More options for a new Dungeon Fantasy campaign

General spoiler warning: Please don't post spoilers about Castle Whiterock in the comments.  If you think there's any chance you might want to play in this campaign, please avoid reading Castle Whiterock, or the preview PDF for Castle Whiterock, or reviews of Castle Whiterock, etc.  Reading this blog is fine though; anything I post here is considered to be common knowledge in the campaign.

Last post, I talked about options I'm thinking about when planning a new Dungeon Fantasy RPG campaign, focused on character generation.  This time, I'll continue with choices that I suspect will matter in the critical first few sessions of the game, when we find out if the players like it or not and want to keep playing.

- Real life sometimes gets in the way of gaming.  Not every player can make it to every session.  I think it's important to recognize this, and design a game that works even if a couple of players miss a session, rather than canceling the session when that happens.  So I would like to encourage all the PCs to go back to town at the end of every session, rather than camping in the dungeon, so that if some players can't make it every session, their PCs just stay in town, with no continuity problems from PCs zapping in and out, or PCs being run (probably badly) as NPCs.  (Idea stolen from Peter at Dungeon Fantastic.)  I hate to completely take away player choice, though, so rather than flat-out telling the players they can't stay in the dungeon between sessions, I'd want to just make it the Obviously Correct Choice using various in-game carrots and sticks.  What's the best mix of rules to get the behavior I want here?  Character points per delve rather than per session, limit one delve per session, will probably suffice.  Of course it's also important for the GM to not hit the players with a 2-hour combat one hour from the end of the session.

- The Castle Whiterock box set includes the nearby town of Cillamar, and details it pretty well.  Both GURPS DF and DFRPG mostly abstract Town into a mostly boring place where you buy and sell stuff and get healed up and then get back to the dungeon.  I'm pretty sure I'd like the town to be in play as more than a few die rolls, but I don't want to make it so interesting that the PCs spend half of every session in town.  So I need to try to hand out some detail every session, but also try to limit the amount of time spent in town and encourage the PCs to head for the dungeon.

- Castle Whiterock is a decent hike away from Cillamar, which means the possibility of some wilderness adventure and wandering monster encounters on the way there and back.  The harder it is to get there and back, though, the more of each game session might be consumed on travel, and the earlier the PCs need to leave the dungeon to know they can make it home by the end of game time.  Another possibility is that the trip to the dungeon and back starts out a bit wild, but mostly gets tamer over time, as the PCs trek back and forth over it a lot, wipe out most of the threats, and advance in power so the remaining former threats aren't so scary.  Or perhaps the PCs will have the opportunity to discover better means of travel as the game progresses.

- To restock, or not to restock.  A dungeon that restocks itself feels more realistic lifelike.  On the other hand, if the dungeon restocks too fast, and the players go back to town every session, they might keep half-clearing Level One over and over and never reach the deeper levels.  So I probably want to err on the side of slower rather than faster restocking -- it happens, but if the PCs proceed at a reasonably brisk pace, they'll mostly be clearing new ground rather than re-clearing old ground.  Of course every good megadungeon needs multiple entrances so the PCs don't have to spend too much time walking over the same ground -- but will the players find them?

- Wandering monster frequency.  The DFRPG rules specify some wandering monster frequencies, which are a nice starting point, but sometimes a random fight really gets in the way of a goal the players are trying to accomplish.  Other times, the PCs spend too much time dilly-dallying rather than doing anything, and a wandering monster is just what they need to make something happen.  So let the dice decide, or GM fiat?  I'll probably wing it.  Also, sometimes wandering monsters are monsters from the key that just happen to be in a different location, so meeting a wandering monster doesn't actually mean an extra encounter, just a different one.

- How do we speed up combat so that we have a chance of finishing a huge megadungeon?  First, obviously, avoid a lot of optional rules that add complexity.  No shield damage, no bleeding (except maybe as a rare monster special ability), no extra effort in combat, etc.  Second, maybe also throw away some rules that not everyone thinks of as optional, like rolls on the critical hit table and most rolls for random hit location.  (If you want to hit the face, take your -5 penalty to aim for it.)  Third, add some time-saving rules like No Nuisance Rolls on Fast-Draw (Arrow) for the Scout who fast-draws arrows constantly.  But I think the most important rule is player discipline: if it's your turn, go now.  Think on other people's turns; act on your turn.  Pick a Trademark Move and if in doubt, use it.  Lack of action will be interpreted as a Do Nothing.  Of course this goes double for the GM, who runs the most characters so has the most opportunity to waste time.  Most Oozes aren't big thinkers; it shouldn't take more than a second for the GM to decide which character it's oozing at this turn.  Finally, not every encounter requires combat; it should be possible to evade or negotiate sometimes, saving time and healing potions.

- What online tool should we use for maps and die rolls?  Roll20 seems like the obvious choice to me.  It's not perfect, but it's free for players, freemium for GMs (most features are free, dynamic lighting and scripting cost money), it's web-based and thus portable and easy for less technical players to get working, and it's popular enough that a lot of players already know it.  Plus I've already done the first few levels of maps in Roll20.

- Are my Roll20 maps too big?  Do I need to chop them up into more, smaller maps?  I probably need to recruit a few friends to run some tokens around on my Roll20 maps and let me know how they perform, so that Actual Players have a good first session.

- Should the game be text-only, voice, or voice and video?  I'm flexible here, so it's mostly up to the players.  I suspect most players prefer voice to text-only, so probably voice, but if we get a bunch of text-only diehards, okay, I'm willing to see if I can type fast enough to keep them happy.  I doubt we need video, and it complicates things for people with slow connections, but if everyone wants to try it, okay.  I'd prefer not to spend time on things like recording the sessions that distract from GMing; if one of the players wants to and the other players are cool with it, fine.

- What do we use for voice?  GURPS has a great community on Discord, so that seems like the right choice.  It also works well for between-games chat.  Not sure whether to setup a new Discord server or ask for a room or two on Mook's GURPS Discord server, but that's a minor detail.

- How are character points awarded?  Flat amount per session (easy), based on roleplaying (old-school GURPS), based on combat and exploration and finding bonus areas and stuff (DFRPG), based mostly on treasure (old-school D&D), or just give huge "level-ups" to everyone at once when they reach arbitrary milestones (new-school D&D)?  Player votes for MVP to get an extra point?  Penalties for getting allies killed or not playing disadvantages?  There are a lot of options here, but my thinking is that since it's probably a zero-to-hero game, it will be more points per session than most players are used to, so they'll probably be okay with it regardless.  I tend to lean toward simple, like usually giving all the players the same number of points for a session depending on about how well they did, and not sweating the details too much because there will be more points next time.  Being able to hand out points quickly at the end of the session makes players happy, as it gives them more time to figure out how to spend them, so I don't want to do anything that requires too much computation.

- How many points do new PCs who join the campaign in progress get?  If I want the game to be friendly to a rotating cast of players, then letting new PCs join with some extra points beyond the starting level makes sense.  On the other hand, it's kind of mean to the veteran players if their hard-earned experience doesn't really mean anything because the new recruits are instantly just as good.  So somewhere in between, like new PCs might get 90% of the points of the least-powerful returning PC, perhaps with a minimum value based on the current dungeon level.

- Is money actually useful?  Of course it's useful at first, to buy basic starting equipment and avoid starving.  But, assuming the PCs reach the point where they have the best everyday equipment they can carry, are "special order" non-magical items for sale?  Scrolls?  Potions?  "Basic" magic items like Swords with Puissance +1 on them?  More interesting magic items?  Hirelings?  Skilled hirelings?  Is expensive training required to advance?  Or does money mostly not matter except as a way to keep score, with the good stuff being found rather than bought?  I mostly find bean-counting boring in RPGs, so my bias is toward doing less of it.  The best stuff is in the dungeon, not in town.  Go find it.  But at least basic items and healing potions can be found in town.

- How do we track character point awards and spending over time?  What about equipment and money?  Google Sheets seems okay for this.  I guess it's a discussion with the players about whether they're okay with the other players knowing what's on their sheets, so we can use one big sheet for the whole party, versus keeping things private so every PC needs their own tracking sheet.

- The sandbox vs. railroad balance.  I have a megadungeon and I want to run it rather than make another dungeon every time the players get wanderlust, which is a certain amount of railroading.  ("The adventure is here.  Elsewhere is boring.  Please go here.")  I have an introductory hook to lure the PCs into the dungeon.  I have a few NPCs with quest-giving possibilities.  But, really, I hope the PCs mostly find their own motivation rather than needing to be told what to do.

- Challenge level.  Is the adventure the adventure as written, with the chips falling as they may, or should it be modified on the fly to suit the current group of players and PCs?  I originally ran this adventure for my family, who have low to medium levels of GURPS-Fu.  If it attracts some really good GURPS players this time, are they going to just run over the challenges?  If that happens and then I scale up the challenges to match, and then one day the most skilled players stay home, is that a likely total party kill for the less experienced players, as they just trudge merrily through the dungeon without remembering to probe everything with an 11-foot pole?  I guess a little too easy is better than a little too hard, but tastes vary, so it's key to get feedback from the players between sessions.  (Not during sessions.  During sessions, stay in character.)

I'm sure there are more, but that's a good start of things I'm thinking about.  If this sounds like a game you'd like to play in, stay tuned, and I'll start looking for players in a few weeks, probably early May.