Re: [DL] Our first foray into DL Original Recipe

[balance@tubas.net]

On Wednesday, September 25, 2002, at 04:28  PM, David L. Hoff wrote:

All of these suggestions sound good!

> I agree with what most people have said so far about keeping combat 
> moving, using the mook rules, having a spare deck or two availiable, 
> etc. Here are a few suggestions of my own:
>
> 1) Get a bunch of those cheap d6's from your local gaming store, you 
> know, the ones usually sold for a buck a handful or so. Use them as 
> miniatures for the bad guys. You can easily keep track of how badly 
> wounded a mook is by what number is showing (6 = no wounds, any other 
> number = the number of wounds taken). The assortment of colors makes it 
> easy to keep track of who is who, such as having the black dice be the 
> guys with pistols, the blue dice are guys with shotguns, and the red 
> die is a guy with a flamethrower :-)

This is a good idea. I may have to steal it, even!

> 2) Have any of your spell chuckers do up a 3x5 card for each spell they 
> know. That way, instead of having to look through a 120 page book past 
> all of the spells they don't know for the one they want to cast, they 
> can just sort through a small stack of cards. I also use this for the 
> bad guys, writing down stuff like black magic powers. hexes, harrowed 
> powers, etc. In fact, if you have a bunch of cards made up, and you 
> need to quickly make up an NPC with some powers, you can just deal him 
> out some cards from the appropriate stack.

I WISH they'd do this. My one mad Scientist is going to do up his 
blueprints, and it is appreciated, but it's more important for the 
battle casters. The sorceress in the D&D3e game I'm in does this, and 
it's extremely handy for any 'choose on the fly' spellcaster types, 
especially in deadlands where there's a wide variety of spells.

> 3) Don't drag out a combat that isn't important. If the players are 
> supposed to ambush some bad guys before making their way to the evil 
> villian's lair, don't spend chips to make the mooks take longer to 
> kill; if they take enough wounds to put them down, let them die. Save 
> your chips for the big fight with the evil mastermind. It keeps the 
> session moving, as well as making the final battle a true test of what 
> your heroes are made of.

Good advice... Also, it saves the chips for the big boss. Of course, i 
recommend chipping an occasional minor villain just to make the PCs 
sweat...

> Thats all I can think of off the top of my head. Hope this helps.

Good advice...

--
Brett

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER 
MAN? (Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett)