Kickstarter Wilderlands Map Update

Aside from completing my side of Map 1, I am almost done with all the Rivers. I just finishing swinging around the Ament Tundra and heading into the Ghinor Highlands ultimately to finish with the Southern Reaches.

Coastlines
Islands
Mountains
Hills
River <- here="" p="">Deserts, Forests, Plains, & Swamps
Settlements
Roads
Key

Origins Game Fair Report Part 1

This weekend I headed out to the Origins Game Fair with Tim of Gothridge and Dan from the Monday night gaming group. The drive was about 3.5 hours and we got into check-in around 10am. Word to the wise, PRE-REGISTER. The line was a killer and it took us an hour to get through it. By the time we checked in the line has grown to probably a two hour wait.

Dan grabbed some card game events he wanted and we all signed up for a 8pm DnD Next event. Another word for the wise. Don't sign up for a 8pm event when you have a 3 hour+ drive afterwards.  Then we went to the dealer's area to see what could be had. The first booth we stumbled on was SJ Games and Dan roped me into a munchkin demo game. It was Dan, a nice SJ Games rep, a little girl, and I playing the game. Tim wanted to stretch his legs continued further into the vendor area.

Just before another SJ Games staffer handed me a couple of munchkin bookmarks. If you don't know, these bookmarks are also Munchkin game pieces. The rules are printed on them and you can use them in a variety of way. One of the bookmarks was an Adventure Time! bookmark. The idea was to ask them the time and if they gave an expected answer "It 11:00am" Then you can shout No it is Adventure Time! Mathematica! You then get a Door and Treasure card to put into your hand. But if the person says "It's Adventure Time!" you lose a level.

Figuring that the SJ Game rep was very aware of this, I decided to play a long con. We started playing around 11:15 and Dan had to leave for an event at noon. Shortly in the game I asked Dan about this and got him to tell everybody what time he needed to leave. I noticed that Dan didn't have a watch or his cell phone handy but the SJ Games staffer had a watch. During the next 15 minute I checked my cell phone and reminded Dan about the time. Then 20 minutes I played my initial cards and figured I could stock up with two money. I brought up Dan's deadline and causally asked the SJ Games staffer the time. He looked at the his watch and said it was 11:35. I slapped my hand on the table and loudly announced "No! It adventure time! Mathematica!"

The look on his face was precious when he realized I played him. And then he broke out in a big smile. When I showed Dan and the girl the bookmark they all busted laughing. With a grin I collected my door card and treasure. However don't feel bad for the staffer as it was he who won the game in the end.

After that Dan went to his event and I went shopping. Early on I ran into the Gamescience booth and Lou Zocchi. I filled him in on what was going at Judges Guild and gave him one of my test printouts of the new Wilderlands Map 1. I think he got a kick out of my story about how the Roll20 Virtual Tabletop is using a quantum noise generator as a source for random numbers. I picked up a package of huge numbered 3/8" hex sheets that included some blank wargame chits. In addition to dice the Gamescience booth has an assortment of older material including some Judges Guild. If you are looking for some mint copies he has both the original CSIO and the CS of the World Emperor for a pricey $200.

Continuing on, I ran across the KenzerCo booth. I finally picked the copy of Bag War Saga I wanted. I also admired the sheer awesomeness of their 5th edition Hackmaster books. I passed on buying them. I could afford them but I knew the chances of me using them were near nil.

Then I picked up some pretty dice for my wife, Kelly Anne. Some she keeps for herself and other she will use as toppers on the hair sticks she makes for sale. I found some Lego mini-figures for Gregory my youngest, and bought some Star Trek Heroclixs for my Jamie my oldest son.

At my first Origins I bought some miniature walls and fencing from Acheson Creations. They make their miniatures out of  tough plastic that holds a lot of detail. I looked at their booth again and found they had a bunch of medieval buildings this time. I bought a couple and under pressure from Tim bought some yurt. He said I got to have yurts in my game. Actually they are Pictish round houses but still.

I found a couple of vendors selling D&D and Pathfinder miniatures and bought a couple. I finally have a set of figures I can use for animated statues. It was probably way too expensive I bought one of larger miniatures to surprise the J Squad with at the Gold Star Anime.

Finally in the last rows I found the Columba Games booth. As readers know, Harn is one of my guilty pleasures. I been collecting Harn stuff since 1985. Not only that Columbia Games is always outstanding to deal with. Grant Dalgliesh was there and graciously let me prattle on about Harn for a few minutes. I thanked him for all the great work he and his dad has done over the years. It was a interesting conversation and it was great to see the human side of a company that I been dealing with for a long time.I aided their cause by getting Dan and Tim to buy a couple of the Harn books Columbia Games had at their booth.

The next post will be about DnD Next.

Judges Guild Podcast

A couple of weeks ago the folks at Aethercon interviewed some of the Judges Guild team working on the Wilderlands maps, Robert Bledsaw III, Chris Bernhardt, and myself. If you are interested you can find the podcast here.

The podcast was fun especially with Tim Kask as the moderator. I got to thank him for putting out at Adventure Gaming a short lived magazine he put out after he left TSR. The session quickly devolved into a gaming story swap meet. Mostly focused on how we each experienced the Wilderlands.

Heading to Origins

I will be heading to Origins on Saturday the 14th. Making a roughly 3 1/2 hour road trip with my friends Dan and Tim. Hopefully meet some people, play some games and do some shopping.

I will bringing my Majestic Realms Fudge RPG and dice for sure. I may pack Swords & Wizardry and my digest box of MW supplements as well. I have D&D Next on my iPad if that happens to come up.

So look me up if you happen to be at Origins.

Harn Day in the Attic

It is another Harn Day in the Attic. I got the latest Harnquest from Columbia Games. For those of you who don't Harn is packaged into a series of loose leaf articles that you put into a binder. Columbia Games give an option to subscribe to all their new Harn releases at a discount. The releases are spaced anywhere from 4 to 6 times a year. It is a bit pricey even with the discount but the quality is always outstanding. The releases are a mix of old material that is reprinted and expanded and completely new material.

Minilaous Keep

Minilaous is the seat of a small out of the way Barony in the Kingdom of Kanday in western Harn. Like all newer releases it details the personalities of the inhabitants in greater details and include a section on adventuring hooks. The background of the keep includes details on the legacy of being conquered by the Theocracy of Tekhos (think fanatics on Jihad for a God of the Undead) and the fact it is a seaside community

Chimerae: Centaur.

Chimerae are the various hybrid creatures of legends like the Griffin or Hippogriff. This articles expands the original Chimerae article to include the Centaurs of Harn. It is a short but interesting take on a traditional trope.

Haakapik Inn

 In recent years, Columbia Games has been releasing a series of short articles detailing the inns, taverns and other estabilshments. This is one is about a low rent viking bar. I found it very atmospheric and it features a lot of hooks to generates adventures from. A great resource if you want to run a campaign inspired by History Channel's Vikings.

Moleryn Castle

This is the expanded reprint in this Harnquest. Moleryn is the capital of a frontier province in the Thardic Republic of Harn. The expanded details include more details on the personalities of its inhabitants and details on the castle that is part of Moleryn. I particularly like how the endemic corruption of the Republic was fleshed out and detailed in this version of Moleryn.  Each province of the republic is jointly ruled by a magistrate for civil affairs and a marshal for military. The Magistrate is not even physically present in the town and has turned over his official residence and subordinate offices to his corrupt relatives.

The Harn Guide to Cow Hunting

I been asked where are the rules on Cow Hunting are?

For new reader he is referring to an ignoble refereeing moment which I recount in this post titled Cow in the Attic and Tim gives his version in this post titled The Cow in the Attic - the players POV.

I will show everybody exactly where to find the rules to hunt cows in Harn. Yes I know this is a geeky topic even for geeks like us. But hey some time you just got to dive in.

First you need to know about Cows, this is found in the Cattle Article. In my own binders I placed this in the bestiary section of the Harnmaster Rules. In this six page article are Domestic Bull, Domestic Cow, Domestic Ox, the Auroch (which is very nasty), and the Wisen (bison). There are notes about breeds like the Themeson Dryder, and the Orbalese Longhair.

Second you need to know how to hunt them. In the original incident I used the hunting rules for Harnmaster 1st edition which was found in Harnlore #4. The culprit for culmination of the cow hunt, aside from my poor judgment, was result 48-55 Moose/Cattle on the quarry table. I feel the system itself is quite good, although my judgement in applying it was questionable.

When a character needed to hunt they cast for a trail by rolling against their tracking skill. If they find one, you roll to see how many hours old is it which determines how long it is. Then for each hour traveling you roll against tracking. Good results shorten the trail. Get enough good results you wind up within sight of the quarry. Which of course in this case was a cow.

However these rules have been superseded by a new article on hunting. The new article is now 22 pages and far more comprehensive. There are character info, adventure seeds as well as rules on well... hunting. The old rules pretty revolved around tracking. Now there are straight forward options on ambush hunting, stalking quarry (like the old rules), quarry drives, and pitfall traps. If you don't want that level of details then there is section that abstracts foraging into a single table that yields the number of mandays of rations you find.

With these rules you can setup an ambush for cows, drive cows, trap cows, and of course stalking cows. Or you could say to hell with cows and string up your referee.

You could easily use these rules with classic editions of DnD even without a skill system. Just roll against the appropriate attribute. If you like to roll high add your attribute to a d20 roll and if you roll a 20 or higher you succeed. Harnmaster skill rolls generate four results. Critical Success, Marginal Success, Marginal Failure,  Critical Failure. Harnmaster uses percentile and a roll under skill level system. Any roll ending a 0 or 5 is a critical. Success or failure depends whenever you are under the skill level or over. For d20 roll any roll divisible by 5 is a critical.

So that how you hunt a cow in DnD or Harn.

Judges Guild Kickstarter update: My side of campaign map 1 is done.

Here is the preview.

It is a cartographic style where terrain (mountains, hills) are b/w fills and vegetation is color.