Six Months in (Stone)hell
My role at the table
In Mister Jenx’s Stonehell game I started out playing Tina the Titanic, a fighter modeled after Tina Turner’s character in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. I also was the official mapper, treasure recorder, book keeper, quarter master, and frequent shot caller. Tina ended up naming the adventure company, establishing our charter, spearheading base construction and even negotiating for political control of the region around Stonehell. Understandably I ended up as the de facto party leader.
I am also proud to say I am the only player to have never missed a game. Having an identical schedule to the GM does help with that though.
I had not intended to make Tina the Titanic such a key figure but it sort of happened due to my intense investment and work put into the game. Once she reached level 2 I actually retired her. I was finding that I was too invested in what Tina was building to risk continually putting her back in the dungeon. Enter Tiny Tina Turner (not her real name), a diminutive cleric that had been dressed by Big Tina in an identical outfit. Tiny Tina took on the critical job of keeping the party alive while also being Big Tina’s secretary and toady.
When Jenx changed up the rules to allow increased XP gain and “companion” characters instead of just basic hirelings, I was eager to bring Big Tina back into the game. As of session 20 both of them are level 6 and make a formidable tag team.
My overall impressions
Stonehell is absurdly huge and the treasure inside feels unreasonably low for the amount of work it takes to find it. I know for a fact that Mister Jenx is adding additional loot and magical items into it, and still we often have multiple sessions in a row with very little income to show for it. This was a real struggle in the early game. These days the domain play stuff I worked out with Mister Jenx allows for cheaper simplified food and gear management. I am not sure we could afford to adventure here otherwise.
If the rules had not been changed to allow our party to “over level” for the floor of Stonehell we are on, I honestly would have quit. It was a miserable slog for a large number of the early sessions. The third session in a row with almost no income, limited xp, and making very little progress because of unending orc attacks was simply not a fun game. I understand that some tables enjoy a very slow paced, constantly close to death style but this dungeon as written seemed unreasonably slow paced.
This was not helped by other players at our table insisting that we must map every inch of a floor before proceeding down. It meant we were locked into a low income, low xp loop.
Once we stopped splitting XP we quickly jumped up in levels and that made everything less grindy and more fun. I think we all agree it was probably too much XP too fast, and should be tweaked in future campaigns, but not splitting XP is a thing we all enjoyed.
I have grown very close to a few of my tablemates and truly am finding that I love this game. I am grateful both that I did not leave it, and that changes were made to make it more fun.
I also want to mention that Mister Jenx brought back characters from prior games as part of the special hireling list. This was extremely fun and we have moved most of them into our town with us. I really hope to see more characters from other games in the future.
I don’t think this game is the kind of game that I would seek out. I like deep emotional connections between characters during play. I like exploring intense topics. I like rich layered worlds. This game, by necessity, is none of those things. But I love Mister Jenx, and I love my fellow core players, and I adore spending my Saturdays with them. It’s not the RPG I would dream up, but I love that I get to play in this. I am looking forward to another 6 months.
Is this arcade gaming?
The idea of arcade gaming has been an ongoing conversation on the OSR discord for many months, and a source of confusion for me for just as long. It’s a vibe and vibes are hard to nail down. Having never spent time in an arcade, or even heard of most of the games people use as examples, the term didn't click for me. I think however, I am starting to piece together what it means.
I keep expecting the campaign world to open up in ways that will punish me. I keep thinking I have to maintain peace with Lord Krofax and that a grand war with the Elves is coming, and we need to install the ballistas at the gatehouse so we won’t be taken undefended. I am slowly coming to trust that there is nothing else out there. There is no bigger world. Nothing is coming. It is just us and this dank hole in the ground.
It’s not even that I want there to be a wider world. I just don’t know how to parse a world that does not have one. I have never played an RPG like this before. I made the quip on discord which I think is valid. This is the “porn without plot” version of D&D. Who made the dungeon? What are the wider political implications? Is this snake cult trying to summon a dead god and do we have to stop them before time runs out? No. No. No. Just get in the hole, kill monsters and get money.
It’s an RPG stripped back to just the core game play loop. It’s not about the themes or rule sets used, just about keeping the world simple. Maybe there is a better name for this? Procedure centric? Narrative light? Who knows, but I am glad to say I think I finally at least understand what people are talking about.
I am more competent than I think
At some point I got it into my head that in any game where player skill is a factor, character death is punishment for playing the game poorly. I get it, other people don’t feel this way but it is one of those unshakable “truths” in my head. “This world is unforgiving and mistakes will be punished with you being removed from it.”
I went into this game expecting to die, because I don’t consider myself very good at this. For one thing, I don’t have tons of table experience. Why would I be good at it? I also live with a very high skill player who constantly plays with other very high skilled people. I expected to fuck up a lot.
Turns out we have had very low death rates in this game. Jenx says the world isn’t less lethal than his other games. Another player who has played in many of Jenx’s games feels that is correct. This player has directly told me the reason we have so few deaths is because I am at the table keeping us alive.
I am not sure fully what to make of that. Clearly I am more competent than I think, but I am not sure if I am a legitimately competent player. I know some of the other players at the table frequently want to make choices that endanger themselves and the party. I think I need to get around properly skilled players to really get a feel for my competency level. (Sorry to my table mates, it’s harsh but true.)
I really don’t like open tables
Or at least I have not enjoyed the open table as it has manifested for this game. For me the issue is an inconsistent experience. If this game had a large number of frequently changing players each week that would at least be consistent. Instead the net result has been three extremely dedicated players who show up every week, and occasionally people showing up at random. Most of the stress and table conflict that has happened in this game has been because of these random players. Either because they have poor table manners, or they are trying to play a different game than is presented, or they vanish for weeks and then show up demanding we spend funds on them.
It legitimately causes me stress every time I know someone from outside of the core group of players signed up. It takes a guaranteed nice afternoon and turns it into a coin toss if something unpleasant is going to happen. I also frankly feel emotionally less safe with random people because I have to mask harder. I really worry about having something upsetting happen in the game and not being able to either keep that locked inside, or be safe to express my distress.
I am terrified of dying in RPGs
Or rather I am terrified of experiencing death at the table. By that I mean I am ok with a PC dying in a one-shot. I have even intentionally killed PCs at the table for different reasons. I am scared of bleed and of emotionally experiencing a character dying when I am not in a safe place to express or process those emotions. The open table format makes this even more unsafe for me because it necessitates gaming with strangers in a busy club.
I went into this game with the idea that it was high lethality and that Tina the Titanic was a throw away PC that wasn’t going to make it more than a few sessions at most. And then she didn’t die. I ended up making plans for what I wanted to do with her, and how she fit into this world. Probably a mistake in an arcade style game.
Growing too afraid of experiencing her dying, and our table in desperate need of a cleric, I retired Tina the Titanic. I did not want to. I was not thrilled to be playing a different character. It also meant I had a PC that did nothing in the dungeon except give out occasional hugs. That was ok because I was doing so many things as a player but it felt bad to give up my character out of fear.
It wasn’t just the potential of her dying, I was scared for the death of my engagement with this world. I was already imagining what this character was going to build. She was important to the coherence of the company. She was important to my enjoyment of this game. I love spending my Saturdays with this group. I didn’t know how that might look and feel if she died. So I took her out myself.
Domain play and owning the dungeon
Mister Jenx did not want the burden of GMing a wider world and certainly wasn’t looking to run domain play for this game. I, a life long fan of games like Alpha Centauri and Dwarf Fortress, very much wanted domain level play. We came up with the compromise where I would come up with everything I wanted to happen, he would have final approval. He came up with the mechanics and I even created a script for him that would automatically handle all the calculations to make it even simpler.
See “The Dungeon Game - Simplified Domains”
I love this part of the game so much. I have taken the abandoned fortress area from the North West of the valley, which I named Crownfall Keep and massively expanded it. I have rebuilt the gatehouse, and fortified it with standing troops. I have built cook houses, bunk houses, townhomes for the inmates who lived on floor two who are now residents.
The town area is called Talley Town because it’s where your taxes are collected when you bring loot out of Stonehell. Talley Town has residents from Graylands and Devil’s World Heroes and other games. We have a hospital and future plans for a monastery, a vineyard, and a power plant. It makes me grin just thinking about it.
I also love that Mister Jenx lets me interact with Stonehell directly as well. Since we have guards, a standing labor force, and a robot with a drill I can move one 10x10 square of the dungeon per downtown. I have taken great advantage of this by punching new corridors and blocking others to make our navigating the dungeon easier and to create safe zones.
I really appreciate getting to have this kind of investment in the world, even though it’s not what Mister Jenx was setting out to incentivise with this campaign.
Death Rule Changes
Mister Jenx and I are very emotionally bonded and if I am in distress he is in distress. That has been a problem in prior games, because RPGs are often distressing. I was asked not to play in Mister Jenx’s prior campaign “Zandan” for this reason. It’s not that I was unwanted but out of a genuine worry on his part that he could not focus on running, if he was also focused on supporting me.
After 20 sessions of play I can say with certainty that I have not been a source of disruption. Other players have said how much fun the game is because I am around. Mister Jenx has also confirmed that I have not been a problem at the table. That is a huge relief for me.
My comfort at the table has only grown now that we have access to free resurrection. I don’t worry as much when things get dicey because I know there is a straight forward fix. The only close call for me was a near TPK which did leave me pretty rattled.
In response to that event, Mister Jenx added a rule. In the case of a TPK we could simply wave away that session and try again the following week. I still feel odd about this despite his insistence that he was already considering tweaking death rules for games, but simply had not written them for this campaign yet. Other players also agreed that losing the entire party this deep into the game would be a rough blow. Still, I feel weird about it.
I don’t like having to have accommodations made for me. I don’t like being the stereotypical girl who is too soft to play with the boys. It sucks knowing that maybe it was the right call not to have me play in the prior campaign.
Final Notes
It’s easier to complain than to compliment. I hope my comments here do enough to convey just how much I appreciate this game and for being given a chance to participate in it. I want to say thank you to Mister Jenx for giving this a chance, and to Telperion and Vaco’s players for being such an amazing support system and teammates. It’s easy to make friends playing RPGs, but it’s hard to make friendships this wonderful.