Unexpected developments in player psychology

[numenetics]

Not sure how widely applicable this will be, but I had an interesting experience last night. I was getting set to play with two players, my wife and a friend of mine. Both of them have finished the funnel through solo play. The friend hit level one via the "one adventure" rule, while my wife earned the xp.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, my wife played level 0 very cautiously and her funnel consisted of four sorties to Stonehell. Her party consisted of eight people, and all of her sorties just explored the gatehouse on the surface. On her first sortie she lost one character to giant centipedes and two to goblins (who actually surrendered soon after when they lost half of their numbers). She returned to town with a little bit of treasure, and rolled up three more zeroes. The second sortie went much better, and she only lost one member. After returning from the second trip her original party was a little over halfway to level one. She left the party at seven. On the third trip I rolled a random encounter, which turned out to be a lone ogre fairly distant from them. They split up, with the two halves of the party going on opposite sides of the road and taking cover in the trees. They managed to take down the ogre (who happened to have relatively low hit points) before he closed to melee range, using a couple of bows they had scavenged from goblins and a couple of slings they had purchased. After that, they decided to try to track down the ogre's cave. They didn't have a forester or anything, so I just did a Luck roll, and they hit it. I assigned a probability to see if there were any other ogres in the cave, and it turned up clear. I used LL's treasure system for ogres, which gives a treasure type + 1000gp. The % rolls didn't favor them on the treasure, so they just go the 1000gp, but that was more than enough to take all seven to level 1. She leveled them all and we stopped play there.

The friend did his funnel and a little bit of level one in the Palace of the Silver Princess, and had an extremely high mortality rate, even once he hit level one. I think he got two characters through the funnel, and only kept one. He didn't manage to find almost any treasure, and the only way he was able to have money for more hirelings was to hawk their gear once he returned to the city. His character is a Cultist bound to Azi Dahaka and his surviving hireling is a chaotic ex-noble with his tongue cut out (thanks to the Meatshields generator and some creative interpretation on the player's part), so they don't have any moral issues with that. Their base of operations is Vornheim, a huge city, so word hasn't gotten around not to sign up with these guys yet. Probably the coolest thing that happened with him was that he had a good invoke patron roll that we said sent an animate whirlwind to hang around a bit (it would have been a devil toad for Bobugbobilz). When they opened the door on a room full of kobolds he sent in the whirlwind and cast hold portal. There was no escape. He's also bound his henchman (now a level one thief) to Azi Dahaka.

So that's the solo prelude. The unexpected developments last night were that a)they both had a really hard time thinking about adventuring together, because they already had a strong party identity all to themselves and b)my wife is very attached to all seven characters, my friend is extremely attached to both his character and his hireling and wants to bond more followers. The friend definitely sympathized with my wife's attachment and said he would feel the same way if he got that many through. I got her to just play two characters, and they hired a few hirelings, but she definitely wanted to reserve the right to pull out the other guys on future sorties.

So I guess the interesting thing to me was how the funnel has created stronger attachments to level one characters than I have maybe ever seen before. Also, they are very interested in a mixed career of sometimes adventuring on their own with hirelings and sometimes doing the standard party thing. I attribute that to playing multiple characters in the funnel. They don't really want to fully go back to single character play, although they would do so if there were enough players in a given session.

At first I dragged my feet, with the 1e DMG warnings about multiple characters echoing in my head, but it seemed somehow to fit. Anyway, that's my report.

[Ogrepuppy]

She returned to town with a little bit of treasure, and rolled up three more zeroes.

Not trying to criticize, but I'm genuinely puzzled--why is she rolling more characters when this is supposed to be a funnel that whittles down the number of characters?

[numenetics]

She returned to town with a little bit of treasure, and rolled up three more zeroes.

Not trying to criticize, but I'm genuinely puzzled--why is she rolling more characters when this is supposed to be a funnel that whittles down the number of characters?

That's a good question, and maybe it would be something I would disallow in the future. However, this was my reasoning: First, I don't think 5 level zeroes have much of a chance of making it to level one on their own. The funnel as written seems to have 3-5 players running 4 characters each, giving you 12-20 characters for the funnel. Instead of having her run 12-20 characters all at once, allowing the restock spread that out. Her entire funnel consisted of 11 characters, its just that three of them weren't there at the start. Second, her party went back to a major city and tried to find other people that would go with them. This made sense as an in-game action, and they're not really in a position to have "hirelings," so I treated what would normally be "let's go hire some people" as adding new characters into her party.

It's certainly something I would only allow at 0 level.

[finarvyn]

She returned to town with a little bit of treasure, and rolled up three more zeroes.

Not trying to criticize, but I'm genuinely puzzled--why is she rolling more characters when this is supposed to be a funnel that whittles down the number of characters?

In early D&D, players often hired a bunch of flunky hirelings to accompany the characters so that there could be a high attrition rate and yet the characters could still survive.

Numenetics' wife has just re-discovered 1975.

The difference is that back in "the day" we didn't bother to roll out the stats of the hirelings unless they survived an adventure or two. Now we start out with their stats and give them "nearly real person" status.

I think it's a cool strategy as long as:
(1) You are playing with a small number of players
(2) You are throwing low-level characters into a high level adventure
(3) The players don't get to continually stockpile above-zero level characters.

In other words, if Numenetics' wife has 3-4 3rd level characters after a few adventures, that's a bad thing. If her primary character continues to live by continuing to add to the pile of zeroes who accompany her on adventures, that's okay. Eventually she'll want to go off on her own and not bother with the redshirts any more.

Just my two coppers.

[jmucchiello]

I'm more puzzled about the Ogre with 1000 gp. A gp is like a year's worth of income for a """well-to-do""" farmer. How does a solo ogre accumulate that kind of wealth without attracting the attention of higher level adventurers?

[numenetics]

I'm more puzzled about the Ogre with 1000 gp. A gp is like a year's worth of income for a """well-to-do""" farmer. How does a solo ogre accumulate that kind of wealth without attracting the attention of higher level adventurers?

Don't shoot the messenger on this one. As I said, I was just using Labyrinth Lord's treasure distribtution, which actually has a decent percentage chance for an ogre lair to have even more treasure than that. Also, they only encountered the one but it needn't be operating alone. Given that it's on the path to a major site of exploration, accumulating that money doesn't seem too unlikely.

At some point a party of level zeroes is either going to hit a significant stash or two, or die before hitting level one, I think.

[meinvt]

I'm more puzzled about the Ogre with 1000 gp. A gp is like a year's worth of income for a """well-to-do""" farmer. How does a solo ogre accumulate that kind of wealth without attracting the attention of higher level adventurers?

Don't shoot the messenger on this one. As I said, I was just using Labyrinth Lord's treasure distribtution, which actually has a decent percentage chance for an ogre lair to have even more treasure than that. Also, they only encountered the one but it needn't be operating alone. Given that it's on the path to a major site of exploration, accumulating that money doesn't seem too unlikely.

At some point a party of level zeroes is either going to hit a significant stash or two, or die before hitting level one, I think.

Fantasy RPGs have always had this economic disconnect. I was reading B2 last night and struck by the size and value of some of the stashes of treasure the low level monsters there have as well. But, you have to remember that when parties are expected to be about 9 characters (as is the case in B2) and treasure is expected to be the primary source of experience points, you need to have some big hauls to keep things going.

[finarvyn]

Ironic if it's harder to convert treasure from one game to another than it is to convert monsters.

[numenetics]

Ironic if it's harder to convert treasure from one game to another than it is to convert monsters.

Although with the rarity of magic items in DCC, that seems like it might be the case. Do you just cut all the magical treasure from a module? Some of it? Probably most of it, and make the remaining items unique/mysterious, I guess.

Also, having tried to convert between 4e and anything else treasure-wise, it's not surprising to me at all.

[goodmangames]

So I guess the interesting thing to me was how the funnel has created stronger attachments to level one characters than I have maybe ever seen before.

That's great to hear. That's what I personally have experienced, as well. Players really get attached to the characters that survive the funnel. And those characters all have, basically, the same basic stats: 3d6 down the line, a random occupation, a lucky roll -- and not much else. No special rules, no feats or prestige classes or anything else. Believe it or not, it seems to me that all these random chargen seems to encourage role playing!