Heading to Con on the Cob! and trying out my game.

Off to Con on the Cob to fight some World War II, adventure with Labyrinth Lord, trying out the second session of the Fudge based RPG I am working on and most importantly hang out with good friends.

Despite appearances the game is no where ready for release. It just I been involved in publishing long enough that I have a bunch of ready made templates to use for prototypes. The content is pretty thin at the moment little more than lists of stuff. I did put some work into a character sheet because I find that helps novices understand a new system.

The sound of many dwarven footfalls.

Looks like the five sets I ordered from the Dwarven Forge Kickstarter will be arriving before the end of October. I won't have them for Con on the Cob but it looks I will have them in time for the monthly Gold Star Anime game on the 26th. That is nice because the party choose to return to Tegal Manor.

Shipments East of the Mississippi:  The majority of these shipments are leaving via truck throughout this week. These packages should mostly be delivered during the week ending October 25th. Tracking numbers should go out to these recipients around (or before) October 21st.

This what I estimate I am getting

- 5 Sets (Dungeon Gray) Game Tiles
- 5 x 1 Set (Dungeon Gray) Stretch Goals
- Diagonal Wall Pack (Dungeon Gray)
- Curved Corner Pack (Dungeon Gray)
- 2 x Floor Pack (Dungeon Gray)
- 2 x Dungeon Dressing Pack (Dungeon Gray)
- Chamber of Sorrows (Dungeon Gray)
- Grand Stair Pack (Dungeon Gray)
- 2 x Castle Wall Pack (Dungeon Gray)


123 - Straight Wall
92 - 2 x 2 Floor
40 - Corner
15 - Swinging Doors
26 - Curved Corner
18 - Curved Half Floor
30 - Diagonal Wall
18 - Diagonal Floor
12 - Pillars
6 - Demon Doors
25 - Castle Window Wall
12 - Arrow Slits
14 - Barrels
15 - Up Stairs
15 - Pedestals
17 - Curved Corner Stairs
5 - Treasure Piles
10 - Narrow Freestanding Walls
10 - Freestanding Walls
4 - Lower Stair
4 - Lower Stair with Doors
1 - 4 x 4 Pool of Sorrows
1 - 2 x 2 Floor w/Grate
1 - 2 x 2 Floor w/Broken Grate
2 - Pile of Skulls
2 - Floor with Pit
2 - Secret Door (Straight Wall)
9 - Narrow Door
4 - Cell Door
2 - Dwarven Door
2 - Broken Door
2 - Metal Door
2 - Portcullis
4 - Table
4 - Bench
8 - Chair
4 - Bed
4 - Chest
10 - 4 x 6 Floor
4 - 2 x 2 Stair DN

Enough to build out this section of the manor as well as other of similar size.

Solving the Tenkar's Dilemma, the Wilderlands plus Southlands plus Blackmarsh

Tenkar is facing a choice about what to do with his proposed campaign.

Having a bit of involvement in the boxed set Wilderlands as well as being the author of Blackmarsh and Southlands. This would be my "official" opinion on the matter of combining them.

Of course there is no desert along the northern edge of Map 9 (New Map 1) Elephand Lands but there are plenty of blank hexes east of the Land of Beasts to pencil one in.  My Grand Kingdom of Blackmarsh/Southland doesn't exist in the Wilderlands but there is a rather large bit of white space to the east where it could be placed. Also I consider the Elephand lands to be the most DnDish of all the Wilderlands map as it is a polygot collection of village of different races in a forest land.

As a bonus you can see how I meant for Blackmarsh and Southland to be fit together.

One of Blackmarsh's map edges lines up with Hungary

I stumbled across to Adam Borbely's RPG blog in Hungarian and apparently he is translating Blackmarsh into Hungarian. Plus, if Google translate is accurate, also expanding it to support another RPG system.

This is one of the advantage of releasing a product under a open license. As a small publisher it is highly unlikely that I could arrange for the translation of Blackmarsh into any other language. But because of the open license Adam is free to do just that and also convert to use the system that he feels that it would be the most useful . Much like what happened over at Heroes and Other Worlds.

One interesting part of his post is where Adam talks about trying to come up with an equivalent name for various locales in Hungarian. The example he gives is Strangeholm, a name of a halfling village.

I used an archaic definition of strange where the word refers to a far away place. Holm is an archaic term used in Middle English to refer to an island in the middle of a river. The literal translation is Far away Island. However the village is built around a prominent hill so why Far way Island? It is a play on words. The Far away part is literal. The village is a halfling colony in Blackmarsh. However Holm/River Island is play on words due to the fact that the hill is an isolated geographical feature rising out of the lowlands. The founders found it mildly humorous to think of their hill as an "island". Hence the name Far away River Island or Strangeholm.

Hey! people used stranger rationale name their village.

The Fate (rpg) of the Majestic Wilderlands)

I just ran a Fate one-off. I used an adventure created for the Majestic Wilderlands and the character were created with a quasi medieval fantasy world in mind.

Rufus
--------------------------
Aspect
High Concept: Bounty Hunter
Failed Merchant left debt
Ladies Man
Big Spender
Bruiser

Skills
+4 Fight
+4 Fight
+3 Athletics~ Physique
+2 Contacts ~ Investigate~ Notice
+1 Empathy  ~ Rapport    ~ Stealth~ Will

Stunts
Because I'm tough as nails I get a +2 advantage when fighting with my sword

Because I have a Magic ring goblins tend to trust me.

Raymond
--------------------------
Aspects
Wizard College Dropout
I can do that if I wanted to I just don't Care
I think I can figure this out.
Never without a Map
This is just like that game I played when I was young

Skills
Will +4
Lore +3 Fight +3
Stealth +2 Athletics +2 Deceive +2
Contacts Empathy Notice Provoke +1

Stunts
Because I have an elven cloak, I get a +2 when I gain an advantage by hiding
when I'm in a natural environment

Because I accidentally summoned something, once per game I can teleport to a place of the creatures choosing.


My impression is that for a one off adventure Fate is mediocre. Those who have read my Scourge of Demon Wolf know that while I have opportunities for combat and treasure the adventure itself revolves round roleplaying with NPCs and this was no exception.

It involved the rescue of a kidnapped Baron's daughter by a coven of warlocks. Involves the party entering the warlocks three level cliff side dwelling. Inside there are slaves, visiting orc chieftain, a pair of summoned captive demons, a talking dragon skull, the warlocks, and a bunch of captured children.

The magic system was basically using the Lore skills to perform one of the four basic Fate actions with the condition that anything beyond a single target or a single area would be very difficult to accomplish. Other than the I encouraged the mage character to make up his spells.

Combat was relatively quick one of the faster method of resolving combat I have used. The make up your own spells didn't get out of hand. The use of aspects and stunts was constrained by the pool of fate points. For this game the characters had 3 fate points.

Unfortunately there wasn't a lot of opportunities to earn fate points. In the post game discussion it was agree that we could have tried but it would been forced and probably some thing that was silly and very improbable.

We all felt that Fate was better suited for a regular campaign than a one off adventure. That if we to use Fate 'as is' we would flesh out a lot of things especially the magic system. As it was it felt like to much like metagaming. We plan to look at Legend of Angleterre and see how that holds up.

We all liked the use of Fudge Dice and how it added on top of a skill. How opposed rolls were handled. I mention that I am in the midst of making a rule system using Fudge as the foundation.  We also talked about the Fate jargon that littered the rule book.

I am still leaning more towards Fudge and a traditional approach but I am glad I got to run a Fate session.

So what did you download?

Two days ago I organized all the files I posted to blog in one handy list that you can get to by clicking Stuff in the Attic above.

I got a fair amount of hits and it is interesting to see what people were grabbing.

The top ten Letterman style

#10 Ruin Generate
25 you were brave enough to download the source code my Ruin Generate program. It is the raw project although there is some complied EXEs embedded in it.

#9 OSR Primer
28 of you downloaded the OSR Primer a short (shorter than my post yesterday) foldable overview of the OSR hobby. For the record this is what I would use or say if I trying to get somebody to PLAY as opposed to telling what you need to do run a older DnD game.

#8 ADnD Treasure Types
29 of you downloaded ADnD Treasure Types. Normally deep analysis of the mechanics doesn't interest me but it was nice to see that there was a little bit of a pattern to how ODnD and ADnD Treasure Types were allocated.

#6 tie Magic Item Price List
32 of downloaded Magic Item price list. You heathens! How dare you have magic shops in your campaign! In all seriousness I am in the magic shop category mysself and I recognized the ability to buy magic items is one of those big divides from the earliest days of the hobby.

#6 tie  Elf Lord's Temple
32 Good to see one of my rough adventure getting a lot of downloads. This adventure has been well received whenever I run it. One thing I didn't mention is that the map I drew for this dates back 30 years. I have a computation book (not composition) which is a big huge durable book of graph paper used mostly by engineers and scientists. They are expensive but boy they last a long time. As far as I am concerned it is the gold standard of graph paper. The only thing that rivals it is a poster size sheet of 1/4" or 1/5" graph paper.

#5 Hill Fort Battle Map
Interesting that 33 of you downloaded this but only 25 downloaded the Hill Fort Adventure. Miniatures is another of those big divides that stems from the beginning of the hobby. For the record I am also a heavy user of miniatures even in my ODnD games. Dang, magic shops and miniatures I must gunning for being a serious old school heretic ;-)

#4 Magic Wilderlands Price List
40 of you downloaded this. Interesting that only 14 grabbed the short list. A couple of notes on this. First this and the magic creation costs are designed to be printed as a booklet. I recommend Adobe Reader for this. Second if you have people roll up characters for a convention game use the short list if all possible otherwise they will get lost especially when looking for dungeon equipment.

#2 tie Fantasy Demographics
46 of you downloaded this. Nice to see some interest in this. I have found that S John Ross method is about the easiest AND logical method of rolling up the shops in a village. Other methods may be slightly easier but they produce too many weird results. Weird is OK but in moderation. Also 23 of you downloaded the Paris Tax Roll. Way to go and make sure youbust those scofflaws holding out on the king!

#2 tie Adventure Handout (Traveller)
46 of you downloaded this campaign start handout for Traveller. I will look at my original files and see if I can make something editable so it is easy to replace the last section with the particulars of your campaign.

and the #1 download is.....

D&D Next Final Playtest Packet is up.

You can download it from here.

I plan to read it through and will post my thoughts.

The Greyhawk Grognard is concerned about the lack of news on third party license. My feeling is that if Wizards pushes the reuse of older adventures and older styles with D&D Next then it will be a non-issue. Yes it would be nice to have an official stamp. But I think DCC RPG, Castles & Crusades and the diversity of OSR RPGs shows that the difference is a matter of inches and everybody is plundering everybody else material for their campaigns.

To flip it around, Paizo and their Pathfinder line is about as open of a game line as they come however much of has gained little traction among the OSR. Not because they don't produce good stuff of excellent quality but more because the type of game they are aiming doesn't mesh well with what the OSR does. Most of the useful stuff for the OSR they produce are their accessory products like Chase Cards, battle mats, etc.

The take away what going to matter is not the open license but that how Wizards presents their game. Don't get me wrong I would like to see both. Wizards having a nice third party publishing program AND publishes adventures that dovetails nicely with the variety of material the OSR produces. However of the two I think the latter is more important.

Onto the playtest documents and let see if we can clear the tea leaves up a bit.