blahblah blah sound, here’s the way I did henchmen in the Blackmoor Dungeons run:

• Ask each player their charisma, tell them how many maximum followers they can have as a result.
• Offer a choice between guaranteed henchmen or rolling for them.
• If you go with the guarantee, you have three zero-level men-at-arms (fewer if your Charisma doesn’t allow that many).
• If you choose to roll, you get a d6 worth (again limited by your Charisma max). If you rolled a 6, one of them is a first-level fighting man, cleric, or magic-user (with two randomly chosen spells in their spellbook).
• Don’t roll any stats for the henchmen; assume they have perfectly average or just below normal scores. If a player’s PC is killed or incapacitated, they take over one of their former henchmen; rolling up their ability scores at this point creates some excitement and gives them a new sense of ownership over the character.

In my first Blackmoor run, we had a lot of time before the official session start so I had people roll their henchmen’s stats; this put more focus on them at the start of the game than I think was necessary, and when henchmen were known ahead of time to have great ability scores players were like “Can I sacrifice my main guy and play this one instead?”

Alternately, a nice way to turn alternative ability score generation from a dissociated mechanic into a concrete one is to have people roll multiple sets of 3d6 in order. Your favorite of these is your PC; the others are your henchmen.

Simultaneous Sacking of Castle Zagyg at Fal-Con

JoetheLawyer* and I are going to be running simultaneous, competing expeditions into Castle Zagyg at  Fal-Con on Sat., Oct. 16. I hope all readers of the Mule who are in the area will join the race to loot the Upper Works!

The idea is that we’ll each have adjacent tables so that we can eavesdrop on what one another’s group are doing and keep abreast of where in the dungeons they are. We’ll be doing two runs apiece, so in the afternoon session there’ll be the possibility that adventurers will enter rooms ransacked that morning. Savvy parties will presumably hide the bodies, lest the freshness of the blood tip their rivals to their proximity!

Some questions:

• Anyone have experience with something similar to suggest what works, what doesn’t, etc.?
• As a player, would you be disappointed if you did/didn’t encounter the other party?
• Tips on communications between the DMs to help us know when the parties are near enough to influence one another?
• Tips on summarizing the dungeon (even the fragment of CZ that got published is big!) in such a way that we could deal with parties going anywhere & knowing roughly where the other group is?

* Joe is better known to the White Sandbox players as Theos, one of the slayers of the Beast Lord.

Word from the Geofront

Just a quick update: I’ve been at Myrtle Beach for the past six days, hence my lack of gaming posts. I have, however, finished mapping out two levels of my megadungeon and wrote up the contents of 75 rooms, including assorted furnishings and bric-a-brac. I gotta tell ya, filling in all the fine details takes a lot of time! But it’s necessary to give the dungeon that “lived-in” look. Some of it actually counts as treasure, too! (This is a good reason to bring in the Trader PC: to assess the value of this chair or that tapestry!)

More later. Eric out.

anybody can paint minis, part three

Paint Your Miniature Now

Bare Essential Supply List

• dish soap
• sponge
• 2 tubs for water
• paper towels
• Exacto or craft-knife
• super-glue
• palette paper or white plate
• 2 synthetic hair short handle watercolor brush (nylon, taklon, sablette), one 0 size and one 000 size.
• miniature paint (any brand, if needed you can go without the two browns, two silvers etc.)

• white
• black
• bright silver metallic
• dull silver metallic (gunmetal)
• light brown
• dark brown
• light skin color
• dark skin color
• middle blue
• middle red
• middle yellow
• middle green
• black ink
• brown ink

Bare Essential Instructions:

• Soak your new miniatures in a tub of soapy water and sponge them off after a while. This will remove the mold release grease that all new miniatures have.
• Dry your miniatures on a paper towel.
• Cut all the excess casting metal (flash) from the miniature with your knife and carefully bend it into the proper shape.
• Assemble and glue you miniature if necessary. Check the base for a proper fit before the glue goes on.
• Plan out which colors will go where on the mini. Use a scrap paper to check for color combinations if needed.
• Set the two tubs of water down on the table and put a folded paper towel under one of them. One of the tubs is to rinse your brush in, the other is to get fresh water from.
• Paint a base-coat or priming layer on the mini to get it ready to accept the later coats of paint. Use black paint if your mini will be mostly dark colors or white if your mini will be mostly light colors. Red, orange, and yellow parts need to go over a white layer of paint.
• Put a drop of paint on your palette. Put a drop or two of water on your palette next to your paint drop. Mix the paint and water so the combination has the consistency of heavy milk or light cream.
• Get comfortable, pick the miniature up and hold it in your hands. If you need to, brace your wrists against each other or the table edge so they don’t move too much. Try and get used to painting sitting up straight.
• Using just the tip of your brush, apply your chosen colors to the miniature like you were painting a coloring book. Just try to keep it in the lines.
• The paint colors go on in layers. You usually have to make two or three coats of a color to get it opaque on the miniature. Do not glob the paint on to make it opaque. Work thin and in layers. Control is key, opacity builds up over time. Drying time is only a couple minutes.
• Wipe excess paint or water off your brush with the paper towel, you should always have a point on your brush. Rinse the brush in water before starting a new color and don’t rest your brush in the water tub with the tip down.
• Once you have covered the miniature with paint, you are done. Congratulations. You may alternatively keep correcting your paint edges but it’s not necessary.
• Clean up. Rinse your brushes with hand or dish soap in the palm of your hand until no more color comes out. Use soap to make a point on your brushes and have them dry out laying flat. This will keep them pointed as they dry.

More arcane knowledge to follow. Post any question you have in the comments section.