Bat in the Attic

D&D Next - Skills and Abilities

2012-01-29T15:41:00.002-05:00

The final D&D Next seminar at D&D Experience was about how they are handling skills and abilities (i.e. characteristics).

I find this interesting

Bruce: Looking at the playtest characters here, you might have noticed that a class or a theme might have given you a bonus to skill, but you didn't have a skill list. Normally if you were to call for a check, you would just call for the ability score - like a dexterity check for sneaking up. But if you have a class or character feature that gives you a bonus to sneak, you would add that in. There are a lot of different expressions for skills. Trained, sneaking at full speed (stealth twice). Lots of options.

Sounds a lot like I did with my Majestic Wilderlands Abilities. Based on discussion at Knight & Knaves, the RPG Site, and other forums I am wondering if they are better off renaming some of these mechanics. Feats, skills, etc bring up preconceived ideas in people's head.

Of course the stuff on saving throws tied to abilities will bring up comparisons with Castles & Crusades but it sounds like with 5e skills it will be a different implementation of the idea.

It would be interesting if they flat out say that any character can do any action just some are better at certain things.

I find this exchange interesting as well

Rob: It's been a difficult problem for a while. In 3E and 4E skills were sort of the doorway to interaction with the world.

Monte: In previous editions, ability scores played into skills. We want skills to play into ability scores. Maybe more open-ended.

Bruce: If skills are not the portals to ability scores, but rather the tweaks to them, we can add interesting tiny skills. More flavor. Because the ability scores are the core, we can make any little skills we want.

Monte: It means that if you're a DM and you don't even want to deal with skills, you can totally do that.

To me what important here is the attitude. Even you think D&;D Next's mechanics are stupid compared to AD&D, B/X, etc, we will wind up having a larger pool of gamers understanding how older editions are played. It sounds like it will be a less of a leap from D&D Next to AD&D, or OD&D than it was with D&D 4e or even 3.X.

Certainly the Do it yourself spirit, is compatible with how gamers in the OSR actually run their campaigns, a mishmash of their favorite D&D rules.

Hopefully this means a larger pool of gamers for the editions we love.

Help with NPC Spellcasters

2012-01-25T08:39:00.001-05:00

In Kellri Classic Dungeon Designer Netbook #4 there is an very useful table for generating spellbooks. From it I can make a NPC Magic User with the spells he has memorized and have it differ from NPC to NPC.
While Clerics don’t have spell books it would be nice to have something similar for them. Also Kellri’s net book is oriented to AD&;D.
My question is that is there something that already been written for Clerics and other spell using classes? And as a bonus oriented to Swords &; Wizardry? Also I have old Dragon Magazines so a relevant article would be useful to me.

AD&D survives it's System Shock Roll!

2012-01-19T00:46:00.000-05:00

In 1974, the world changed forever when Gary Gygax introduced the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The legacy of his innovative ideas and the extensive reach of his powerful influence can be seen in virtually every facet of gaming today.To help honor his work and his memory, we created limited-edition reprints of the original 1st Edition core rulebooks: the Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, and Dungeon Master's Guide. These premium versions of the original AD&D rulebooks have been lovingly reprinted with the original art and content, but feature an attractive new cover design commemorating this re-release. Available in limited quantities as a hobby channel exclusive in North America.Your purchase of this monumental book helps support the Gygax Memorial Fund—established to immortalize the “Father of Roleplaying Games” with a memorial statue in Lake Geneva, WI.

Product Release List
Player's Handbook

Print on Demand with CreateSpace

2012-01-18T14:29:00.001-05:00

I just got a email from CreateSpace notifying me that they did away with the Pro Plan. Looking over their site it looks like they decided to operate more like Lulu then the weird byzantine setup they had before. They have a cheaper base price and more format sizes than lulu but offer a different set of royalty rates that you will have to review. For $25 per book you can get expanded distribution which has the best royalty option of anything I seen for PoD although I think it requires the use of an ISBN for the book.

Also unlike Lulu it appears their method of selling online is to have the author create a estore and customize it's appearance. Doesn't look much more difficult than setting up with Cafe Press. That setup offers the best royalty option outside of paying for Extended Distribution.

It good to have more options when it comes to Print on Demand.

From the Attic: Why D&D is the way it is; The Different Versions

2012-01-17T12:56:00.003-05:00

Wizards is getting the word out that a major goal of the new edition is to reunite the D&D fan base. I figure it would be useful to list all the distinct versions of D&D that are out there. This list focuses on those games released by TSR/Wizards.

Chainmail Fantasy Supplement in 1971
Original Dungeons & Dragons published in 1974
Supplement I Greyhawk published in 1975
added rules made Dungeons & Dragon into a form we recognize today.
Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Holmes in 1977
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1977-1979
Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons by Moldavy/Cook in 1981
Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortal Dungeons & Dragons by Mentzer in 1983.
Unearthed Arcana for AD&D in 1985, Some say that this made AD&D 1.5
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition in 1989
Rules Cyclopedia for Dungeons & Dragons in 1991, A one book compilation of Mentzer's BECM D&D, some consider this the definitive version of the original Dungeons & Dragons line.
Skills & Powers for AD&D 2nd edition. Some say that this made a AD&D 2.5
Dungeons & Dragons 3.0 in 2000
Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 in 2003
Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 in 2008
Dungeons & Dragons Essentials in 2010. Some say that this made a D&D 4.5

From the Attic: Why D&D is the way it is; Levels and Hit Dice.

2012-01-13T06:00:00.002-05:00

During the rampup to the next edition of D&D, I figure it would be useful to look at how D&D changed over the different editions. Today I look at the origins of levels and what they meant.

Levels started with the Chainmail Miniature Wargame. First off you have to remember that in Chainmail for the ordinary fighting man 1 hit = 1 kill. In the fantasy supplement to Chainmail there was the Hero and the Super Hero. A Hero was worth four fighting men, and took four hit to kill. The Super Hero was worth eight fighting men, and took eight hit to kill.

When Gygax developed D&D he changed the 1 hit to a 1d6 roll. Likewise for the number of hits a character could take he changed that to 1d6 roll and called them hit points. The three original classes varied in modifiers to the 1d6 roll with Magic-users being the worst, and Fighters the best.

In general a level in OD&D could be looked at as a multiplier. A 4th level character was four times as effective as a first level character, and a 8th level character was 8 times as effective.

If you don't want to suck in older edition D&D then...

2012-01-12T10:11:00.000-05:00

Start at 5th level.

Why fifth level? Because from long years playing both older D&D and GURPS a 5th level character feels roughly as capable as a 150 pt GURPS Character (100 pts in 3rd edition GURPS). And starting GURPS Character feel about what starting characters feel like in other skill based games like BRP, Hero System, etc.

In D&D, GURPS, etc this represents basically a character who lived a little and now is coming into the prime of his adventuring career.

While I was running GURPS 3rd my rule of thumb conversion rule was 20 pt per level/HD. With 4th edition I use the same formula but add 50pts to the total.

A tale of two RPGs

2012-01-11T09:55:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday I got the chance to run Champions (Hero System) for the first time in ten years. I used Hero 5th Edition as that was the last version I got the books for. To me the Hero System is voluminous but not particularly complicated. Also I simplified things for the players by having a session where they sit down with me and come up with a list of powers for their characters. I then take that and create the actual character.

For this round I got the Hero Designer software to cut down the time I would need to help the players create characters. At $25 dollars it is a pretty good deal. What made a A+ program was the easy way it had to enter (and remember) custom modifiers. That made it a snap to use the paper character I have from years ago.

I got the characters finished and had enough time to run a sample combat. I was definitely rusty but the system came back to me. After all it was my primary RPG from 1986 to 1989 (Fantasy Hero 1st and Champions). The biggest difficulty was trying to figure out how to do one player's siphon kinetic energy power. In the end it wasn't as hard to setup as I thought after I figured out that absorption. Also I highly recommend the Until Database of Superpower in conjunction with the main rulebook. It is easy to find something close to what the player wants and modify it to the exact power.

Also it is interesting on how Tim of Gothridge Manor Just above Suck post related to the champion game. While superheroes, they are not the most powerful hero, yet. Some of the players struggled with this expecting their character to be more capable than they were. However in all fairness they targeted the supervillains first. When they finally got down to the lackeys they tore them up fast especially the speedster who was able to knock out a half dozen of them in a single round with a series of move bys.

So why this was a tale of TWO RPGs. Well because I been refereeing Swords & Wizardry for a while now (over two years), and I was startled by the contrast in complexity. I guess I lost the taste for RPGs with detailed mechanics I once had. With GURPS I have 20 years of notes and experience to make the game second nature. With the Hero System the change in my tastes was made apparent.

I have a fun campaign planned out for Champion but I am glad that I have decided to limit it to a half dozen sessions or so. After Champions I moving on to Traveller which I ready ran at a convention.

Wizards remakes D&D?

2012-01-09T10:15:00.003-05:00

According to the NY Time Hasbro/Wizards is going to announce a new edition of D&D.

NY Times article (login required).

Brief Twitter Mention

UPDATE: It official.

Your Voice, Your Game.

The article and even the twitter post mention that player input will be solicited. The NY Times articles was surprisingly astute in it's analysis that the the D&D fan base is fractured among the different editions. Another thing I noticed is that whoever fed the NY Times the information was emphasizing a more inclusive message.

As much as I love the OSR, I have to admit that it was the good folks at Paizo with their excellent Pathfinder game that made Wizards wake up. For several months now the few bestselling game lists we have access too has Pathfinder topping D&D 4th edition.

One though off the top of my head is that Wizards is going to have a tough time reconciling the work done on 3.X and older with 4th edition. As games like Castles & Crusade, and the retro clones show it possible to make a game that functions like older D&D using the 3.X rules as a foundation. 4th edition in contrast is very much it's own game.

Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games thought he could create a "classic 4e". My impression is that the project failed because of changing life circumstances and the GSL license rather than for any technical reason over the mechanics. So it may be possible for a imaginative person to create a version of 4e that has the simplicity of older edition D&D and works with the older material.

From my experience with the OSR and watching Pathfinder grow, I have to say that fans of various editions want to play that edition, not something like it. The clones with the most appeal are the ones that stick close to their parent ruleset, (Pathfinder, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, etc).

Wizards can take advantage of this by release again pdfs of the older editions. Expanding DDI to encompass all editions of D&D. For the 5th edition of D&D I would focus on three things. A evergreen simple game to sell in Target, Walmart, etc. Something like the Holmes boxed set, or the Pathfinder Beginner's set. An Advanced version that covers pretty much the same range of stuff (classes, monsters, etc) as older edition. It should have generic support of a variety of play styles. Finally every year come up with a theme to use for organized play (game stores and conventions), and a handful of products to sell to these players. They use the advanced version as the foundation but it is understood they don't extend core game but rather implement it for some particular theme, plot, idea.

If and when Wizards make their announcements I will post some further thoughts.

Refereeing Skills and Abilities

2012-01-04T08:17:00.002-05:00

I had success doing the following while refereeing anything involving skills or abilities.

Player(s) describe what they are doing as if they are there as the character.
Think about how to use the mechanics to resolve it.
Tell the players how it going to be resolved.
Listen to any feedback
Have the players roll.

In short describe, make a ruling, and roll.

I personally don't mind feedback from the players. Often they think of things I don't. So after I tell them how it going to be resolved I will listen to what they have to say and make any changes I feel is warranted. But in the end the final decision is up to me.

I can't stress enough how always making sure that the players describe things before rolling is important for roleplaying. For me as well as the players. Often it leads to interesting details being revealed and enhances the encounter.

Virtual Table Tops and the Future.

2012-01-03T13:19:00.000-05:00

I been using Fantasy Grounds, Virtual Tabletop software for several years now. In conjunction with Skype it been the perfect tool to use for running the weekly campaign that my friends and I have. There are other VTTs like Battlegrounds, Open Grounds, MapTool, the one that Wizards has, and others each with their strengths and weaknesses.

What makes a VTT work is that it is a sophisticated whiteboard application combined with RPG utilities (Dice roller, character sheets, etc) with voice/chat. The whiteboard aspect means all you need to do something is to be able to create or scan in a image, something that many of use already do in our regular tabletop game. Some things are easier like fog of war, and secret notes. Some things are harder, opening ports, everybody needing a copy, need to scan anything you want to show. But overall it is a win for tabletop roleplaying because gamers are doing same things and using the same products as they do in a regular tabletop game.

Ryan Dancey makes the following comment.

The problem is that VTTs exist, and they’re not successful. If you give people the choice between a VTT and an MMO, they pick the MMO. The VTT doesn’t solve the real problem that is that the MMO experience is simply better for a significant portion of the former TRPG social network. My opinion is that a successful and widely used VTT will remain an elusive mirage despite how much effort is poured into developing them.

Trying to compare VTTs with MMOs is indicative of a common problem in the industry in comparing tabletop roleplaying to other types of roleplaying games. The issue arises from the fact that myriad children of D&D compete and supplanttabletop roleplaying for many. Many in the industry, including Ryan Dancey look at these other forms of roleplaying and say to themselves "If we can take X feature from them, tabletop can now successfully compete."

Also Ryan and others propose creating games that fundamentally change the mechanics of tabletop RPGs in order to compete. Like eliminating the need for a human referee, zero prep games, collaborative story telling. They may create fun games as a result, but also games that are no longer tabletop roleplaying.

If tabletop roleplaying is to compete then it needs to emphasis the elements that are unique to it alone. Namely the human referee and how easy it is to let the imagination roam free with the human referee interacting with his players. Just as important making it easy for players to find one another.

Because of this VTTs are going to be an important element of tabletop roleplaying future. The whiteboard nature of the software makes it easy for the referee and the players to throw up whatever their imagination think of. Far easier than having to construct or place 3D objects and paint them with textures. All one has to do see this in action is look at the volume of fan fiction. It is far easier to write about your favorite things than to construct a 3D world, or shoot a video.

One thing that VTTs haven't effectively addressed yet is getting gamers together to game. Many are working on this including Wizards. What is needed is a site where hundreds or even thousands of gamers can browse to find open campaigns or create new campaigns. I personally think it will take a large preexisting network to make this happen. Either Facebook/Google+ will get a VTT app, or Paizo or Wizards throw their weight and resources behind one. Wizards has taken the first steps in this regard but not there yet.

VTTs are not the only answer. Things like an effective intro product, quality products, and game store events need to be part of the mix as well.

Comments on LEGOS Heroica

2012-01-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

Over the fall my youngest son, Gregory and I collected all four Heroica sets and had a lot of fun playing with them. Grognardia has a nice in depth review of the components and game.

The only thing he missed emphasizing in his review is that the Heroica components are basically dungeon tiles that you assemble in a wide variety of configurations. There are two types of "tiles". The rooms which are mostly built on a 6 by 6 plate and the corridors which are built on 2 by X plates. Both rooms and corridors use the 2 by 2 pieces with a single post on top to control movement and placement.

There is no reason why it can't be used to run a game of basic D&D if you and the kids want a more detailed game. In addition once you get how the corridors and rooms are built it is easy to rob your other lego sets to build your own custom pieces. Gregory built a half dozen new potions and items to put into the dungeon. When we finally got all four sets he even took the extra weapons and items and painted them when he saw me painting my miniatures.

An interesting conversation to start the new roleplaying year

2012-01-01T13:28:00.000-05:00

John Wick on Facebook posted about the Escapist's article on D&D's Future. I suggest reading the comment section as Ryan Dancey weighs in and the two (and others) go back and forth in an interesting conversation.

I find the discussion interesting on whether the roleplaying market is developing a even longer tail. Switching to market where the best strategy is selling small quantities of a large range of unique products.

And finally a Ryan Dancey quote that sums up what is fueling his comments on roleplaying.

I'm talking about people who work full time designing/developing tabletop RPGs.

Perhaps what we are seeing is the collapse of mass market RPGs. Games and products that appeal across the entire spectrum of gaming. The large volume generated by such products can generate a lot of jobs. There are jobs in the Long Tail as well but people who prosper in working for a company may find it difficult working in the Long Tail and vice versa as well.

I think why we have mass anything is because of the limitations of technology. There are things that have broad appeal. But for type of consumer items that many of our parents and grandparents have been buying, individual tastes rule. The problem that throughout the industrial era there is only so much variety a company can offers before costs going up. Henry Ford's famous quote of "They can have the Model-T in any color as long as it is black." is not arrogance but part of what made the Model-T affordable in the first place.

Now computer aided manufacturing has considerably narrowed the cost difference between mass produced items and one of the kind unique items. The internet have allowed the entire world to become one large bazaar catering to every tastes where Kelly Anne, my wife, sends her d20 hairsticks all around the world. For some reason Norway is her biggest customer in those items.

(Note to James Raggi, she sent some to Finland so you may see some pop up at one of your conventions)

Given the choices folks rather buy the item they exactly want and this includes roleplaying game products.

But on the flip side a lot of people like buying some that makes them part of a larger group. For roleplaying games this is a distinct advantage as well as it increases the chances of finding players for that game. In the coming decades large gaming companies will live or die on how well they do in getting their players together to play their games beyond just selling. Because this will be one area that smaller game companies will find it hard to compete with.

That is until the Long Tail figures out how to do the same thing.

Year end crystal ball gazing

2011-12-31T12:11:00.001-05:00

The end of a year brings with it reflections over the past and thoughts about the future. The Escapist has an interesting series of articles on the past, present, and future of D&D.

I think that musing about D&D is only natural given the social nature of RPGs. Both in playing and creating things.

How hard is it to organize or play in a RPG campaign?

Because if that is hard then everything RPG related is in trouble..

The iPad

2011-12-27T06:00:00.048-05:00

Thanks to Kelly Anne, and my family I got a iPad for Christmas. It was literally my only present but what a present it is. The two things I want to use the iPad is for entertainment (Netflix, etc) and to use to organize my notes at the table.

First off I recommend reading this excellent thread on digital readers over on the SJ Games Forums. PDF releases are a big part of the GURPS Product lines now and with the advent of e-book readers and tablets people are interested in how to effectively use them. Then there is this page on Enworld with a good list of useful RPG utilities for these devices.

I am excited about using the iPad as my experience with computers suggests that touchscreens combined with the right software are the way to go.

I bought Goodreader to handle PDFs on the iPad. It has a tabbed interface for multiple PDFs and a handy customizable bookmark list. It also nice that I can organize everything into folders. So on the second day of owning the iPad, I downloaded my copies of GURP Core campaign book (has all the rules) and my copy of Swords and Wizardry and spent some time bookmarking them.

GURPS Core Rules Campaigns

Swords and Wizardry

The bookmarks are chosen on the basis on my experience on what I looked up the most during a session. I will working on the Swords and Wizardry Monster Book and a couple more of my GURPS pdfs. One nice thing about the Core Book on other GURPS PDFs is that they have a nice table of contents already built in.

Computers, Rolplaying, iPads and all that

2011-12-26T13:10:00.000-05:00

I program for a living, creating interfaces for metal cutting machines, and at home I am a computer hobbyist in addition to my tabletop roleplaying. In the 25 odd years since my family got a Radio Shack Model I, my main interest with computer has been how to make a better machine for tabletop roleplaying.

From my first word proccessor, CorelDRAW for mapping, to writing utilities to cranks Traveller Sectors I fiddle with my machines to make running my campaign easier. I never liked using a computer at the table as it was too clunky and in the way. Instead I tried to figure out how to produce really good play aids for myself and my player keeping to paper on the table. Heck when somebody tried to use a iPad for dice rolling, I told him to put it away and gave him one of my spare sets to use in it's place.

I am not against the use of computers at the table. It great to have DM Genie and Nbos' the Keep running while I am using Fantasy Grounds., but it has to be the right setup before I starting using at a normal tabletop session.

For two years I finally found it and it was the iPad and similar tablets. The reason is not in using a utility but rather as a means of organizing the books and reams of notes I use during the game. Lying flat with a touch interface with well bookmarked PDFs would be exactly what I need. While I appreciate the open Android platform, I learned with my experience with the Kindle is that it is really worth the extra money to get the best when things are so unsettled. For now, the best in tablets means the iPad.

And I got one for Christmas. It was my one and only Christmas present this year given to me by my entire family. My wife Kelly Anne organized the effort and I can't thank her enough. Tomorrow I will post some details on how I am going to set it up and what I am going to use the other computers I have for.

Christmas in your campaign?

2011-12-25T11:06:00.002-05:00

To myself and billions of Christians around the world today marks the day of the birth of the savoir. Cynics will say that Christmas is only celebrated as the birth of Christ because of the need to compete with the pagans of Rome. But I can't help note that in nearly all cultures of the world the time around the Winter Solstice is a special time of renewal and hope. In my view if one didn't know the exact day on which Jesus was born there is no better time to celebrate his birth.

Which leads me to my question How is the winter solstice depicted in your setting?

In the religions of the Majestic Wilderlands, winter symbolizes the enslavement of the mortal races to the demons during the Uttermost War. Imbolc is celebrated at the winter solstice and is remembered as the turn of the tide in the war against the Demons. When the forces of light finally moved from fighting for survival to fighting for victory.

To all, my family and I wish you a Merry Christmas.

Dwarven Names

2011-12-22T07:03:00.000-05:00

The recent release of the Hobbit Trailer reminded me that I looked at Tolkien's original source for the names of his Dwarves. I took the old Norse Poem and extracted all the names from it, modified them to fit english better, and made a list. With this it easy enough to make a random table for Inspiration Pad or Tablesmith.

Ai
Alf
Althjof
An
Anarr
Andvari
Aurvang
Austri
Bafur
Bifur
Bild
Billing
Bombur
Bruni
Buri
Dain
Dolgthrasir
Dori
Draupnir
Duf
Durinn
Dwalin
Eikinskjaldi
Fili
Finn
Fjalar
Frar
Fregr
Frosti
Fundin
Gandalf
Ginnar
Gloin
Hanar
Har
Haugspori
Hepti
Hlevang
Hornbori
Jari
Kili
Litr
Lofar
Loni
Mjodvitnir
Motsognir
Nain
Nali
Nar
Nidi
Niping
Nordri
Nori
Nyi
Nyrad
Ori
Radsvid
Regin
Skafid
Skirvir
Sudri
Svior
Thekk
Thorin
Thrain
Thror
Veig
Vestri
Vili
Vindalf
Virvir
Vitr
Yngvi

The Arena

2011-12-21T06:00:00.006-05:00

I am doing some mapping for Tim on Starter Adventures and a miscommunication occurred. He told he wanted a simple arena like the one in Spartacus Blood and Sand. So Dwayne of Gamer's Closet and I looked at some trailers and figured out what roughly it looked like on all four sides. Then I tweaked the layout to make it unique.

It turned out that what Tim wanted was more of a fighting pit than an arena. So rather then let the map go to waste I am posting it for use in your campaigns. Click on the image to get the full resolution version.

The Arena Floor, it is has a sand and sawdust floor.
Room is where the Gladiators stay before their fights.
The animal pens with a set of bar gates to safely get the animal from the cages into the arena.
These pens can hold larger animals or more typically those sentenced to die in the arena.
Store
Store
Commoner Entrance
Small Store
Small Store
Small Store
Noble Entrance
Noble Seating, The small room to the south is where slaves can prepare drinks and meals for their masters.
Common seating. They are in three tiers stacked three feet above each other.
Food vendors, commoners can buy food and drink during the fights.

Hope this is useful.

Welcome to the Tavern

2011-12-13T06:00:00.001-05:00

Along with the Hommlet write up I did some battlemaps for GURPS. The one that survived was the floorplan of the Inn of the Welcome Wench. It prints out on 17" by 11". There is not much in the way details as I used miniature tables and other props.

Download

From the Attic: GURPS Hommlet

2011-12-12T06:00:00.003-05:00

In the mid 90s I ran a fantasy campaign using GURPS that combined the Village of Hommlet with the A series Slavelord Modules. It marked the first major use of my computer to prepare for a campaign. I rewrote the entire Hommlet module and even did a layout (without art) of it. Obviously I can't post the entire thing due to copyright but I do have bits and pieces I can share.

First off is the roster of NPCs I used. I changed some of the names to fit my City-State campaign. And to make it more confusing at some point after the actual campaign I must have tried to adapt it back into a GURPS Greyhawk campaign because all the languages and area knowledges were set to Greyhawk.

The characters are GURPS 3rd Edition done with Suerer's excellent Makechar.

GURPS Hommlet NPCs.

I am making a expurgated copy of the text I wrote. When I finish I will share it.

Mongoose Legend for $1

2011-12-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

A while ago Mongoose announced that they were not renewing their Runequest II license. However they decided to continued the system under the Legends name. They did a nice things by declaring the text of the core legends books to be under the Open Game license. And now I learned they are having a $1 sale of theCore Rule PDF on RPGNow.

For those who don't know what the system like. It is part of the Runequest family of games where characters are defined by skill and using a d100 for resolution.

I got the PDF and will be posting my impressions later. One nice thing they right off the bat is format it for digest size which makes printing little booklets of the various chapters easy.

License update on Blackmarsh

2011-12-01T06:00:00.006-05:00

I am a fan of GURPS and while talking about GURPS Dungeon Fantasy a couple of folks mentioned they would feel more comfortable using Blackmarsh for a fan publication if it was dual licensed under a Creative Commons License.

So I did just that, the Blackmarsh Setting Reference Document is now dual licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. You can download the SRD, or use RPGNow.

When you create a fan publication you can choose either license to use. The Creative Common license should make it either to release a Blackmarsh related fan publication for a RPG that doesn't have an open license. Please check the Game Publisher's policy on fan publications first.

2,748 and still counting.

2011-11-27T06:00:00.008-05:00

Over on Grognardia there have been some interesting discussion on professional versus hobbyists. Along with I talked with a OSR gamer on Google chat about his ideas for publishing. My advice to him was that If you think that you can sell a 100 copies then the hobby time you spend on making your idea publishable will be well spent.

A perfect storm combining the Internet, Print on Demand, and Desktop Publishing has driven the cost of publishing to all time low. The cost of doing a project is pretty much down to the time you are willing to spend.

The 2,748 in the title of this post is the total I earned from my self-published works. All but $200 of that from Majestic Wilderlands. This is over two years since December of 2009.

For Blackmarsh, I only earned around $200, but I have had over 1,724 downloads. Which is pretty much what I intended when I decided to release the whole thing under the OGL. With Delving Deeper coming out soon even more people will have Blackmarsh in their hands.

The only reason I didn't earn more was I haven't completed the projects I been working on. Partly due to my procrastination and partly due a busier schedule due to my family's activities. I make progress, just not very fast.

The only caveat in all this is that it is still takes work and patience. You need to advertise yourself either by blogging or maintaining a steady output. While straightforward publishing is not easy, but it is not particularly hard. The nice thing is that if you get a good reputation then it easily becomes a hobby that pays for itself. You may not get to go to Tahati as Zak mentioned but you will some extra bucks to
spend.

Magic Item Prices

2011-11-19T14:20:00.000-05:00

Since I published the Majestic Wilderlands, I ran several campaigns using Swords & Wizardry Core. In one of my campaigns the players are starting a point where they can create and buy magic items. One of the things I done is brought over the details of magic when I ran the Majestic Wilderlands using GURPS and other systems. My style since refereeing AD&D in the early 80s has been that Magic Items can be bought and sold. I always treated it similar to historical trading in luxury items. Low power items can be bought in shops catering to the wealthy, while the rest have to be commissioned or bought at elite auctions.

My previous price lists were based on the power levels of various magic item in the system I was using (GURPS, Fantasy Hero, D&D 3.X, etc). And now I am working on a list that reflects Swords & Wizardry. It doesn't need to be exact in the ballpark is just fine. I would like to get folk's opinions on what I come up with so far.

I am currently working on Weapons and Armors

I have the following base categories. I am going to set a +1 weapons as the base cost everything else is a factor. For example if you say that a +1 swords costs 1,000gp then a +5 sword, which is 15x, will cost 15,000gp.

+1 missile .1x
+1 missile weapon 2x
+1 melee weapon 1x
+1 shield 1x
+1 armor 2x

I multiply the above prices by 3 for +2
I multiply the above prices by 6 for +3
I multiply the above prices by 10 for +4
I multiply the above prices by 15 for +5

+5 to Hit and +5 to Damage is the max bonus from any combination

I get the factors by adding the pluses 1+2=3, 1+2+3=6,1+2+3+4=10, 1+2+3+4+5=15.

+1 Damage vs foe is 1/2x
+2 Damage vs foe is 1.5x
+3 Damage vs foe is 3x
+4 Damage vs foe is 5x
+5 Damage vs foe is 7.5x

This adds on top of the base bonus. Again there is a max of +5 damage so a Sword of +3 to hit, +5 vs Undead cost 6x for +3 Plus 1.5x (+2 damage vs foe) for 7.5x. IF you decided that +1 weapons cost 1,000 gp then a +3 Sword +5 Damage vs Undead is 7,500d.

This effect add on top of the base +
Extra Attack 5x
Destroy Undead 10x
Throw and Return to Hand 2x
Light, 15ft radius 1/4x
Light, 30ft radius 1/2x

Flaming Weapon 2.5x
Freezing Weapon 2.5x
Dancing Weapon 5x

Arrow Deflection Armor 10x
Ethereal Armor 15x
Fiery Armor 5x

All of this is going to be incorporated into a follow-on to the Majestic Wilderlands I am calling the Lost Book of Magic. After I finish Scourge of the Demon Wolf and some maps for Tim of Gothridge Manor I will start working on it.

Additional reflections on the OSR and older edition D&D.

2011-11-12T13:54:00.000-05:00

James Maliszewski over on Grognardia is spot on with his post on the OSR and older edition D&D.

Everytime I see this come up, like on the theRPGsite, I point out the OSR is what it is. Because of it's grassroots origins, the OSR reflects the desires of gamers not the business plans of companies. And the simple fact is that most old school gamers prefer an older edition D&D over other RPGs.

As one of the commentators pointed out many of the other popular old school RPGs are still supported by active publishers. This takes away a lot of the reasons for a grassroots movement to form around those games. And explains why the OSR is so overwhelmingly focused on older edition D&D.

And other commentators point out that large segments of the OSR are involved in preserving other older edition games. Some are involved in creating new games for different genres designed to appeal to old school gamers. Mutant Future, and Stars without Number are two of many examples.

The nice things about all of this is that because of it's foundation on the Open Game License there is very little to stop anybody from publishing what interests them. In addition the expansion of the OSR has lead to opportunities to buy original games from their copyright holders and release them for the current generation of gamers. Spacemen & Spaceships from Goblinoid Games is an example of this.

Dominon

2011-11-03T09:35:00.003-04:00

Ars Magica by Atlas Games has been a major influence over the nuts and bolts of magic in the Majestic Wilderlands. Mostly because it describes a easily understandable and gamable culture of magic-users. The I only used a few of the mechanics of magic from Ars Magica and one of them is the Dominion.

The Dominion
As powerful as magic-users are they pale against the divine power of the gods. In various holy (and unholy) places the local mana has been altered to only respond to those who have faith in a deity’s religion. Magic-users has labeled this phenomenon as the Dominion. This is represented as a penalty to the caster level for all magic-user spells including those associated with that deity. If the caster level drops below 1, then spells can only be cast through a ritual or with an item. The dominion levels do not add together. Take the highest one that applies.

Location, (Spell Level)
Altar or Sanctum, (-10)
Temple Grounds, (-5)
Shrine or minor holy place, (-3)
Holy ground, graveyard, etc, (-1)

Region dominated by a single religion may be considered a holy ground for that religion.

Location (Spell Level)
Wilderness (-0)
Rural Countryside (-1)
Village (-2)
Town, City, (-3)

In the present day of the Wilderlands, the following regions are noted for their dominions.

Location (Deity)
The Elven Kingdom of Irminsul (Silvanus)
The Sarnic city states (Hamakhis)
Principality of Modron (Mitra)
Principality of Nome (Mitra)
Principality of Tlan (Mitra)
The Karian Empire (Mitra)
Limerick Shire (Dannu)

The Empire of Thule to the far south of the Wilderlands is noted for being under the dominion of Set. Before it fell a thousand years ago, the Ghinorian Empire was under the dominion of Mitra, many of the surviving Ghinorian successor states have maintained the remnants of this dominion.

The dominion of Mitra in the Principality of Lenap has faded due the corruption of Mitra’s church in the region. What remains is strongest in rural villages where it still can be found at a -1 modifier. For a different reasons, the dominions of Mitra in Tarantis and Nomar have disappeared. The influx of Skandians invading both realms has changed the local population to the point that the land is no longer dominated by those following Mitra.

In the Sarnia the dominion of Hamakhis nearly faded due to incessant wars between the city-states. The temples became corrupt due to politics and factional conflict. But it was renewed several centuries ago by the reformers of the Order of Pegana.

A dominion of Dannu appeared in the Limerick Shire after the fall of the elven kingdom of Silverwoods four centuries ago. Many attribute this to the halflings remarkable efforts in creating a safe haven for refugees of al races trying to escape the chaos of that time period. Their continued work in keeping the peace between the races has caused Dannu’s dominion to persist to the present.

The Viridians of Viridistan never had a dominion and in the past actively worked to destroy the traces of any that appeared by killing the populace. Today with the empire torn apart in civil war, adherents of all the major religions of the Wilderlands are adventuring to rid any remnant of the Viridians and their demonic influence.

Other kinds of Sandbox

2011-11-02T06:00:00.002-04:00

Currently I am running a one player GURPS Campaign with Dwayne of Gamer's Closet. Dwayne recently listened to the Game of Thrones audio book and liked it a lot. He came to me to see if I could come up with a campaign where he got to play a knight. Luckily I have an area of the Majestic Wilderlands that is perfect for this. Nomar my "Arthur" land. Instead of focusing on the myth of Arthur, I will focus on the politics. That in conjunction with recent events of my setting should produce something that gives the feel of Game of Thrones but has it own unique situation.

During my prep I discovered something interesting. While knowing the geography and locale was useful of far more importance was the roster of NPCs. The campaign was going to be a sandbox but it wasn't going to be about wandering from place to place. But instead it was more likely it was going to be more about going from people to people.

I am still developing my thoughts on this but here is one of the background documents I developed for the campaign. It details the regions of Nomar focusing on the nobles. Currently I am working fleshing Dwayne's family and I will post later on that. Here the link to the maps to make sense of the writeup.

Gold Star Anime Levels Up

2011-11-01T06:00:00.001-04:00

Two weeks ago I walked into the Gold Star Anime to setup for my weekly Majestic Wilderlands game (Swords & Wizardry) when I find this.

Jerry, the owner of Gold Star Anime, has built three gaming tables with plexiglass tops. He has one with 1" inch squares, another with 1" hexes, and a third one with 1.5" squares for Heroclix and other miniature games. It was really cool of him to do this and proved very useful during the game. Not only for drawing out the battle map but also gave me a place to write down NPC Hit Points and other useful info.

There facebook page is here where they post upcoming events. I am there every Wednesday from 7:30pm to around 10:00pm and play a monthly Saturday game. The next Saturday game is on November 19th.

After Action Report, Erie Days of Gaming

2011-10-30T19:20:00.000-04:00

Kelly Anne and I arrived at Erie Days of Gaming on Friday Night and set up her booth. She was selling hair sticks include some copies of Majestic Wilderlands and Blackmarsh. This included a nice selection of d20 hair sticks.

Friday proved to a very slow day. I brought my painting stuff and finished up the unpainted cauldrons that were in my collections.

Kelly Anne had a good suggestion of using the metallic green I had as highlight for the cauldrons with the icky green stuff. I thought they came out nice. Also shown is the last of the unpainted orc figures in my collection. Now every orc is painted and it off to finish up the unpainted official guards.

For Saturday I had two session slated. The first was to run another playtest of Night's Bride Coven. It was is a three level dungeon built into a cliff. It is the base for a coven of warlocks that the players were set to take out by the Invincible Overlord as they were frustrating his plans to colonize Dearthwood.

The adventure started well with the party killing a raiding party of Purple Claw orc. Given most current gamer unfamiliarity with older D&D, I have a straightforward combat encounter to get them used to the system.

For Night Bride's the party then has a choice of going to the base of the cliff or the top. The party elected to send all their hireling mercenaries to the base of the cliff. While the adventurers went to the top of the cliff. At the bottom they found a cave entrance and signaled the hirelings to charge into there. The party spotted a ledge twenty feet below and elected to repel down. Unfortunately the only thief in the party, Jasons of Underworld Ink, rolled very low for his climbing roll and plummeted to his death onto the ledge. A house rule in my game is that you don't die until you reach negative con, Jasons rolled a very low constitution for his thief. Then to compound the tragedy, one of the party's mage rolled a 1 for climbing and not only fell but missed the ledge completely and fell 60's to the base of the cliff. Needlessly he died as well. So we found out why hirelings are useful as the two took two of the mercernaries and rolled them up as fighters. It was good they had hireling left as the cave they charged into was filled with spiders and slaughtered 2/3rd of them.

The rest of the module went well. Unintentionally followed how the previous playtest went at Eriecon. However I ran out of time and had to cut it short before the final encounters. The players had it pretty much wrapped up with only one further death when one of the replacement characters, not Jasons but the other guy, fell into a pit with poisoned spikes. He just drew one of the remaining hireling and continued with the party.

Next was the game I was very excited play Traveller. It was the first time I played Traveller in 15 years and I went all out including setting up my referee screen just so.

I elected to use Classic Traveller and to have the player rolled up characters. The process proved to be more involved than I thought. The big omission was I didn't have any explanation of the cascade skills.

But with all the cards and cheat sheets I made it was borderline. Half of the players liked it and other half didn't. A couple of things I was going to use from Mongoose Traveller. First was their mishap table if any of the player blew their survival rolls, and second was I had a package of needed skills that the party could distribute among themselves. I may go with pre-gens next time.

We wound up with a Marine General who was a Baron, A one term Army Lieutenant, A Army General who was a Knight, A Scout, and a Rogue. The players were the crew of the Semper Fi and we quickly estabilshed that the Marine General was the owner/captain with the other players owning shares.

The adventure involved going to Focaline in the Aramis subsector. The players were contracted to deliver a cargo of breeding groat. Luckily for them they didn't have the Serenity problem of live cattle, instead they were in low berths.

The players had a lot of fun with the adventure, it involved Zhodani, Ancient artifacts, Vargrs, big guns, and all the usual Traveller fun stuff. Part of the adventure involved figuring out why a passenger spaced himself in the middle of the jump. One comment it I got was that it was like being part of a SF Short Story written by Phillip Dick before he gone bonkers. I was worried that it would play out like Adventure 3, Twilight Peak which also involves Zhodani, and Ancient artifacts but it played out much differently.

One interesting thing is that I studied the Traveller Combat and skills rules a lot to prepare for this game. However I didn't really use them at all. This seemed weird to me compared to the Majestic Wilderlands games when it hit me. It was pretty much how my original Traveller campaign went.

They play out like an old episode of Mission Impossible. The players figure out what they have to solve. Then they sit around the "coffee table" and discuss how to solve it. Finally execute the plan which usually involved surprise and overwhelming force.

I had a great time refereeing this and going to see how I can work this into a rotation of games at the Gold Star Anime.

GURPS Combat Examples

2011-10-25T12:43:00.001-04:00

If you have trouble puzzling out GURPS Combat the Mook has an excellent page filled with different combat examples.

Erie Days of Old School Gaming 2011 (a reminder)

2011-10-19T06:00:00.000-04:00

Erie Days of Gaming will be held at the Avalon Hotel in Erie PA from Friday October 21st to Sunday the 23rd. I will be running two events on Saturday a Swords & Wizardry event and a Traveller event.

Night's Bride Coven, Saturday at 1:00 pm
An Original Edition Dungeons & Dragon adventure for 3 to 6 players. All materials are provided
Deep in the forest a coven of warlocks weave their foul plans. Will the party end their reign of vile evil or become their next victim.

Drive to Focaline, Saturday at 6:00 pm
A Traveller adventure for 3 to 6 players. All materials are provided. Focaline is a backwater world of the Imperium noted for the raising of groats and cattle. The export of meat, and hides is a major part of the economy and the various ranchers are always looking for an edge. At the last minute an important cargo of breeding stock being delivered to Focaline was bumped from a major shipping line. Now the intrepid crew of the Semper Fi are hired to make this important delivery.

I hope to see some of you there.

Qanat Irrigation

2011-10-14T12:15:00.000-04:00

Jeff posted a cool picture of a water structure here. It from a site called Subterranean Design and while poking around I found this post about Qanat Irrigation. What struck me is the extensive size of the underground network and the possibilities for adventure.

Erie Days of Old School Gaming 2011

2011-10-09T11:46:00.002-04:00

Erie Days of Gaming will be held at the Avalon Hotel in Erie PA from Friday October 21st to Sunday the 23rd. I will be running two events on Saturday a Swords & Wizardry event and a Traveller event

I hope to see some of you there.

Into the Dark Lands with Boog Part III

2011-10-07T07:05:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the belated post. This for the September 28th session. I will have the notes for this week's session up on the weekend. After the conclusion of this adventure Boog survived to be 2nd level! Also I rolled maximum hit points for a total of 26!

A bunch of rot grubs fell on Corum and Grim. Boog, Corum, and Grim manage to knock a few off. A few burrowed in and the party managed to burn them out. The shrine had a curtain made of flesh along with three wooden masks for the statue. Wolf, Goblin, and Bird. After searching the room the party went further in. Found a latrine and killed a goblin taking a dump. Pushing further in the party discovers a temple with four black goblins. The fight doesn’t go well and Boog fumbles his halberd away. Boog takes a potion of speed aging him by one year. The party manages to down the four black goblins when the Goblin Lord appears. It turned out that Boog was charmed a while ago by the Goblin Lord. The party had no choice to listen but to everyone’s surprise the Goblin Lord offered a truce along with information. As sign of good faith the Goblin Lord let Grim keep the glowing sword. We agreed to talk to Commander Sterling about the Goblin’s Lords Offer.

On the way back Grim saw a guild symbol drawn in the dirt of the path. Looking around he found Mo a fellow Halfling thief one of Waldron’s cronies. Mo is not happy with Waldron and told Grim that Waldron has set Bear’s traps along the path we were using. We headed back to the fort by a different way. We also learned that Waldron has five to seven men including Smoke and Manny.

Back the Bastion, the party got healed. While we were eating, Grim and Corum talked to Marshall one of the farmers. It turned out that Waldron is promising the farmers a lot if they would join him. Prall left the Bastion to join Waldron. We took Marshall to Sterling who was saddened that Manny left. Sterling mood picked up after we told of the truce offer and he readily agreed.
The next morning the party headed back to the Goblin Lord to tell him that Sterling agreed to the truce. The Goblin Lord seemed pleased at this and told us that one of the outlying villages, Cason, was going to be attacked by Hobgoblins. He also gave Boog a +1 Ring of Protection. It can’t come off unless Boog decides to let it come off. The Goblin Lord also assigned one of his Black Goblins to accompany us.
The party debated about whether to go after the Hobgoblins or Waldron and we decided that the Hobgoblins were priority. Cason was a day’s hike away so we left right away. Along the way we found a band of four hobgoblins and we ambushed them. The fight was nearly as bad as the Black Goblins and Boog injured his arm. Luckily it was his off arm so he was able to use his footman’s mace to continue fightings. Afterwards the party found a cave and retired for the night.

Here is the adventure record.

Front PageBack Page

Working on a New Campaign

2011-10-02T12:51:00.006-04:00

My friend Dwayne really likes the audiobook version of the Game of Thrones and wants to try playing a knight. Those of you with my Majestic Wilderlands know that I designed different regions with various fantasy sub-genres in mind. I just happened to have one area that works very well for a Game of Thrones like situation, Nomar.

I originally designed the area as the Majestic Wilderlands version of the Arthur myth. Given my interest in history and politics, the original design reflected more the politics of Arthur rather than the more fantastic elements. This makes it easy to adapt for a Game of Thrones like campaign and as the benefit of being it own "thing".

Since this is for my personal campaign the setting "present" is twenty years after the Majestic Wilderlands Supplement. Artos returned a decade ago, and reunified Nomar. But the promise of his return has ran aground against the reality of the situation. Artos is a brilliant leader but most days make him feel like he is herding cats. The Skandian Viking invaders are too numerous and too entrenched to be defeated in a single war. Now City-State under the regency of Duke Divolic has become a rising threat, and Nomar is besieged on all sides.

I prepare for this type of campaign by doing several things. First I draw a map, it serves an outline for all the things I need to detail next.

You can download a PDF of the map here. It includes two additional pages showing the local realms, and sub-domains.

I found out that CorelDRAW can export layered PDFs. If you use Acrobat Reader or another PDF Viewer that supports layers then you can download this file.

Next I will write up a short history, detail each sub-domain with a paragraph or two, and then write up a sentence or a paragraph on each of the personalities.

After that I will collect together what I call my Bag of stuff. A list of ideas and "bits" that I will combine to create the individual locales and minor personalities Dwayne will come across in his adventures.

Then I will make a timeline of what will happen if Dwayne's character didn't exist.

The campaign will be run using GURPS 4th edition. Still figuring out the exact number of points. I will also being adapting some mechanics from Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Mostly chapter 6 on creating a house.

I will post what I give Dwayne. My main notes will have to wait for the campaign's conclusion.

New Lythia Uploads for Harn Fans

2011-09-27T12:25:00.002-04:00

There are two new uploads on Lythia.com, a repository of various fanon Harn articles.

The first is a continuation of the excellent Friends, Foes, and Followers series. Even if you don't use the Harnmaster stats the character backgrounds serve as excellent idea generators. And the illustrations are excellent as usual.

The second is a detailed description of the Delwyn Hundred a lightly populated region north of Thay.

Into the Dark Lands with Boog Part II

2011-09-21T06:00:00.000-04:00

Tim had his second session of his AD&D campaign last night. Rusty Battle Axe joined in although we had technical difficulties with Fantasy Grounds. We gave up and plan to fix it later this week. Probably something to do with firewalls and their setup. What made it strange that his gamemaster mode looked like it would have worked. But the player side didn't work. So we did voice for Rusty and trusted his die rolls. Fed him the maps through Skype downloads.

Grim, Corum, and Boog woke up the next morning after the Goblin Raid adventure and got breakfast. Boog collected the extra bacon rations that were owed to him. He let the soldier (the one he gave the shield too) keep half of his bacon as Boog was feeling good about everything. After breakfast the party headed into the woods where they spotted Waleron talking with an elven mage. Mage was new to the area and not at the forts when the pass collapsed. The Elven mage went over and talked to the party and offered to take items that weigh no more than 5 lbs with him. He wants a large fee to do this. Unfortunately this meant that Boog couldn’t send his Ma a message. She is working at the Green Stag Inn at the Wayfarer’s crossing. Waleron look pissed because the party was there.

The party made it to the goblin cave without incident. Boog gives Corum the potion of healing. Once inside the party makes their way further into the caves where they find a room filled with goblins eating, sleeping, and gambling. After carefully planning, the party attacked and had the element of surprise. The fight didn’t go so well as nobody could seem to hit anything including Boog. Boog fumbled his halberd away and it nearly turned disaster when Boog critically fumbled with his mace and KOed Corum in the head. Boog and Grim managed to kill the rest of the goblin and got out of the cave with Corum.

The party got back to Jedebiah’s Bastion and got Corum healed. Waleron mocks Boog for his ineptness. Boog gets Corum’s helm fixed at Henry (the smith) while Grim talks to Jonathan. Jonathan wants to work out a deal with Grim to get some goods into his shop to trade with. The party works at their jobs the rest fo the day (Grim, leatherworker, Boog, teamster, Corum, healer). The party meets Sterling that night and after giving the report Sterling arranges for a fighter named Dixin to join the party. He wields a spears and seems like a good person. That night, while trying to get to sleep, Boog wakes up after a snake bites him. Luckily the snake wasn’t poisonous according to Henderix. When Boog some back he finds Waleron and his cronies laughing at him and Boog punches Waleron in the face. Everybody backs off before the fight turns serious but Waleron and his goons back up everything and leave the fort. Waleron tells Boog that he just signed his death warrant.

The next morning Boog and the party (plus Dixin) leaves and heads to the goblin cave. They find Bear the Trapper with the crap beat out of him. Apparently Waleron and his goons attacked him and stole all his equipment including traps. Boog give Bear his special dagger (normal but a fantasy bowie knife). Bear appreciates this. The party decides to deal with the goblin cave first and head there. Once in the party try to sneak in carefully but sets off an alarm trap. The party manages to hide in time except for Boog who starts fitting a big goblin with a magic sword. The goblin is quickly killed and looted. The party heads deeper into the caves and finds a unused crossbow trap at the end of the corridor. The crossbow needs repaired to usable.

The party opens one door and find nothing, opens another and finds what looks like to be a shrine. There is a silver bowl on a altar, a dead goblin before the altar and a curtain dividing the room. The bowl is carefully taken. The curtain was open to reveal a hideous statue of a god and then a bunch of rot grubs fell on Corum and Grim.

Brian got to 2nd level as Grim which is great he now has 11 hit points and better skills. Tim's critical tables are brutal but they mostly work in our favor except for Boog's head shot on Corum. Looking forward to next week.

Once again a copy of the adventure record sheet
Front side
Backside

Grimtooth's Trap is available again!

2011-09-16T06:00:00.001-04:00

You can buy the PDF of Grimtooth's Trap on RPGNow or E23. Hooray for an old favorite reappearing. Now we just need the City Books.

Into the Dark Lands with Boog Part I

2011-09-14T06:00:00.002-04:00

Monday Tim ran the first session of his Into the Dark Land campaign.The characters was me playing Boog and Brian playing Grim a Halfling Thief. The session was pretty good. One outstanding item as Tim's Background notes. Not only they were well written and interesting they were formatted like a professional product. You can see a copy of the campaign start document.

We started out in Jebediah's Bastion. Boog thinks that complicated so calls it Jeb's Place to himself. Boog came here to find enough gold so that his Ma wouldn't have to work in the inns anymore (she is a cook). Jeb's Place is at the exit of Wallace Pass the only way through the rugged Reznor Mountains. Beyond are the Dark Lands. Named because the of surrounding high mountains limiting the hours of full daylight. Goblins, Orcs, and other humanoids like it here and it all prime land.

Unfortunately bad luck strikes and a major landslide covers the pass blocking the only way back to civilization. Of course the goblins hear of this and attacks Jeb's Place and thus the campaign begins.

Just to let everybody know, Tim has a distinct style of drawing maps that I think is great. I am flattered to draw maps for him and probably do better on the actual dungeon maps. But he really should use his local maps, like the above of the bastion. Especially that RPGNow has a cheap full color option (16 pages for $3 or so) for publishers to use. They are great to look at and very evocative of his setting.

The Goblin Raid

Goblin’s attacked Jebediah’s Bastion. Boog and Grim stationed at the pass exit. Ten goblins repelled down. Boog killed seven while Grim killed three. Grim gets knocked down to zero hp while going after Russell the fletcher. Boog kills the goblin, and Russell promised Boog his share of bacon, especially after Boog gives him the metal from two swords.

Grim revives and is helped to the shrine to be healed. Boog takes the swords to Henry the blacksmith and gets 8 tokens for later use. Waldron calls Boog an idiot and Boog beats him after connected with two blows. Hendrix lectures Boog about fighting but heals him anyway. Commander Sterling wants to see Boog and Grim at the tower.

Commander Sterling wants us to go into the woods and try to find the Goblin Lair. Promises us extra rations as an award and will consider it a favor. We agreed and went off to get something to eat. We talk to Corum, our friend who is also a cleric, Corum is bummed that he can’t go. Grim promises to talk to Sterling about it. We go to sleep and in the morning head out to the forest. At the gate, the soldier ask Boog to get a shield for him. Boog get him to agree to give his share of bacon for the shield.

Grim and Boog head into the forest and walk for a while. At one point Grim smells smoke from a settlement. When Boog and Grim scout around they see a boar. Boog immediately starts hunting the boar with Grim nagging at him. Boog shoots the boar and then charges it. Then fail save and get caught in a net trap set by four Goblins. The four attempt to shoot Boog but only one manages to hit. Grim sneaks around and backstabs on of the Goblins. Boog rips free from the net, while the goblns take more shots at him. Luckily Boog doesn’t take a hit. Boog and Grim take down the remaining goblins and finds one of them alive. While interrogating, the goblin reveals that the Goblin Chief has hidden his treasure in the woods and he knows where it is. However Grim had a enough and kills the goblin. We kill the boar and string it up to drain.

We head down a path and find the Goblin cave, Boog and Grim surprise two Goblin guard, unfortunately one of them gets a lucky hit and Grim goes down. Boog manages to take down both and carries Grim out of the cave. Then Boog gets the two goblin bodies and hides them outside. Hopefully the chief just thinks they ran off.

On the way back Boog and Grim spotted Smoke, one of Waldron’s flunkies, searching the ground of a clearing. After a while he finds something, notes the spot and leaves. Boog watches as Grim searches who finds a locked box buried. It is guarded by a swing tree spike trap which is disabled. The box is dug up and Boog puts it in his pouch. Boog had to make a save when he accidentally set it off while trying to hid to give Smoke a surprise.

Boog and Grim make it back to the Keep. Everybody cheers at the sight of the boar carcass. Boog and Grim reported everything but the box to Commander Sterling. Sterling agrees to have Corum accompany us back to the goblin cave. After getting Grim healed they goto the shrine to open the box. Corum doesn’t like this and thinks we should report it. Inside we find two healing potion. Grim gets one, he needs it, and Boog gets one after Courm said he would turn it in if he got it. Boog plans to give it to him at the cave.

I am also in the middle of writing an account from Boog's point of view. I will post a pdf link when I get it done. The critical hit system was simple and bloody, I will leave it to Tim to post the details on that. We handled pummeling with a normal attack roll and doing 1d3 + str bonus for damage. I think it was 1/4 real and the rest subdue damage. I was real lucky to have the 18/00 strength as I think Waldron was somewhat higher than Boog.

This is a copy of the the adventure record both the front and back.
The updated character sheet front and back.
Looking forward to see what happens in the next session and having the Rusty Battleaxe join as his cleric Corum.

Note: These sheets can be gotten from the Mad Irishman.

How many "Interesting" hexes should you have?

2011-09-12T07:11:00.000-04:00

Over on TheRPGSite Noisms asks how many hexes in a hexcrawl map should you have something preplanned for?

I would shoot for 10% to 20% detailed hexes. In the dozen or so sandbox settings I wrote so far that what I averaged. Out of 512 hexes Blackmarsh had 76 detailed hexes. Most people have a dozen detailed ideas, two dozen more sketchy ideas, and for the rest that why God invented random tables for. A good set of random table is worth it's weight in gold as it is easier to explain why something is then make it out of nothing.

Remember it is meant to serve as a framework for you, the referee, to fill out in detail as the players traverse the landscape, and have adventures. Not as a fully fleshed out world detailed to the nth degree. So in the end it boils down to whatever you need to get at the proper area in your "Bag o' stuff" to construct the various encounters the players run into.

Arts of Magic

2011-09-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

It been two years since I published the Majestic Wilderlands supplement. I didn't include all the details of magic developed using GURPS and other rule systems. In addition I continued to run Swords & Wizardry and had to make rulings related to magic. So I decided to start writing them up and expand them for use in further adventures.

In the Majestic Wilderlands Supplement I give information about the Chromatic Crystals. Nine crystals used to seal the Abyss after the gods banished the demons. The crystals include a tenth crystal, a master crystal, the Chromatic Crystal. The crystals have an important influence on magic in the wilderlands as detailed in this post.

Arts of Magic
In the Dawn Age, magic could only be cast through elaborate rituals. The level of ambient mana was too low to permit casters to memorize spells to cast at a moment’s notice. Through rituals the mana was slowly gathered and infused into an item such as a scroll, charm, or wand. Only then it could be quickly released to create the spell the caster desired.

After the Uttermost War, the gods imprisoned the surviving demons in the Abyss. To seal the Abyss from the Wilderlands the gods created ten crystals of powers. Nine of which were set around the entrance and the tenth, the Chromatic Crystal, was used to activate them and seal the Abyss. A consequence of this was that the ambient level of mana was greatly increased. The crystals gathered the ambient mana, cycled it through their lattice to power the seal, and then released back in a concentrated form into the Wilderlands.

Suddenly magic-users found they no longer had to rely on lengthy rituals to gather the necessary mana to power a spell. Instead a complex series of mediations allowed the caster to prepare to cast a spell at a moment’s notice. When needed the magic-user use his will to open a channel to let the mana flow through the spell’s form which created its effect.

Each of the crystals was created by one of the gods. They imbued their inner essence into each crystal’s lattice to add to the strength of the seal. This also subtly altered the mana after it flowed through the crystal. When the Order of Thoth, the Elves, and others studied magic, they found that certain mana worked better to create a particular effect. There are nine types of mana, each based on one of the crystals used to make the seal to the Abyss. In addition there is a tenth type of mana, the original ambient mana left over from the creation of the Wilderlands.

The study of the ten types of mana is universally known as the Arts of Magic, a near universal nomenclature has developed to describe each type; The Claw, The Eagle, The Flame, The Hearth, The Lantern, The Skull, The Storm, The Tree, and The Web. The original ambient mana is known as The Forge.

The Claw
This mana is best used in spells involving creatures and monsters of the wild. It originates from the Ebon Crystal created by the blood goddess, Kalis.

The Eagle
This mana is best used spells involving movement, protection, and air. It originates from the Crimson Crystal created by the goddess of justice and honor, Mitra.

The Flame
This mana is best used in spells involving fire. It also works well with mastery of the natural world and the body. It originates from the Ochre Crystal, created by the god of war and order, Set.

The Hearth
This mana is best used in spells involving earth, healing, and the body. It originates from the Emerald Crystal created by the goddess of healing and the earth, Dannu.

The Lantern
This mana is best used in spells involving knowledge, and symbols. It originates from the Amethyst Crystal created by the god of knowledge, Thoth.

The Skull
This mana is best used in spells involving death, and life. It originates from the Ivory Crystal created by the god of judgment and death, Hamakhis.

The Storm
This mana is best used in spells involving weather, and water. It originates from the Indigo Crystal created by the god of thunder and warriors, Thor.

The Tree
This mana is best used in spells involving plants, and the spirit. It originates from the Azure Crystal created by the god of forests and dreams, Silvanus.

The Web
This mana is best used in spells involving the mind, divination, and illusions. It originates from the Amber Crystal created by the goddess of fates and pleasure, Nephthys.

The Forge
The original ambient mana is best used in spells involving the control of magic, also the creation, control, and manipulation of objects. While the most difficult to use it is the most powerful and versatile form of mana. It originates from the creation of the Wilderlands and many associate it with the Chromatic Crystal created by the High Lord Veritas, the god of creation, and artifice.

Introducing Boog

2011-09-01T07:00:00.000-04:00

Tim is starting up a new AD&D campaign. He sent us the character generation rules which is 4d6, drop the lowest, do this six times. So I rolled a 18,12, 7, 15, 12, and 13. So close to being a ranger. But I decided to go with fighter going with Str 18, Int 12, Wis 7, Dex 12, Con 15, and Charisma 12. I rolled a 92 for exceptional strength.

After thinking about it, I decide to play a half-orc. I figure the +1 to strength will get me the rest of the way to the prized 18/00 and the +1 constitution is nice as well. -2 to charisma is a hit especially I wanted one of Boog's goals is to build a castle to hold lots of feasts. But a 10 is workable. Along the way I rolled age and Boog is 14 years old, a young adult. Looking at the DMG, he gets another +1 constitution, but a -1 wisdom. Taking it down to a 6, yikes!

I downloaded Mad Irishman's original AD&D character sheet PDFs. I save both sides as a jpg and used them as a background in CorelDRAW to write on them. Had a lot of fun doing this and went all the way filling out everything including weapon speeds, weapon modifiers and the always fun, pummeling, grappling, and overbear modifier. Then I printed it out using some goldenrod cardstock I had stashed away.

Here the completed character sheet. Boog's driving ambition at the moment is to get enough treasure to allow his ma to retire in style. I have a personality for Boog developed during a couple of convention games where I played a half-orc fighter. It a bit hard to describe, but people seem to enjoy and the inane solutions I came up with.

For those of you without CorelDRAW, you can use Paint.NET or inkscape. Just save the character sheets as 300 dpi jpg. (you need to set the option when saving from Adobe). Put them on a bottom layer. Then another layer on top where you type in your text. I used 8 and 6 point text to get stuff to fit.

From the Attic: The first Wilderlands Campaign

2011-08-26T06:00:00.009-04:00

Every campaign has a beginning and it is no different for the Majestic Wilderlands. I knew I started the using the Wilderlands sometime during the very early 80s but wasn't sure exactly when. Now thanks to a fortuitous discovery by my long time friend, Brian, now I know it is was sometime in the early part of 1981 before March.

Brian found his original Holmes Box and Rulebook and inside the box were some of the original character sheets for Valeric (or Valoric depending which one you look at). Below is a copy of the front and back of his character sheet.

The campaign first started in Greyhawk. It revolved mainly around two characters, Brian played Valeric and another friend played a wizard named Blackstone. In Meadville at that time people hopped campaigns all the time so characters came and go. But Valeric and Blackstone were at the heart of this campaign. When they started to reach name level I decided to do something cool and make Valeric the lost prince of Furyondy. The king of Furyondy was killed and the whole realm fell apart leaving it open to the depredations of Iuz and the Horned Society.

The first few sessions were sort of OK. I was in 9th grade at the time and just didn't have the knowledge to do really do a cool political/military campaign. What I really hated is what I still call the "Howling Emptiness of the 30 mile hex." One of the character sheets shows this period of the campaign.

If Greyhawk was all that I had, I probably would have stuck it out and figured something out. But I also just got the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. And it had detailed terrain maps, traveller style listing of locales, the works. I could focus on crafting the politics and stuff I liked and rely on the Wilderlands for the low level details.

Below are the campaign notes I created.

I bought two copies of Wilderlands of High Fantasy and drew further notes on the second set of maps. Below is an annotated map and here is a link to the original scans.

By far the best part was Brian not only finding Valeric's character sheet but also the original write up of Sunblazer one of the 13 Swords of Power. The stats in Majestic Wilderlands were based on my hazy memories. I knew it was a powerful and try to recreate it as best as I could. But the true original version was a bit well... you can see for yourself.

Sunblazer
+5 to Hit, +5 to Damage
Lawful Good
Int -18, Wis (must be Ego)-18
-5 Armor Class to wielder when drawn

Command Word:Sunblazer
1) Fly 120' ft/rd (written as 12' but meant as 12")
2) Locate Object 100' Radius
3) Locates and Identifies Precious Metals
4) Instant Death to Undead (except Vampires make a saving throw at -4, Demons and Devils make a Saving Thrown, and ArchDevils and Demon Princes at +4)
5) Regenerates 2 hp/rd
6) Cast Heal 1/day

Plus as a bonus there is Iron Fang which I have no memory of. It might be something I handed out or something from another person's campaign. I think it is a dagger.

Iron Fang
+2 to Hit/Damage
+3 to Hit/Damage versus Fire
Paralyzes for 1d8 rounds, Saving throw at -2
Gives 50% magic resistance to the owner.

This campaign started at 4433 BCCC, the year all the Judges Guild products were set at originally. Every year of high school I advanced the timeline one year. When I went into College it was 4436 BCCC and during my freshmen year is when I ran the campaign that resulted in the paladin Endless Star killing the last Viridistan Emperor. For those of you wanted more detailed after reading the Nome entry in the supplement, I hope this helped.

Thanks to Brian for digging this up and letting me take all of you down memory lane.

Eriecon is this weekend.

2011-08-25T23:31:00.002-04:00

Just to let everybody know, I will be at Erie Con this Saturday running a new Swords & Wizardry adventure at noon. And if there is interest another adventure late afternoon. It will be held at the Avalon Hotel in Erie, PA.

Update: I realize the con page behind facebook. Here is a link from a post on a boardgame forum.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/685322/eriecon-2011-aug-27th-continental-qualifier

and here is the flyer he sent me.

The world's crappiest orc miniature painted

2011-08-21T06:00:00.001-04:00

I been methodically painting the remaining unpainted miniatures in my collection. Shamed by the nice dwarven forge miniatures I got a few months ago (thanks to a gift certificate from Jerry of Gold Star Anime), I been began painting miniatures again. At first I focused on the resin props and now going into some of the unpainted monster figures. I am starting with the orcs. I got all the generic orc figures done and now I am tackling my unique figures.

For a long time I had this "thing", some misshapen lead blog representing a orc, hobgoblin or something holding a bow. So after priming everything I decided to tackle it first just to see how much better it would look.

I am pleased with the results now you can tell it is something orcish. Although I am now wondering if it is some weird vampire orc from Tekumel.

Next I decided to tackle one of my simpler unique orcs. Basically a big brute wielding a club.

In case you are wondering what I am using for the orc skin color it is Italian Sage.

Then I painted the mule figure I had. I need to paint the base and then glue it to a wider base. It gotten to be known as the narcoleptic mule from all the time it fell over.

The baggage on top was painted with a color called linen. Sort of a brownish white which makes a nice cloth color. All the paints I got are acrylic paints from Wal-Mart or Jo-Ann Fabrics. I protect the completed miniature with a coating of matte Mod-podge.

Update
Thanks to Scottsz I have a screen shot of the Orc

He mentions that it came from a Heritage Model set called the Crypt of the Sorcerer. I still have the map somewhere. Who ever has this model has a worse one than mine as the area between the legs is filled in with metal. On mine it is free of metal.

Creativity can't be taught. Yeah so what!

2011-08-20T15:00:00.003-04:00

Hill Canton's Building a better GM got me thinking further on how I got to the point where I am today in refereeing and writing for RPGs.

It is accurate to say that people are born with an artistic talent or not. That if you don't have it in you no amount of practice and study is going to allow you to match the top performers in a particular art or craft.

But it is irrelevant. Because you are not in competition for a publisher's slot, or a role of a lifetime for a movie. The only person you need measure your creativity against is yourself. And there are a hell of a lot of things you can do make yourself more creative today than you were the yesterday.

I know everybody can learn to be a good referee, if they have the interest. I also know that it is not always apparent that a person will be a great referee at first. Sure some just pick up the dice and books and never look back. But for many it is more of a matter of playing and learning until that day comes when it all comes together for them.

How I know that? Because that my story. I have a learning disability in language skills. When I was six years old, I had scarlet fever. Afterwards my doctors found that I suffered a 50% hearing loss because a chunk of my nerves got burned away or something like that. And it isn't a 50% decrease in volume either. It 80% at one frequency and only a 20% loss at another. So they figured out my hearing profile and I got hearing aids.

Then later they found the really sucky part, apparently it just didn't get my nerves, it hit where it they entered my brain. It takes me two or three times as long compared to a normal person to learn speech, writing, spelling . Also it made learning foreign languages a long drawn out process. All throughout school my scores were like 90% math, 100% science, 100% history, and then 60% English.

So in the middle of all this comes Dungeons & Dragons. Which I am sure you all realize by now is something I really like. And if there is one activity that needs language skills, that activity is Dungeons and Dragons.

It was not the only thing driving my improvement in language, I have my mother to thank for much of it. She was a teacher for several decades and she really helped me. But Dungeons & Dragons provided that extra boost for me to keep going even after I moved away from home and was on my own. And I kept writing year, after, year, over decades. And I am still not finished. All of you reading this blog have seen dropped words, misspellings, switched letters. All I can do is keep practicing and make sure my published material is not edited just once, or twice, but several times. I have Tim of Gothridge Manor to thank for helping a lot with that.

Because of the hearing loss, I struggled with running a game. It was hard, and while hearing aids helped it is a not a universal antidote. The main issue is that I can hear certain voices better than others. For me running a tabletop is a challenge. At one time I had a tape of the "The Great Party Fight." I had two groups of players at the same AD&D game. The groups had a history of backstabbing and were always threatening each other. I was getting kind of fed up with the trash talk so for this session I instituted the rule that what you say is what your character does.

Well I thought the player said "I backstab him with the sword." So I told him to roll and the party proceeded to kill each other. It just so happened we recorded the session and when we played the tape back, what the player really said was "I ought to backstab him with the sword".

Sigh.

Because of my hearing loss I really had to play attention to the way I referee. Which lead to me thinking about how to prepare, run adventures, interact with my players, and all the other things that make up a successful campaign. I also learned that it not a one size fits all deal. Depending on the genre, situation and players, different techniques need to be used. Roleplaying is a young hobby, we only scratched the surface of what you can do with it or how teach it.

If I can learn to be a good referee, I don't see why anybody can't either.

Being the best GM possible

2011-08-20T06:00:00.001-04:00

Hill Cantons ignited an interesting discussion on Building a better GM.

First I read books and watch movies. Both for enjoyment as well as keeping an eye on how they do things. Twenty years ago, I gamed with a guy named Wes and we went to a couple of movies. He was a movie buff in addition to being a gamer and he had a gift for explaining what was good and bad in a film. It was an eye-opener for me and I never looked at movies in the same way again. Afterward I learned a lot of little bits that I incorporated into my game. Mostly dialog and how two actors played off of each other. I also read lots of books and found them a great source of inspiration.

I do this to build up a bag of stuff in my head to pull out while running a game. A bigger bag of stuff means you have more options for when the player talks to the tavern keeper, arrives at royal court, or just stumbles across a peasant's hovel in the middle of the forest.

The key thing is to take some quiet time and organize things in your head. Think about a peasant, an orc, a kobold, etc and then ask yourself a series of what if. There is no right answer and you don't need to be Star Trek's Data and have perfect recall. Do it enough times it will come to you when you need it. This technique shares some ideas with that of the Memory Palace. The best part is that you likely have much of what you need already due to being exposed to fantasy and other genres over the years.

Another technique is to challenge yourself. Conventions are perfect for this. Run some situation, genre, or game that you never done before. The idea isn't to change your style of play but to broaden your experience. By experiencing different methods of roleplaying you will understand the ones you like better. With Google Plus gaming and the virtual tabletop games there are more opportunities today than ever before to try different games at a convenient time.

For me it was playing and running a LARP game for over a decade. Writing and running adventures for LARPS is stifling. It is because the physical logistics precludes the flexibility of locations, creatures, and items, that you have for tabletop. Despite the limitations I learned to write fun adventures for LARPS and it helped my tabletop game immensely.

Another thing I did was run a dungeon adventure cold. All I had was the stats for the big bad guy, the map, and a general idea that it was a coven of warlocks. I just made it up on the spot as the players went through the dungeon. Knowing that it was a coven keep things from getting incoherent.

Also surprisingly running Tegal Manor. The sparseness of the description, (a room name and maybe a sentence or two) has really forced me to reach deep into my bag of stuff to keep the game going. I always done it with my sandbox campaigns but since Tegal is a funhouse dungeon it forced me to go outside of the things I done before.

On a different note, I been refereeing large groups of players at my Gold Star Anime games. One session I had ten players. This is something I hadn't done since the early 80s so I had to relearn a few things. Once thing I did was figure out how to keep individual initiative. Basically everybody roll for initiative. I roll once for each group of monsters.

In my games the DEX bonus gets added to the die. Fighter get to add their to hit bonus from their class. For monsters I add 1/2 hit dice. So I start at 10 and count my way down calling for anybody who has initiative at that number. I found this works just as fast as doing single die initiative and going round robin around the table.

Split groups don't bother me, I just go round-robin between each group giving them 5 minutes at a time.

There is my How to Build a Fantasy Sandbox for preparing a campaign.

I always have players speak in first person when they speak as their characters. I find it helps immersion.

I do the funny voices, I also practice so I am pretty comfortable doing them. I understand it is not everybody cup of tea.

If you use miniatures, the best thing you do is take all the most commonly used items; beds, tables, orcs, guards, chests, doors, etc and put them in an easily accessible box. I use foam lined bead trays bought from Wal-mart.

Plot in my campaign is a time-line of events that would occur if the players don't do anything. It gets changed (or not changed) after every session to reflect what the PCs did (or not do). I have a roster of NPCs. The creativity comes from deciding how the NPCs react to the PCs.

I try to sit down with each player and do a one on one session to develop their character background. Then incorporates elements of that into the campaign's plot. I make sure there are as many potential benefits as there is potential complications from doing this.

I have way more than the three Hill Canton asked for, I hope you find them useful.

ErieCon 2011

2011-08-19T12:16:00.003-04:00

I will be running the Night's Bride Coven at ErieCon in Erie, PA on August 27th at Noon. It will be held at the Avalon Hotel.

Saturday August 27th, 12:00 pm, Night's Bride Coven.

The forest of Dearthwood has long been haunted by evil. Finally it's source has been located, the foul mages of the Night Bride's Coven. Be part of the band of heroes that strikes down this ancient menace one and for all. An adventure for the original 1974 rules of Dungeons & Dragons. Rules and character materials will be provided, just bring your dice! Suitable for novice and experienced gamers.

One interesting aspect of this dungeon is that it has been delved from a cliff side rather than completely underground.

If there is enough interest I will run another dungeon during the evening.

Interesting Google Plus development

2011-08-12T11:34:00.004-04:00

Looks like games are coming to Google Plus in this announcement. What makes this of interest to us is that they will be having a developer's program which you can read about here. Eventually we should get additional tools, like dice-rollers, that will enhance Google Plus for table top games.

Presenting s the first-ever RPG book focused solely on one city

2011-08-12T06:00:00.003-04:00

Neverwinter Campaign Setting, seriously you can read the press release over on Dorkland!

This and the Gates of Neverdeath, I have to say I got to wonder what going on over at Wizards.

There are dozens of example of city books, in fact I was involved with one a couple of years back. It based on the very city ever to be described in a book for a roleplaying game.

Let's look at the real first-ever RPG book focused solely on a city.

It no longer in print, but you get a PDF from RPGNow. Both the original and the Necromancer version.

Gold Star Game Day

2011-08-07T06:00:00.002-04:00

Saturday was D&D Game Day, while Tim of Gothridge Manor was working on perhaps the most quintessential activity of older D&D, creating a random dungeon. I on the other did one the most quintessential activity of 4th edition D&D, ran a canned adventure of encounters for D&D, "Gates of Neverdeath".

I did some prep for the game. Not the actual adventure of course, Instead I went through my miniature and props for stuff to use and to make the encounters visually exciting for the people attending. Here the results The ship encounter when the party first sails into Neverwinter. When this picture was taken, Josh's Goliath just pushed the wagon into the water on top of a zombie trying to climb onto the dock.

The climatic encounter in the graveyard.

The players really like this especially the newcomer who hasn't played with in my Swords & Wizardry sessions.

What was most uncanny of the whole session is what Kelly Anne, my wife, got for her character. See in the grab bag that Wizards has for each participant there is a theme care the player can use for their character. This one had to do with the character being a ex-member of the Brotherhood of the Rat (or something like that) give them an at-will power to allow them to change into a tiny rat.

Which makes this ironic is that we have adorable pet rats at home. Years ago I was skeptical and so was Kelly Anne when my youngest wanted to get some as pets. But they turned out to be great pets, a little like owning small excitable dogs rather than the boring gerbil, hamsters, and mice, Kelly Anne had when we were kids.

Initially skeptical at playing 4e, she was pretty exciting at playing her thief now. Especially when she had a +14 to her stealth roll as a first level character.

The session ended with one party member dead, two members down. Kelly Anne's thief was the only one still standing. The main bad guy was dead but his minions survived and dragged his body away. Overall the party was battered but succeeded in stopping the bad ritual.

While the session when well, the adventure was some of the worst crap I seen published for roleplaying in a long time. I understand constraints the authors have to operate under. I experienced some of them myself when trying to run good live action roleplaying events. The format imposes limitation on what you can do in terms of plot and the action. It results in a sequence of encounters that is a railroad. But if you write good plot and design inserting encounters the result can be fun for organized play.

But those limitations are no excuse for crap. And make no mistake Gates of Neverdeath is crap. The adventure hinges on the main guy stealing the McGuffin. The way it is written the bad guys just appears and there is nothing the PCs can do about it. Railroad combat is one of the things that will piss off players to no end.

I fixed it by bringing the bad guy on stage. I practiced the encounter the night before and so my version was fair. If the guy died I would dropped the graveyard as the location where some nasty things were setup and the guards asking the players to go and clear it out. Although this fixes the issue, it shows the problem in sharp relief. To pull this off requires luck and requires a highly skilled referee. My solution is not ideal for use in organized play where skill levels range all over the place.

To top it all off, some of the experienced 4e players were commenting how tough the monsters were. I don't play 4e on a regular basis so I had little to compared this too. But looking at the monsters afterwards, they were startled at how they are stated. The hallmark of Wizard's 4e offering is the combat encounter and I am left wondering if standards slipped on this.

Wizards should be ashamed at letting this go out with their name on it. And the limitations of the encounters format is no excuse.

Mapping the Starter Adventures

2011-08-05T06:00:00.000-04:00

Been working on one of the maps for Tim of Gothridge Manor Starter Adventure. Had to figure out how to do scorch marks with a greyscale map. I think the end result will look good.

Figure do a full screen shot of my two monitor setup to show what it looks like. The right side is a monitor mounted in landscape. I like doing that as I can have an entire page up when I am writing. The mapping program is CorelDRAW. Underneath is all my images from Profantasy Campaign Cartographer. While I don't use Campaign Cartographer much for my professional work I do use the images.

Overlaying the images are all my CorelDraw dockers including my all important symbol palette of dungeon details.
I really recommend a two monitor setup for serious work. Triple is even better if you can afford it and have the space.

Working on Scourge of the Demon Wolf

2011-08-04T20:12:00.001-04:00

Did some more work on Scourge of the Demon Wolf. I decided a while ago to make it a two in one book. An adventure in the front and a supplement in the back that expands some of the things used in the adventure in greater detail. One part of the adventure revolves around a conclave of the Order of Thoth, a guild of magic-users, called the Golden House. In the supplement half I write about the Order in greater detail than the adventure and the Majestic Wilderlands supplement. I finally came up with a code for the Order of Thoth.

The Code of Thoth
I will not raise a hand against my peers except through proper challenge.
I will train at least one apprentice to preserve my knowledge.
I will abide by the judgment of my peers sitting in a duly constituted conclave.
I will defend my peers against all enemies.
I will not consort withdemons.

Working on something called the Silent Code which is a unwritten body of customs that developed after the foundation of the order. Mostly dealing with how mages should deal with non-mages. Only thought up a few so far.

A mage shall not rise above the mundanes.
A mage shall not be impious.
A mage shall not war without the consent of his peers.

The first one developed after a series of mages and conclaves set themselves up as rulers. The main exception to this is the city-state of Tula which is ruled by the order.

The second one doesn't cover mage's personal opinions but rather stopping raids on temples and other religious places. A few conclaves ran into trouble after they started a conflict with the local temples and brought down widespread trouble on the Order as a whole.

The last is mostly about conclaves and mages attacking rival orders of magic. Against this resulted from conclaves getting into trouble as local conflicts spiraled out of control to effect the entire order.

My whole Order of Thoth background originally developed out of a mix of Ars Magica, Harn's Shek P'var, and my own ideas. For publication I am replacing the stuff from other games with my own ideas.

Erie Days of (Old School?) Gaming

2011-08-02T06:00:00.003-04:00

Tim is promoting the upcoming Erie Days of Gaming on the weekend of October 21st. It is a nice local convention that I been attending for a number of years. For many of you it is well positioned between Cleveland, Buffalo,and Pittsburgh about two hours drive from each city. The vendor vary but most years there been a good selection.

I plan to be there and try to run at least two games and maybe a third. One will be a Swords & Wizardry game plus Majestic Wilderlands focused on playtesting one of my modules. The next will be a Traveller game using either Classic Traveller or Mongoose Traveller. Likely it will be a Third Imperium scenario. For the third game I am still deciding between GURPS, DCC RPG, or Hackmaster Basic. I will post teasers later in August.

Hope to see many of you there.

Greg ducking as Jason's Elven Wizard is about to be killed by a door in the DCC RPG. Tim looks away in horror, Al stares at me in disbelief, and John is eclipsed by me (sorry about that).

Medieval Population Pyramid

2011-07-26T06:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I asked about the age demographics of a medieval society. Thanks to Joseph, Todd, Patrick, CastleMike1 over on the HarnForum, I was able to find what I was looking for. Joseph sent me some population pyramids. Using that as reference while using Google books search and image search, I found this in a biology text.

Which is very much like the population pyramid of many third world countries. Like this one from Angola. Which is also a reminder that as humans we still have some work to do to make the world a better place.

So what this useful for in tabletop roleplaying games? Say you want to flesh out an entire village. Even for a small village the detail can be overwhelming. This coupled the tendency of people to pick certain numbers over others resulting in a strange looking place, like my initial pass on Kensla for Scourge of the Demon Wolf where I had 75% of the population as children. So I want a baseline to see how many old people, middle age people, and so on there on.

Nicholas over on the Harn Forum pointed out that Family Tree on Lythia.com has some stuff in it. Sure enough on the age table there is a Current Age column which is the same as a population pyramid pyramid. I don't need to break it down by year by year so I used a spread sheet and came up with this.

Just take the population of the village and multiply it by the percentage to get the number of people of each age. If you want even more detail you can use the Family Tree articles. I divided the age cohorts unevenly.

All the children 13 and under are in one group. Since most medieval started giving adult responsibilities at age 14, I made an age group from 14 to 17. Then a young adult group of 18 to 25, where most are unmarried, then a group 26 to 30 of young married couples. Most medieval men didn't start until their late twenties because margins were so thin that you had to establish yourself before getting married and have kids.

Hope this is useful in detailing your own settlements. I will clean up my spread sheet and post it.

Medieval Demographics, a question

2011-07-25T06:00:00.000-04:00

Where can I find a population distribution of different ages for medieval societies? For example data that looks like age 60-65 is 1.3%, age 55-60 is 6.3%. In some of the projects I am working I am detailing entire villages and it would help to have a baseline to work from.

Now that is service

2011-07-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

I been a regular buyer of Harn material for nearly 25 years. A couple years ago I decided to subscribe to Harnquest to get the latest articles at a price break. The way it works is that they put together a package of harn related articles every quarter or so. Send an email to let you know what the charge is, bill you, and then two or three week you get the latest harn articles.

For the gaming industry this approach has failed more often than it succeeded. But Columbia Games has been doing this for years and earned my trust. Harn material is uniformly excellent in quality. There is a sense of pride and craftsmanship that goes into them and it shows at Columbia Games and in the community over on the Harnforum.

However they do have premium prices, which can be off putting to many gamers who wonder if they are worth the price. However they do have a great $10 deal on the core Harnmaster rules. Also they make cool wargames that uses wooden block for unit counters, which allows them to incorporate fog of war into the game.

In the spring I updated my credit card info with them and changed my email address. They missed a letter so sent email to another Robert Conley. So how they handled it?

The vice president of Columbia Games,Grant Dalgliesh, called me to get it straightened out. How cool is that! We chatted for a few minutes and I thanked him for all the good work they done over the years and for being the main inspiration for me getting into cartography.

Now that is service.

I showed up, played, and died.

2011-07-20T06:00:00.000-04:00

And it was a lot of fun.

Tim recounts much of the session here. Tim did a great job refereeing, and Dwayne expertly used the full capabilities of his character.

Looking from the outside lead up and the encounter itself were incredibly interesting, but trying to figure out the best choices for Paltar was an exercise in frustration that night. For me, the best choices means not trying to figure out what I would do, but what would my character. The thing that I like the most in playing tabletop (as opposed to refereeing) is being the character I am playing while at the table. Some of my frustration stems from the fact that Paltar was clearly in a situation beyond anything he trained or prepared for.

But it not Tim's fault that it happen. Sure he the referee, sure he wrote the encounter, downloaded that cool picture, etc, etc. Why it isn't Tim fault? Because it was my choices that resulted Paltar being in that situation.

There were several opportunities for a different set of circumstances to play out. I could have headed back to City-State instead of sending Lazarus. Despite the bum arm from the previous' week undead attack, I figured I was better choice because I had a large shield and could defend Cal, our mage, better. Lazarus was a sword and buckler fighter.

I didn't have to go into the woods to lure the thing out. But I did and that was that. My only regret that I wish I could have hung on for one more round so I could have Create Fire it's ass while we were in a Very High Mana zone.

In the end Paltar died a heroic death, and now I got to come up with a new character. I am thinking about playing either a Tharian HorseLord, a Cleric of Sarrath (Set), or a Myrmidon of Sarrath (Set).

The way we play clerical magic with GURPS is using the Unlimited Mana system out of GURPS Thaumatology. The upside of unlimited mana is that you don't spend fatigue for spells, just cast and it is done. However the fatigue that would have been spent get added to a tally. If your tally crosses a threshold, then "bad things" happen. I.e. you get to roll on the calamity table. Where results ranges from you getting a tail, to permanently destroying the mana in a region

With our variant your tally get reduced only by performing acts of piety. Daily prayer restores a small amount, more import acts of faith reduce the tally by larger amounts. It is a nice contrast to the standard GURPS Magic system. I detail the variant here.

So tonight I am going sit down with GURPS Character Assistant and see what I get for 120 point.

Of Mythago Woods and Faerie Wolds,

2011-07-15T06:00:00.001-04:00

Richard Holdstock wrote a great fantasy novel called Mythago Wood. Centerpiece of the novel is the mysterious Ryhope Wood. I am not going into detail about the novel itself. The part that really inspired me was the fact that Ryhope Wood was larger on the inside than the outside. Much larger.

When I read this in the 80s, I challenged myself to come up with a to come up with gamable way of mapping something like this. I only have half of the original handdrawn map so I dug through what I recently drawn and threw together some examples of doing this.

I call places that are larger in the inside than the outside Faerie Wolds.

First think of a line. This represents the normal world.

Next think of a line with a mushroom like shape protruding upwards. It is connected to the line by a thin neck. This is a side profile of a faerie wold. The following diagram illustrates.

So how you map something like this? First you draw the outline of the next. This regional map of City-State from my Majestic Wilderlands shows an area that is the "neck" of a Faerie Wold.

Each small hex is 1 league, or 2.5 miles. The distance a person can walk in an hour. The larger hex is 5 league. The hex that show up on my large scale maps. Note near the upper right corner near the letter G is Savernari Vale. This valley is noted for it's uncanny nature and is avoided by Purple Claw Orc, Orc Bounty Hunters, and City-State Patrols.

The neck of the Wold is the dashed line. Note it is an irregular shape, for your first attempt you may want to try doing this with a circular neck and polar plot sheets, but any shape can be used.

Next I grab a piece of paper, hex, square, or plain, that you are going to map with. I recommend that it be a lot bigger than than the size of the next. Draw a outer boundary far away from the neck. This outer boundary represents the equator of the Faerie Wold.

Next grab another sheet of mapping paper and redraw the exact same outer boundary. When drawing the outer boundary keep in mind you want to make it easy to locate corresponding points on the edge for when the players crosses the wold's equator.

Next take any terrain feature that enters through the next and draw a little bit of them coming through the neck boundary on the first wold map. After you sure you have it lined up, then map away. When a terrain feature cross the equator note where the points are and make corresponding marks on the other wold map to continue the feature. The example wold above show how I handle rivers, forest and hills.

So how this does it work. A group of players are traveling up river and cross into the Wold at point A. They continue up river traveling to the left on the first Wold map (representing the bottom half of the Wold), until they hit Point C.

Now they cross over onto the second wold map, at point C. Continuing travelling up river and wondering why it is getting larger. Then they hit the sea at the top of the wold. They are lucky and manage to make it to the river on the other side and continue through the swamp, still going up river the whole time, exiting the top half at point D.

They still continue going up river, noting it is finally narrowing as expected. Eventually they cross the neck boundary at point B remerging in the real world. Throughly confused at travelling 34 leagues instead the expected 3 leagues.

Depending on how big the wold is compared to the neck it can be easy to get lost in one. The party can keep to going in circles until they manage to find the neck boundary again. You can be tricky and put duplicate terrain to confuse the issue further. Note on the first wold map, point G, this is similar to the gap in the hills marked at Point G on the City-State map. A party traveling south would enter the wold and head to Point and see the expected gap in the hills.

Next I will write about how to apply this to dungeons. You haven't seen a funhouse dungeon until you been in one with a wold inside of it.

Gone Reading

2011-07-13T07:02:00.006-04:00

The latest in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, A Dance with Dragons. So far it pretty good, I like the Tyrion chapters the best. The opening prologue is pretty interesting and I am sure many will mine it for ideas for their fantasy campaign. It is an interesting insight into what many gamers would consider a monster/villain point of view.

There is going to be a feast tonight!

2011-07-10T06:00:00.000-04:00

A least for a bunch of miniatures.

These were originally plaster castings that I had for nearly two decades. It took me a couple of weeks to complete these as I only have two or three hours to do this. Some of the hardest part was figuring out what the various blobs of plaster were. Plus how to paint food in the first place.

Overall I am pleased with the result. One trick that worked was dry brushing some brown onto the bread and the turkey/chicken. I painted the cheese a base yellow then brushed on some dark yellow to make it look well.. more cheesy. The hardest part was figuring out how to paint the roast/ham. What I settled on was painting it flesh, then some blood red dry brushing, followed by dark brown dry brushing. For the blobs on the roast platter I figure they were onions so I painted them ivory and dry brushed some more brown onto them.

Return from the West

2011-07-08T10:58:00.003-04:00

I got back from visiting my father and sister in Phoenix Arizona. This trip we headed north to Flagstaff to do some back road driving, caving, and swimming in waterholes. Several years ago a previous trip into northern Arizona to the Mogollon Rim partly inspired Southland. This trip was equally inspiring.

In the eastern United States the flora and fauna is largely determined by how north and south you are. In the western United States it is determined more by the altitude. We started in Phoenix which is roughly a 1,000 feet above sea level, and ended up in Flagstaff which is a little under 7,000 ft. Driving around we got as high as 8,000 feet.

The changes in terrain are dramatic. Phoenix back country looks mostly like a construction yard littered with rocks with Saguaro cactus dotting the landscape. Driving further north you find yourself in a similar region but instead of cactus you see juniper trees. They look more like man high bushes than a tree. Occasionally you will see three of a brighter green that mark stands of cottonwood trees along a stream.

Finally after climbing onto the Colorado Plateau you get into the Coconino National Forest and it extensive forest of Ponderosa pines. There is virtually no underbrush the forest floor is carpeted by grass turned yellow in the midsummer sun and littered with numerous pine cones. Deadfall can be an obstacle in some area. Despite the lack of underbrush the number pine trees break up line of sight and makes it easy to get lost if you are not paying attention to where you are going.

The landscape is broken up by dramatic mountain ranges and places where bare rock is exposed. We went to one place where the indian culture of the area used a vertical rock face not only to carve sacred pictures but also a solar calender that used the shadows cast by protruding rocks. Nearby there was a public swimming hole where the creek passed through an area of exposed rock forming a natural cliff on one side that you can jump off of.

Finally we headed to a cave that was once a lava tube. Most of the mountains in the region were formed by volcanism. This area the lava flow harden on the surface quickly but underneath it flowed out leaving behind a long snake like cave. An interesting feature is that the cave is 32 to 45 degrees all year around.

The cave entrance is a rock filled bowl and when you climb down into you can feel the dramatic changes of temperature, like walking into a refrigerated meat locker. The cave floor is nothing but a rock pile so you have to carefully pick your way through. It would not be an ideal place to fight. There would be a lot of dexterity saving throws trying to have combat in such a place.

I got some ideas for settings and adventures and I hope this inspires you as well.

Still more to learn about this Sandbox stuff

2011-07-01T14:07:00.003-04:00

James at Grognardia took to time to write a great review of Blackmarsh. To me a great review is one that I can learn from whether it is positive or negative comments. The positive teach me what to continue to do, and negative helps me learn what I need to work on. Especially valuable are those that help me look at something in a different way.

Many of the Blackmarsh reviews commented on the locales that are "frozen in a moment of time."

This is one of them

0214 A mother black dragon (old, HD 8) and her child (young, HD 7) have slaughtered a herd of deer and are in a meadow consuming the carcasses.

I generally try to minimize these type of entries as they are pretty much one shot deals. Too many will limit the utility of the products.

However there are reason to include them in a hex crawl map. Perhaps just not as a locale like I been doing. James', Akratic's, Chicago Wizard's review all helped clarify my thought on this. Which is good because when I do this in the future I will have clear idea as to why I included such an entry.

Right now I see several types of "frozen moments in time" that will be useful for a hexcrawl setting.

First is the wandering monster as a locale. That what the black dragon encounter represents. Instead of putting it the encounter table, I just made it a locale. However for a map the size of Blackmarsh they should be no more than two or three of these and they should be particularly memorable. Which is why I would have left this in even I knowing what I know now.

1503 A flock of 9 hippogriffs (HD 3) landed on Egbert’s farm two miles from the river. The locals have gathered to watch. Egbert weeps as his pigs and chickens are devoured by the hippogriffs.

Another type is this

2618 A ship from the Ochre Empire is sailing toward Blackmarsh searching for the lost expedition sent here five years ago. It is commanded by Lord Travvarn (Ftr7, L), a powerful myrmidon in the Church of Sarrath, the Dragon God. He is assisted by Archon Devers (Clr5, L) who enforces a strict discipline among the ship’s crew and warriors.

This along with the gang of bandit attacking Blackoak Castle are events about to happen. What I think would be better and just not make them locales but their own section like I did with the Geographical entries. I did something similar to with the tribal entries in Points of Light's Wildland. The initial layout had them as locales which really didn't look good. So they were pulled out and made their own section. Perhaps also do the same for the special wandering encounters like the Black Dragon.

Note that Blackmarsh doesn't have a wandering monster table is it is meant to use the base rule set tables (Delving Deeper, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, etc).

So there still more the learn about to write effective sandbox products.

A 911 Call from the Attic (repost)

2011-06-29T06:00:00.000-04:00

Normally I avoid repeating older posts. But James at Grognardia posted about Harn in his series about old Dragon Magazine Ads. A couple of questions came up in the comments so here is an actual play account from two years ago about a Harn game I ran.

My favorite RPG of all times is Harnmaster. For me Harnmaster has a perfect blend of playability and realism. I rarely have the chance to GM the game as the group I play with prefers GURPS. This isn't a big problem as it is my second favorite RPG. It is been nearly 20 years since I last GMed Harn.

A little background on Harnmaster. It is a RPG originally written by N Robin Crossby and the Columbia Games Crew. In the late 90s Columbia and NRC split causing Harnmaster to split into two editions Harnmaster 2nd edition and Harnmaster Gold. Finally Columbia Games put out a 3rd edition that collected errata and added esstential element for a medieval RPG the most important of which was mounted combat! All four versions of Harnmaster are compatible and GMs have freely intermixed rules between them.

Columbia Games
Kelestia

Harnmaster is geared towards playing in a low magic low fantasy medieval world like... Harn. However aside from the dieties it has few Harn centric details and can be used for any medieval fantasy RPG.

Harnmaster has some similarity to Runequest in how characters are presented. Skills are percentile and attributes are on a nominal 3 to 18 scale. Where Harnmaster really excels in its brutally realistic combat system. Harnmaster rules front load all the calculations before you play. Actual play is quick as it involves some rolls and chart lookup. You can see the combat cards here

Skills involves rolling low on percentile dice. Any roll ending in a zero or five is a critical. Whether is it is a success or failure depends on if you roll under your skill.

The combat basic procedure is

1) Side A rolls attack
2) Side B roll defense
3) Cross index the level of success (Critical Success, Marginal Success, Marginal Failure, Critical Failure) on the combat chart and apply the result.
4) If you hit you will get to roll a number of D6. Add the impact of the weapon aspect to the roll. Aspects can be point, edge or blunt. Typically range from 0 to 11. This givesthe total impact of the blow.
5) Roll hit location. You can aim high low or middle.
6) Subtract the Armor in that location
7) If the remaining impact is great than zero look up what type of injury you take for that hit location.

You can take a minor, serious, or grievous injury. You record each injury separately. The nominal effect is rated in injury levels. A S2 result means you have a serious injury with 2 levels of damage. Each level subtracts one from any roll with d6s against your attributes or -5 per level for skill rolls. Aside from the injury levels many wounds have special saves. Shock, fumble, stumble, amputation, and the dreaded kill roll. The type of save and the injury you substained determine how many d6s you roll against the attribute to save.

For example if you took a M1 hit to the hand requires a fumble roll if you were holding something in that hand. Normally it is a 1d6. Unless you have a crap dexterity you can't fail. However in a fight where you took a S2 wound to the chest, a pair of M1 wounds to the thigh, and a S3 gash to the upper arm you are looking at rolling that 1d6 at a +7 modifier. The more injuries you take the worse these saves get even the minor ones.

Healing well, it has a detailed resolution as well. Let's say a severely injured character isn't going to be getting up for the next couple of weeks.

I admit writing it down like this makes it seems very complicated and detailed obsessed. However in actual play it flows very fast without a lot of headaches. This is because of the design of the combat card combined with the fact that the situational modifiers are very few and well thought out.

Two weeks ago I get a call from my friend Josh who lives in Pittsburgh. He wants to try Harnmaster after reading Cow in the Attic. Between family, work, the National Guard, and college he wanted to play an RPG that was utterly brutal and Harnmaster seems to fit the bill.

I readily agreed and went down to Pittsburgh the following weekend. The two of us managed to convince another friend of mine Scott to play as well. He not a big fan of RPGs that have you roll your character but was willing to try.

Lucky for me Columbia Games released an excellent little intro adventure called Field of Daisies for Harnmaster. So I decided to use that. When I got there I offered them to use the pre-gen character in Field of Daises or roll up their own.

So we sat down and rolled up a pair of Harnmaster characters. I decided that Slot #1 was going to be a Shek-Pvar, a Harnic Mage, Slot #2 would be the mage's bodyguard, and if a third player showed up Slot #3 a cleric of one of the good dieties. Now Harnmaster Magic is useful but not overwhelming. The mage + bodyguard combo should be able to deal with Field of Daisies.

Rolling up a Harnmaster Characters involves a lot of calculation and table lookup. Part of this is due to the fact they front load everything to make actual play run smooth.

Here is where 20 years of not actively using Harnmaster hurt. I should have photocopied the tables so that the both players could have used them at the various steps. Another thing about Harnmaster is that attribute dont' gimp your characters. A lot of skills involves averaging three attribute together so low stats are not an issue. Even so there are seven key attributes for these I am generous and have the players roll 4d6 reroll ones drop the lowest and do this 8 times. This is similar to how I did it for AD&D. Josh wants to be the magic user so has a 17 Aura the prime state for mages. Scott puts some great stats into his physical abilities which he his lowest in agility. Agility represent body dexterity, while dexterity represents manual dexterity.

In Harnmaster who your parents are is important for part of the initial batch of skills you get. Odds are you will be a child of a serf. In the 80s when I ran a succession of Harn campaign there were a lot of runaway serfs in the group. Josh parents turns out to be indeed serfs. Scott however rolls a 03 what happens to be a... slave. Scott gets a sour expression on his face at that. I explain that slavery existed in the middle age however it was not prevalent. Serfdom was the order of the day. I told he will still be the bodyguard but he enslaved to the Mage's Guild assigned to protect Josh's Mage.

Character generation proceeds until when we get to the Medical Table. For every roll on the medical table you get 2 points to raise your attributes. There is a 30% that roll will come to nothing. Most results are bad but a few are benefits like left handed which gives you 1 to 2 points of dexterity. Decks of many things anybody.

Josh decides to take three rolls gets no medical traits twice and an allergy to shell fish. Now that may sound silly until you are stuck in a seaside village and all there is to eat is clams.

Scott... poor Scott. He also takes three rolls. First roll he is allergic to fowl. Considering 90% of the population of Harn lives in rural villages this is going to be an issue. Then 2nd roll, ....

Lame

His left leg was chopped off when he was young leaving him with a pegleg. Scott throws up his hands and says "I am literally a gimp character." As this was a one shot we decide to go with this. The third roll was No Medical Trait with Scott giving a sigh of relief.

Being Lame meant his final Agility was 3. His normal combat move being a 1 hex and running 3 hexes. An average character would have a combat move of 10 hexes and running of 20 hexes. He not moving fast.

Then they came to the psyche table. Which is just like the Medical Table except it is psychological disorder. You have the option of one roll for +3 to any attribute except will. Josh elects to roll and comes with a No Pysche Trait result. Scott elects to pass.

When the character are finished up Josh has a Pelahn Shek-Pvar (Pelahn= Fire) with some nice offensive spells. A interesting thing about his character was that he was a bastard of a freeman born to a serf mother. Josh's high Aura attracted a travelling mage who decided to buy out his labor with his lord and have Josh trained as a mage. An interesting part of Josh's character was he was able to max out his dodge to above 100%. (Harnmaster allows skills greater than 100%)

Scott had a lame bodyguard. However he has an outstanding calculated Endurance of 19 (on a 3 to 18 scale). In Harnmaster a lot of saving throws are made against endurance. Most initial injuries he won't be effected by as it is impossible for him to fail. And he can last a lot longer in most fights. Scott's lost his leg while young and the same mage who found Josh took pity on him and bought him to serve as a servant. Due to Scott's great strength and endurance he was given weapon training as a bodyguard.

So I thought. Understand I GMed Harn 1st Edition and for this I was using 3rd Edition for the first time. There was an important change to the combat roll that made this not as useful.

For new games I run a combat encounter before starting play so that players can tweak their character before start of play. They found a couple of bandits and it went well. One of the bandits had a sling and inflicted a nasty bruise to Josh's hip. Because Sling bullets are considered fast missile (compared to a thrown axe or javelin) you can't dodge. But you can use a shield to block them. So Josh rearranged his skill buys to boost up his shield and bought a door errr tower shield.

The back story was that Josh was just made a journeyman of the Shek-Pvar and let loose for a year and a day to bring back three interesting magic items and three pieces of lore so that he could become a master. He decided to journey north to his home village of Falkith to visit his father who was a yeoman beadle.

When they got there they first encountered the woodward (the guy who manages the local forest so that people don't strip it bare for firewood and herbs). The woodward had been illegally poaching rabbits from the woods and was cooking one up in the back. When the characters came up the road he doused the fire, rushed out front and started to act belligerent. However the character didn't really take notice and were able to get directions to the manor.

Entering the village they found most of the men of the village and the manor lord (a knight) had gathered on the green and were discussing the disappearance of two serf boys. It been two days and they haven't found any sign of them in the surrounding country side. The lord was in the middle of ordering the yeoman to go to the hundred moot (the village where local court was held) and post notice that the two were runaway serfs.

At this point everybody notices the PCs and started questioning them as to their business. Josh explained about his father and the tension immediately broke. They explained that his father passed away and the current yeoman was his cousin. Note that due to Josh's clothing and the fact he had a armed bodyguard signaled to everyone that he had done very well since leaving the village. The yeoman invited Josh to stay at his cottage. And the Lord congratulated Josh on his success. In honor of Josh's return he ordered that a hog's head and some pork hocks be sent to the yeoman so they could have a little family feast. The lord also invited Josh and Scott over for breakfast in the morning. Note that despite Josh's serf background he represented a source of outside news. So the lord had ulterior motives other than being hospitable.

The villagers concluded the meeting and Josh, his yeoman cousin, and Scott when off to the cottage. There they found a large three room hut where one room was used as the living area, the second as a bedroom, and next to the bedroom was where they kept the family livestock, including chickens to Scott discomfort. After the feast there was talk about what happened to Josh's father. At this point they learned about a local cave that was supposely haunted.

While they were turning in for bed. The eldest son offered his blanket to Josh and Scott. To my surprise the players looked embrassed at this. Apparently I was doing a good job describing the surrounding and they knew that despite being a yeoman Josh's cousin didn't have much. Looking on their character sheets the two realized that they had their own blankets and so graciously refused.

At dawn they awoke. Josh and Scott decided to check out the cave instead of escorting his cousin to the hundred moot. They walked down to the lord's manor to eat breakfast. The manor looks somewhat like a wild west stockade with only one wooden tower. Only the manor house itself was made of stone. When they walked in they saw the alewife (the female servant in charge of maintaining the lord stock of ales, and other liquors). She showed to the great hall of the manor. There they saw the cook preparing breakfast over a smoky hearth along with the lord's old uncle sitting at the table and complaining about everything.

After several minutes the lord came down and breakfast was served. The conversation revolved around news from the outside which Josh and Scott did a great job in making stuff up despite their lack of knowledge of Harn along with the two of them asking about the cave. Every so often the Uncle piped in with his bombastic comments.

Note that I do voices. I am not a professional by any means but I can do it well enough to give each of my NPCs a distinct voice. I don't try to do a true falsetto for my female NPCs I do raise my voice a pitch or two.

They learned that the local cave was considered haunted and nobody ever goes in there. So after breakfast they thanked the lord and decided to go exploring.

Now when a Harn adventure has a cave they have a cave. The floors are uneven they show sudden drops and climbs, tight spots, and passageways going every which way. Field of Daisies was no different.

The front part of the cave was relatively innocuous more of a puzzle challenge than anything truly dangerous. The only part that could serious hurt them was a patch of M'nogi or the Harnic Green Slime. Unlike D&D's slime, the M'nogi was a mushroom with a acid filled interior. If you pick one it is very easy to squirt the acid out randomly often severely burning the character. And if you fall into a patch it was a bad day for everyone.

Apparently the whole "realism" thing that I was doing in my description was really getting to the players in a good way by raising the tension. Much in the way a good GM of Call of Cthulu will do while investigators explore that creepy old house they shouldn't.

Also remember that despite Scott's one leg he has tremendous upper body strength so his climbing and other physical skill were slightly above average.

The climax of this exploration came when they reached a bottleneck. The cave narrowed to a single passageway which dipped down and up again much like a drain pipe under a sink. The effect was that nothing bulky or over 5' in length could be taken. This meant Scott's spear and Josh's tower shield. Luckily Scott had a round shield that could be taken.

So they climbed down and out again where the cave broadened again. Here it opened into a large chamber. The creepiness started to peg too high on the meter as the both of them began to think this whole cave business was a bad bad idea.

It was...

The rear of the cave system was inhabited by two Vlasta or Eaters of Eyes. They are about as big as a chicken with no feathers with claws and a wicked beak. They liked to leap high and get at the face of their target trying to peck at anything especially the eyes.

While setting up the module, I rolled the dice roll to see what type of setup the vlasta would be in. As it turned out there was only one near the PCs.

One proved to be enough.

While the players were debating I started scratching the underside of the table. They didn't seem to notice consciously that I was doing this but the conversation started to take a "Get the hell out of here turn". I then threw some dice and announced that they heard some stone clattering.

They immediately began to retreat back to the bottleneck. It was then I had the Vlasta attack.

After rolling who it will target the thing leaped onto Scott. Scott failed his dodge while I got a marginal success on the hit. I had it aim high and rolled for hit location ...

the face.

We all groaned as the Vlasta had a 70% chance of ripping Scott's eye out on a face shot. Luckily I rolled a 93 so it was a serious stab wound (S2) to the face.

Josh cast a Orb of Zetara which creates a ball of ethereal fire. Normally it is used for lighting but if you hit somebody with it using a touch attack it will burn them.

Scott stabbed at the Vlasta with his dagger. Now understand that Harnmaster has 10 second combat rounds. So it isn't like you are stabbing at your face with a dagger. Rather you have this thing trashing around pecking at you and you try to get a good blow in.

For a defense I choose a counter attack figuring the Vlasta is going all out. Well Scott missed and the Vlasta got a critical success. This time the hit location was in the neck. Scott got a serious stab wound to the neck (S3).

Here where new edition of Harnmaster got me. Harnmaster had shock rolls after every injury. If you failed to roll beneath your endurance you passed out. In 1st edition the roll was whatever injury level you took for that blow along with +1 for every two levels of injury you already had. This was perhaps too generous as it left a lot of fights where both sides unable to do anything because they were so injured.

The new rule for 2nd and 3rd edition. Is that number of d6 you roll is the TOTAL of all your injuries. So when the Vlasta nailed Scott he had to roll 5d6 (S2 in the face + a S3 in the neck) under a 19. And Scott blew the shock roll and passed out.

In the first harnmaster combat ever for these guys one of them gets laid out in two rounds. Understand this took about 2 minutes of real time. Most of that me looking up what the Orb of Zetara did. So it was BAM! and BAM! Scott is down.

Josh punches the Vlasta with the Orb and burns it. The Vlasta then turns around aims high and leaps at Josh. Josh's 100+ dodge saves him. Josh then punches the Vlasta again. The Vlasta counterattack fails and Josh succeeds and again burns the Vlasta. Now the Vlasta has only a 8 endurance so the two minor burns combined to a 2d6 shock roll which the Vlasta fails.

Stunned at this turn of events. Josh begins first aiding Scott, poorly. Then uses a healing salve that allows the wounds to be healing quicker once they get out of the cave. Scott wakes up and succeeds on his final shock roll. If he had failed he would be no condition to fight.

The two of them decide to leave. Then I started scratching the underside of the table which this time they noticed. They listen and heard clattering of more stones. The second Vlasta had heard the fight and was coming to investigate.

The players didn't know there was only one more so decided to get out. However Josh didn't want it following them. So he casted another spell called lake of fire. It doesn't do much damage but it engulf a rather large area in flames. Josh figures whatever out there would be scared off.

He successfully casted the spell and the whole rear section of the cave was brief engulfed in a fireball. They hear the scream of the Vlasta as it runs away to its lair. But they also hear two human screams.

Unbeknownst to the two the cave connects to an abandoned Khuzan (Dwarven) Mine. Off of the main mine shaft the dwarves carved out a series of rooms as a small living quarter and storeroom. In the back of one of the room was a secret room that connected the rooms to the cave. If something would happened in the mine this would be an alternate route out.

A couple of days ago a peddler was fishing in a pond with his feet in the water. While fishing his feet hit something solid in the musk. He pulled it out and turned out to be a dagger of a dark god named Morgath. It primary power was to instill a compulsion to kill in the bearer to the point where he had to take a sentient life every 13 days. The peddler was greatly disturbed by this, not being an evil man. So he fled into this cave eventually discovering the secret door. He has spent the last two weeks in here trying to resist the compulsion.

However two serf boys from the villages dared each other to go into the cave two days ago. They managed to get all the way into the rear of the cave when they were attacked by the Vlasta. One of them was killed and the other fled further in. The peddler heard this and rescued him. They wound up back in the secret chamber.

However there was enough of the dagger's compulsion on him that the peddler decided tie the body up until he decided what to do. With food running out and the dagger's hold increasing the peddler is on the verge of murdering the child. When Josh casted the Lake of Fire I ruled that the secret door wasn't a barrier and thus the body and the peddler were effected.

Attracted by the shouts, Josh and Scott began searching the chamber. They found the secret door. When they opened they heard the peddler smacking the body around telling him to shut up. The boy is crying that he wants to go home.

The two decided to rush the chamber. They charged in and announced that on the authority of the Mage's Guild the peddler is under arrest. The peddler panics and thinks they are here for him and the magical dagger. He lunges at the box where he is keeping the dagger and is able to retrieve it. Scott steps up and misses while the peddler dodges. Josh creates another Orb of Zetara. The next round the peddlers lunges at Scott.

After the fight with the first Vlasta, Josh takes Scott's shield and never gives it back. So Scott is stuck using his dagger parry or his dodge both of which sucks. He blows his dodge and the Peddler plunges the dagger into Scott's already injured neck getting a Kill result (K4). Now K4 isn't instant death you still get a save. 4d6 roll lower than Scott endurance of 19 not affected by injury. Scott saves so the K4 is converted to a grievous wound (G4). However this wound plus the other neck stab and the face stab combine into a 9d6 shock roll versus a 19 endurance. Scott fails and passes out.

Josh then punches the Peddler with the Orb and succeeds. Josh dodges the next thrust of the dagger and punches again with the orb, succeeding. The Peddler has ordinary stats and winds up failing the 2d6 shock roll (two minor burns M1 each). The Peddler passes out.

Josh then reaches down and picks up the dagger. The compulsion to kill takes hold of him after failing the will roll and Josh plunges the Dagger into the peddler.

Josh did a nice bit of role-playing while he sat in the room considering whether he would kill Scott and the boy as well. The dagger's compulsion was satisfied for 13 days so it was Josh's choice. In the end he sheathed the dagger and wraps it up.

Scott wakes up and doesn't make his final shock roll so he in a dazed condition for at least four hours. Josh goes into the dwarven mine and finds the exit to be blocked by stones. He is able to clear enough to allow the boy to escape. Then returns to the cave and hunts down the remaining Vlasta. I do mean he hunts down. Josh is determined to make the Vlasta his prey. He succeeds in killing the last Vlasta.

When Josh returns to the secret chambers he finds the villagers had cleared enough stone to allow both Josh and Scott to exit by the old mine entrance. Josh and Scott are hailed as heroes while Scott is given a room at the manor to recuperate. Josh decides that he has one of his three items and carefully bundles the dagger. Scott recovers in five weeks with no infections however suffers a loss in Stamina due to the multiple neck wounds and Comeliness due to the facial scars.

Overall the game was a success and the players had a lot of fun.

The Pluses

I had forgotten how much I really enjoyed GMing Harnmaster.

Once again the brutality and playability of combat system pulled the players into the game rather than driving them out of it. When I DMed harnmaster in the late 80s it's graphic nature never failed to make players go "Combat is serious."

I was in a groove GMing wise and managed to build tension. This is my weakest aspect as a GM and I am glad to have pulled this off as Field of Daisies depends on it.

The Minuses

Need to photocopy a lot more charts than I did for character creation. I forgotten I did this for 1st edition.

I also need to create a table of triple values so players can quickly compute the average. For example a total of 42 means the average of three values is 14 the same for 43, 44. For 45 the average becomes 15.

I am not sure about this new shock roll system. I see what they were trying to fix with 1st edition. But this is like way to brutal for even my taste. I may go with a d6 roll based on whatever injury they took that round plus +1 to the roll for each prior injury. So in the first fight Scott would have been faced with a 3d6+2 shock roll instead of 5d6. 4d6+5 for the second fight's shock roll.

Probably use my Majestic Wilderlands instead of Harn for the next game. For two reasons, first my demographics and social structure borrows a lot from Harn already. Second my Harn stuff is not organized for actual play but rather for easy reading. I just don't want to spend the time doing the reorganization when the Majestic Wilderlands is right there in my head and organized in my notebook.

I should have given Scott better Armor and equipment. Despite having one leg, if he was properly armored up he could have shined in the combat situations rather than being overshadowed by Josh. Looks like in Harnmaster proper equipment is essential as it is in real life.

Josh and Scott said that the whole village sequence really drew them in especially the bit about the hog's head and hocks along with the offering of the blanket. Character generation was a bit of
chore. Scott swore if he made another harnmaster character he would never roll on the medical or pysche table again. Both agreed that combat seemed complex but played very fast.

Provided I can avoid things like Cow in the Attic and One legged dwarves err characters I can continue to make Harnmaster a fun experience.

My day at Origins

2011-06-28T06:00:00.003-04:00

It was a great experience and the $5 day pass was the right price.

The day started at 6:30 am with Tim coming into the driveway. I wasn't sure what to expect so I packed my roll on kit with my swords & wizardry books, binder, dice box and my netbook. Figuring that we may have a chance of running a game at the open gaming table. In the prior conventions I had considerable down time. I knew Origins was larger but figured we go through the exhibitor with time to spare. Little did I know.

Tim and I drive there in record time, 3 1/2 hours. Along the way he helped me do a first pass on what I wrote on the Scourge of the Demon Wolf. Arriving at Columbus we ran into construction and a detour to the convention but we popped out right next to a parking garage. We find a space the first turn after the entrance.

We some gamers parking so we followed them. We made our way through a skywalk, we blew some search rolls at various points but successfully made our way into the convention hall. We saw a stream of gamers moving into the hall, the closer the denser the tables of gamers gaming became.

We got in line and within 5 minutes had our day pass. I have to say that Origin's day pass is a great deal. You don't get access to any game events but you can participate in the other activities and best of all get to roam the exhibitor hall.

The exhibitor hall is enormous! We decided to methodically work the hall by going up down each aisle roll from front to back. The Troll and Toad booth was in front of us so we went there first as I had my copy of Dune RPG with me. I didn't get the offer I was looking for so we headed to the far aisle. We spotted the Gamescience booth so we made a beeline to it. I got to talk to Lou Zocchi. He is a great guy. He didn't do his spiel but he was glad that I was a licensee of Judges Guild.

In addition to all the dice he had a ton of Judges Guild stuff. He told me how he made a deal with Bob Bledsaw Sr and for payment he took a cargo crate of product and the right to reprint a handful of items. Because of this deal not only I got my second set of sapphire Gamescience dice, I was able to pick up TWO pristine copies of the map for the City-State of the World Emperor, Viridistan, unmarked! Tim picked up a set of Zocchi Dice.

The first aisle we hit had Crazy Egor's, who had a ton of current and old gaming material. I still didn't get the price I wanted for the Dune RPG but it did find decent copies of the old Harnview and Harndex. Mine have long lost their covers and even have a few pages torn. Now I have some good copies.

Heading down the aisle we stop by the side Chessex booth, there they have a big bin of dice where you buy dice for 30 cents, buy a mug, or a even a pitcher. Kelly Anne wanted me to get some interesting dice and I found some interesting two color d20s. We stopped later at the other side of Chessex where I got her some pink dice to use in the Gold Star Anime campaign. Plus some at Crystal Caste. In addition in my Origin's bag there were three tiny d20 (only marked 0 to 9)
Continuing down we stop at Acheson Creations. There they had a ton of resin props. I picked up some fences, log barricades, Chest Piles, and other stuff. Also they have a line of miniatures called Primeval Design. It has 25 mm dinosaur, prehistoric mammals, and present day animals. I picked a package of bears, a major category of animal I was missing. I also picked up a package of five wolves. He has some great fullsize (25 mm) resin dinosaurs.

At the end of the first aisle was Politically Incorrect Games, Tim saw hooker dice for sale, they were sort of interesting with two dice with different suggestive silhouettes in place of the one. He didn't get them.

Coming back up the second aisle we stopped at Chessex and then at the end of the aisle there was Dungeon Decks. They are also lead the Game Publisher Association. We got useful information about both. The Dungeon Deck is very interesting and the cards include a small but complete dungeon maps that work with dungeon tiles or dwarven forge. They have a Camp Encounter deck they are releasing at Gen Con which I am going to snag. Basically it is a deck to use when the party encamped. Something that I would like to make more interesting. (insert evil laugh)

In the third aisle Chimera Hobbies had a wall of books including copies of my Thieves of Badabaskor and Points of Light II. If you see them at Gencon buy some. In the next two aisle I picked up some more resin miniatures including a full scale bridge and a bookcase. I like to collect props that I can throw together to represent an encounter in a medieval fantasy world.

In the third aisle I got to talk to Steven Chenault of Troll Lord Games and Tom Tullis of Fat Dragon Games. Both are great to talk too and was able to correct Tom's lack of a copy of Majestic Wilderlands. I was impressed that he makes all his dioramas by using an old fashioned ruler and protractor.

We ate some lunch and I stopped at a booth where they had D&D Miniatures. I was a bit disappointed in the selection. Obviously people picked through leaving only the unpopular models. However I did find a ton of giant beetles and got ten of them. I will use them for mass insect encounters.

I told Tim I will be there awhile, when he came back he told me he lined up a game of Tunnels and Trolls with Ken St. Andre. Now Tunnels & Trolls, is a RPG that I normally play but when Ken St Andre is offering to gamemaster a game you just leap in. What was a bummer that he actually had trouble finding players leaving only Tim and I in the game.

Tim played a human fighter and I played a human wizard. The session was a ton of fun. What was best was listening to the enthusiasm that Ken has for his setting Trollworld. It is off-beat and a bit zany and I could tell why a lot of people had fun with it over the years. Now that I played Tunnels and Troll I can understand it's appeal. I have to admit it's system of ever increasing stats is nifty.

The dungeon itself involved a lot of puzzle and traps. Tim and I are not the greatest at this. Our strength are mostly in the roleplaying department. But we struggled through with some help from time to time from Ken. Tim became stoned, then a dwarf, and at the end he weighed over 8,000 lbs. Ken said that the heaviest dwarf he had ever seen.

We hit the Kenzer Co both where I got the author of Hackmaster Basic to sign my book. Everybody was nice and Jolly Blackburn was great at answering my questions about the parts of Hackmaster combat I didn't understand. I also picked up four back issues of Knights of the Dinner Table that I was missing.

We wrapped up the trip by eating at this place called Grandma's Kitchen or something similar. Their steak was great and tasted just like it was cooked on a backyard grill. A good backyard grill. Tim had the best apple dumpling he ever tasted. We got home at 11, tried but pleased at completing one of the best convention trips ever.

Off to Origins

2011-06-25T06:00:00.000-04:00

Road Trip!

First Session of GURPS was great!

2011-06-21T06:00:00.001-04:00

Resuming GURPS like putting on a nice comfortable pair of slippers. We were a little rusty but soon we were in the thick of the action. The campaign is set in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord. This time I am not the referee, my friend Tim Shorts took up the reins.

Tim decided to start game off with a bang with me, Paltar Longshanks, and Dwayne, Cal, woke up blindfolded and chained in somebody's dungeon. Cal is a Mage of the Order of Thoth and a member of City-State's Guild of Arcane Lore. Waking up he used his locksmith spell to free him and myself. Then wandering in come Robert, a poor servant to the big bad that owned the dungeon. We quickly figured out from Robert's description we were dealing with a Medusa.

Without weapons, and warned that "she was coming". We were chained up again and put on our blindfolds again. We felt this monstrous presence pass by us and I got chills when she said to me "You are the one.". However with Cal's locksmith spell available we both were not quite sweating it yet.

She left and once again Cal freed us both. However the use of Locksmith four times it quite fatiguing for him so he had to rest for 40 minutes. GURPS Magic requires expenditure of fatigue which is based off your health (D&D's constitution). GURPS attribute are very roughly scaled like D&D with 10 the normal and 15 on the high end. Palter had a 11 strength, 13 dexterity, 10 IQ, and a 10 Health. Pretty good for a starting 100 pt GURPS characters. I min maxed a bit by taking two points of Striking Strength which increased my weapon damage, but not any strength rolls. I rationalized it as Paltar spending much of his left as a mercenary.

We only get 20 minutes into the rest period when two guards come into the room. Cue the battle music as we get into our first GURPS combat in a year. The combat system is one of the great things about GURPS. It can be straightforwardly simple or use the full monty of detail. We are a full monty group.

We heard the guards coming so we stood there with loose blindfolds and grabbing the chains. The guards checked us over and one was getting suspicious. So in the first second Cal fires off a Blindness spell. He knows it to the point where he can cast it with a small gesture or incant. The guard start screaming "I'm blind, I'm blind". Paltar was holding a loose piece of chain, stepped forward and cracked it across the second guard's chest causing him to fall back three feet.

We fight back and forth the next few rounds and all seems lost when two more guards come running in. Luckily one of them had my spear! While Cal was casting Sunbolts, Robert the Servant, joined our side and began stabbing guards.

Then I remembered something in Martial Arts that could help. I found the rule on doing a sweep maneuver basically trying to kick or push over the target. So I grabbed the spear and kicked at the guards legs. I succeeded despite the minuses and he failed his defense badly leaving me in possession of my spear again.

I then proceeded to run it through the remaining guards in a series of all-out attacks opting for two attacks per round. The big risk is that I forego any defense roll but the situation was such I could take on the one guard and then pivot and get the other guard from the side. With Cal and Robert continuing their fights I was in position to quickly end the combat.

Unfortunately we attracted the attention of the Medusa, I maintained to make a saving throw against my health and not be petrified into stone. But Cal was down to 1 fatigue, and then she geased me to seek the Column of Conquest in the Cave of the Bev'el. An ancient race of demons imprisoned by the self sacrifice of a legion of dwarves.

The medusa let us go for me to fulfill the quest. What followed was a nice bit of roleplaying where I was still playing Paltar but with a very singular focus. Dwayne played Cal well suckering me into the guildhall and enlisting the aid of his fellow mages to dispel the geas.

We reported what happened and learned a few interesting things that we will need to follow up on.

Tim gave me an an excellent character background to work with. He is a master of doing this far better than anything I do. I am not going to post details yet until I understand how this works out with Dwayne's characters. Plus we have an old friend returning to gaming. This GURPS campaign promises to be very interesting.

This is the first GURPS sessions where we tried our new XP system. Basically whatever skill you used you get the roll 3d6 and if you roll higher then you get a single character point. It like old Runequest and it is designed to make character progression more natural for the way we play GURPS. We tend to roleplay each day with some sessions only covering a single day's worth of game time. This results in characters zooming from zeroes to GURPS style megaheroes in a game year or so.

In addition to the skill rolls, there will be lump awards given at the completion of a major goal. Some are character driven other stem from the events unfolding around us. This session I got a point in the Kusari skill for the successful use of the chain in melee, a point of spear, a point in the sweep technique. Eventually I can raise this high enough to negate the -3 penalty it imposes when you use it. For now I will need another point to get it down to -2.

More musings on Paladins

2011-06-20T06:00:00.001-04:00

Posts on Knights and Knaves and Swords & Wizardry forums ask what do Paladins do with evil humanoids (orcs, goblins, kobolds, etc).

The answer can be either devilish difficult or simple depending on the work the referee did or did not do while preparing his campaign.

For my campaign, the Majestic Wilderlands, the answer would hinge on whether the prisoner is an innocent or a knowing follower of evil . Being innocent meaning that the person was doing his or her duty the best way they knew without evil intentions.

I generally use only two of the humanoid races; orcs and goblins. Like all the races, except Elves and Men, they were twitsted from Man by the demons in their search for the perfect servitor race. This plot point allows me to stack the metaphysical deck to have both shades of gray and clear black & white answers. While the demons could not take away Man's free will, they could and did twist many of the new race's psyche to the point where a typical member's action are considered evil by the other races. The two races most afflicted by this are the Orcs and the Goblins.

In the Majestic Wilderlands, the vast majority of orcs have surrendered to their heightened aggression living evil lives. Some argue that it not fair to judge them as it was the demons that caused them to be this way. But then it is pointed out that there are orcs that managed to control their anger and choose the way of right. However difficult it is to overcome, orcs have the free will to choose good or evil. Just as other races have their own burdens.

Imagine a society where 90% of the adults abuse, and terrorize each other. The reason for this is that orcs were created with 10x the aggression of normal humans. Without a great exertion of will, the slightest provocation will set off the cycle of abuse for an individual orc. And it something they can't turn off, only master if they are tough enough.

The only reason they function as a society is that the demons also heightened the dominance/submission reflex where they will submit to a clearly dominant leader. The demon intended for them to be that leader but since their imprisonment in the Abyss, the orcs made it work on their own. Because of their heightened aggression they are unable to function or meaningfully interact with normal human (or demi-human) society. Relations will typically break down into conflict. The dominance/submission reflex also why orcs are often successfully controlled by an evil overlord type.

Goblins face a similar but different issue with their hyper focus on a single task or small detail. Unlike the orcs, circumstances has resulted in some regions of the Wilderlands having goblins as a functioning part of civilization. However their barbarian cousins are every bit bad as the orcs. focusing on survival above all else regardless of the impact of their decisions on their neighbors.

Orcs, goblins, and other sentient races with similar afflictions have been dubbed the monstrous races by the philosophers and sages of the Wilderlands. For the fire few centuries after the Uttermost War attempts were made by the Elves to integrate them into their civilization or at least provide homelands where they can live without interference from other race. But these attempts failed and a war started that has raged off and on across the millenniums. Both sides seeking the annihilation of the other. And generally the monstrous races are on the losing end as the tide of civilization sweeps across the world.

So what does this mean for the paladin?

The killing the monstrous races usually carries little moral issue with the paladin. The members of the races have choosen evil and reap the consequences. However unlike a normal fighter, a paladin is the servant of his god, he is not alone and as long as he relies on his faith, use wisely the abilities granted him, he will be able to save the truly repentant among the monstrous races. The rest will be slain for the evil acts they have done.

A point was raised in the post about using prisoners as trap detector and other hazardous tasks. A paladin views that as cruelty and a callous disregard for life, a paladin would not condone such an action and will opt to kill the prisoner cleanly.

This is not the only way of handling the issue. Just an illustration of the solution I came up with many years ago when the question came up in my campaign.

Ready for the DCC RPG

2011-06-19T06:00:00.001-04:00

I went up to Book Galore for Free RPG Day. Along the way I stopped at Gold Star Anime and picked up a set of Zocchi dice. At Books Galore I bought this month's Knights of the Dinner Table and a d30. Fortunately I avoided Tim's experience. Kelly Anne bought a bunch of new d20 and d12s for her hairstick projects. Including some interesting mini dice.

So now I am set with my Zocchi dice and don't have to complain anymore.

For Free RPG Day I picked the DCC RPG Adventure Starter which I surprisingly liked a lot. Usually intro adventures are OK but not only did Goodman Games give a intro adventures they squeezed a second on in for 5th level characters. So you get to try out the full level range. The adventure themselves are very evocative. I see the authors been reading their National Geographic as I recognized one room from a particularly memorable issue about ancient China.

The other one I picked was the Pathfinder Adventure "We be Goblins". Basically you play a bunch of goblins off on an adventures. It looks fun and may use it for a one shot.

Plus I got a rock making kit for Father's Day, when we were at A.C. Moore, a craft store. This has a mold for 8 rocks that you cast using casting plaster. I managed to make a batch tonight and it wasn't too hard. Need to thin out the mixture as I had some bubbles appear in the several pieces. Also found the perfect shade of green for orc skin so I don't have to mix it up anymore to finish the remainder of my orcs.

Playing hokey from my writing. Painting Miniatures.

2011-06-18T06:00:00.001-04:00

When I got my Dwarven Dungeon Accessories I went wow my other stuff kinda of sucks now. Then Chicago Wizard had a bunch of posts on him painting miniatures. Luckily for me I still had most of my original Grenadier along the boxes are long gone. I think some of the foam I use to line my storage cases is still vintage.

This is basically what I used for the last 25 years for dungeon props. A long time ago I picked up a bunch of resin and plaster furniture and used them ever since.

So it time to break out the paint brush after a twenty year hiatus. Amazingly about 2/3rd of the paints I had stored were still good enough to use. Although all my metallics are were done for. Thanks to the ongoing craft fad Jo-ann and Wal-mart had a variety of inexpensive acrylics to stock up with. I also snagged a set of generic brushes from Wal-mart and some nice detail brushes from a model/art store in my town.

Then it was down to business. I focused on the stuff I used the most figuring it give me the most bang for what little time I can spend doing this.

First I painted up a bar set I had forever. Note that the tables are from Mage Knight. If you ever run across these get them. They are durable and look good. I uploaded the full resolution picture so you can see the details.

And would you know it the flash revealed some areas I missed behind the barrels. I also painted a resin fireplace. Once neat think was the detail on the flames which I had to be careful with. Painting flames was a challenge as I never done it before. I started with a layer of red. Then a thin layer of orange letting it pool and finally a dry brushing with yellow.

The desk on the left is more recent. I think needed to use a more yellowish white for the paper. The text was done by painting thin lines across the page and then putting two or three small gaps with white. I didn't try to totally white out the line. The smudged remains of the black enhanced the illusion of text.

Next I did some of my "official orcs". At one point I got over a dozen similar orc figures and they became my generic orc horde. Now they are getting some color. Later I pulled out all my plaster firepits and p
A closeup of the orcs. I guess I nailed the skin color as a lot of the gamers at the last Gold Star Anime session were complimenting on how orcish they looked. I used a drab light green mixed with a small amount of brown. Of course my campaign being the Majestic Wilderlands and the City-State these guys had to be from the Purple Claws.

The first figures I did was three of my "official peasants" figures. I got nearly two dozen peasants in storage. One the table are three plaster barrel things. Never figured out what they were supposed to be. So I painted them brown, gave them a rock gray base, and a brass rim. Over on the left is a brazier I painted. I actually started it in the late 80s but never completed it. Now it is tone. Finally I painted the five resin full beds. I debated what to do with the folded blankets. Then I remember the blanks the Happy Whisk gave to my boys two years ago and made them double sided quilts. I took the top color and added white to form the second shade. The bed on the left was a bit of a challenge as it had straw from it's mattress sticking out all over the place. Finally there were the three chests I painted. Two are plaster and the last is a metal miniature from somewhere.

In all this took about eight sessions about three hours each. With a session a week. Right now I finished prepping the remaining "official orcs" and two more tables with food modeled on the top.

As for my writing, I been somewhat more regular. Not as fast as I like but getting a solid three hour session a week in. The painting has been surprisingly enjoyable and I plane to continue with it.

Could use any tips you got so feel free to comment.

Delving into the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG, Part III

2011-06-17T06:00:00.001-04:00

Onto the Character Class in the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG

The classes parallel the four basic classes of Dungeons & Dragons but there are important differences.

Cleric
Like the D&D version, the Cleric is the second best fighter in the game. Also greater emphasis is placed on the cleric being a follower of his deity. Several of the mechanics reflect this. We also learn a little more of the cosmology behind the DCC RPG. The influence of Michael Moorcock can be seen in the big role that Law and Chaos plays.

Cleric basically start off by knowing a limited amount of spells (four for first level). The first spell of the day is cast at no penalty but successive spell casting carries a penalty. This penalty can be reset the next day or by performing the correct sacrifice for his deity. In addition if the cleric rules a natural 1 then he ticked off his deity and must roll on the Disapproval Table. Results range from the penalty reset being delayed a day, the cleric unable to turn for a few days, or endure a test of faith.

The different alignments turn different types of creatures, Lawful Clerics can turn undead an demons, Chaotic clerics can turn angels, etc.

The healing ability of clerics is made an ability in it's own right. However the amount of hit points healed is effected by cross indexing the cleric's and recipient's alignment. Some will view this as an unessecary complication. Using successive Lay on Hand incurs a -1 penalty to the next check.

Clerics can also call on their diety for divine aid. This is basically a set of guidlines for allowing anything can go divine intervention. The major limitation of using this is that -10 is added to spell check penalty afterwards so you better make your request a good one.

Next is a listing of the dieties of the DCCRPG. For the most part they fit the Swords and Sorcery feel of the game quite well. Also in the list is Lovecraft's Cthulu. Many people will wonder why Cthulu is listed as a neutral god. The basic reason is that Cthulu is neither lawful or chaotic, he just doesn't care about such issues, in fact is indifferent to the whole situation or the dealing of the mortal races.

Next the Fighter

The end of a campaign

2011-06-16T06:00:00.002-04:00

Unfortunately Rusty has too many family issues to commit to a weekly gaming session much less be a gamemaster. So we ended the Castles & Crusades campaign after the completion of the first Splinters of Faith. We did quite well and each of us had an important contribution. I, playing an illusionist, was damn lucky to have used my Prestidigitation cantrip on turning the key in the lock of a chest. It turned out to have a poison dart trap. Later when we emerged from the dungeon, Tim, playing a Bard, and me convinced the bandits outside that a pair of pewter goblets was the "big" treasure that was found.

So now Tim is going to referee City-State using GURPS. I had a 100 pt character named Paltar Longshanks that I made up earlier. Using the Archer template as a starting point, I created a all-around fighter type that is handy to have in the wilds. He wields a spear, shield, and longbow. I had to fuss around with his armor given my limited budget. Wound up with a Medium Shield, a pot helm, a thick leather tunic, mail sleeves, a studded leather skirt, and heavy leather leggings.

Given that Dwayne made a mage of the Guild of Arcane Lore (a conclave of the Order of Thoth), I made Paltar a bodyguard in the guild's employment.

If you are interested in his sheet, you can download it from here.

More D20 Hairstick creations

2011-06-11T09:09:00.006-04:00

Kelly Anne has been working hard on her hairsticks and has another d20 hairstick for sale. There would have been two but the first one sold within hours of it being posted. Go Kelly Anne! She has started to play in the bi-weekly Tuesday S&W games I am running at the Gold Star Anime. Interestingly enough her character, a Human Burglar, is wearing a pair of hairsticks. I was asked how much damage they do. So...

Hairsticks, weight 0, 1d3.

She already used them to fight her way out of being swallowed by a Giant Toad.

Hairstick D20 Aurora Sparkle In Swarovski Crystal On A Violet Glitter Stick A sky-streaked blue d20 die with a mysterious purple shimmer under argent numerals centers the D20 Aurora Sparkle Hairstick, the violaceous hues carried out with a brilliant violet Swarovski crystal bicone and sparkling birch wood stick with a shimmer of metallic UV-resistant outdoor acrylic under a glimmering mist of blue-violet glitter under a clear polyurethane gloss, the die set off with a pair of silver Tierracast pewter heishis and celestial bead cap.

The D20 Aurora Sparkle Hairstick is 7 5/16" in length with a usable length of 6".

Who needs another D&D?

2011-06-10T09:26:00.004-04:00

Al of Black Gate asks a very good question, How badly do I need another D&D?

The short answer is you don't, given the assumption that most of you reading this are playing some form of D&D or at least another RPG.

However if you are a publisher you may need another D&D very badly. And that what sets up the conflict. As Bob Bledsaw of Judges Guild, Mayfair Games, John Adams of Brave Halfling and Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games found out, when you don't have clear control over the core rule set your efforts are at the mercy of other people.

Unlike Judges Guild and Mayfair Games, recent publishers have more options in regards to how to deal with the situation thanks to open gaming. Namely the option of creating your own RPG. If you look at most of the big d20 companies still going to day they used the d20 SRD to develop their own system (Mutant & Mastermind, Castles & Crusades, True20, etc).

The catch is that once you branch out you are faced with growing your audience. And for some this is a challenge they rise too. For others it is one that cause them to crash and burn.

There is no right or wrong with this situation only that that choices have various consequences. If you are going to publish a ruleset be prepared to grow your audience and that the synergy of supporting the original edition is going to be lessened.

As for my personal view, I don't really want to try to grow an audience for a ruleset. While I like complex or interesting rule systems, I don't like designing them. The only reason I came out with a rules supplement in the first place because I been gaming for 30 years and managed to come up with a useful rule every other year or so. So it added up. I marvel at guys, like Clash at Better Mousetrap Games, who can sit down and whip an entire system, multiple times.

So when I started writing for RPG, I resolved not to write my own retro clone. Since that my view slightly modified, only because I get tired of having to flip through both my MW Supplement and the SW Core book. So at some point I may do a combined player's handbook but it very low on the priority list.

Delving into the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG, Part II

2011-06-10T06:00:00.001-04:00

One of the reasons for this series of posts is to help me learn the DCC RPG by ensuring that I read each section throughly. There are plenty of interesting mechanics and for my Lands of Adventures series of setting I always planned to do some oriented to specific sub-genres of fantasy including Swords & Sorcery. Reading about what other think of the Swords & Sorcery genre helps me hone my own ideas.

After the initial section comes one of the only big missteps of the beta. The big page of black with white letterings dividing the major sections. As pleasing it looks, it doesn't help people to use this for playtesting as anything they print will need to avoid these pages or go through a lot of ink. This one is one page 8. There is a nice bit of flavor text on the page.

Following this is another full page illustration, again it is evocative and captures the spirit of the of game. The lady in the picture has more clothes on than two of the figure which is a welcome change from the usual chainmail bikini pictures we endured over the years.

Now we come to what will be another controversial sub-system. The character creation funnel. You generate up to 4 zero level characters and run them with other characters of the party and see who survives to first level. I can see it working but... the referee is going to need some more tools than what is given here. First I hope in the full rulebook they give some space to discussion plausible scenarios for having such a gaggle of people tramping on an adventure. Second they discuss alternative starting point.

From running the Majestic Wilderlands for 30 years the problem is that ANY fixed method of starting character gets to be old in the long run. The key is to have a variety of methods to start off a campaign and varying them over time. RPGs should discuss a variety of starting points in order for it not to become a one trick pony.

With that being said I think the funnel will work as described in the hands of an experienced referee and certainly you not investing much time into making each characters so the game will get off to a quick start. The random background table even fixes the issue of having to buy equipment.

The ability Scores are unique to DCC RPG, the six chosen are Strength, Agility, Stamina, Personality, Intelligence, and Luck. Luck is an important score used to influence the dice rolls of the game in a variety of ways.

The Ability modifiers in contrast pretty much echo those of the d20 system. +1 for 13 to 15, +2 for 16, 17,and +3 for 8. Minus modifiers start at scores lower than 8. We also see the first of the humorous cartoons that are liberally sprinkled throughout the book.

The section goes on further to explain the luck score and the things you can do with it. One really cool think is that the modifier for Luck will effect different things for different characters. You roll on a table which give the exact situation your luck modifiers works for (or against for a low luck). It also uses the first of the non-standard dice the d30.

Saving throw are straight from d20. I alway found the d20 setup to be the more straightforward of all the version of D&D and glad to see it used here. You get a number of language equal to your intelligence modifier including common.

Next it explains what goes into a being a level 0 characters. 1d4 hp + Stamina mod, 5d12 copper, -100 XP, One random piece of equipment, One random occupation which determines what wepaons you can use and give you a trade good, and +0 to all attacks and saves.

We get to use a d100 on the occupation table which ranges from Alchemist to Woodcutter. Trade Good include things like a flask of oil, a Pony, Lantern, a Sow, Silk Clothes, Badger Pelts, etc. This table is a key reason why I think that the Character Funnel would be a extremely fun. Rolling on the table may look like extraneous fluff but when you look at what they actually include you start see the possibilities.

Next after a brief talk about Weapon Training and Trade Goods, we come to alignment. It is Micheal Moorcock' Law-Neutral-Chaos full bore and what defines the supernatural in the DCC RPG. I like some of the things included in Neutral like Cthulu, and the Old Olds. While it not how I would run things in my campaign I think it will work for the DCC RPG.

Next we get an Easley full page illustration with a warrior of law about to lay some smackdown on a orcish minion of chaos.

Next the games goes into Level advancement with particular attention paid to how you go from zero-level to first. Interestingly enough reading the Choosing a Class section I don't see anything about mandating race as class.

If your character survives to 1st level, you can choose a class. Your free will is constrained by the fatalism of the dice; pick a class that suits your randomly determined strengths and weaknesses. The demi-human classes of dwarf, elf, and halfling may only be selected by characters whose 0-level occupation was of that race.

Read that carefully, the demi-human class are limited to only those races but the reverse is not mentioned. No where it says you MUST pick your race's class. I am not sure if this was overlooked or is intentional. ~~Personally I think it would be cool if was intentional.~~

I read up on the issue on the DCC Forums and it turns out that the intent is race as class. However the comment was made by Joseph Goodman that having other racial classes is within the spirit of the game. For example a Dwarven Runecaster. His current feeling is to leave it up to the third party publishers to flesh out. Mmmmm

Next we look at the individual classes.

Delving into the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG, Part I

2011-06-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

You can download the DCC RPG PDF from Goodman Games, as #61.

First the Cover is very evocative. When an adventurer facing a challenge of crossing a chasm to get to the dungeon door.

Next the is a b/w full page Mullen's interior cover. Showing orc/goblin/hobgoblins standing outside of their cave. Plus some type of one-eyed giant. It set the town as the creatures are obviously dragging in slaves into the area. Interestingly one slave chain is a group of brownies.

Also setting the tone is the sub title "Glory & Gold" won by Sorcery & Sword. The use of a full page illustrations is a theme repeated throughout the rulebook.

Next is the introduction and credit, right off we are told that the beta rules are an excerpt, however they touch every area that the DCC RPG is meant to cover. Also that it is still a work in progress. And it is good to know that there will be a third party license for those interested in publishing for the DCC RPG.

Next we get some of the enthusiasm I saw in the alpha playtest documents. Some may view it too much of a joke like how Hackmaster 4e presented. To me it shows the fun and exuberance that Joseph and his team feel for what they are trying to. Free from adhering to the D&D 3e vision, or the D&D 4e vision, they are getting to go full bore on the type of fantasy THEY like. It is a bit zany and crazy and they are going to have fun even if it means that a door explodes out it's jam, smashes into you, and kills you before you step a foot into the dungeon.

Now this is NOT my type of fantasy, I mostly try to run a game where adventure is found in the conflict of culture and religion. I was always more a fan of Tolkien than Moorcock. However I do appreciate the sentiment, understand it fairly well as I grew up with the stuff, and I love the enthusiasm. After 30 years of gaming, I find myself more attracted to games with a community of gamers that have a great sense of fun and this has it in spade.

Next we get another full page Mullen Illustration wwith a dragon having a field day with some adventurers. Interestingly the dragon is using spells and not it's breath weapons.

Now we come a section on the Core Mechanics of the DCC RPG. While there a lot of old school attitude the heart of it is the tried and true d20 system of 3.X, sort of. There are many differences in the detail but the general gist is that you are going to be rolling a d20, looking for a high roll and try to beat a target number.

Next Joseph highlights the difference from both D&D 3.x and AD&D 1.0. No feats, prestige classes, attacks of opportunity, or skill points. It has ascending AC, yay!, and uses a d20 roll high beat a target to resolve most actions.

The next section highlights the additions the DCC RPG brings.

Cleric turns a wider range of creatures and it depends on their religion.

All spells require a spell check, i.e. a skill roll, to succeed, spells have variable result based on a chart.

The magic system isn't quite fire and forget, the Wizards may keep their spell after a successful roll, or lose it for the day after a failure.

Clerics have repeated penalties for successive casting of the same spell.

There are critical hits and some types of characters get better at them the higher level they are.

Finally there is a burn ability mechanic that can influence a dice roll. Luck is mentioned.

Finally Joseph tells us that he going to be using the Zocchi dice as part of the mechanics, d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. That he has plan to make them readily available from Goodman Games and that for now there are other sources from which you can buy them.

This is the first "hump" that a DCC RPG has to overcome to attract gamers. The initial impression is nearly always negative. It is a gamble by Goodman Games to do this. Skipping ahead a bit the main use of the Zocchi dice is to reflect increasing ability to get better criticals and better results on various tables.

The use of the Zocchi dice is has two implications in terms of mechanics. First you won't be using a bell curve to roll. Every number has an equal chance of coming up. Also you will have a wider RANGE of results when you use the bigger dice.

That could make the difference between acceptance or rejection of the zocchi dice. We will have to wait and see.

Then we wind up with another full page illustration this time by Roslof, it is sad that he passed away recently, but it is great that he getting a showcase for his work. This show an adventuring party with all four classes represented descending the stairs into the dungeon, I guess they figured out how to cross the chasm. What nice is that they are not muscled models and that their outfits look sensible for the occasion.

Next time we dive into Character Creation.

The DCC RPG Playtest is out.

2011-06-08T06:00:00.001-04:00

Download it from the beta playtest page.

I tested printing it using the booklet feature of Adobe Reader and it was very readable. It will take about 42 sheets of paper printed front and back.

Joesph Goodman is also continuing the lessons of the Dungeon Alphabet. The illustrations in the playtest document are kick butt.

It is however not the full game, as far as all the spell and monsters, Goodman Games is upfront about that in the introduction. You should be able to run a short campaign from Level 0 to Level 3. The good news is that all the mechanics come into play from the start. So by playing you will get to experience what makes the DCC RPG unique.

High Fantasy, All the time.

2011-06-07T11:13:00.002-04:00

Jgants over on the RPGSite asks,

Am I the only one that ever gets sick to death of playing nothing but high fantasy games filled with elves and wizards???

My answer is no. It no more boring than the fact that the planet Earth only filled with a single sentient species known as humans.

The trick is to figure out what cultures and sub cultures exist within your setting. That the stereotypes are just a baseline and that true situation is one of incredible diversity.

One way I generate diversity is think of the implications of the supernatural aspect of the game rules and do a what if. Extrapolating the possible effects on the different races and picking the ones that are the most gamable, interesting, fun, and fit with what I want out of my campaign.

If you have trouble doing this then have your players help by running a campaign to flesh out one or more aspect of the setting. Have everybody be a member of the thieves guild, a beggar, everybody from the same neighborhood in City-State, a city guard, etc, etc. The results are surprising and often useful as background for the next campaign. If something is precluded by the situation in the current time period then pick a time in the past and run a campaign then. Use that as background for your "present day".

Now I do run other genres and enjoy refereeing or playing them. But I stuck with the Majestic Wilderlands for fantasy games, because long ago I figured out that with a whole world at my fingertips what I can do is unlimited.

Mermaids of the Caribbean

2011-06-06T06:00:00.002-04:00

This weekend my sons and I saw new Pirates of the Caribbean. The movie itself was a fun watch, neither the best or the worst of the series or the genre. However it did have a standout moment in how it portrayed mermaids. Pretty much after watching On Stranger Tides you won't look at mermaids quite the same way again.

Mermaid
Mermaids have the torso of a woman and the lower body of a fish. They live in schools of 4d6 mermaids. They are capable of limited bursts of great speed allowing them to leap out of the water for 60 feet.

They can execute a charge with the leap to grab an unlucky sailor and drag him down to the depth. The mermaid rolls against AC 10 (effected by the target's dexterity modifier). If the mermaid hits, the target must make a saving throw or be dragged into the water.

In concert, three dozen mermaids have enough strength to capsize a large ship.

The mermaid can use seaweed as an entangling rope. It has a range of 20 feet. The mermaid needs to hit AC 10 (target dexterity modifies) and like the charge the target needs to make a saving throw or be dragged to the mermaid.

Mermaids have an enchanted voice that allows them to cast mass charm 1/day.

A Mermaid's kiss allows a target to breathe underwater as long as the kiss continues.

Mermaids are known to use these abilities to drag sailors down into the depth, drown them, and feed on them.

Mermaids can be attracted by a sailor singing in the area in which they frequent. A mermaid brought onto dry land will have her tail transform into a pair of legs. Legends has it that mermaids use this ability to venture onto dry lands in search of mates. Male children are left with their fathers, while females are taken back at the age of six to be raised in the sea with the mermaid's school.

Majestic Wilderlands:
A mermaid's tears can be harvested for 4d6 x 10d worth of components. The mermaid is aware of her tear's potency will resist any attempts at forcing her to cry. Half the value of the tears if not given willingly.

Mermaid: HD 2; AC 4[15]; Atk fangs (1d6); Move 1 (Swim 18);
Save 16; CL/XP 4/120; Special: Breathe water, Charm, Entangle with Hair, Charge and Grapple

Blackmarsh SRD Updated

2011-06-05T18:08:00.003-04:00

I updated the Blackmarsh SRD which you can download from here. RPGNow customers will also be able to download the new SRD from their accounts.

The Setting Reference Document has been updated to Revision 9. This contains some edits submitted by ptingler over on the Original D&D Discussion Forum, (appreciate this). I also reworked the paragraph mention Delving Deeper to be more generic. Finally I appended the Open Game License and made it clear that the entire document is under the Open Game License.

There was some question over the revision numbers. Each file has their own revision number which don't match the other files. In the case of the PDFs the revision number indicates more the Layout version.

I will be updating the print files over the next couple of days with the edits also adding Swords & Wizardry to list of products that Blackmarsh works the best with.

So you walking along a path see some white flowers and BOOM!

2011-06-05T09:00:00.001-04:00

There is a real flower known as the Gas plant who's flower excludes a flammable gas. Don't believe me? Just watch this video by my wife, Kelly Anne.

Just add a giant size version and when the party comes along with lanterns and torches.... I think you can take it from there.

And the Three Castles Award winner is....

2011-06-04T22:04:00.003-04:00

Michael Curtis and the Dungeon Alphabet.
Grognardia has the scoop.

Congratulations, Michael and looking forward to seeing what else you have up your sleeves.

And as for me, I have at least Blackmarsh, and the other projects I am working for the 2012 awards so we see how it goes then.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monster I Review

2011-06-03T12:00:00.001-04:00

SJ Games just released Dungeon Fantasy Monster I for GURPS. The Dungeon Fantasy line implements the GURPS system to run dungeon crawls in a style familiar to most D&D gamers. It is somewhat high powered with 250 pt characters compared to the normally recommend 150pt characters for regular GURPS campaigns.

Part of the increase is that the character are somewhat more survivable and each of the templates cover one of the traditional niches in a dungeon party. The line has been supported by 12 books so far and most of them have been excellent in quality.

But...

There was no monster manual. Scattered throughout the 12 books were various creatures one could use but nothing systematic.

Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 is designed to cover that lapse. It is written by Peter V. Dell’Orto and Sean Punch. There are thirty monster with each author contributing 15 from their personal campaign. That gets +1 old school bonus from me. There is a chapter on Monster Traits which means more options to personalize monster. And the at the end there is a index to all the monsters in the DF series to date.

Overall it is a very good product, 5 out of 5 starts. The format and advice is outstanding a 1000% improvement over previous GURPS bestiaries. The collected index of all DF monsters is very handy as well.

It's only quirk, if you can call it such, is that the monsters are drawn from the author's home campaign. Which generally means that they are crafted to the specific circumstance of the author's setting. For example one of the two really likes to mix his Cthulhu with his Dungeon Fantasy :D. But sometimes it means an interesting take like the bugbear, or a lot of experience with a standard monster like a troll.

This quirk can be a major plus for many gamers, in the revival of older D&D editions several products, including my own, include monsters that are product of a specific campaign. Many gamers look for this and is an important reason to buy them.

Also this quirk means that these creatures are developed from actual play. Which gives credibility to the excellent advice found with each creature.

I recommend this highly for GURPS Fantasy referees, and recommend legacy D&D gamers to take a look as well. The interesting monster descriptions and much of the tactical advice can be used for those games. You see a preview which has a complete entry here.

I would like to see future DF monster supplements to continue to include treatments of standard D&D style monsters like the Troll entry in this one.

Finally, I have a sneaking suspicion one of the authors subjected their party to the Tomb of Horrors, Horrid Skull anybody?

Blackmarsh Status Report

2011-06-02T06:00:00.000-04:00

It been nearly six weeks since I released Blackmarsh. So how is it doing? The primary goal of Blackmarsh was to release a setting that is completely under the OGL. What little expenses I incurred would be recouped by the profits on the sale of the books.

So far there are over 1032 download of Blackmarsh and the current pace of 5 to 6 copies a day shows no signs of abating.

Over 248 of you download the Blackmarsh Setting Reference Document.

I sold 45 copies of the Blackmarsh book which more than recouped my minimal costs (art). The ratio of 45 books sold against 1032 downloads does seem a little discouraging but after talking to some of the retro-clone authors, ratio would be typical of anybody doing a OGL PDF/Commerical Print project of general interest.

One welcome side effect is what appears to be a 33% increase in sales of Majestic Wilderlands. I sold 26 copies in the last six weeks compared to selling 26 for the entire 1st quarter of 2011.

Since Blackmarsh is clearly an OSR product and not a rule book, the number of downloads may prove interesting as to the current size of the market for older editions.

I want to thank Tim, Dwayne, Rusty Battleaxe, John Adams and everybody else who helped with this project. And most of all to everybody who bought or downloaded a copy. Also since my last Blackmarsh report Akrasia posted a review. Appreciate the kind words there.

As for future planes for Blackmarsh, the only thing on the plate is adding Swords & Wizardry to the list of supported system. It doesn't mean much changes in the the text, Blackmarsh is statless but reinforces the idea that Blackmarsh is usable with all older editions.

If nobody picks up on the OGL material, I may do an expansion of my own later in the years. For now I am content to see what people do with it while I work on Scourge of the Demon Wolf, and the How to Make and Manage Fantasy Sandbox book.

Sailors on the Sea of Five Winds

2011-06-01T06:00:00.001-04:00

Chicago Wizards talks about adapting Battlestar Galactica to the fantasy genre. He asks for ideas about running it as a sandbox. It just so happens I have notes for such a campaign.

My Majestic Wilderlands supplement is set in the year 4436 BCCC, three years after the Judges Guild start date. However my personal campaign is up to the year 4452 BCCC and there been considerable changes wrought by various players groups over the years.

One of was campaign that included Tim of Gothridge Manor and Dwayne of Gamer's Closet. Tim played Draco-lindus a mercenary captain, and Dwayne played William Enderil, a merchant adventurer type. During the course of the campaign Draco-lindus became a Duke of the City-State and wound up conquering the Kingdom of Antil with Overlord as an ally in 4442 BCCC.

Which brings me to the Sailors of the Sea of Five Winds. For past century the Kingdom of Antil played City-State against the Empire of Viridistan to maintain their independence. Now with Viridistan in the midst of civil war there no nearby power that can check City-State's ambitions. In short the Antillians are screwed and their way of life is about to come to an end. Their only hope is that much of the southern half of their Kingdom is only readily accessible by ship. And it going to take time before Draco-lindus and the Overlord to build enough ships to take the remaining strongholds.

The surviving nobles, and refugees have come to the conclusion that there is no hope in remaining. To preserve their ancient heritage they will flee across the Sea of Five Winds and build a new home in the southern lands of the Wilderlands. But exactly where? Thus enter the player characters.

They will be part of an expedition across the Sea of Five Winds to find a suitable territory for colonization. Their initial target is somewhere along the shores of the Ament Plains. Between Antil and the Ament plains are several hundred islands largely uncharted. They have one year to establish a route and return. Then led the exodus to the the new land.

For those familiar with the Wilderlands (any version) know that the Sea of Five Winds has a dense concentration of islands filled with strange ruins, and unusual monsters. While the campaign has a definite three part structure, the exact shape of the journey is very much in the hands of the player characters.

Part I is the initial exploration and finding the safest route. The players have one year to do this as this is how long before everybody estimates Draco-lindus and the Overlord will have enough ships to conquer the southern half. They start at the citadel of Mysk marked with a yellow dot.

The subpart are;

The voyage through the Sea of Five Winds which will involve much island hopping looking for anchorage and resupply points.

The exploration of the Ament Plains finding a suitable location for colonization perhaps an ally or two among the barbarian tribes.

The return voyage with possible complications caused by the initial passage.

Then Part II is the gathering of the rag-tag fleet. The main challenge of this will be the faction among the surviving nobles, priest, and refugees. The player characters will have unite them in the face of impending conquest. Then there is the second voyage across with possible threats from anybody in the Sea of Five Winds who don't desire the passage of the fleet.

Finally Part III is the landing and colonization of the Ament Plains. Dealing with a ancient threat that has long dwelled in the plains. Plus the fact there are already people here to begin with.

So that my idea for a Battlestar Galactica type campaign for fantasy.

The D20 Hairstick Returns

2011-05-31T06:00:00.000-04:00

My wife, Kelly Anne, is working on another set of d20 hairsticks this is the first to be completed. Note this is also one of her special color changing hairstick. In sunlight the hairstick portion changes from beige to a deep purple.

Tipped in glimmering amethyst Swarovski crystal, the red purple speckled d20 die focal of the Dappled D20 Hairstick is clasped between a pair of sooty gunmetal Tierracast pewter scalloped caps above an ornate beadcap on the warm pearl birch wood stick encased in a special paint that becomes wine purple in sunlight under a protective polyurethane gloss. The more intense the sunlight, the brighter and more saturated in color this stick becomes.

The Dappled D20 Hairstick is 7 1/4" long, and it has a usable length of 5 15/16".

Now, get as many Aliarose hairsticks as you like and only pay $4.95 for Priority Mail in the US, $4.95 first class to Canada, and $5.95 for first class to any other destination on the planet--no additional fees! http://www.etsy.com/shop/Aliarose

Gamer's Closet for the win!

2011-05-30T09:06:00.004-04:00

Saturday was game day for my Swords & Wizardry campaign at the Gold Star Anime. Particularly interesting for this session is that Dwayne of Gamer's Closet had dropped the second batch of 3D Dungeon tiles he has made out of wood. The preview of which you can see in these series of posts.

Roster
Alagahzar, Human Mage of the Order of Thoth
Hazar, Human Thug
Riordan, Dwarven Paladin of the Battle Maiden (Mitra)
The Priestess of Silvanus (Elven cleric)
Grog (Orc Soldier)
Hunter the Halfling Fighter
Heimdell, the Dwarven Runecaster

I didn't use them right off as the group left off in the Brother's tower of Tegal Manor

The below shows them running into the undead guards and wights on the second level.

The 4th level cleric automatically turned the skeletons causing them to quail against the tower walls as the party dispatched the wights. Unfortunately one of the wights successfully struck Hunter the Halfling Fighter causing him to drop from 6th level to 5th level.

The party continued down the stairs and found themselves in a 5 foot wide passageway. Now comes in Dwayne's dungeon tiles. After a search they find two secret doors. Opening the first one they found themselves in a alchemy laboratory. Apparently whoever was working here last was trying to transmute copper into gold. In the lower right corner they found barrels of a powder that transmute flesh into stone as well as another barrel with powder that does stone to flesh. While they were poking around a fire elemental erupted from the cauldron of lava in the middle of the room and was stopped by Hazar the Thug throwing a pottery flask filled with the flesh to stone powder. The elemental turned into lava and collapsed to the floor.

Next the party entered the Game Room where they found several green felt card tables, two bowling alleys, a toy chest, and a magical organ that played itself! On one of the tables was a deck of cards. A magical deck of cards.
(cue ominous music)
The Deck of Many Things!

There was a scramble as half of the party lined up to draw from it. For most it was a wash, as they gained XP and then lost a level from the draws. However for Alaghazar his hubris got the better of him and he drew both the Queen of Clubs and the Queen of Spades, he was killed and then turned into stone.

The bowling alley had two animated bowling balls that proceeded to attack the party. Heimdell took care of one by grabbing it and using it to bowl a strike (He rolled a natural 20). Hazar kick the other down a giant rat hole in the corner of the room where they heard it roll away. The party congratulated Hazar on his thinking as the party despised the rat tunnels under Tegal Manor.

Next the party went through the second secret door.

It opened up into a bedroom where a women that was completely yellow lay sleeping on the bed. Her hair was yellow, as well as skin and clothes. Hazar went to examine her and carefully checked her pulse. Then her body collapsed into a cloud of Yellow Mold spores which Hazar died from after inhaling them. Fortunately Janus the Elven Cleric was still upstairs in the Brother Tower and could cast Raise Dead. (Janus was played by the store owner and he couldn't play that day, but he did come down to the game room to perform the Raise Dead).

Also it turned out that the keg in the corner was filled with poisoned wine. Riordan the Dwarven Paladin wisely let the Priestess of Silvanus check it out before consuming it.

The party checked out the south door.

There they found a room covered with piles of giant rat droppings and a giant rat hole gnawed out of the floor. Note that the Dwarven Forge folks really need not to paint one of their coin piles that particular shade of brown.

The party decided to forego searching that room and instead searched the closets of the room where the yellow lady was located. In one of them they found a secret door.

Opening it up they found themselves on the west wall of a huge hall with a throne at one end. The hall was covered with webs and there were nearly two dozen large spiders crawling around. Also they were treated to the unusual sight of six men in guard uniforms beating on the body of a giant rat. Despite being sympathizing with what they were doing the Paladin sensed they were undead zombies. Also webbed to one of the pillars was a Elven Knight who started shouting that he needed rescue. (The replacement character for Alaghazar).

Careful placement of a fireball, the priestess of Silvanus turning the zombies, and the fighter being able to use their multiple attack (spiders were less than 1 HD) resulted in the room being quickly cleared. The only causality was Hazar who wound up paralyzed.

After searching the room the party decided to search the rate dung room. Finding nothing except the sound of a bowling ball rumbling from the rat hole they continued southwards.

They passed through an empty room but unfortunately, Riordan, the dwarven paladin fell into a 20 foot pit in front of the south door. When that was sorted out the party found the door opened to a long gallery of portraits. Note the small six sided dice marks where the portraits are.

From previous experience the party knew that they each could have a magical effect on the viewer. Grog the Orc ran up to one and promptly disappeared. The Elven Knight peered at another and found himself unable to speak louder than a whisper. While the party considered what happened to Grog, the Elven knight continued to look around.

Found another picture, that allowed him to levitate, and finally watching one of a usurper killing a king that turned into a map to the throne room. At this point he promptly took off thinking there was great treasure to be found. Hazar was watching this, grabbed Heimdell, and the two gave chase.

They wound up in the throne room, an area already explored. After looking around they decided to hack up the throne figuring the treasure was hidden there. A single golden ring fell out, the Master ring to the 26 servitor rings that was found earlier! After a tussle, Hazar wound up buying the ring from the Elven Knight.

Back in the portrait gallery Riordan, the Dwarven Paladin, and the Priestess of Silvanus decided to go after Grog.

They wound up another bedroom and saw that a secret door to the east was opened. They came just in time as they found Grog laying on the ground nearly dead. The paladin healed him back up to 2 hit points, when he was attacked from behind. Whirling around he saw nothing! Puzzled again he was stuck again and his stomach nearly ripped opened as he took 25 points of damage! An Invisible Stalker just struck a critical blow. Luckily the Invisible Stalker focused on the paladin and while beating him down to 8 hit points, Grog hit the creature with two mighty blows, one a critical. They proved enough to bring down the stalker. The Priestress then teleported in time to heal them.

Exploring the rest of the area they found little of anything in the room they appeared in, including it's two closets. The next room to the west was a bedroom that was filled with dozens of small frog with a single huge toad in the middle. They were quickly dispatched with a flask of oil. Searching they found a five foot corridor to the west and that lead to an abandoned magical laboratory where they found healing potions and an amulet that gave +4 save vs poison.

Dwayne's new dungeon tiles worked out really well. All that needed in the future is to change the mix of pieces. I needed more 2x2 with a single wall, 2x2 tiles, 2 by 4 tiles, and 2 by 4 with a single wall. I will be continuing to use these in future games.

Getting started with Publishing tools

2011-05-28T06:00:00.000-04:00

The Adobe tools are very expensive for hobbyist publishers and in some cases overkill. Luckily there are several free open source tools out there that can be used by the hobbyist to publish their materials. Among them are Gimp, Inkscape, and Scribus.

Learning them can be pretty daunting but fortunately a beginner's guide for Scribus, a desktop publisher has been released that you can purchase. In addition to covering Scribus, it has teaches how to integrate programs like Inkscape and Gimp into producing your document.

My Second Position

2011-05-27T06:00:00.000-04:00

Over on Gothridge Manor, Rusty wrote a great piece on the idea of first and second position. It was very illuminating. I also know where he is coming from because of the years I spent managing live-action roleplaying events.

The basic issues is live-action is well... live. That means you need to have people in certain location at certain times with certain props and the set for the area all properly built. It also means if you don't plan well you find yourself in the middle of the event with your entire staff sleeping. All this means that live-action plot is basically a huge railroad. I ran some great live-action events but many of them would sucked badly as a tabletop session.

I lucked out with my first event in that my plot was heavy on NPC doing things (the roles played by staff) and roleplaying. As long as I didn't wear everybody out I was able to keep the event going at a fun pace.

The experience left me wondering what I hell I am going to do in the future. I was kinda aware of the limitations but didn't know how bad of a railroad live-action plot was until I had to do it myself.

So rather than wind up frustrated and return to being a player, I decided I was going to push on and learn how to run good LARP plot despite the limitations. And for the most part I feel I succeeded.

After the birth of Gregory in 2003 I no longer had the time or energy to run LARP events and tabletop gaming returned to being my primary hobby activity. I found the my LARP experiences really helped my tabletop. It helped my roleplaying (i.e. funny voices :D), being able to describe the action better, and finally made realize that I could make other styles of refereeing as fun as the sandbox game that dominated my pre-larp tabletop refereeing. As Rusty wrote about, I learned to play the second position in refereeing.

For those who are interested, the key techniques that worked for me in LARP events where

Schedule staff in groups of five for two to three hour blocks.

Pace the activity level so Friday Night estabilshes the plot, Saturday Late Morning, and Early Afternoon build tension, Late Saturday Afternoon has a plot climax. Follow by an early Sat Evening build tension, then a Saturday Late Evening grand finale.

Build your event plan to allow the plot to have many paths but one destination. So if something unexpected comes up in Early Saturday Morning, I have stuff prepared to use in Early Afternoon and the subsequent time block that reflect what the players did.

Over events of a season try to give each players a plot where they are lead. They won't have something occur every event but over multiple events the story unfolds.

Realize between events you have a lot more flexibility to respond to what the players did.

These are a few of the things I did that helped me run fun events. The one most applicable to tabletop is the Many Paths One Destination structure and the pacing. These techniques are vital for running a fun Adventure Path.

Monday and Tuesday Night Gaming

2011-05-25T06:00:00.000-04:00

I concluded refereeing my Monday night Swords & Wizardry campaign which had a great finish. So now I am playing in Rusty Battle Axe's campaign using Castles & Crusades. I created Anbar a Human Illusionist. He is a basically a good guy but doesn't take much seriously. The first session went pretty good but we have some work to do to come together as a party. Dwayne's Father Dani (pronounced deny) was much more devout than I expected. Tim's bard's seem more compatible with Anbar's outlook but there is stuff swimming under the surface of that character too. It will come together.

Rusty did a great job as a referee especially with his NPCs. Plus I was wondering if my line-up of illusionist spells would be of any use but proved useful in getting the fox that was preying on the local's chickens.

The things I need be careful of is making sure that Anbar and Father Dani doesn't turn into what happen in another campaign with my character, Sir Hawk, and a character named Sir Jeffery played by another friend named Dave. Pretty much the values of Sir Hawk and of Sir Jeffery conflicted on every level. I was a Knight who served the people, land and king. Sir Jeffery was a Knight Templar first and foremost and damn anybody who got in his way.

I was aware of what Dwayne was planning to do, so decided to make Anbar basically a good guy who agrees with what Dani so devoutly preaches. He just likes having a good time too and not fussy in the way it gets done. Sometimes positively irreverent due he once a street urchin. We will see how it goes, I think it will work out.

Since I am not refereeing Mondays any more I decided to referee the game at the Gold Star Anime more often. Due to scheduling conflicts for the player I will still do the once a month games but will now do short evening sessions on Tuesday every two weeks. The first one was this Tuesday and saw the continuation of the exploration of Tegal Manor.

It started a bit chaotic due to the number of new players, including my wife Kelly-Anne! We been going up to Gold Star for a couple weeks now for board games and now she decided to sit on my roleplaying session. She rolled up a Human Burglar named Alia Juliet Day. A roll on Jeff Rient's XP Charts gave her enough XP to be fourth level. The other three new players rolled a Half-Viridian/Elf Artificer (a type of magic-user), a Orc Soldier, an a Elven Cleric of Silvanus. Returning characters included a Dwarven Paladin, another Elven Cleric of Silvanus, and a Halfling Fighter.

It was a bit of a zany mix but then again Tegal Manor is a crazy place. This session saw the returning players come down the stairs from clearing out the northeast wing and meeting the new characters. After a round of introductions they explored the immediate vicinity and found no way out except the way back to areas already explored. The was an entrance to the rat tunnels so they explored that. Came across a were-rat guarding his treasure and quickly dealt with that.

Further explorations of the tunnel found an exit into a bedroom that appeared to be home to a big game hunter. A strange lizard skeleton threatened them with doom unless it was fed with rot worms. Calling on the power of Silvanus, Janus one of the elven clerics, turn it into dust. Among other things in the room was a strange glowing circle. The Orc Solider took one look stepped into it and disappeared. Half the party went "What the hell." and stepped in as well. The other half also went "What the hell" and decided to search the room and see what beyond the one door.

The Orc Solider and the others found themselves in some type of strange zoo in one of the towers. Teleported one by one, outside of the protections of the viewing area in the center of the room, the creatures attacked the individual party members . They were two giant lizards, two giant toads, a lightning beast (a small blue 3H Lizard, with a horn that can shoot lightning 3d6), a giant dire wolf, a giant rat, and two panthers.

It was pretty dicey for a while. Both the Orc Solider and Kelly Anne's burglar were half-swallowed by the Giant Toads. But when Janus teleported in she turned the tide with a well placed sleep spell. Effected nearly 12 HD of creatures. With the remaining half of party coming in the rest of the creatures were dispatched. But not before Riordan's, the dwarven paladin, little Kobold henchman died after being fried by one of the lightning beast's blasts.

The kobold's last words were (in a Harry Potter's Dobby voice)

Master, I told you bad things happen when you step on those circles.

The session ended soon after and we will pick up again on Saturday with further exploration of the tower.

Killed by a Door and other thoughts on the DCC RPG

2011-05-24T06:00:00.002-04:00

James at Grognardia has a good post on the lethality of the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG. It was prompted by the blurb about the adventure "The Portal under the Stairs"

This adventure is designed for 15-20 0-level characters or 8-10 1st-level characters. Remember that players should have 2-3 characters each, so they can continue enjoying the fun of play even if some of their PCs die off. In playtest groups of 15 0-level PCs, 7 or 8 typically survive. The author has playtested this adventure with groups of up to 28 PCs and experienced one complete TPK and several sessions with only a handful of survivors.

That quite a estimated death count. Accurate give my experience with playtesting the DCC RPG.

In the comment section of James' post Chicago Wizards give this comment.

Something cibet said made me realize that the point needs to be made: DCCRPG is not D&D. It may be D&Desque in its pedigree, but it's not the same in "scale" or matched to any edition. It evokes similarities, but it's expectations and execution is/are far different.

The comment is spot on, despite similarities to the d20 rules and D&D it is own thing. I felt that Harley and Joseph succeeded in channeling 70s era fantasy. The potential weakness of the DCC RPG is in it's extensive use of charts and it will live or die based on how well they are presented.

The use of the extra zocchi dice is going to a minor issue in the long run. In the playtest I ran, Fighters and other classes improved their ability to critical by using a progression of dice that included the zocchi dice. Going off the top of my head, at 1st level you would get say a d8, then at 4th a d10, then later a d12, d14, d16, d20, etc. The bigger dice allow you to get better results on a critical.

There were a couple of negative comments on the need to have multiple PCs per player. Understand that you can still use the DCC RPG and play a campaign where the player starts out with a single character struggling to survive. If you use the adventures that Goodman Games has planned they will die as they are death traps, cool death traps but death traps none the less.

If you run your campaign in more naturalistic way, the character can avoid those type of locales and focus on the challenges they can overcome. Such has working their way up to the leadership of a bandit gang, or fighting a border war between two nobles. Slowly working up to the point where they can enter one of those death trap and survive. Nothing in the playtest ruleset precludes this style of play and there is a lot of interesting bits to the rules especially the magic system. You will soon be able to see for yourself after free RPG day when Goodman Games releases the beta.

Runequest is dead, Long live Wayfarer

2011-05-23T08:57:00.002-04:00

Mongoose has announced that they are dropping the agreement with Issaries for Runequest. However they are not abandoning the d100 system they developed with Runequest II. They intend to drop the Runequest references and release it as Wayfarers. There is a thread on their board devoted to the topic.

A bottle with a cook in it.

2011-05-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

Last night I went to board game night at the Gold Star Anime. Kelly Anne and I got to play a game called Once Upon a Time. Basically it is Whimsy Cards on steroids. You have story cards and one ending card. The object of the game is to get rid of all your cards by composing a story incorporating the single word found on each of the story games that finishes with the ending written on the ending card.

The fun begins when other players can interrupt and hijack your story. Then attempt to complete it by using their cards and their ending. When you get up to seven players the result is zany, hilarious, and a lot of fun. Where you wind up with a young Queen imprisoned in a dungeon by the evil Witch upstairs, next to a cave with treasure that includes a crown, a ring, and a bottle with a cook inside dreaming about getting back to his home town of Stupidville.

Released in 1997, it is made by Atlas Games who appears to still publish it.

An Erol Otus MMORPG

2011-05-17T07:01:00.003-04:00

I had an odd dream last night. I bought a new fantasy MMORPG to play and when I logged in, the world and all the character/monster models looked like if they were drawn by Erol Otus. Very very surreal.

Swords & Wizardry, Core 4th edition is out.

2011-05-16T07:00:00.003-04:00

Matt Finch has released the 4th edition of the Swords & Wizardry Core rules. You can download a free copy from RPGNow here. Some of the changes include the still optional Thief Class being moved up and included in the Character Class chapter. Some additional combat rules like parrying. Along with a two page sample setting in the appendixes.

That twenty hour thing for Sandboxes

2011-05-15T06:00:00.000-04:00

In my How to Create a Fantasy Sandbox I gave an estimate of twenty hours to complete the list. After reading Flynn's excellent post on creating a sandbox I realized that I should talk more about that time.

That time is based on the size of the region you choose to detail in step 4. In this case roughly 200 miles by 150 miles. The work involved increases or decreases geometrically the larger or smaller you go. This because the amount of stuff you can detail increases by how much AREA the map covers. So doubling the size of the map means four times the detail. Conversely halving the map means a quarter of the work. Something I learned when doing Acheron (a half sized map) vs the other three maps in the first Points of Lights. And is why for the blog, I just focus on a single small island for the detailed examples.

For the person trying this for the first time I strongly recommend starting small. Detail a 50 by 50 mile region centered around a barony or a city-state or an large island. Instead of the three dozen or so locales that will come out of my initial recommendation you will have only a dozen or so. The same for the detailed town, start out with a smaller size. Another option is to opt for the larger size and just have a sparse sprinkling of locales.

In his post, Flynn mentioned Zak S minimalist sandbox approach.

Create a map with interesting names
Create a couple of interesting encounter charts for different regions.

That can work if you feel you have a good Bag of Stuff in your your head. However most people need a little more structure than Zak's list. The important thing to remember about my "How to Create to Sandbox" steps is what they cover. I organized it the way I did because eventually you will need to come up with everything on that list in the course of a sandbox campaign.

The questions you will need to answer is that are these issues something you want to deal with now or later. Before the session or on the fly as needed? A detailed writeup, a sentence or two, a random table, or wait to make it up out of your head during the session.

I can't answer these definitively because the exact mix depends on you, what you know, and what you are good at. All I can tell you is to think about the issues before the campaign so you are not overwhelmed during the session. And of course give some tips on what I did in hopes that it will help your own game.

Fighting Fantasy Classics on the Kindle

2011-05-11T21:11:00.000-04:00

Over on Hack-n-Slash C mentions that you can get the classic Fighting Fantasy books for the Kindle. Not only it been released for the Kindle it is also active content! So I bought Warlock of Firetop Mountain for $4.

This is the first time with Fighting Fantasy for me although I had other similar books back in the say. I got to say it is pretty damn good both the book itself and the active content that surrounds it. It rolls dice for you, manages saves, character sheet, and shows a map when needed. It is a lot of fun. Best of all it appears to have the original illustrations!

I agree with C this is what the Kindle was born for.

That twenty hour thing for Sandboxes

2011-05-11T09:33:00.005-04:00

Home made Dungeon Tiles

2011-05-11T06:00:00.001-04:00

My friend Dwayne has found a great way of making Dwarven Forge compatible Dungeons Tiles. His first post is here, and the second one here. I can't wait for him to come back to Meadville and try them out.