Campaign Journal: Viking True20 Actual Play

If you’ve been reading my campaign journal, you know a little something about the Viking campaign I’m running for my RPG group in Ottawa. I decided I wanted to do an actual play, and the first steps have been completed. The first episode, a “story so far” episode, is now available.

You can find information at the new blog dedicated to the Adventures of the Ottawa Warband. I apologize for the name. Not as cool as Accidental Survivors. We were on the spot with this one. The blog is at herlid.blogspot.com, herlid being Old Norse for warband, and warband being a group of vikings joined together under a leader or captain.

I will continue the campaign journal here, as well as cross-posting everything over to the blog. The actual play podcast will only be available at the blog. If you are interested, you can subscribe to the feed to get the podcasts as they come out.

Campaign Journal: Conclusions from Session One

The first session didn’t totally sell me on True20. I realized this was partly my problem. I was still stuck in a d20 mindset. I missed the Minons rule, which would have made the combat with Hygelac’s warband fit to my preconception. Also, while the iconic weapon concept I mentioned in my last post dealt with the combat competency gap, this could also have been dealt with–mostly–with the rules as written.

Here’s the thing: I started the characters at 3rd level to give them some experience. I chose 3rd level based on my d20 experience–the character is more capable, but is not yet nigh-invulnerable due to high hit points. Without hit points, I could have started the characters at 10th level.

Because the Toughness save doesn’t have level dependent bonuses, a 10th level character is as vulnerable as a 3rd level character, unless the 10th level character has burned feats on increasing his Toughness. I should have started the characters at 6th or even 8th level. That would have made them as competent as I had hoped, but would not make them tanks–the outcome of starting at such as level in d20.

A couple of problems remained, based on the conflict of my conception and the True20 rules.

Players would still choose weapons based on the mechanical benefits, or if they chose based on style, would face mechanical penalties. Giving iconic weapons a +4 damage allowed players to choose style over mechanics without penalty.

While a wounded character did have a penalty to most actions, it was not progressive. It was only applied once, no matter how many times the character was wounded. I changed that to a – 1 penalty per wound. It creates the kind of deteriorating condition for which I usually look.

Having addressed those problems with house rules, True20 is now chugging along very well. Truth be told, though, I have never met a system I haven’t house-ruled, so only applying two house-rules (so far) is impressive in itself.

One thing I couldn’t figure out and I need to research is the use of ranged weapons in melee. I know how d20 deals with it, but I couldn’t find anything in True20. Given that I totally missed the Minions rules, this may simply be my oversight. I’ll check back in later if I learn something more. As it was, the ranged weapon in question was an iconic weapon, so no worry.