DWH Retrospective and Arcade Gaming
I recently wrapped up running Devil’s World Heroes after 30 sessions of fast and frenetic gaming action. Like Jenx, a player in this campaign, I've written about some of the highlights of the campaign, though I’ll also talk about some of the issues I had with it.
Tell me about Devils
I ran this campaign in what I call an arcade style. The way I think about this is with a Jean-Claude Van Damme quote where, in an interview about a shitty movie I’ve never watched, he said “the lunch is about fun” to describe the atmosphere on set. The Devil is about fun. I do that by focusing my prep on the following:
- Content made up of “game units” (i.e, objects endogenous to the game book—monsters, treasure, and so on).
- Big characters with big personalities.
- Violence everywhere. The arcade style is about fighting monsters and getting treasure. Story elements can absolutely come into it, and NPCs should have motivations but, at the end of the day, we are here to fight 2d20 Orcs. In terms of table culture, especially considering our large group, this meant the development of hyper-efficiency. NPCs tended to be marginalized, especially after the first few sessions, in favour of an almost myopic focus on achieving party goals.
To keep my prep easy I developed the world as a series of hex flower regions rather than as a proper hexcrawl; I didn’t even draw a worldmap. I started running this campaign about two weeks after Wolves Upon The Coast ended and had very little time to prep. I started with a little region, a dungeon, and we were off.
The arcade ethos kept the game very fast and light. It was easy to prep and a very fun time each weekend. Some folks have asked me to explain the “arcade style” but there really isn’t much to it. I hope this is sufficient.
It’s a Devil’s World after all
When it comes to running a campaign, the players are hands down the most important part. The group called themselves the Big Boys: we had Jenx, Havoc, Mr.Mann, Ags, MTB, Zygocact, Kirko, Cellar Gelatin and, at the very end, my own pal Gaming Peepaw. They were amazing to play with for a number of reasons. Most important is that all were very generous and had an opinion about the game world; by that I mean, though different players engaged with the game in different ways. The players were all very creatively engaged. Jenx’s drew all the central player characters, Mr.Mann created and ran a whole hexcrawl based on the backstory of his character and wrote an awesome epilogue, Ollie created a whole random table of backstories for their character, Zygocact enumerated the many chronic illnesses of his low Con steppe nomad, Havoc had some very engaged downtimes resolved over direct messages, etc etc. The list goes on; this type of thing is precious to the referee, who stands alone in a stupid zebra striped jersey. The players make the table come to life.
Player energy was especially remarkable given that this was ultimately a pretty low effort, low key campaign. As described above, I kept prep fast and furious and, for the most part, the game was entirely about crawlin’ and brawlin’. Despite the looseness with which I sketched the world, individual sessions were brilliant. This is a contrast to some previous campaigns where player groups were more of a mixed bag, or included players who strained against each other in terms of desire. In the Devil’s World, the group found common ground and all contributed toward a central project (i.e, having a good time). As phoned in as elements of DWH were on the prep side, I never had a bad time.
In the whole run of the campaign we only had 1 notably bad session and a few average ones. Most were great, with some being among the best I’ve ever participated in.
No Devil could be any other
While I had a great time this was one of the least satisfying campaigns I’ve run. It felt hollow, like popcorn. Most of this is the fault of the arcade style of play. Typically, a simple low stakes campaign can blossom into something more as players form connections to the world, develop goals, and the world building expands or extends. Games gain depth over time, and even starting with a well trodden module like the Caves of Chaos can result in a campaign with brilliant depth of world and character.
This didn’t happen here, and a big part of it was the way I prepped the world. By using hexflowers cordoned off from one another, and without drawing a broader worldmap to situate where things were in the world, each region came to feel hermetically sealed from the other. It also made the world feel extremely cramped, as if the settlements and people contained within each hexcrawl or dungeon were the only things in the world to exist.
Ideally, the game world expands as you play rather than shrinks, as happened here. To facilitate that you should flesh out the world in broad terms, and use a world map as an aid to the imagination. Then you can flesh out specific areas with hexcrawls or pointcrawls as needed. This is the basic structure I’ve had success with in the past. You need to have enough solidity to prompt the imaginations of players and to begin the campaign, but you also need enough there to let the game take shape as you play. You also need to have enough room for places and people in the world to breathe. Running a campaign is not making a product, not everything needs to be completed before you even begin. I rushed to complete each region as it was encountered, and thus killed my own seeds of creation as they were planted.
A related issue was the size of the group. With 8 or so players, especially online, it is very difficult to get the immersive, character focused experience that I enjoy. “The game in my head” is pretty much just old JRPGs: Final Fantasy, Suikoden, Breath of Fire, etc. A character driven, high fantasy narrative supported by dungeon crawls, mass battles, questing, and intrigue. That’s the kind of game I’ve enjoyed most as both a referee and a player. Nothing makes me happier than when players in a game I’m in make very detailed, interesting characters that are invested in the world and bet them against the various challenges we’ll go on to face. The stakes come from an emotional resonance with the character, world, and table; detached arcade style gaming action with minimal roleplaying only goes so far at giving that kind of satisfaction.
With so many players the group became increasingly focused and efficient at the main gameplay loops (hex travel, encounters, dungeon crawl, logistics). I think the content/style of the game combined with the size of the group slowly funnelled the players toward this playstyle. Havoc, for example, is a very roleplaying focused player; he started out that way but, eventually, was corrupted by the Big Boys’ malignant influence. Ags is normally super immersed in their character and connected to the game, but had a lot of trouble connecting with the world and characters in part due to its floatiness. I definitely want to use a smaller group for my next campaign.
This Devil has a machinegun
Some final, rapid fire thoughts mostly focused on mechanics:
- Target20 is great for attack rolls but is no good for Saves. The starting value for the Saves is too low, especially Save vs. Spells.
- Thief Skills are truly terrible in default Target20; they are worse than the normal percentile Thief.
- Thieves should have Gear Bubbles, like The Vanilla Game. It did a lot to improve the class.
- Using a d6 standard for HD and damage is the way to go. I’m not interested in other dice sizes, except a d% where warranted.
- Yes, I changed magic systems like 15 times. Thank you, players, for putting up with it.
- 1HP healed per day is very, very good. It does a lot to slow the pace of the game and make attrition meaningful at higher levels. In my next campaign I will use this again, but add that the Hit Point only recovers you are in town or have great camp conditions (tents, a cook, etc).
- Speaking of which, I’m still convinced Magic-users should need a week of repose to recover their spells. I know in my heart it is the truth. Combined with slow healing: this is best, and healthy for you.
- My favourite fight was the one where the Big Boys found an Elven production of The Tempest frozen as statues, except Caliban’s actor was actually in disguise doing a tableau with victims of petrification. He had a Gorgon backstage who charged on stage and surprised the party. The resulting fight involved lots of verticality, schemes, an NPCs heroic sacrifice, the works.
- We had lots of great, great characters but Mr. Mann’s The Dhunprick Slipper was most enduring. A classic case of a character starting with a simple gimmick (A hairless man that covers himself in oil all the time) who evolved into an icon (mall-goth philosopher prince).
What would never be would never will a Devil
Next up I’ll do one of two things:
- Run a short campaign of newt’s Fall of Emermeraan.
- Jump into my next big campaign! A grand campaign!!!!!!
I’m 50/50 on which to go for.
I’ve been world building and system finalizing (@_@ so many spells written up) for my next campaign and have the initial pitch ready, alongside some of the scaffolding for the initial stages of the campaign. We’ll see where I’m at after the holidays, and how some of my players are feeling, and that will determine my next move.
The thing I am dreading most is going to a smaller group. I really like playing with everyone, but it's gotta be smaller next time. I definitely intend to do some pick up games without a player limit in the new year, so hopefully all the homies can join for that. If I can find my Castle Gygar booklet (-___- I lost that shit moving) then I’d run that during New Moons in 2026 for sure.