Xcrawl Diary II: On Tour

On Tour

Xcrawl was out, it was real. I had a copy in my hands.

We spent much of the next couple of years doing as many conventions and store appearances as possible. Those were great days.

We met the odd gamer who hated Xcrawl, either the concept or the execution or both. Lots of them just considered it too out there, or not serious enough. I met even more who would learn about Xcrawl, make a pained face, and then proceed to tell me how they would have done it differently (you get a whole lot of that with gamers, each of whom is, deep down, a fantasy auteur, present company absolutely included). These projections often had terms like mana-punk or virtual. Very cool ideas.

While lots of folks didn’t get the scenario, or actively hated it, or only saw it as a springboard to doing something almost entirely different, mostly people had fun with Xcrawl, and some folks even loved it, and that was wonderful.

The best part was meeting people who got excited about Xcrawl, who would share their ideas for their own DJs, and their own adventures. There is nothing like seeing folks getting excited about your idea and running with it. And my players asked a lot of excellent questions, and my thinking about the answers started to formulate my next Xcrawl book, Sellout!

I also joined a second gaming group around that time, which included a fellow named Jamie, a real mastermind. He had an amazing brain for gaming, and in the two years that we played together he became my Moriarty. Jamie analyzed dungeons like a combination game of chess/ poker, and was excellent at figuring out what challenges were coming up, by analyzing current and past dungeons, and then using that knowledge to help manage resources. I remember him discussing the secret door situation with his teammates at one point. “Look, there has to be a secret door in one of those last two rooms because we have to be getting close to the edge of the graph paper.” And the bastard was right! Running Xcrawl for that that team really shaped my design style.

The early adventures started to come out. Scott Knuchel wrote the Three Rivers Crawl, a game that will always be near and dear to my heart because I that playtest marks the first time I ever played Xcrawl on the player side of the screen. My first character was Captain Howdy, the Cowboy from Hell, and I think of that twisted psycho often – ever have one of those characters that you had so many ideas about, and you never get to get to it all? That was Captain Howdy. I mean, he was eventually going to demonstrate a vulnerable side. A vulnerable side, Liz Lemon!  Captain, we hardly knew ye.

Fun Fact: To this day I have still only read the wonderful fiction by Alyson Brooks in the beginning of the Three Rivers Crawl, and none of the adventure. I have this fantasy of someday moving back to Georgia and getting Scott to run it for me and the old group. Captain Howdy must return!

I wrote the Emperor’s Cup that year, and working on that also really developed my design style, and really my RPG play style. Long story short I try to never prep more than about one session ahead of the game. When we first sat down to do play the Cup, I had about twenty pages of notes - mostly ideas for encounters and traps, and some role playing ideas, but also Xcrawl specific stuff, like sponsors, plus a map of the first couple of rooms, a few encounters planned out with treasure lists, and  not much else. After every session I would take a look at how the player’s reacted to hazards and what resources they used, and then figure out what I should come up next.

The benefits of this design/ play style are many. I think that balance is the key factor – by just working a little bit in advance I can make sure that I am creating situations that can tap every resource the player’s possibly have, and not overtaxing any of them. Players never, ever, ever do what you expect them to do, and if you design way ahead of the point in the story that the characters exist in at any given time the game might go in a direction you aren’t ready for. Also, if certain characters aren’t getting enough play time, you can make an encounter or event for the next session that will allow them to really shine. The most fun games are where everyone gets a turn at being the MVP.

I believe that the most important rule for gaming, really the only rule, is fun at the table. I want the game to be fun for all my players and myself, and nothing else matters. If we sit around the table all night and only get through half of one encounter because we were laughing so hard, I consider that a perfect night.

I feel like the Emperor’s Cup is the meanest adventure I have ever written. I’m not a sadist - really! I do, however, believe that RPGs stop being fun when they stop being challenging, and I want there to be the real and true chance for every player to die in every dungeon. Otherwise, what are you doing? I don’t play to kill PCs, but I make sure to present an adventure where death might be around every corner. And the Emperor’s Cup might just be the highest presentation of that ideal I have ever managed.

Story from the Emperor’s Cup playtest: My fearless playtesters made up their own characters, and at the first session they went around the room and talked about their character’s names and back stories. My buddy Don had created a dwarf fighter/ rogue, and his story was that he had participated in Xcrawl for 20 years, from the very first match, but this was his first time making it all the way to the Emperor’s Cup.

One of the players asked me if the dwarf held any records, being a crawler for so long.

Sure, I said. The dwarf holds the record for being swallowed alive and surviving the most times of any player ever in the game.

Chuckles. A little throw away line, the kind of goofy detail I love layering into a game.

We get started. The first room has a nightshade nightcrawler. The dwarf rolled top initiative – he drew his axe and ran to get in front of the wizard, putting himself in a position to block the foul thing’s attack.

The nightshade goes next. It moves up, attacks the dwarf and blau – I drop a 20. The dwarf is swallowed whole. First attack of the first room.

We laughed our asses off. I went on this whole rant about money changing hands all over Vegas, about the announcers just losing their minds, about the dwarf’s fan club jumping all the way to the last line of their drinking game, and having to continuously drink until the dwarf got free. That conversation led to the creation of the Interior Player feat, naturally. 

Good times. That was a hell of a game, and I miss playing with those guys tremendously. 

Next up: Hiatus