Brencrawl 2010

[Bitom]

I know this is way early, but people are already thinking of rooms for it, so I wanted a place for us to get together and talk about how we're gonna work this.

Here's the general idea so far:

• Everyone who wants to play arrives at Brencon with a character (Preferably checked over carefully by someone else with a lot of D20 Experience)
• Everyone who wants to DJ arrives at Brencon with a pre-made room built for 4 characters.
• Whenever people want to run and play, they'll match up and play rooms. The crawl will keep going as long as people want to play, but since it's in little separate groups, other gaming will happen at the same time.
• Teams will score points in each room by some formula to be determined. Each player will keep the points for their top 3 scoring rooms. Winner will be determined individually.

Other ideas that have been kicked around:

• A "PAR" system, so you can earn points for finishing rooms quickly.
• No mojo, since teams are constantly reshuffling
• Each room has some kind of silly object that you acquire for completing it, these objects can be combined with a magic item combiner at the beginning of other rooms to make silly or possibly useful magic items (Bacon + candlestick = Pork sword)

[Cattywumpus]

I am down with the silly item.

I have fieldded a room idea and I would like to bring up level of characters too.

Doom suggested 6-8th. Part of the fun of this for me is the wild ideas people implement at 13th though.

[Bitom]

Having now experienced 2 brencrawls, I would like to suggest 13th level. It's high enough to let people make something silly, but low enough that rooms aren't hard to design.

[pygmaelion]

The Shuffling Teams concept was designed to make up for "They person on your left could be your DJ next round".

The "Form Voltron" concept of "everyone gets something for completing a room that can be used to form something else cool" is to combat the
inability for mojo points to work across severed teams.

Example:
Ann, Bren, Connie, and Doom play a room as a team, and squash it flat. Each one of them is given a single Gestalt item from a different set. Later on they get split up onto another team, as Connie and Doom are running their own rooms. while Bren and Ann have teamed up with someone who has a complimentary part to one of their items. Each item is useful on its own,and gets better when other players have complimentary pieces. This encourages mixing up the teams. The other team members will receive items from other "Combined items" or equivalent awesome stuff.

Sample Gestalt Item:
The Four Horseshoes of the Apocalypse

War Horseshoe:
This rusty red, heavily cleated horseshoe can be used as a light weapon, or as a thrown weapon (at -4 non-proficiency penalty, if applicable). A
successful touch attack or ranged touch attack causes the target to make a DC 25 Will save on their next initiative. Succeeding at the save causes
the target to immediately move to attack the wielder of the horseshoe in the most direct fashion possible, with no regard for AoO or difficult
terrain (which take their normal effect). Failing at the save causes the target to become "Confused". Instead of rolling percentile dice, the
result is automatically 100%. The save is attempted each round until the target dies, or gains possession of this horseshoe (which ends the
effect immediately).

Famine HorseShoe:
This worn down pig iron horseshoe can be used as a light weapon, or as a thrown weapon (at -4 non-proficiency penalty, if applicable). A
successful touch attack or ranged touch attack causes the target to be affected as follows. All hit points regained by anything within a 50 foot
radius of the target are given to the target of the horseshoe instead of the intended recipient for the duration of the effect . A Foritude save
is made each round on the target's init, before any actions are taken (DC 15, +3 for each previous check) failure causes target to take 2d6 points
of nonlethal damage. This effect lasts until the target goes unconcious, or until the target gains possession of this horseshoe (which ends the
effect immediately, restoring all CON lost in this way).


Pestilence HorseShoe:
This corrosion pocked horseshoe can be used as a light weapon (at -4 non-proficiency penalty, if applicable). A successful touch attackcauses the
target to be affected as follows. The target of the Pestilence Horseshoe must make a DC 25 Fortitued save on thier next initiative and every
subsequent intitiative (before taking other actions) until the effect ends. The new result each round determines the effect. Success causes the
target to become Exhausted (An exhausted character moves at half speed and takes a -6 penalty to Strength and Dexterity. After 1 hour of complete
rest, an exhausted character becomes fatigued. A fatigued character becomes exhausted by doing something else that would normally cause fatigue.). A failed save causes the target to become exhausted, and all creatures passing within a 20ft radius of the target are targeted with 'Contagion - Cackle Fever' as per the Necromancy spell. The effect lasts until the target goes unconcious, or until the target obtains this horseshoe.

Death Horseshoe:
This jet black wrought iron shoe must be wielded two handed (at a -4 non-proficiency penalty, if applicable. A successful touch attack causes the
target of the attack to be affected as follows. The target makes a DC 25 Con Save. Success causes the target to immediately drop to 1 hit point
and ends the effect. and Failure drains the target of of hit points equal to the wielder's level, plus con bonus (if any), which go to the
wielder of the horseshoe until the target dies, or gains control of this horseshoe. Once a target is effected (regardless of the outcome of the
save), the Death Horseshoe had no further effect on them.


"The Leaner": When two or more of the horseshoes listed above are thrown so that they touch the same target (via a ranged touch attack), that target automatically fails all saves for one of the horseshoes (determine randomly). The effects of the other shoes are tested for as normal.

"And Hand Grenades": If two or more of the horseshoes listed above contact (via non-ranged touch attacks) the same target while that target is flanked, the target automatically fails all saves related to each of the horseshoes. Any horseshoe wielders may then move their "move" distance as a free action.

[Bitom]

Actually, this was not my idea with the room items, but it was also one of the ideas kicking around that I forgot to mentioned.

The one I posted about was that each room would have some utterly useless item that could be fed into the magic combiner, and the GM of the room getting the combination would make up what the combination did.

So: if you've completed the rooms "Push button, receive bacon" and "Clue", then you enter "Night of the 9 stars" , and put them into the combiner, you end up with the pork sword: +2 longsword, Bane vs Jews and Islamics. But in the next room, "Worship the Vman" the combiner might turn it into the Bacon Candle: lights the room as a torch, smells tasty and attracts monsters.

[JohnnyWeird]

The old Monkey-Island fan in me rejoices at item-gathering! I cannot be more in favor of the idea of combining to make 'useful' items.

[Brennor]

I like the magic combo item usefulness from non useful items idea (though who says bacon is not useful -- NOM NOM NOM! ).

I think the combination should be left up to the people designing the room that the items are not found in though... which I think is what Bitom was describing.

For this to work though, each of the DJs would need to specify the 4 non useful items that might be found in their rooms so that the other DJs could make up a chart or something for which items would be useful in their rooms.

Then again, this could get to be waaay crazy. With 4 DJs each with 4 items, that equates to a 16x16 grid... yikes! ... a bunch of those space could be blanks or no effect though, which brings it back into the realm of doable.

[Bitom]

Pre-planning isn't necessarily bad... although my first idea was that each room would have one item, which all 4 people would get, which would limit the possibilities somewhat.

I think that the estimate of only 4 DJ's is suicidally low, too... I'm expecting something like 10.

[Brennor]

Yeah, I know 4 is too low, I just chose 4 because it made the math easier.

I'm fully expecting there to be 8 guaranteed DJs and possibly up to 14-ish... ALOT more than 4, for sure.

1 useless item per room... that would definitely slim the possibilities a bit. That's probably not a bad idea... though it does hinder those who have a team of 4 and want to keep it all day long a bit... but then again, they get other benefits (probably more teamwork), so that's not all bad.

I think 1 item for all the characters in a room will encourage people to trade up teams (to increase item interoperability, since it would take two rooms complete for the team of 4 that sticks together to even have a chance of combining any items).

[pygmaelion]

I agree that 4 DJs is a low number.

Let's do some bad combinatorial math here...


So, if we have... 20 people attending, playing BrenCrawl, and assuming that a DJ will run their room twice (so, only 2 teams will get to play that room)

DJ 1, with players 2,3,4,5
DJ 6 with players 7,8,9,10
DJ 11 with players 12,13,14,15
DJ 16 with players 17,18,19,20


Next round
DJ 2 with players 5,10,15,20
DJ7 with players 4,9,14,19
DJ12 with players 3,8,13,18
DJ17 with players 1,6,11,16


Third round
DJ 1 with players 5,8,14,17
DJ 6 with players 2,10,13,19
DJ 11 with players 4,7,18,15
DJ 16 with players 12,3,9,20

Fourth round
DJ 2 with players 4,8,11,20
DJ 7 with players 3,6,15,19
DJ 12 with players 1,10, 14,18
DJ 17 with players 5,9,13,16

###UPSHOT####
8 people have to make their own room, and run it 2 times during the day. This halves the load on the DJ, and gets people mixing together with folks they otherwise wouldn't get to see.

No player sits down at the table with anyone they've played with before (Not counting the DJ... who will have been a player in the previous/next round).

There will be no "Teams" per se, since the mix is absolute, and very little plotting can take place when you have no idea who you'll be sitting down with next.

###PROBLEMS###

This gives the DJs a chance to play 2 rooms, and anyone not DJing to play 4 rooms. If we are doing this for "Points" or "Braggin' Rights", then Judging a room will have to grant some amount of points to the DJ, or they're straight out of contention.


You may end up with a team full of Heavy Hitters, One team of invisible gnomes, one team of all-clerics, and a squad of bards. and then you'll get a proper mix of talents another round....

There are also "Inseparable pairs" that this doesn't account for (Mr. & Mrs. Gamer or Themed-Pair Characters).

This also insinuates that we can get a room done in the same amount of time, with whatever players we have, regardless of party composition. This is a logistics problem in any team system we do.

Anyhow... Yeah, in an "ideal, everyone likes playing with everyone equally" I think this will be a good example of how it plays out. With 4 djs, you'd just have the same thing we have this year, with 4 people DJing until they fall down from exhaustion. This gives us a rotation to work with.