Category: Campaigns

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Stonehell: the Joys of Megadungeons

We had a very good session with the kids exploring Stonehell last night, and it was gratifying to see that one of the primary features of a megadungeon that you return to again and again has started to pay off, namely that they are remembering and taking advantage of their knowledge of the places and creatures they’ve run into before. When they killed a wandering giant ferret that attacked them on level one, they headed over to the Kobold marketplace to sell it, figuring the hide must be worth something (and it was). Later on, on the way out of the dungeon, they used their knowledge of the layout to duck out of the way of a group of hunting Neanderthals… the Neanderthals had come close kicking their asses several times before and now they give them a wide berth when they can.

During the session they almost lost a party member to the haunted straight jacket, and unwisely sat down to party with the Piskes whom they mistook for their benevolent relatives the Pixies; they survived that encounter, thanks to a lucky roll by the party cleric in smiting the Piske shaman, but it was a near thing. They also got some interesting magical loot that I threw in, a potion that granted 10 minutes of unkillability (damage taken while the potion is in effect regenerates) and some random magic lollipops (these were licorice, cure poison).

A good time was had by all, and three of the party leveled up (which reminds me I should make a cheat sheet to make that easier next time).

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Introducing New Players to D&D via Stonehell

Last night we brought my wife’s college roommate and her two kids, ages 14 and 9, to our Sunday night Bumblers gathering, and introduced them to D&D.  None of them had ever played RPGs before, so I decided that a straight-on dungeon delve was the ticket.  The kids were enthusiastic to try, the mom was at least willing.   We rolled up characters, using my D&Desque homebrew rules, before the game started and they created Hippolyta the Fighter (mom), Dorian the Fighter (14 year-old daughter), and Little Father Muffler (9 year-old son).  My wife Elyssa also rolled a new character, Ranger Joe-Bob.  Yeah, I don’t bother trying to encourage campaign-world compatible names, not for this sort of thing anyway.  Doug and Dan were the only other regulars, what with it being Valentine’s day, and they brought Tomato the Fairy Witch and Hurlon the Dwarven Thief.

For a dungeon, I used Michael Curtis’ Stonehell, the same one I’ve been using with the other set of kids.  (I’m using the free version, though the link it to the more polished and complete version you can purchase from Lulu.) It’s a good beginner’s dungeon with a variety of things to encounter, architectural features, and old-fashioned traps.   I’ve found that I like to beef it up a bit, adding stuff so that almost every room has something interesting to investigate or fight; a lot of the rooms are empty, particularly right around the entrance, presumably so you can more easily tailor it to your taste this way.  There are probably arguments to be made along the lines of naturalism and discouraging too much caution (by making it boring to search exhaustively)  for having a fair bit of empty space, but since it violates the King Kong principle (get to the f*ing monkey), the heck with it… players go into the dungeon to encounter stuff, so let’s have them encounter stuff.

An example: in the Feast Hall I put a niche behind one of the rotting tapestries.  In the niche are a swarm of carnivorous moths; they won’t do any actual damage, but will painfully bite exposed flesh (similar to the bit of a horsefly). They are thickly gathered on a small leather bag that’s been coated with a waxy substance.   After Joe-Bob the ranger found the niche and got badly bitten for his troubles, Father Muffler (the 9-year old boy) came up with the idea of luring the moths away from the bag with the light of his lantern; this worked and they retrieved the bag with no further problems… though they did end up abandoning the lantern; fortunately they had a spare.  In the bag they found a necklace of amber beads, each containing an insect inclusion.  Tomato cast Detect Magic, and found that it was indeed magical, and after some hemming and hawing about whether they should try it out and if so, who should take the risk, Tomato draped it over her(him?)self as a kind of sash.  Nothing bad happened immediately,  and later on in a random encounter with some fire beetles they discovered that it allowed the wearer to control insects.  It also dealt Tomato a 1 HP stinging wound after Tomato had made the beetles fight until there was one left, when Father Muffler smashed the last beetle.  The party speculated that this was some kind of feedback effect.  SPOILER (Doug don’t read): [spoiler name=”Spoiler”]actually, it just deals 1HP sting damage whenever the spell wears off, after one ten-minute turn; otherwise it has no charges or limit on times it can be used[/spoiler].

The new players were a bit confused and tentative at first, but started to get the hang of it as we went along.  I did all the rolling for them (usually I let the players roll for everything except searches and the like where they’re not supposed to know whether they’ve failed or there was nothing to find) and just told them the results.  They had the fairly typical fear that they were “doing it wrong,” but the experienced players really encouraged them to go with the flow.  One thing that I do, which I think helps new players get the hang of the role-playing aspect of it, is encourage them to roll on a random table of motivations: once each for their primary drive and primary aversion.  So, for instance, Father Muffler happened to roll that his primary drive was Religion, and that his aversion was also Religion, so he decided that the was a fanatic about his faith and opposed to other faiths.  Dorian rolled that her primary drive was Knowledge, and her aversion was Danger.  This made for (imo) for a rather interesting character, though I think she was particularly concerned that she wasn’t “playing well” because she was avoiding the fighting that the others were doing (with great enthusiasm on some of their parts.  Elyssa in particular loves hacking away at things as a Fighter).  After the game we all reassured her that as long as she was having fun, playing true to the character’s personality rather than optimally for the party’s goals was playing well.  At least by my group’s standards.  Certainly Doug never lets optimum party strategy or groupthink get in the way of his characters’ outrageous personalities, and as long as he manages to be entertaining about it that’s one of the fun things about playing with Doug.

The evening ended with the poison-gas fish-fountain claiming all three of the new players (everyone had to make a save, they were the only ones who failed).  It was getting late, so we ended there, but we’re going to play again tonight, probably with just the kids and Elyssa…the mom appreciated it as a new experience, but wasn’t as taken with the whole thing.  As they were heading out the door to go visit the museums they have planned for the day, the 9 year-old was busy trying to come up with a name for his next priest…

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Superheroes, not Superbowl

Lat night we ran another session of Kapow!, my superheroes rpg that we’re playtesting, and I take it as a good sign that despite the fact that before we started a couple of our players expressed interest in watching the Superbowl half-time show, once we got going they forgot all about it.  We had our first big set-piece battle, and it went really well I think.  Everybody was engaged and involved, and despite the fact that it went for most of the session it felt fairly fast-paced and like they got a good amount done.  They were facing off against the big boss and her 64 minions, so the fact we managed to wrap it up at all is good.

The group had tracked Alexandra LeGrande to a warehouse where she was training her army of Glammazons, and scouted it out to find a secret lab underneath.  They decided to split their forces, with Harbinger (intangible scout) and Public Defender (Force Fields) sneaking in through the storm drains to confront and delay LeGrande, while Namaste (super-yogini), Akela (jungle girl), the Wraith (power-draining mystery man), and Redline (powered-armor/motorcycle multi-form) burst into the warehouse above to round up the Glammazons and prevent them from just running off.

The fight between LeGrande and Harbinger and Public Defender went particularly well, from my point of view. Once she revealed her supervillain persona,  Olympia, and began chucking her pentathalon-themed weaponry (exploding discus, “switch-blade” javelins, and big old hammer) it became evident that one or two on one they were just no match for her.  She KO’ed Public Defender in the first round, which really bummed him out until I reminded him that by the rules he’d be out for a maximum of three rounds or until one of his teammates revived him, whichever came first.   Harbinger then spent his turn reviving him, which meant that he couldn’t stay phased, but managed to avoid her attack anyway and they were both back in action.

Upstairs the fight went pretty much as expected, with the heroes easily clobbering multiple Glammazons per round, though the Glammazons did manage to at least hinder them, and in one case managed to pile on enough to score as a knock-out on Akela…but her jaguar Nushka was able to revive her easily enough.  The Wraith’s exotic power-drain power proved to be the most effective at dispatching large numbers of agents quickly, though Namaste was no slouch in that department either, just using her strength and acrobatics.  Akela’s heightened senses allowed her to detect that the group below were having trouble, so she, Redline and Namaste headed down to the lab, leaving the Wraith to deal with the remaining Glammazons.

Once the full group (more or less) was assembled, they managed to combine their powers and take Olympia down, though she did get a good shot in, disabling Redline’s Super Strength with a javelin through his suit’s shoulders.  Basically it worked exactly as designed: a boss significantly tougher than any individual was defeated by the heroes using team-work in a straight slug-fest, and once they had cleared the decks and gotten together it went only two rounds…no slow war of attrition in Kapow!  It could also have easily gone the other way, I think; if she had been able to take one or two out and press the attack so the group couldn’t afford the time to revive them they wouldn’t have had the numbers needed to overcome her higher defense and she might have been able to defeat them all and capture them or escape.

It was also very gratifying that Wendy at least thought the villain was really cool, and seems to be looking forward to her escaping custody and facing them again some time in the future.  Don’t worry, Wendy, you haven’t seen the last of Olympia!

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Clobberin’ Time: Kapow! Playtest

We had our first real (in the sense of using the rules and rolling dice) session playtesting my Kapow! Superhero RPG, and I’d say it went pretty well.  We had one short combat, where the gang–who have decided to call themselves The Beacon City Brawlers–took out a dozen thugs armed with pistols and shotguns who were robbing a diamond exchange with startling ease.  Startling to them, that is…one thing I was hoping to get out of the combat was to teach them how much more powerful they were than normals.  We generally play in much, much lower power settings, so I think they found it gratifying when they realized that bullets really couldn’t hurt them.

The combat out of the way, we moved to the meat of the session, with them investigating a bank robbery by a group of masked, super-strong and fast women the press had dubbed “Barbie-zons”.  The players got to invoke various of their shticks, with Jungle Gal scouting the bank with her heightened senses, The Wraith using his contacts to acquire the surveillance tapes, Redline using the Crime Lab in the base to analyze the tapes with facial analysis software, and even Namaste getting into using her knowledge of yoga and anatomy to analyze the way that they moved.

One thing that I realized in GMing is that even though I made up all the rules, and even wrote them down, I don’t have them all at the tip of my fingers, and the rules aren’t quite light enough for there to be only one thing to remember (e.g. roll vs. target).  I’ll need to review them a bit before I run again.  They did seem to work pretty much as I had hoped, to direct and resolve actions without getting in the way.  There’s definitely a tendency for the players to ask for permission to try things that’s a legacy of other games we’ve played over the years, such as questions about whether they can move and attack, or does the move take their entire action, but I can definitely see them warming to the possibilities of simply being able to say “I phase through the top of the van that’s speeding away and into the seat next to the driver” without needing to make a skill check or negotiate it with the GM.  Which reminds me, I did want to nail down the rule for over-awing somebody (along the lines of a Champions “Presence Attack”) before next session.

The session was it it was over before we knew it, and in fact we were fifteen minutes past our usual stopping time when somebody noticed and we had to wrap things up.  People seemed pretty absorbed, and into their characters, and you can see the personalities starting to emerge.  I’m really looking forward to the next session.

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Kapow! Introductions

We had our first real session of Kapow! on Sunday.  Mostly the group just role-played through getting together.  Mike D’s character Redline is putting up a warehouse to serve as the group’s base, and started the ball rolling by getting in touch with the sole remaining member of the Beacon City Police Squad, Public Defender (Mike B’s character).  He figured that, even though the Police Squad had been stood down by the city after cost overruns and a disastrous mistaken battle with the world’s premier super-team, the Astralnauts, they might have some idea of where to find some supers who would be willing to form the core of a new, private team.  Public Defender ran it by Captain Carlson, who didn’t want to hear anything about it or anything that would lead to the Department being seen even remotely to be involved in forming a new team, however unofficial.  That said, he conveniently went for a cup of coffee leaving the file containing the information PD was looking for open on his desk.  From this PD gleaned the name The Wraith (Doug’s character) and set out to contact him.

Oddly, before he could do so, the Wraith (a former undercover officer with the Police Squad) showed up…the Wraith has good sources of information.  Using his myriad contacts throughout the city, the Wraith tracked down some potential recruits and persuaded them to go to the warehouse where the group’s not-so-mysterious backer would meet them.  There was a certain amount of hilarity as Doug strove to find exactly the mysterious voice he wanted to use for his character…particularly because it strayed perilously close to Montgomery Burns at times (“From time immemorial mankind has dreamt of … blotting out the sun!  Er, forming a group of do-gooders, I mean. … Eeexcellent.”)  But they all showed up anyway:

  • Redline, Mike D.  Founder of the group, paraplegic ex-motorcycle racer and inventor of the powered armor that transforms into a motorcycle; or is it a motorcycle that transforms into powered armor.
  • Akela, or Jungle Gal as she’s called by the press, and her jaguar Nushka.  Wendy was busy with Google, as you can see.
  • Namaste, the yogini, Elyssa.  Super strength, flexibility, breath control, and mental tricks, plus the power of Karmic Retribution.
  • Public Defender, Mike B, a force-field projector.  Police officer, last member of the disbanded official police superteam Police Squad.  The rest turned in their equipment, but it was built into Public Defender, so…
  • The Wraith, Doug, mystery figure in a trench-coat, with gloves that can drain super powers and stun.
  • Andrew Jackson, Dan, no super name yet.  Has-been extreme sport star with the power to phase through solid objects.

Together they form….  um, actually, the group hasn’t settled on a name yet.  I’m sure they’d be grateful for suggestions.

After their introductions, they did a little light sparring so the players could get used to the system and the characters “wouldn’t seem like a bunch of big doofuses in their first battle”, to quote Mike D.  That went pretty well, though I realized that I hadn’t fully defined how control powers work if they don’t achieve a “knock out.”  (I have since rectified this: a partial victory lets the controller command the target to perform one action, then the control lapses.)  It went pretty quickly, anyway, and I expect it will be quicker still once people get the hang of it.

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Kapow! Playtest Starting

Last night we started hashing out the parameters for a supers campaign playtesting my new Kapow! Superhero RPG System.  We didn’t actually generate characters because people wanted time to mull it over, but we discussed how it worked, and settled on some things about power level and tone.  To summarize:

  • Tone: serious, but not grim.  Superheroes don’t kill, and supervillains mostly don’t either (because it’s not their MO or they’re stopped by the superheroes).  No “Joker Syndrome”–if they catch a killer, the authorities can put him away for good.  Realistic consequences of property damage such as throwing a car or getting smashed into a building aren’t generally considered, but violence isn’t sanitized to the point where fighter planes blowing up are followed by a cut-away to all the pilots floating down on their parachutes, Saturday-morning cartoon style.
  • Scope: City-wide.  The adventures will mostly take place in a single city, but range all over the city rather than be focused on a particular neighborhood.  The PCs will be major players for their home city, but there are well-known groups and supers much more powerful than they.
  • Prevalence of supers: Supers are common, and have been so for a long time.  Every city probably has at least one hero, big cities will have a hero group, huge cities might have several.  A super group can expect to fight a wide variety of villains, not the same ones over and over. There’s a wide spread of power-levels, and many who have powers have minor ones and don’t use them to fight or commit crime.
  • Fictional Cities: the world will use fictional analogue of cities (a la the DC Universe) instead of real ones.  The players agreed they would rather not get hung up on their knowledge (or lack) of actual geography, distances, and characteristics of neighborhoods.  Play will take place in Beacon City, a fictional analogue of Boston.
  • Not SF.  The setting will be treated according to genre conventions rather than SF ones.  We just won’t explore logical implications of certain kinds of technology or proof that magic works and literal gods walk the Earth.  No explanation will be given or asked for as to why the world hasn’t changed in this or that way because of the existence of supernatural creatures, aliens from another world, artificial intelligences and so on.

Character concepts that people are leaning towards are:

  • Doug: John McClane from Die Hard as a super; he gets hurt but just keeps on going, and going.  Also has a prototype power-suppression device (used to restrain supervillains).
  • Elyssa: Namaste, a yogini who has yoga abilities exaggerated to the point of super-powers (much as various kung fu and karate-based superheroes).
  • Wendy: a Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, type complete with a big cat (lion or leopard) pet.  Possibly an ordinary woman who can transform herself and her housecat via a magic amulet.
  • Mike: a paraplegic with a transforming motorcycle/powered armor suit, or maybe a Sonic Blaster, he hasn’t decided yet.
  • Dan: a superspeedster who “moves through time at twice or more the rate of anybody else”, so he need to eat, breath, sleep, etc twice as often as everybody else, but can actually phase through solid objects (by going through the space before the Earth’s motion actually moves the object there?  I’m not sure I understood the comic-book physics of it.)
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Exploring the Contested Corridors

Friday we had a good long session of the game with the kids, where they explored more of Amityville Mike’s Stonehell dungeon, in particular the 1C section: The Contested Corridors.  The game continues to go well, and much enjoyment is being had by all.  There was one more character death this time, Grace’s character Horatia, but a succesful dying prayer (natural 20) restored the character to life in a spectacular fashion, though much in need of rest and recuperation.  The party continues to be more and more impressed with Horatia’s make-believe god Horatio, which Grace plays to the hilt.  It will be interesting to see if they ever do figure out that the god she claims to be worshipping isn’t the one she’s actually devoted to.

They also leveled up, all except Charlie’s new character (replacing the deceased Revenge) and Elyssa’s new-to-the-campaign fighter, Biff.  Mostly that involved getting another dice worth of Stamina points, since nobody opted for trying to increase any stats, and choosing a new Talent, plus selecting new spells for the Mages.   I’ve replaced the specific effects of spells  like Magic Missile, Burning Hands, and Shocking Grasp with more generalized versions where when you learn the spell you pick the element (from a list of available elements) along the lines of Trappings in Savage Worlds.   Mac’s Rogue (Thief/Mage) decided to specialize in Electrical magic, in return for the vague promise of future benefits for having done so;  Tommy’s Mage decided to branch out, so he can now cast either the Ice or Poison versions of the two elemental spells he knows: dart and fan.

I had hoped to spend some time RPing the interaction with the Adventurer’s Guild and with Rowena the Healer, an NPC they just met and daughter of Contus the boat-man, who ferries them to the island with the dungeon as needed. But the kids were getting a little antsy, and needed some good hack-time.  One of the things I’ve found about GMing Stonehell is that there are really more empty rooms than the kids will put up with.  Part of that is Mike leaving plenty of space for GMs to insert their own stuff, and part that there’s a certain logic to not having everything cheek-by-jowl to everything else,  but I’ve been sliding more and more towards having something to do or think about in every room.   Some of the time I’m just shifting the location of a random encounter so that it’s either  in the room or comes upon them while they’re checking it out, but I’m also starting to just wing extra stuff, like the giant crab pretending to be a table, or the secret compartment beneath the broken statue containing a copper bracelet that grants immunity to the lightning that the trapped suits of armor cast.  I’ll be interested to see what they do with that, once they figure it out.

The orcs continue to be a source of great amusement; making them comically stupid has worked out really well.  The highlight of the session was when Tommy (the youngest) managed to fool a big crowd of orcs who were attracted by the sounds of them fighting the giant crab by shouting through the door in orcish “They went the other way!”  It’ll also be fun when they meet the bogeys (shemped goblins) and find out that not all monsters are that gullible.

One thing they’re not very good about is running away when the odds aren’t good.  So far, it’s worked out ok for them, but so far they’ve been quite lucky with some of Horatia’s miracles.  On the other hand, at least one of the miracles wouldn’t have been necessary if they hadn’t been really unlucky with one of the orc’s damage rolls. I’m wondering if I should tweak the rules for extra damage hits slightly; I had thought that I made really bad hits rare enough, but now I’m not sure.

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Names and Language in Nonesuch

Anything the players want.  That’s what they do anyway, and I know from bitter experience that once I start in on listing appropriate names for cultures and races it’s just a short step to a naming language and then a full-blown death spiral into conlangs.  So Umbry, Auxi-lock, Revenge, Expendable 1401, Tomato, Hermia/Horatia, Caboose, Hurlon, Poden Persas, welcome to the Land of Nonesuch!  Hope you survive the experience!

Well, except for you Revenge, better luck next life.

One thing I haven’t really settled is how many languages there are and how many the characters know.  Originally I was allowing each character one extra language per INT bonus, so pretty much all the characters had one or none. Everybody in the kids’ game wanted Orc, because that was the first group of humanoid monsters they ran into, and they were fun to talk to.  Now I’m thinking that will be kind of dull when they run into other monsters, unless they speak common, and I’m also wondering if I’m taking too American a view of foreign languages.  In a setting where you’re exposed to them regularly, it probably shouldn’t be so hard to pick them up.  Maybe one extra spoken language per point of Int over 9, and one dead language per Int Bonus?  It would be something to do with Int for non-Mages, given the system doesn’t really emphasize skills.  And I want characters to be talking to the monsters, even the hostile ones, because that’s where the RP is.

Thoughts and suggestions?  How do you handle it in your games?

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Humanoid Monsters of Nonesuch

Here’s a sketch of the various humanoid monsters common to the Land of Nonesuch.  The goal is to make them, not unique, but distinctive and recognizable…if they’re mooks, they’re not generic interchangeable mooks.  On the other hand, I want to avoid the “in this world, Orcs are descended from flightless birds, and are the proud descendants of an ancient and cosmopolitan culture, more like feathery elves” that I’m sometimes prone to.  I want them to be reminiscent of common fantasy and folklore, if slightly skew. Some of these have already made an appearance in the kids’ game.

  • Orcs – magically evolved pigs (totally swiped from Grognardia’s Dwimmermount).  Evil, comically greedy, quarrelsome, and easy to trick.  The Three Stooges of humanoid monsters.
  • Kobolds – magically evolved dogs.  Neutral, generally traders and merchants in the dungeon economy (Rat on a Stick, anyone?), some actually live peacefully in some surface cities.  Something along the lines of Nessie from Too Many Curses or the kobolds from Suikoden.
  • Hobgoblins – mischievous house-sprites.  I know that I just got done saying I didn’t want this to be another “well, in my world” setting, but folklore trumps Tolkien and D&D here.  Good, although tricksy.  Puck is a hobgoblin.
  • Redcaps – these replace the D&D militaristic, organized, larger-sized goblin troopers.  Evil, sadistic buggers who dye their caps in human blood.  Iron boots, iron pikes, and faster than anybody can run away.
  • Goblins –  I’m really torn here.  On the one hand, I have this vision of them as these nasty, deformed little mushroom men out of Goya that use human corpses for compost.  On the other hand, I’m also attracted to the Labyrinth version of goblins (also one of the sources for the feel of this setting), with each one a unique Henson-esque critter.  I could combine the two, I suppose, or have them both be true in different parts of the setting.  Or I could split them into two different kinds of monsters and call one of them goblins and the other… I could call them wirry-cows, I suppose, which would be good folklore but be unintentionally silly to my players.  Ooh.  Bogeys would be a great name for the mushroom-type.
  • Bugbears – more the creepy bear in the woods sort than a generic bogeyman. Definitely not an oversized Hobgoblin war-leader out of Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance.
  • Trolls and Trollwives.  These guys.  The males are big and hairy, with huge noses and ears; the females are slight and beautiful.  Trolls are one of the PC races in the setting, though you have to roll really well to qualify.
  • Ogres and Giants – Haven’t really given a lot of thought to them yet.  Probably straight out of the Book of Wierd.
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The Land of Nonesuch

I’ve been working a bit on the setting for my game with the kids, which is also my backup game for the Bumblers, possibly a play-by-forum game in the future if I get my act together,  and finally an example setting for the system (tentatively titled The Majyc System).  So it needs a name, and possibly a hook.  I’m a little leery of the “elevator-pitch” approach to game settings; too often they end up sounding like something out of They Fight Crime: “He’s an all-American white trash shaman haunted by an iconic dead American confidante She’s a beautiful antique-collecting femme fatale from a secret island of warrior women. They fight crime!”  On the other hand, there’s certainly something to be said for being able to succinctly state what the game is about, and give the players an expectation of the tone and kind of adventures they’ll be playing.  And bog-standard dungeon bash doesn’t sound all that thrilling, even if you’re confident that playing it will be a blast.

For now, I’m calling it the Land of Nonesuch, and working on the premise that (unknown to the current crop of characters) they’re inhabiting a land described in a book of odd and somewhat macabre fairy tales called The Land of Nonesuch, by the mysterious George Jester.  Both the book and the author appear both in our world, and in the land the book describes.  My overall plan, if something so vague and inchoate can actually be called such, is that this setting will let me scratch several itches that I’ve had for quite a while now: running a game in a setting inspired by The Book of Weird, and by the Oz books; getting some use from various cast-off pieces of prior settings (such as the settings of the games with the Three Paladinos, and the one-shot To Rescue the Sun) and swiped from other people’s settings (like Thool, or Dwimmermount); to do some bottom-up setting design, where I haven’t worked out a whole map of the setting and a thousand years of history before I begin; and finally, putting that all together, to do some gaming where I haven’t systemetized everything and there’s not a way that magic or religion works, and I’m not pinging the players with info-dumps.  Naturally, I have ideas on things I want to see in the setting, and spring on the characters, but I want to be much more encouraging of letting the players make up crazy stuff too, and just rolling with it.  I want to recapture, at least for some of the time, some of the much more free-wheeling GMing I did in my youth, where a lot of stuff was decided on the basis of either “Yeah, that sounds good!” or “roll a die, high is good.”