The Nature of Maladon and Game Balance

I just wanted to write a few words here after last night's adventure (42; the Orc Hold) as it made me realise that there are certain things that players in Maladon seem confused about: 1) Maladon is not a 'story-game', mainly because I have spent the last 3 years DMing story-games where few characters ever died. I love story games but desperately needed a change of pace, and so with Maladon I designed an 'old skool game' that harks back to the days of AD&D and is intentionally lethal. 2) Maladon is not 'balanced' like normal D&D. The encounters are set at a certain CR that has nothing to do with the level of the party exploring an area. I set the CR when I first post the mission on the job board without knowing who will go on the mission nor when they will go. One of the 'behind the scenes' rules for Maladon is that I never make an encounter easier just because a bunch of 1st levellers take it on. That is the essence of West Marches. The encounter difficultly is set in stone and though I don't do much advance prep before someone decides to go on an adventure, I have a shorthand to tell me about difficulty that I don't just alter on a whim. Let me show you an example 'stat block' for a mission for Maladon: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lord Rufus of the Black Lions hearby offers a reward of 100 gp for any willing to go to Gatesgarth and investigate rumours of Lord Gategarth’s disppearance (job dated 1st Havis 984) The tomb of an ancient Vampire is sited under Gatesgarth Tower. The Vampire's body is ash but the spirit lingers. On the festival of Sorth 983, the Lord of Gatesgarth sleep-walks and opens the hidden crypt under the infuence of a siren spell cast by the Vampire spirit. Life energy is drawn from him. Each full moon the spirit summons him and draws off more life force. The Vampire starts off very weak but by the 1st of Havis 984, the spirit possesses Lord Gatesgarth and he becomes a Vampire spawn and vanishes. PCs invesigating may find the tomb; any spawn will be present in the tomb in the daytime. At night they will be prowling Gatesgarth. Start Date: (1st Havis 984) Starting Difficulty: CR 2 (1 modified Vampire Spawn: see notes). Progression: Each month after the start date (1st Havis 984) roll 1d6: on a 1-3 the CR of the Lord increases by 1; on a 4 the number of CR 1 spawn increases by 1d4, on a 4 the CR of one spawn increases by 1, on a 6 there is no change. Progression Cap: Vampire Lord progression cap is CR 13; Spawn progression cap is CR 5. Maximum number of spawn is equal to 3d6. The spawn cannot grow to higher level than the Lord-1. Encounter Tables: Modify encounter tables in Bonewood/Gatesgarth; add 5% chance of Vampire encounter per month this threat is left unchecked to a maximum of 20%. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The whole of Maladon is set up like this. Why have I done it this way? Because I want the game to be 'impartial! I don't want to decide as a DM that 'tonight it's time to kill some characters'. If I don't do this kind of prep before the mission is discussed, then there's a chance that knowledge of who is going on the mission will start to sway me into being lenient or harsh. This method takes the 'burden' of running the world out of my hands and the thing basically runs itself. It is a powerful GMIng technique that I developed years ago and have been refining ever since. I have simplified the example above to make a point, but you hopefully get the idea. Gatesgarth Outcome In the above example, Gatesgarth is the closest settlement to Haven and was visited in Sessions 1 and 2 of Maladon, which were both face to face sessions. The players tried to see Lord Gatesgarth and were told ' that he has been ill since last winter ' and so went off on the Goblin hunt. At that time the mission above was not yet offically posted. I expected that a low level party would soon go back and destroy the Vampire. What happened illustrates the beauty of this format; no-one in the online game EVER went to Gatesgarth, indeed, at the time of writing (session 42) no-one from the online group has ever set foot there and the face to face players did not go back until session 30 or so. As you can see from the misison stat block above, the mission was lethal by the time it was tackled. The Vampire threat that I designed as a minor element has now mushroomed because it was not dealt with for a over a year of game time! This was totally unexpected and I remember almost not bothering to write a progression for this mission as I thought it would never be needed. So you might ask; why have I designed Maladon like this? It's because players who know everything is 'level appropriate' for them just charge everything and become hack and slashers with no idea of strategy or tactics. A hack and slash kind of game can be great fun and I promise to run one in the future, but it is not Maladon. I want Maladon to teach you lot the hard lessions I learned 30 years ago.; to become the very best of players. You need, as players, to choose missions carefully and to decide 'what might be bad if it's left......'. You also need to know that many missions in Maladon do not change in difficulty if left and some resolve themselves completely without player input. Discovering Mission Danger; the art of Scouting So how can you work out how dangerous a mission is in Maladon? Well I always try and 'telegraph' the danger and players should take careful note of what I say in response to their enquiries and actions. In the Orc mission last night the player learned that: a) There might be as many as 30-50 orcs......... b) They had been in their lair a long time; possibly a month or more (i.e. they've had plenty of time or prepare and adapt their lair) c) They were not behaving like normal orcs; they were much more organised and clever. This probably told every player in that session that they shouldn't have continued on the mission but because they'd signed up they felt they had to go forward with it. That is NOT what players in Maladon should do. I expect and require that if you feel you are in over your head, you bail out of the mission. So what do you do if you're a player in Maladon and you suddenly realise the mission you've opted for is much too dangerous? Do we end the session early? No; instead I suggest you leave the mission and indulge in some 'light exploring'. I have a load of mini-locations set up for this kind of circumstance and I encourage players to bail and do 'light exploring' whenever they get a 'bad feeling' about a mission. We can check out a new region and learn something that might unlock new missions or factions. Of course this will trgger random encounters but a Laen Glass can be used to tell you how dangerous a particular area is, coupled with survival checks to check for tracks and spoor of the inhabitants.

The consequence of Maladon's design is that you should create a certain type of character for this game. If you want to survive, design characters who are competent and have a background where they know something of adventuring. Make it so that your character can use all of the cunning and skill you possess as a player, so that the gap between meta-knowledge and character-knowledge is as slim as possible. Wilderness skills are essential and will be more and more important as people push out into the heartlands of Maladon. If people want to play more character driven stuff, I suggest they stay in Haven and adventure there as much as possible. I will also post low level missions that are less dangerous and will be more suited to this type of character. One cue to a less dangerous mission is less gold and that it is close to Haven. Also, remember that the jobs on the board are only suggestions; I have run entire campaigns sited in one City and could certainly keep these types of characters entertained in Haven if people ask and request more of a certain kind of job. We could start a political game where characters intrigue and assassinate or plot and plan. This is not 'core Maladon' but is certainly possible and I could see it adding to the game.

The Gatesgarth mission that wasn't completed until session 30, did Josh, by any chance, go sleeping around again? XD Anyway,  This post was very informative to me about the world Stephen, I'm not sure about others as I wasn't able to play in as many sessions as others can so thank you. It just makes me want to play even more knowing that this world is much more living than I originally thought.

Teehee; no Derek! It was not like THAT mission. It's just that people were always off chasing other things and doing other missions and it was just overlooked for some reason.

intrigue and assassinate or plot and plan is something i would love to do 

I am fine with anything and think it is great the way you run the game. I think we are just too impatient and in this special mission my OOC knowledge of the last Orc mission made me a bit blind. I expected something like that again and was obviously completely wrong :)  Don't expect Kroasi to make the same mistake again (and do expect Argus to make that mistake over and over again!!)

Another thing to say about this game is that it is very hard to survive! Those of you who have level 3 or higher characters should feel pretty good about yourselves. Congratulations! This also explains most of those 'mismatched' sessions where the players faced overwhelming odds such as : the first Blackspire mission, where several characters almost died in the first room. the attack on the Halls of the Dead where a boulder trap almost took the party out the murderfest Keshgar the pirate mission that claimed Reskin and Meren's lives. These missions and a few others were much higher CR than the party could handle when they first attempted them. It was not that I accidentally got the CR wrong; they were deliberately higher level missions by design. Indeed the Halls of the Dead were eventually conquered in the end thanks to a decent plan, lots of levelling up, huge amounts of healing courtesy of Tannyll, and not a small amount of luck and diplomacy. So....the other consequence of the way Maladon works that in order to survive, players and characters must work together. Characters need to be able to trust that the others will only retreat if the whole group pulls out and that you will have each other's backs. You will quickly find that characters who are unpopular or untrustworthy will die rather rapidly; so those of you playing evil characters take note! Your characters will likely not last long once your alignment becomes known. In addition, you need good decision making when taking on missions. If a mission offers huge amounts of gold it is likely very dangerous. In addition, if the gold reward changes rapidly or there are frequent updates to a mission, it is likely one that is increasing in difficulty. On the other hand, some missions get easier (or even go away) if not attempted immediately. The assault on the Scarlet Blades fortress for example, is likely to get easier with time as the defenders run out of supplies and food, since they are invested by two ships from the Iron Fists and cannot easily re-supply. The other part of success is preparation and decisiveness. Before you go on an adventure, make some fire arrows to light up hidden areas. Many monsters rain missiles down on characters from the safety of darkness and I have used this time and time again. Foil this method of attack and actually bother to fire the arrow where the monsters cannot simply reach it and snuff it out in one turn. Invisibility looks pretty awesome, until the players take a dog, throw flour up into the air etc. Many magics can be foiled very simply but you need to think about ways to defeat them beforehand. This is old skool and the tricks that served us so well in the 1980s might also aid you in Maladon. Also, scout, scout and scout some more. Don't waste time, but someone can do this whilst others are preparing for the adventure proper or scouting the entrance you know about. Find all the entrances and if you find a dungeon in one side of a hill, search the top and other sides of the position for other entrances. A good survival check is worth its weight in gold and we now have the Expertise feat to help with this................

And soon, an abundance of scrolls shall also increase survival!