Circle of Dar Janix

Test 2

2012-01-27T18:24:00.001-05:00

Looks like none of the blogs I tried to post have actually been posting after the first one. Let's try this again.

Rich Baker and Steve Winter

2011-12-14T22:32:00.001-05:00

Really WotC?

Title 1

2011-12-14T21:27:00.001-05:00

Test of new blog software

Think Like a Mind Flayer

2011-12-14T20:56:00.001-05:00

What goes on in the mind of a Mind Flayer? How can we ever really understand these strange, alien intelligences in our games?

Well, if they are anything like octopuses, they may have more than one brain. Each of their tentacles might have its own lower level brain. What might this mean from an in-game point of view?

From a mechanical standpoint you may want to use the multiple brains as a kind of buffer against mind effecting attacks. Perhaps the multiple brains offer a bonus to saving throws in those instances. If you want to get a bit more complicated, you could allow separate saving throws for the tentacles and the main brain; it is probably best to use one save for all the tentacles together though to keep the amount of rolls down.

Maybe the extra brains allow it to split its attention in battle without a penalty. If it is knocked unconscious there could be a chance that one of the tentacles could administer a healing potion. It is possible that the mind flayer can farm out some processes to the smaller brains, this could make its thinking very non-linear, creating strange conversations. The mind flayer might also be able to use all the brains I parallel to solve a problem quickly.

What happens if an old mind flayer gets senile? Might its tentacles operate in ways the main brain is not expecting?

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Skyrim

2011-12-01T22:00:00.001-05:00

I am about a week into Skyrim now, and I am enjoying the game quite a bit. I am a big fan of open world games in general, and Bethesda's work specifically. I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing Morrowind and it's various mods and expansion packs. But while I enjoyed Oblivion, I just played through the main story quickly; the enemy leveling system in that game was a real deal breaker for me.

This has been a great console generation for open world games. Oblivion, Fable II, Crackdown, GTA IV, Fallout, New Vegas, and my personal favorite, Red Dead Redemption have all been excellent. I have been really glad to see this kind of gaming come in to it's own on the consoles, mostly because trying to game on a PC has become so irritating and expensive over the last few years. I have pretty much switched to console gaming, and I am glad that my favorite genre has come over with me.

While Bethesda has had many good games before, this one is looking like it will be the most popular. Skyrim is doing more than just selling well, it is much more polished than Bethesda games tend to be at launch. It is also better looking and has better, although still not great, writing. It has not really sacrificed on the freedom, while making it much easier to build your character and follow the main quest if you want to. This could be the big game for Bethesda, the game that is the real breakthrough for them and their style. I think this game has the ability to bring man new players into this style of gaming, the same way that Final Fantasy VII brought so many new players into the JRPG genre on the '90s.

Skyrim is easy to play in short chunks or in long extended sittings. You can advance the main quest and not feel like you are blocking yourself off from coming back to the side missions later. I have always loved the dungeons in Elder Scrolls games, the have a nice mix between finished areas, mines, and natural caves. While the dungeons do get a bit repetitive, the all are a mixture of cave-like and finished areas, and they all have an improbable one way secret door that lets you get back to the start, they are well designed and beautiful.

My first time through, I am playing a stealth archer. I almost never play stealth characters in RPGs; I almost always play a sword and board fighter. I am already planning out my next play through as a dark elf mage.

I will be getting my money's worth out of this one.

D&D Encounters Session 1

2011-12-01T20:09:00.001-05:00

This week I played in the first session of the new D&D Encounters season at my new FLGS, Big Larry's in Leonardtown, MD. We were supposed to start last week, but it was the night before Thanksgiving; kind of poor planning on WotC's part. We had a full group of 6 players, and the store is a great setting to game in. It is a game and comic book store, and a burger/ice cream place. I think that is a great idea.

This was not my first time playing 4e, but it is my first time in a long time. I ran Keep on the Shadowfell when it first came out, and I also ran a campaign through most of heroic tier in the first year of 4e. The only time I have played it since was at the 2010 GenCon Open, the Podgecast guys and I got destroyed in the first encounter. I enjoyed 4e, but had no real desire to run it long term. I looked forward to being a player for one encounter a week though.

There are plenty of recaps out there of session one, so if you want the plot just look around a bit; it is basically Romeo and Juliet. Or maybe it is West Side Story, perhaps there will be dance-fighting and a lot of snapping later on.

The encounter itself is the usual RPG introductory encounter against "goblins". In this case the goblins wee some kind of blue fae. I had a good time, mostly because the group is full of nice guys, but the main weakness of the system was apparent even in the first session. It took two hours to kill a handful of first level monsters. The time between your turns is way too long. If you are with a group of funny guys, this isn't really a problem, but there is really no reason for it to be like this.

10,000 Words

2011-12-01T19:55:00.001-05:00

Alexis has challenged himself to write a 10,000 word post in one day. He lays out some pretty tough criteria for his self-challenge as well. I look forward to reading it.

I am pretty sure I could never pull that off so more power to him. I do have a three day weekend though...

Adventurer Conqueror King

2011-11-21T22:11:00.001-05:00

This year at GenCon, I had the pleasure of spending almost an entire day playing Adventurer Conqueror King. I picked up the game at the OSR booth when I got my copy of Cheers, Gary. When I picked up ACKs I was given a flyer for a demo game during the con. A little after noon on Saturday I showed up hoping to see what made the game so special.

I played in an afternoon session that highlighted the "Conqueror" level of the game. We were exploring the depths of Alex's megadungeon, when we happened on an odd room with a strange metal disk. After some experimenting we determined that the disk was a levitation device and we figured out how to control it. As we ventured further into the dungeon we found a strange magical sword made only of light. We were ambushed by a mind flayer and almost killed, we managed to defeat him and escape. Sadly one of our number lost his genitalia in the fight.

After the session the Autarch guys were nice enough to let some of us come eat dinner with them. We had a pleasant meal while discussing gaming, ancient history, and great con artists.

After dinner we set up for a "King" round. This was a good demonstration of the realm management rules. We each had our own domain to run as we dealt with a coming threat of invasion. The real rules worked well, and they worked fast. We got to task our minions to run different missions and investigate leads. What was cool about this was that the characters we were asking to do these missions were characters of the "Adventurer" and "Conqueror" levels.

In the final session we split up. Some of us played "Adventurer" level characters on the missions we had assigned them, while others played "King" level characters in a giant mass combat. I took part in the "Adventurer" group, run by Tavis, and played a sexy bard with crazy charm skills. We invaded an underground lair and I charmed my way through some wererats. Hijinks ensued during our escape, and overall the game was a blast.

After our session we all got back together and learned what the other group had been up to. It turns out that during the mass combat, one of the players had ridden the disk and killed a green dragon with a magic sword. Let's put this another way, he killed a green dragon with a lightsaber while riding a hoverboard.

In all I played ACKs for almost 11 hours on Saturday, a marathon session to do my high school years proud. This was the best day of gaming I have ever had a convention. The game was great, and seemed aimed at recreating those great, lost days from my youth. I hope to play ACKs again at another con, I live in MD which is halfway in-between the NY and NC locations of the creators. This has to be possible.

Buying LotFP Again

2011-11-21T21:40:00.001-05:00

What would make me buy a new version of LotFP? Recently Raggi mentioned that the level system might be on the chopping block if there was a third edition of LotFP. This got me thinking about what changes to the game would make me interested in buying a new version. I think removing, or changing, the level system would be a change that would get me interested.

I would like to see changes that support the style of play found in Raggi's modules and that he describes in LotFP. I hope he will either remove levels or drastically change the way they work. The D&D power curve does not really fit with the overall tone of Raggi's stuff. While the original LotFP addresses this to some extent (only fighters advance at fighting), I'd like to see him go further.

I would also like to see Demi-humans removed. While they are part of the original game that LotFP is evolved from, they just don't seem to fit with the overall tone. Maybe they could be replaced with nonstandard races. Raggi doesn't like to use standard monsters, why not remove the traditional races as well. Or they could just be replaced with character classes that have similar abilities, but I hope he goes further, much further. I hope he goes weird.

The have been a recent group of retro-clones like Adventurer, Conqueror, King and Crypts and Things that have focused on developing certain areas of the game. There have also been games like Xplorers, Stars Without Number, and Mutant Future that have taken the old games and run in a new direction with them. I think LotFP wants to be more like the latter than the former in many ways. It seems to aspire to more than just a weird take on the old game.

I hope that whatever Raggi does in a new edition, if there ever is one, will be enough to tempt me into buying it. I hope he decides to go very, very weird.

GenCon Overview

2011-11-15T22:35:00.001-05:00

That's right, I am going to do a GenCon post in mid-November. This year's GenCon was my favorite yet. As always the best part of the convention was the people I room with, The Podgecast guys. If Adam/David did not set up the rooms I would never be able to go.

This year was the first time I ever played a deck building game, I played Ascension and Thunderstone. I found Thunderstone to be a far superior game, it offered far more interesting choices during the game. Ascension was far more dependent on what cards were drawn, and we did not draw good ones. We drew only one type of card for the entire first half of the game, and another type for the second half. We got lots of items, but for the first half there was nothing to use them against. The other players assured me that this was rare and it only happened due to our proximity to Eric, but honestly, the fact that this happened shows a weakness in the game to me.

Another first for me this year was surviving a game of WEGS. WEGS is an insane "old skool" game that has some of the most ridiculously baroque play mechanics I have ever seen. I won't even try to explain it. Let's just say that I only play it once a year, and I love it. This year the GM failed to kill me for the first time. Granted, I ran away when the last fight started to look bad, and my team wound up beating it anyway. I will not even pretend that my cowardly ways bother me. As far as I am concerned, I WON WEGS!!!!

Another great experience was playing All for One, a gothic horror/Three Musketeers game from Paul "Wiggy" Wade. The game uses the Ubiquity System found in Hollow Earth Expedition. The game is fast moving and a lot of fun. The Ubiquity System is perfect for a swashbuckling Three Musketeers game. I highly recommend it.

I have two more games from the con that I want to discuss, Adventurer, Conqueror, King and Vornheim. One I played and one I purchased. They will each be getting their own post in the next few days.

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My Favorite OSR Products

2011-11-14T21:44:00.001-05:00

The Underdark Gazette asks what your favorite OSR products are. My answers below, in no specific order:

1) Stonehell
2) Vornheim
3) Adventurer Conqueror King
4) Death Frost Doom
5) Hammer of the Gods
6) The Grinding Gear
7) Knockspell
8) Fight On!
9) Castle of the Mad Archmage
10) Dragons at Dawn

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Running a FLGS Game with Strangers

2011-11-14T20:42:00.001-05:00

This year was a first for me. I ran a game, in a gaming store, without knowing any of the players before I started. In fact, for the first few weeks I had only one player.

The opportunity to run this game came out of Troll Con East. This was a convention put on by Troll Lord Games at All Things Fun, a gaming store in Berlin, NJ. Steve and Tim from Troll Lord came down and ran Castles and Crusades. At the end of the con I volunteered to run a Castles and Crusades game at the store.

I have never run a pick up game at a store before. I have always had at least one known player before starting a game. I spent some time thinking about what I wanted from the game, and what would work in the conditions I had to work with.

I have always wanted to run a game in the City State of the Invincible Overlord. Not just a game that used the City State as a home base, or visited every once and a while, but a game that never left. A game in a game store where I might have players dropping in and out all the time works really well in an urban setting, it is very easy to introduce new characters and to explain why some characters are not the that week.

I wanted to run a sandbox game. My games have always trended towards the sandbox style anyway. I have never been a "master plotter" DM, I have always know what the NPCs would do if the players did nothing and then gone from there. A sandbox game also works well in a game store setting where you may not have consistent players. It does not depend on having central PCs who are tightly woven into the plot. There is the current state of the city and NPCs, and the players can alter that state by their actions, but even if I have a whole new group the next session we can plow ahead.

I wanted there to be a story with objectives. In order to make this work with the constraints of an in-store game, I had to find a way to keep it modular, yet connected. I decided to use what I call "The Bioware Method". Almost all Bioware games work the same way, there is a central hub and three or four quest lines that the player can choose from. The player can bounce back and forth between these quest lines and does not have to complete them in any specific order. Sometimes actions taken in one quest line can effect another. Once all the quest lines are completed, the story advances in a big way and another set of quests opens up. This is a tried and true formula for Bioware, they have been at it since computers had a turbo button.

I thought the Bioware Method would work well in a game store setting. It still left the characters completely free to operate in the sandbox. They could put aside the quests whenever they wanted to explore. It also allowed for players dropping in and out to work on different goals within the same overall story.

Armed with these main ideas I created my campaign. I did not have to do any real world building, since I was working with the CSIO. I created a group that promulgated fake prophecies, sat on them for a few centuries, and then "filled" them to manipulate people. The characters worked for this group, working to make several different parts of the same prophecy come true. They were also free to explore the City State at will as a sandbox.

There were a few challenges in getting the game going. For the first several weeks only one player showed up. He stuck in there, and I made an entourage of NPCs for him to adventure with. Several of these NPC proved to be popular with the players and they continued to adventure with them even once they had a full group. Another challenge was that D&D Encounters was running at the same time, the next table over. We managed to turn this into an opportunity though, and exploited it. Through boisterous role-playing, and crazy character voices we poached players from D&D for our own group. We did get some concerned looks from time to time though.

Several other factors, beyond my control, contributed to the game being a success:

Castles & Crusades. This is an ideal system for this kind of game. You can teach anyone to play it in minutes. Almost everyone who has ever played a RPG before essentially already knows how to play it. Any material from any edition of D&D can be adapted for use, pretty much on the fly. Yes, even 4th edition stuff.

All Things Fun. Without a doubt the most supportive game store I have ever been involved with. While they sold C&C products there, they probably did not make a whole bunch of money off us being there (unless you include Dr. Pepper), yet they still promoted our game with tweets and pictures of us playing. If you are in South Jersey, go to their store and spend money.

My Group. I have had the pleasure of playing with many great players over the years. Some were good at roleplaying, some were tactically clever, some really added to the world, but this group stood out. I don't know that I have ever had a group where there were so many players that were just plain good at the game before. I am not talking about their RP skills or their ability to tactically destroy my monsters, I am talking about their ability to play The Old Game. To take the weird things I threw at them and use them to achieve their goals, to play the different factions present in the sandbox against each other for their own gain. I am not talking about building a powerful character to defeat the mathematical challenges of the game, I am talking about raw skill at playing the game. They observed the random weird things I threw at them and figured out how to leverage them, they used things that I didn't even know the use for to achieve goals they had set for themselves, and they always gamed a way to keep low probability dice rolls to a minimum. The played The Old Game, Gary's Game, and they kicked it's ass.

My Stonehell group is also a great group, but in a completely different way. They each have their own skill sets, a great mapper that is always catching where the secret door has to be, a daredevil willing to risk every crazy statue and fountain, a tireless tactician, a master of long term strategy (a real hp per day guy), and most important, someone who knows recognizes the have reached the best solution they are likely to get and tells them to get moving. They combine for an awesome group, this C&C group was the first time I ever encountered a group where everyone had the same style, and was so good at it.

OK I am done raving about how lucky a DM I am to have my two groups. I thoroughly enjoyed running an in-store game, hopefully some of you will find the things I related here helpful in your own game.

Oh, one of my players was Drance, you can catch his blog at Once More Unto the Breach

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Finally back

2011-11-14T19:33:00.001-05:00

Hello,
I don't know if anybody is still out there but I am finally clear of law school, bar study, and my trip to Viet Nam. I am settled in at a regular 9 to 5 (actually 7 to 4) job again as a lawyer for the U.S. Government in MD. Working for the Federal Government was my goal entering law school, so it is Mission Accomplished over here. I enjoy law, but money is a horrible motivator for me, knowing I am helping my fellow citizens makes me eager to get in every day.

From a blogging standpoint this is also good news. I know my postings have been pretty slim around here for the last year or so, but I have built up a good backlog of posts so you should be seeing a lot more, even if I have busy periods.

While things have been bleak on the blogging front, they have been great on the gaming front. For a period of time over the last year I had three regular games going at once: an OSRIC game in Stonehell (DM), a Pathfinder game (Player), and a Castle and Crusades game set in the City State of the Invincible Overlord (CK). The Stonehell game continues and we will be playing a session this weekend. The Castles and Crusades group carries on without me with Drance from Once More Unto the Breach at the helm.

I will be checking out my FLGS here in southern MD on Wed. for D&D encounters, to try to meet some local gamers. While my ultimate goal is to get players for some old school gaming, I am also excited to try out the Encounters format. I ran a 4th Ed. game through most of the heroic tier when the game was released and enjoyed it. I admit that I have not paid much attention to 4th Ed since then, so I will basically be a noob.

I went to GenCon again this summer, and I will have some (very late) things to say about that. I also acquired Hexographer/Dungeonographer and I have been making maps and write-ups of some very, very old adventures I wrote using those programs. I hope to post some of those soon.

As a sign of good faith, you will be getting another post from me.... Now

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C&C Dragonlance Session 1

2011-06-03T00:51:00.005-04:00

I had the week off at All Things Fun as CK as Drance was stepping in to run a post War of the Lance Dragonlance game. The following is my recap, in character, as Sir Grant, Knight of Solamnia:

Attention Grand Council, I hereby submit my weekly report.

My colleagues Oisin, Keseim, and I arrived in Zaradine today in hopes of finding a ship to take us to Sankrist. Upon entering the town, one of the low folk, a sailor I believe, approached me and offered his aid in finding lodging. He lead us to the Three Fishes Inn and I compensated him with enough payment to be an incentive to further aid his brothers but not enough to encourage the laziness so common amongst his class.

Once inside, my entourage and I took seats near an elf maid named Kale. I observed that she partook only of vegetables and ale. While my low-born retainers imbibed sinful beverages, I declared that no spirits would pass these virtuous lips. Sadly the wine the owner brought me was not fit for a gully dwarf.

Shortly after we began to eat Quint the Odoriferous crossed the threshold of the inn. I must say that his moniker is well earned, he smelled of rotting fish with a hint of muskrat four days departed. His condition elicited much merriment amongst the low-born in the common room. Quickly I berated both the snickering serfs for their lack of charity and the wretch for his lack of dignity. I was in the midst of explaining the virtue of cleanliness, when I was approached by a lout named Erol. Erol, who claimed to be part of some common-bred militia, informed me that Quint was a Leper.

I quickly determined that a Leper was in fact a human inflicted by some curse. I suggested that we set about killing the foul sorcerer that had cursed him at once! I was shouted down by the superstitious rabble in the room who were under the impression that no evil magic was at work here. To my dismay, even my retainers subscribed to this insane "germ theory", insisting that this was not the result of witchcraft.

I suggest that an inquiry be launched to determine what kind of creature or man is turning humans into Lepers.

As soon as that disturbance settled down I was approached by Giffery Goldenfingers, a lute bearing minstrel conversant in the Tales of Huma. He informed me that one week prior to our meeting, a woman had been murdered by the docks. He further disclosed that her skull had been penetrated by long cylindrical bores approximately the circumference of a late Romantic Period silver piece. Applying the forensic skills that I will soon gain in your training, I determined that she was the victim of a Mind Flayer.

Seconds after I annunciated my hypothesis, we were attacked by two kender. Their lack of fear, and distant expression allowed me to conclude that they were in fact in thrall to the foul Illithid that had murdered the poor wench by the docks. Sadly, my companions allowed them to egress from the inn without seizing them.

Goldenfinger proceeded to tell me that the town had been suffering from repeated attacks by a mixed force of goblins, hobgoblins, and gnolls. The humanoids had not yet breached the town's defenses, a fact that perplexed me considering the sad state of the palisade and the unremarkable pedigree of the defenders.

At this point our repast arrived, a spread that the inn keeper claimed contained beef. Upon tasting this "beef", I was immediately in fear for the well being of my horse, Oedipus. I initially feared that our spread consisted of our faithful steeds. This turned out to not be the case.

How my horse came by the name, "Oedipus", is a tawdry tale that I will not repeat here. Let us just say that he has only one eye as a result of those unfortunate incidents.

At this point Goldenfingers was attempting to engage me on the finer points of Huma-lore. "Mr. Goldenfingers," I asked, "do you expect me to talk?"

"No sir," he replied, "I expect you to dine!"

Sadly, the sad state of our meal prevented this, so I retired to burnish my armor.

Upon returning to the common room, surrounded by that special glow that one gets only after a vigorous waxing of the codpiece, I learned that we were to seek the advice of the local wizard, Martin. When we arrived at Martin's run down shack, I watched in horror as my manservant, Keseim, stood outside the door in apparent fear. I instructed him to observe as I declared my presence like a man. A sharp knock on the door, and a bold announcement of my station summoned the wizard promptly. Sadly, Keseim was playing with a snake instead of paying attention.

Martin told us that he had recently felt a magical disturbance emanating from an old burial ground to the south of town. We departed at once for the unconsecrated cemetery to the south. We found the necropolis in a state of ill repair. I at once set off to right some grave stones that had been allowed to topple. As I approached, Kale drew my attention to a sod covered accumulation of earth nearby. I must say, I was surprised to see that Kale was with us, I had not retained her, and had not noticed that she was accompanying us.

I gently probed her grassy mound with my lance. Without delay, it ejaculated a strange, gaunt, form. The beast attacked me, but I deflected its blow with my sinistral shield. It was in that moment that I determined that these were Mind Flayer thralls disguised as undead.

The cleric Oisin felled my adversary with his morningstar; Kale recovered quickly from the shocking consummation of our exploration and slew another with her bastard sword. I charged one to the right and ran him through. The elf made quick work of another opponent and my lance claimed another. Keseim made a vain attempt to damage one with some kind of gilded arrow. I put a stop to the fight with a smart right wheel and a thrust of my spear through the remaining wretch.

As the din died down, we heard a rustling in the nearby copse. A goblin jumped out and shewed his bare anus to our party. I made at once to attack them, when my manservent informed me that there were two score and three knights on the way. I thought the cavaliers had come to aid us, but instead they were seeking our aid in repelling an attack on the town. Keseim clarified that we faced a false column, meant to distract us from the real battle.

Our arrival at town must have scared off the other invaders, for I saw no sign of them.

I shall continue my investigation in to this Mind Flayer, I strongly suspect that he is using the demihumans as a distraction from his real plot.

Charm Person

2011-04-22T02:22:00.003-04:00

This post at Toa of D&D got me thinking about the history of Charm Person. This post has nothing to do with the substance of his, very interesting, post. It was just inspired by the opening discussion. In Men & Magic the spell is described:

This spell applies to all two-legged, generally mammalian figures near to or less than man-size, excluding all monsters in the "Undead" class but including Sprites, Pixies, Nixies, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and Gnolls. If the spell is successful it will cause the charmed entity to come completely under the influence of the Magic-User until such a time as the "charm" is dispelled (Dispel Magic). Range: 12"

In OD&D there was no limitation as to what the MU could make his victim do. He could force him to commit suicide, or commit acts against his alignment. This situation remained unchanged in Holmes, where the only changes have to do with the duration. It is not until the PHB and Moldvay that there are restrictions (suicide and alignment) on what the MU can force his victim to do. While, as Alexis points out, the debate around Charm Person tends to center on if it would be too powerful to allow suicide, I cannot help but wonder if the real reason that these changes were made involved PR instead of play balance.

In the '70s and early '80s the American public became very concerned about cults. There was a decade of incidents bookended by the Manson Family and Jonestown involving charismatic leaders convincing their followers to do horrible things. Jonestown was in November and the PHB was in June (I think) of 1978 so obviously that event had not happened yet, but the issue had been growing in the American consciousness since the late '60s. While not strictly a cult, the bizarre events surrounding the Patty Hearst kidnapping have a Charm Person feel to them.

While there is no doubt that the debate around Charm Person has mainly been about power level, I wonder if the initial reason for the change had more to do with distancing themselves from cult incidents in the news. This is all speculation on my part, and may be groundless.

I Hate Law School

2011-03-31T14:02:00.003-04:00

OK, bar applications are done, moot court is finished, and I just did my oral defense for my research paper. I still am without a job for after the bar, but I should be back to posting on a regular basis now that I am through hell month.

Both my long-running Stonehell game, and my Castles and Crusades game on Wed. nights continue.

Hot Elf Chick

2011-03-10T16:03:00.003-05:00

I'll admit that the title and the picture were a trap. At the urging of The Underdark Gazette, I am hoping to attract lapsed gamers back into the fold. If you used to play D&D as a kid, and ever stop to wonder what happened to that game, welcome home.

Death in the City State: Session 1

2011-03-08T19:29:00.002-05:00

Last night I ran my first Castles and Crusades game at All Things Fun in Berlin, NJ. I only had one player show up, but we had fun anyway. I set the game in The City State of the Invincible Overlord, in the same campaign world as my OSRIC Stonehell game.

The adventure kicked off with the player waking up shackled to a wall. He had no memory of how he got there, but was sure he had been tortured. After a few minutes a jailer came in to take him back to his cell. After he was unchained he charmed the jailer and convinced him to let him go. During his conversation with the jailer he learned that he was being held for the assassination of the Invincible Overlord and that the City was in chaos.

He made his way out of the tower and on to the wall. When he heard guards and dogs approaching he jumped from the wall onto the roof of a building in a shanty town that had grown up along the outside of the wall. He fell through the roof but was not seriously hurt in the fall. He quickly made his way from the abandoned portion of the slum to a run down tavern.

He rolled a drunk outside the tavern to get a disguise and went fishing for information inside. He found a silver gambling plate from the Silver Eel Inn in the city state in his own pocket when putting on the disguise. He decided to sneak back into the City and investigate the Inn. He climbed back in through a sewer pipe and entered down the block from the brutal repression of a riot by the City's forces. He slipped away into the night.

Next Game: Wed. 3/23 (I have Spring Break next week) at 6pm. All are welcome.

A Blog You Should Be Reading

2011-03-08T19:17:00.002-05:00

If you like old school D&D, or just well written blogs you need to check out The Tao of D&D. The first thing I do when I fire up Reader every day is rush to read Grognardia, Torch, Pole, and Rope, LotFP, Greyhawk Grognard, and flip through the various video game blogs to which I subscribe. Tao of D&D is different, I save it. It isn't something I can read while I am in class, it is something I like to take my time and think about while I read. I do not always agree with Alexis, but he has one of the most thought provoking blogs in RPGs. He also goes into insane (the good kind) detail. You will walk away from his blog with good ideas for your game, and probably having learned something new about history, or geography.

Gaming for Charity

2011-03-05T22:26:00.003-05:00

I recently offered a game of D&D as an item to bid on for my law school's charity auction. I think I am going to cheat a little bit and actually run Castles and Crusades for the winner of the auction. It is just much easier to teach a total outsider.

Wilderness Rules: The Wilderness Turn

2011-03-05T21:55:00.003-05:00

My wilderness rules saw their first use in play tonight. I was pretty happy with the results, they moved fast and made the travel just tense enough. They also gave the players plenty of choices on how to spend their two main resources, time and food. I am going to continue to revise these rules through play, and I have only completed the arctic environment tables (all I need right now). These are not especially original, but they do make wilderness exploration fun. I am heavily influenced by the Wilderness Survival Guide, but I have no interest in its unwieldy nature. My goal was to develop a streamlined wilderness system that still has enough depth to present the players with interesting choices. I am aiming for something like the fun of Oregon Trail.

I am pretty happy with my turn structure. This is my Wilderness Turn (1 day):

Food Phase
Travel Phase
Travel Phase
Camp Phase
Food Phase
Rest Phase

Food phase: Characters must eat 2 meals a day. If they only eat 1 meal they suffer a -1 to all rolls. If they do not eat at all they are subject to starving. All of the Hunting, Fishing, and Foraging table results are expressed in meals.

Travel Phase: During each Travel Phase the characters can move half a day's movement. The can also substitute other actions for a Travel Phase:

Extra Rest Phase: This can help make up for not getting a good or complete night's sleep
Forage for food and water
Hunt
Fish
Explore: Get more detail about the hex they are in

Camp Phase: The characters roll on the camp table to determine if they find a place where they can get a good night's sleep.

Rest Phase: This is when characters sleep, and memorize spells.

Random Encounters: Random Encounters are usually rolled for twice each day. Once during the Travel Phases and once during the Rest Phase. They can take several forms:

Monster encounter
Traveler encounter
Environmental Challenge
Weird Encounter

I will be discussing my rules and the tables that go along with them in more depth.

Shadow, Sword & Spell

2011-03-03T22:36:00.004-05:00

One of my favorite purchases at GenCon this year was James M.'s Shadow, Sword & Spell. Rogue Games has just released a preview of Shadow, Sword and Spell: Expert. I am looking forward to this.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I appreciate that the cover is blue in the Expert book

'70s Sci Fi

2011-03-03T14:45:00.002-05:00

When I was talking about running a game that would look like '70s sci fi I was thinking of something more like this:

And less like this:

See the excellent Space 1970 blog for more examples

TrollCon East Day 2

2011-02-27T02:25:00.002-05:00

Just got home from TrollCon, I had a lot of fun. I played Castles and Crusades for close to 10 hours today. The game is a great fast and loose system. Steve from TLG is a great GM, and there were plenty of great players.

I volunteered to run a C&C game every Monday at 6:30 in All Things Fun, Berlin, NJ. If you are in the Camden County/Philly area, feel free to come out. I am thinking about making it a West Marches style game, so people can drop in and out with overall campaign progress. It starts this Monday.

TrollCon East Day 1

2011-02-26T00:40:00.004-05:00

Just got back from the first day of TrollCon East, it was a lot of fun. All Things Fun is a great store, and the owner is super-nice. We did not game tonight, I got to sit at a table with four other people and listen to the guys from Troll Lord Games talk about Castles & Crusades, the gaming industry, and driving across the country. A totally entertaining evening. I also got a digest edition of the elusive Castle Keeper's Guide. It is real, I am holding it in my hands.

On the Road to the Tomb of Horrors

2011-02-24T15:35:00.003-05:00

Michael Curtis, at the Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope, has posted a really cool idea for a campaign culminating with a run at the Tomb of Horrors. As soon as I read this it brought to mind an area like the Valley of Kings, full of trapped filled tombs to be plundered. This could be a lot of fun, especially if the game was more Swords and Sorcery influenced and focused on Conan style warriors instead of the classic party set-up. This would require that the referee has thought the traps all the way through so that the players could reason through avoiding/disarming them (this will not be news to old school players). There are several great books out there with detailed drawings and explanations of the working of traps.

It doesn't really matter what edition the books are intended for since we are after the diagrams here.

Reviving This Blog

2011-02-24T14:58:00.003-05:00

I am going to attempt to revive this blog. Law school is taking less of my time now that it is drawing to a close, and I have a lot of stuff built up that I can write about. I also have some projects that I have started working on that I will cover here. They are all intended for my personal use, so I will offer them here for anyone else who wants to tinker with them or comment on them.

@ttack: A stripped down version of early fantasy role-playing games that will emulate the play in a roguelike. It will focus on random item identification, random dungeons, and solo/referee-less play
Inspired by my latest read-through of the LotFP Referee Manual, I have decided to make up a list of unique monsters. I want to shift the enemies in my game away from the standard roster and move towards the unique and mysterious. These will be monsters to be used rarely, that will be completely unknown to the players
My own detailed wilderness exploration rules. There is likely a long wilderness trek in the near future of my Stonehell campaign. I want it to focus on man versus nature more than random monster encounters. I will need these rules to allow for more detail than what is general included in core rulebooks, but not reach the insanity present in the Wilderness Survival Guide. I will be covering many of the same areas of the WSG but in less detail.
First: A sci-fi game inspired by '70s sci-fi TV like Space:1999. The game will center in humanity's first faster-than-light ship. The ship was built by a conglomeration of state, super-state, military, and business interests. Each interest will have different objectives it wants to achieve from the exploration mission. The players will play the representatives of those different interests and try to sway a weak captain, while having to work together to survive. While I want to keep the cool silver jumpsuit/mini-skirt aesthetic of the period's shows, I will be limiting aliens to the really alien. No people with funny foreheads.
I may be running an introductory game soon for people that have never played before. I want to use a vampire, but not the modern angsty and sparkly kind. I want an old-time, aristocrat vampire that literally leaches off the poor folk. I also want the vampire to be a surprise. I want to use LotFP for this.
A con game involving monster hunting with miniatures. I was inspired by a recent article in Wargamer Illustrated about a medieval monster hunting wargame. I want to do it with a bidding system instead of dice. It will involve a small number of miniatures and terrain. I would like to run it at a con and have the winner take the game home with them.
A cyberpunk game using old school style rules that features the tunnels under Paris and the 'net as two parallel megadungeons.

These are the things I am planning on working on over the next year. My Stonehell game continues and has passed the one year mark at this point. The players have pretty much cleared out the first level and have started to make tentative forays into the second level. They have had their first encounters with the highly trained hobgoblins. The Knights of Dar Janix have taken over their base town, this offers new chances to learn spells, but there are strings attached. The ranger teleported himself to a far away cave in an arctic wasteland. A cave that shows signs of being of ancient dwarf construction. The ranger will face a long trek back to his party across uncharted wilderness.

GenCon

2010-08-03T21:36:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody, I will be at GenCon this weekend. If any of you are coming I hope to run into you. You can find me at rmckee78 on twitter, or on gmail for those of you who know how to get me there. You can also just comment on my blog at Tragically Trad and I'll get an notification.

My New Home

2010-07-21T21:30:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone, I am moving to be part of another blog. From now on I will be posting at Ideology of Madness in a column named Tragically Trad. This will allow me to reach a larger audience, and will help with the fact that law school can make my posting a bit irregular since there are a bunch of columns there.

I will be covering some ground again. I don't know that I will review every issue again, but I am certainly going to use the increased exposure to talk about Knockspell, Fight On!, and the retro-clones.

You may have a few questions:

What the heck is "Trad"?
"Trad" is a somewhat insulting term that story game people use to describe traditional gaming. Get it, TRADitional?

What's with the rat tails? I got this one from Luke Meyer on the Podgecast. He jokingly claims that all trad gamers have rat tails because that was the haircut of the era.

I have adopted these two things to have some fun with them.

This blog is going to stay here. It is possible that I may still se it for my campaign recaps (of which I am many, many behind). I have not decided yet.

Thank you Grodog for keeping after me about the blog and, for just being a nice internet guy. I will be getting to Knockspell, S&W, and the Adventure Design Deskbook as soon as I get back up to NJ where I accidently left them two weeks ago.

DexCon

2010-04-03T02:05:00.001-04:00

I have sent in proposals to run two games at DexCon in July. I proposed running the gatehouse from Stonehell and my own mini-sandbox city. Both using Labyrinth Lord

Customer Service

2010-03-29T17:45:00.003-04:00

The RPG Blog II pointed out that MWP pricing for the Cortex .pdf didn't make any sense. So they changed the price!

My Kingmaker Pathfinder issue showed up with a broken spine, I emailed Paizo and they are sending me a new one.

Good customer service does still exist.

Old School Tweets

2010-03-26T00:18:00.001-04:00

Anyone know of any good old school tweeters I should be following? I am rmckee78 on there too

Dear,

2010-03-23T20:12:00.003-04:00

Anarchists
Socialists
Libertarians
Porn Stars
Pro-wrestlers
Lion Tamers
Republican Congressmen
Southern Baptist Ministers
Pagans
Rabbis
Witches
Librarians
Accountants
Lawyers
Yale Graduates
GEDs
MBAs
Communists
Doctors
Cashiers
Bankers
Music Critics
IT Professionals
Video Game Designers
Public School Teachers
Engineers
Housewives
Stay-at-home Dads
Artists
Garbage Men
Whale Trainers
American Idol Contestants
Pen and Paper Game Designers
RPG Bloggers

I'd gladly play D&D with any of you. Yes, even after this week RPG Bloggers.

Stonehell: Advancement

2010-03-17T00:20:00.002-04:00

I recently was asked in a comment if there was enough gold in Stonehell to support the training costs in OSRIC for gaining a level. According to the OSRIC rules it costs 1500 gp per level to gain a level in training costs. I am using the entourage system in my game so there are 4 players but each also has a dedicated henchman. I would like for there to be enough gold on the first level for all of the primary characters and main henchman to advance to level 2, even if some of the henchman don't get enough XP until later. This means there will need to be around 12,000 gp.

Some notes about my calculations:

1. This includes only the first level of the dungeon even though we also are playing the above ground areas.

2. I am including only treasure. I am not including the gold gained by selling weapons and armor taken off corpses. I am assuming that most of this goes to equipment, supplies, hirelings etc.

3. I am not including obscure things like selling natural resources to an alchemist.

Here are the rough amounts for each area:

1-A: 2700
1-B: 6500
1-C: 10000
1-D: 1483
Total: 20,734 gp

I am well over the required 12,000 gp. Even if they do not find all the treasure and some 2nd level characters die and additional expenses are incurred we have a good safety margin here.

So far it seems safe to apply training costs from OSRIC in Stonehell. In fact it almost seems like there would be too much gold laying around unless you do charge for training.

Bad News for Catalyst

2010-03-16T18:41:00.003-04:00

One of the RPG darlings of the last few years is in bad shape. From RPG.net by way of Fear the Boot:

OK, as you may well have been able to surmise from release schedules, Catalyst Game Labs is in a bit of a financial pickle, and it is somewhat unlikely that they will retain the license to make Shadowrun products. This is not because Shadowrun hasn't been selling enough to cover expenses, but merely because a significant quantity of money is missing outright. Reliable sources put this figure at roughly $850,000. Which sounds like a lot, and it is. It is roughly 40% of Catalyst's entire sales for last year, missing over a three year period. There will of course be lawsuits, and there are already people drawing up legal documents accusing Loren Coleman of having hired people to construct an extension on his house through the company as "freelance writers" and somehow reporting an estimated $100,000 of convention sales as $6,000. Whether that is actually true or not is - of course - a matter for the courts to decide. And decide they presumably will.

But what that means for Catalyst as a company is pretty bad. It costs several dollars to print a book even when the pdfs are finished and ready for publication. A print run of say, 50,000 books (like the print run of Runner Havens) would cost somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000 to print and ship to distributors. And while it eventually sold to distributors at ~$15 a book (a total take home of $750,000), it did so over a period of three years, during which time they were paying interest on loans and paying for storage, and advertisement and so on and so forth. A book like that isn't actually taking home half a million in profits. Which is a bad thing, because it means that even if there was a complete book printed and ready to sell, even a total and rapid sell through would not pull the company out of the financial hole it is in - and the shortfall means that it does not have the cash on hand to start the ball rolling with a new major printing.

The tiny amount of drachmas that are left in the coffers are being used to print up tiny print runs of books that have sold through - another 3,000 books of Runner's Companion for example (~$15,000 to start up, maybe $30-40k towards paying creditors if it sells out). There simply is not the startup cash to bring upcoming books like the SR4 sixth world almanac or corporate guide forward. The writing is there, but the printing costs are not. Beyond that, the freelancers have not been paid, and some of them are withholding copyright until they are - meaning that even a tiny print run of these new materials is simply not possible.

Many SR writers are quitting, have already quit, or have handed in notices contingent on demands which - word on the street - will not be met. And CGL does not even own Shadowrun, it leases the intellectual property from Topps. It seems unlikely that they will be able to make their licensing payment when the contract comes up for renewal - in a couple of months. At that time, CGL will cease being able to print Shadowrun or Battletech materials (they would presumably keep the license to Cthulhutech and Eclipse Phase for at least a little while longer, because those are separate contracts).

So what does this mean for the future of Shadowrun? It probably means that someone else will create a company and start making Shadowrun again. After all, freelancers work for very little, and a well selling book can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in profits. $850,000 of embezzlement is seemingly enough to sink the company (whoever ended up with the credsticks), but I must point out that there was indeed eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to steal, so Shadowrun is not - as a concept - insoluble. And I also point out that something similar happened to Shadowrun before. Indeed, twice before, as both FanPro and FASA before it collapsed under the weight of people not paying debts and having bags with dollar bill signs vanish mysteriously in the middle of the night. It's somewhat... poetic considering the subject matter of the game itself.

It is entirely probable indeed that when a new company comes to take the licence, many familiar faces will appear in the new company as if they had never left. Certainly back when FanPro collapsed back when I was working for the company, I simply started working for the new company as if nothing had changed. This happened back when FASA collapsed as well - those members of the team that were not extracted by Microsoft simply started turning in writing assignments to the new boss.

And yeah, I regularly go on shadowruns against Catalyst to find out what new releases are in store. Don't you?

-Frank

Doors

2010-03-08T16:33:00.001-05:00

Glad I am not the only one who likes thinking about them

Hackmaster GMG

2010-03-08T16:26:00.003-05:00

I was going to review the Hackmaster books some time in the near future, but there is nothing I can say about the GMG that Labyrinthian didn't say here. The book is an excellent resource, it is full of great stuff no matter what version of The Game you are playing. I will probably still talk about it later, but I wanted to pass the link along.

Good Indoor Mapping Software

2010-03-04T00:05:00.001-05:00

Anyone know a good program for making square graph maps? I know about Hexographer for outdoors stuff, is there anything similar for inside? I have some maps I want to be able to post on the blog.

Taming the Savage Beast: Dragon Subdual

2010-03-02T16:25:00.004-05:00

Way back in the 1980s a young boy was paging through his Mentzer Basic Set and noticed a section about subduing dragons. You could fight them with the flat of your blade, and capture them. Even sell them for money. Oh the possibilities...

Historically there are two different methods for subduing a dragon, you can reduce it to 0 hp with subdual damage, or you roll against a ration of damage done over total HP. 4th Edition charts new and interesting territory on this subject.

Chainmail: While dragons are in the fantasy section of Chainmail, nothing is said about subduing them

OD&D: OD&D uses a ratio method where a ratio is kept of total damage done over the dragon's total HP. Each round percentile dice are rolled, if the roll is less than the ration the dragon is subdued. The rules cap the number of people attempting to subdue a dragon at 8.

The characters can choose to sell the dragon for 500-1,000 gp per hit point, or they can keep it in their own service. If they sell the dragon it leaves the game forever. If they keep it they must remain in a commanding position or it will attempt to escape or kill them.

AD&D 1st Ed.: The players must announce their intention to subdue before the start of combat. Silver, Gold, Platinum, and chromatic dragons cannot be subdued. I am fairly certain that by chromatic dragons they are referring to the monster known as a chromatic dragon (Tiamat) not the class of dragons known as chromatic.

1st Ed. uses the same ratio method as OD&D but allows 11 characters to attempt to subdue the dragon. A subdued dragon can be sold for 100-800 gp per hit point. Subdued dragons can be ridden. A dragon can stay subdued indefinitely as long as it is strongly held, well treated, allowed freedom and given treasure. Older, more powerful and spell casting dragons are more likely to turn on their holders and take their realms and holdings as their own.

Holmes: Characters can attempt to subdue a dragon only if it is encounter while it is asleep. They must inflict subdual damage equal to the dragons HP, but subdual damage does no change the dragons breath weapon damage. A subdued dragon can be sold (no guidance on price) or forced to serve. A dragon will only stay subdued for 1 month and will then attempt to escape.

Moldvay/Mentzer: This uses a subdual method similar to Holmes but makes some changes to what happens after the dragon is subdued. The dragon will attempt to escape if given a chance. The subdued dragon must be sold. The sell price is 1,000 gp per HP.

Rules Cyclopedia: Identical to Mentzer except it says "can be sold" where Mentzer says "must be sold"

AD&D 2nd Ed.: While this edition has non-lethal combat rules, I see no specific rules for subduing a dragon. That said, there are a lot of books for 2nd Ed. In fact there are several different versions of the Monster Book out there. It could be somewhere I did not look.

3rd Edition: Has subdual damage in general, but no specific mention of subduing dragons. It is possible that there are rules for this in the Dragonomicon. I am separated from my 3.x stuff by 700 miles and only had a 3.0 core set to work off of.

4th Edition: Rules for dragon subdual are given in the Dragonomicon: Metallic. A dragon is subdued when bloodied. The rules provide for scaling the rewards based on how many characters are bloodied. A subdued dragon will grant passage, aid, or information. The rules also provide for a Duel of Honor. Here the dragon knows ahead of time that the party is shooting for subdual and any characters that are bloodied must leave the fight.

Labyrinth Lord: Uses the method where it must be dealt enough subdual damage to reduce it to 0 HP. The dragon will attempt to escape unless restrained and can be sold for 1,000 gp per HP. The AEC suggests the ratio method be used.

OSRIC: Says that you can challenge a dragon to a fight till subdued.

Hackmaster: Has non-lethal combat rules but no specific subdual rules. They do have rules for selling and uses dragon bits though.

C+C Collector's Set: No mention of subdual of any kind.

S&W Core: Uses the reduce to 0 hp through subdual damage method. Says the dragon can be sold and will attempt to escape if not frightened or impressed.

S&W WB: No mention.

I'd like a method that combines the ratio method and adds the Duel of Honor. I'd want the method to have robust support for selling the dragon or forcing it to serve you.

I am a bit surprised that none of the methods is based on a morale system, even in editions where that system was present. The ratio method and 4E's method are the closest to dealing with it as a morale issue.

A Long, Strange Trip

2010-03-02T13:58:00.002-05:00

Two ago a former player of min passed away. He was about 30 years older than me, so he would be in his early 60s now if he had lived. One of his children recently sent be a box full of hid RPG stuff. It is full of all kinds of cool old stuff as well as a DVD with a bunch of Judges Guild .pdfs. I have no idea how legal these .pdfs are but amongst them were some fan made products, including a few by Gabor Lux.

I have remarked before that Gabor Lux is very prolific in the two old school magazines and there have been several of his articles that I really enjoyed (in fact there is an adventure in FO5 that is great). I have been meaning to search around to see if he has a blog or website for a while and decided that this was the perfect time to do so.

While I did not find a blog or website my search brought up this very level headed review of Carcosa. This was something else I have been meaning to pick up so I started checking out some of the posts by Geoffrey on Dragonsfoot. I found two, about the possibility of using the Holmes box set as a complete game especially interesting (here and here). So I ordered Carcosa, I got my file last night and am going to make my booklet today.

But the original mystery is still unsolved, where can I find out more about Mr. Lux's Fomalhaut setting and does he have a blog or website?

Akso if anyone knows of any other cool posts like the ones I linked from Dragonsfoot let me know. I love that kind of stuff.

Whitebox Arrives

2010-03-01T13:22:00.002-05:00

My Whitebox arrived today from Brave Halfling. It looks good, I have to go to class but I don't see any obvious quality issues. Let me tell you, it is chock full of stuff too.

Now I need to find a way to make Akrasia's Swords and Sorcery mods from Knockspell into a booklet that I can put in there.

I also want to get a copy of Carcosa, I have been reading a bunch of threads by "Geoffrey" on Dragonsfoot and I like this guy's style. I am not talking about the "mature content" stuff, I'll wait till I see that myself, I am talking about his ideas for the Holmes box set. More to come..

Expedition to Stonehell: Session 2

2010-02-28T13:40:00.002-05:00

The second session of my OSRIC game went very well. While creating characters was a pain the first week, the game plays very well. I only went with the OSRIC rules for now with the optional shield rules and entourage system in place. I did not add in weapon speed or weapon v. AC. Combat moved fast, by my count we got in six different combat encounters.

We started the session off with the characters getting off the boat from The City State of the Invincible Overlord in Magnus Aquila, the colony city. They didn't hang out in town very long because the place was a mud-ridden, depressing dump. They hired two torchbearers and a boat and headed for the dungeon.

That's right, there were 4 players, each with a primary PC and a favored henchman, and two torchbearers. If you are keeping score at home that makes a party of 10 characters, and we managed to get done 6 combats in about 5 hours of playing.

When they arrived at the Stonehell canyon they dove right into exploring. They decided to not go through the gateway and went around through the hole in the curtain wall. They did a quick survey of the valley and they decided to explore the gate house starting from the north entrance.

They made quick work of the goblins in this section (room 2 and 3 if you are playing along at home) without even taking damage. They then ventured into the Former Magic User's Quarters (#4). The dwarf fighter was caught alone by the giant centipedes and surrounded. I had decided to give the centipedes paralytic poison instead of death poison before the game started and I am glad I did. Even with paralytic poison they came whithin a hair of a TPK. The mages used two sleep spells to put everyone, other party members included, in the room to sleep. The mages and the torchbearers then ran around and coup de grace'd the centipedes. Thanks to their quick thinking they managed to avoid any deaths. They uncovered a secret door and found a magic umbrella and cloak.

Having narrowly escaped death they decided to barricade themselves in the cleared North Watch Post (#2) and rest. During the night a Green Slime oozed its way through an arrow slit and attacked. Oil splattering, torch throwing hijinx ensued and the dwarf fighter had to throw himself into the fire in order to avoid loosing his leg to green slime.

Recovered, the party decided to push on to the second floor. Here they encountered a flight of steps leading up to the roof and a wine cask and satchel with a nasty looking wasp nest suspended above them (#11). They decided to head up to the roof. The ranger volunteered to scout the roof for them and headed south towards the hole he could see.

As he approached the hole the roof gave way beneath him and he fell through. When he hit the floor below (#9) it too broke and he fell back to the first floor. He found himself in a room with several ghostly adventurers (#5). After a few tense moments he decided they were harmless and the others pulled him up to the second floor (#9) with a rope. They joined him by descending the stairs.

With the party reformed, they dealt with the goblins in The Upper Gallery (#10) and the stirges to the south (#8), getting a nice gem as a reward. They descended a spiral staircase and checked the remaining areas, finsing nothing of interest.

The party decided to head back to the wasp room and get the satchel. They wanted to have Hans, the torchbearer, retrieve the satchel for them, but he refused to do it for less than 5 gold. The ranger retrieved it and got badly stung. While retrieving the satchel he noticed that the cask had its seals intact. There was some very old wine in there. They decided to find a way to retrieve the cask later.

All told the session was a lot of fun. The players seemed to enjoy the style of the game and the faster paced combat. I am VERY happy with my decision to not include a thief class. I think it paid dividends in the very first game in the way they played. For the most part I stuck with the roll 1d6 to resolve everything except for a few things directly derived from attributes. I am using roll-under-the-score ability checks.

By my calculations they should gain a level every 4 or 5 adventures. This may accelerate slightly when they are in the dungeon proper because there seems to be more loot down there for XP. I am giving XP for magic items based on the values suggested in Unearthed Arcana.

Fear the Con

2010-02-21T12:43:00.002-05:00

Fear the Boot is having its annual convention on March 12-13 in St. Louis. I attended the first one and had a blast, they have expanded it since then. Sadly law school will keep me away again this year. If you are looking for an affordable con and can make it to the St. Louis area, this is a great choice. The last time I went the size of the con was great, enough people that there was alot going on but few enough that you got to meet almost everybody.

You can check it out here: Fear the Con 3

So Many Doors

2010-02-20T23:03:00.003-05:00

Over at Aeons & Augauries, JDJarvis posted a bunch of symbols of different door types. What, you aks, would I want with all those door symbols? The main thing I want with all those door symbols is to figure out how they would mechanically differentiate themselves in game. This is another one of those great blog posts that gets me thinking, it doesn't give me any answers, just a launching point for an evening of RPG related thought.

This got me rereading godog's From Kuroth's Quill #01 that dealt with special doors, stairs and sublevels. And this got me excited about getting back to work on my changes to Stonehell (after loosing play time to the snowpocolypse we should be back on track next week, I hope). So what would I do to make these doors different?

Pivot Hinge: Have to choose between a one handed weapon attack or your shield bonus while standing in the doorway. There is no enough room for both or for a two handed attack.

Flapped Hinge: Surprise penalty while entering room. If no one holds it open it shuts.

Slides Down: Can be lowered part of the way to provide cover

Flimsy Door: Can be charged through

Decrepit Door: 1 in 6 chance of mold if bashed. 1 in 6 chance lock is rusted shut.

Chained Door: First bash attempt only breaks door open. It opens part way before being stopped by the chain. A second, esier, attempt is required.

Slotted Door: Piercing attacks are possible through the slot. -1 to attack roll

These are just the ones that came to me off the top of my head, some of the doors are just stronger or weaker. Others will have more complicated in game effects.

Iron Tyrants Website

2010-02-19T16:08:00.002-05:00

Iron Tyrants is a mech mini game by David (I may accidently also call him Adam from time to time) and Luke at the Podgecast. I was lucky to get a chance to play it at Gen Con last year and now their website is up as launch draws closer.

First, David and Luke are great guys. I went to Gen Con with them last year and Luke was one of the people I roomed with. The guys a roomed with were a fun multiplier for the whole event. If the quality of the person making the game matters to you, they check that box.

Second, I think that podcasts, and especially shows like The Podgecast and Fear the Boot, are one of the best things the RPG world has going right now (the old school revolution and Fantasy Flight Games being the others). This is a game being made with that same "do it yourself" spirit that makes podcasting and the OSR so important.

Third, it was a fun game 6 months ago. I imagine that as playtesting has progressed it has only gotten better. It moves fast and the overdrive mechanic allows you to make gonzo, go-for-broke, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead, gambles. There is a real risk vs reward mechanism to the game.

Fourth, and this is just in case David reads this, it is shockingly well balanced despite the fact that no mathematical method was used to balance it.

Anyway I suggest you check out the Iron Tyrant's website

Labyrinth Lord AEC

2010-02-09T15:48:00.001-05:00

Just finished reading through it. If only this had arrived a few weeks ago, I could have avoided a ridiculously long character creation session in OSRIC. Oh well. Looks like I am not the only one who has had these problems.

Rogue Trader: Session 1

2010-02-04T19:38:00.002-05:00

Last weekend I was fortunate to be a player in an excellent Rogue Trader game. I played the Seneschal on a ship owned by a crazy, spoiled Rogue Trader with a Napolean Complex. It was my job to translate his vague instructions into commands that could actually be used to run the ship. We also had a dead world warrior and a navigator along.

Our first mission was to recover a city building artifact to pay off the Rogue Trader's charter. We set off to meet our contact to get the co-ordinates. We met him deep in the bowels of the space stations machinery. As he was passing off the data some kind of mechanical bird swooped down to steal the crystal. We made quick work of the bird and its psycher owner. While our fearless leader was standing on the cooling body of our foe making odd proclomations we tracked the psycher back to another Rogue Trader named Garren Fel, who was trying to jump our claim on the city building McGuffin.

As we prepped the ship for the journey the navigator approached me with some interesting news, our ship had been part of a space hulk at one point. She also felt that there was something "wrong" with the ship. I decided that this was not information that the captain needed to perform his duty and went to tell him that we were ready to go.

When I arrived on the bridge I was shocked to find the barely clothed captain glistening in the middle of the room. He had ordered "the men" to cover him with butter. He had also ordered "the men" to cover the floor with butter, or at least that is what they told me when I woke up in sick bay after my fall.

At this point I instituted a policy change on the ship. I created a group of fairly useless men and labeled them "the men". This way when the captain asked me to give "the men" a stupid order I could literally follow his instructions without causing too much harm.

Soon after we started our journey the navigator informed me that another ship was following us. The captain gave the order that we were to find a space monster and trick them into following us into danger. The navigator was able to find an Orc warship that we bribed into attacking the following ship. The captain proved surprisingly good at talking to orcs.

Once in system we decide to investigate a planet that has an area our sensors cannot scan. Jace, the dead worlder, and I landed outside the dead zone and hoofed it in with 150 of the ship's troops. We soon found ourselves in a maze. I took a small force to scout ahead and promptly got totally lost. Jace managed to find me just in time for our unit to run into a force of 600 orcs.

A short while later we stood on the smoking bodies of the orcs with only 7 or our force still alive. We proceeded to the middle of the dead zone where I communed with a force called the Star Mirror. The Star Mirror downloaded every event of the last 400 years into my brain in a matter of seconds. This had two results, I learned when the city builder entered the system and where it went when it left, and I went a little crazy.

I could now commune with the solar system whenever I wanted, but doing so warped me a little more each time. I used my new found abilities to determine exactly when and where the ship following us (Gerran Fel) would enter the system. As they jumped in I communed with the Star Mirror to guide a shot right to their bridge. I also started spouting nonsense about being a god. The captain knocked me out with a blow to the head.

Needless to say, we brutalized them and took their stuff.

We then jumped to the co-ordinates that the Star Mirror gave me for the McGuffin-bearing ship. As soon as we jumped in system we were faced with a bunch of planets carved to look like giant elder god heads. We set course for the one planet not carved up.

We hit the ground in three groups to retrieve the city building device. Two of the groups went after proof that we had found a long lost fleet. The main group went after the McGuffin. We fought off the deranged mechanical guardians and made off with "acceptable losses". In other words only about 30 of the several hundred men sent to the surface returned.

I really enjoyed this Rogue Trader adventure, and I am looking forward to more.

Expedition to Stonehell: Session 1

2010-02-04T19:22:00.003-05:00

Two weeks ago we had our first OSRIC game session. The players created characters to take on Stonehell dungoen. Since we are using David Bowman's Entourage system from Fight On! #2 I had each player create two PCs one of which will be their main character and the other will be their Loyal Henchman.

I pretty much want to leave the world open for the players to create as much as possible so I was happy to see them start filling in the racial details as we made characters (female dwarves have beards!). It has been a long time since I had a group make up 1st Edition Characters and I forgot what a pain it was. Character creation requires a total of 8 die rolls (6 stats, hit points, starting gold) for most characters, but it still takes almost as long as 3.5 until people get familiar with the system. The problem is the race/class combos and the non-universal stat bonuses. Not only do the stat bonuses vary from stat to stat, they also vary from class to class! AAAAARRRGGG!

This problem was made worse by the fact that I allowed them to assign their stats after rolling. I wanted them to be able to play characters they liked, but the random attribure bonuses means they have to flip around the book forever to figure it out.

Once we internalize all of that character creation will fly by, but I forgot how much pointless chart checking there was. The OSRIC layout makes this much better, but you still have players making race/class combos that are not allowed (for no reason anyone can figure out) if you aren't on top of them. 3.5 characters take forever to make because of the number of choices, in 1st Edition it takes forever because nothing makes any sense. You just have to memorize it all.

I knew I should have used Labyrinth Lord instead.

So we didn't get any gaming in, just character creation.

This Saturday:
Welcome to Stonehell

Busy Week

2010-01-20T13:04:00.003-05:00

It has been a busy week or so around here. I am in crunch time to get a legal brief written and I am putting the finishing touches on the start of my OSRIC campaign.

Good stuff is on the way though. Two weeks ago I played in a Pathfinder game and I will be sitting in on another session this Saturday. There will be recaps of those two games going up soon. After the Pathfinder game, at 6 PM, I finally kick off my OSRIC game. Stonhell awaits!

I also confirmed that I will be staying with the Podgecast boys at GenCon this year. I had a blast last year and cannot wait to do it all again.

Adventure Names: Songs

2010-01-11T14:50:00.003-05:00

I would love to see what an adventure with any of these names would be like (in easy to use d100 form)

1. Last Train to London
2. In the Hall of the Mountain King
3. Welcome to My Nightmare
4. Heart of Glass
5. The Bringer of Old Age
6. Jungleland
7. Darkness on the Edge of Town (Hey, I am from NJ)
8. The Man Who Sold the World
9. Child in Time
10.Spanish Caravan
11.Soldiers of the Wastelands
12.Burn Down the Mission
13.The Ecstasy of Gold
14. Gabriel's Oboe
15.Wanderers from Ys
16.Castles Made of Sand
17.Vanishing World
18.Walking the Path of Legend
19.The Ancient City Surfaces
20.Collapse of the Ark Napishtim
21.Scenes From a Night's Dream
22.Duke's Travels
23.Land of Confusion
24.Firth of Fith
25.In the Cage
26.Los Endos
27.Watcher of the Skies
28.Dance on a Volcano
29.Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
30.Dark Horse
31.Rocket Queen
32.The Lonely Bull
33.2 Minutes to Midnight
34.Can I Play With Madness
35.The Evil That Men Do
36.Duel of the Fates
37.Electric Eye
38.Bat out of Hell
39.Dead Ringer For Love
40.Symphony of Destruction
41.Wake Up Dead
42.Fire on the Mountain
43.Hooligan's Holiday
44.The World is Not Enough
45.Butterflies and Hurricanes
46.Knights of Cydonia
47.Mt. Ordeals
48.Road to Nowhere
49.Wolfman's Brother
50.Purple Rain
51.Keep Yourself Alive
52.Seven Seas of Rhye
53.A Kind of Magic
54.Who Wants to Live Forever
55.Imitation of Life
56.The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight
57.Ashes in the Fall
58.People of the Sun
59.No Shelter
60.Sympathy for the Devil
61.Pulsing Towards Ruin
62.Living for the City
63.Thunderball
64.Handle With Care
65.Tweeter and the Monkey Man
66.Xanadu (Just seeing if you are still reading)
67.King of Kings
68.The Watchers are Being Watched
69.The Musical Pocket Watch
70.Once Upon a Time in the West
71.Cinema Paradiso
72.Elected
73.Domino
74.Home by the Sea
75.Midnight Rider
76.Night on Bald Hill
77.Whipping Post
78.Space Truckin'
79.Rainbow Demon
80.The Magician's Birthday
81.Echoes in the Dark
82.Footprints in the Snow
83.God of Thunder
84.The Hanging Tree
85.Atomic Punk
86.Verklärte Nacht
87.Consecration of the House
88.Screaming for Vengence
89.Symphonie Fantastique
90.Locomotive Breath
91.The Ancient Giants Under the Sun
92.On The Silent Wings of Freedom
93.Gates of Delirium
94.The Three Fates
95.Aquatarkus
96.Phantom Lord
97.Disposable Heroes
98.The Ones Who Help to Set the Sun
99.Under a Glass Moon
100.Prophets of War

Fight On! Issue 4

2010-01-08T13:05:00.002-05:00

I got way behind on these reviews so the next few will just be quick thoughts so I can get caught up to the present.

I love the Arudin Trilogy picture on page 8. I don't know exactly what Arudin is, I gather it is pretty wild and gonzo, but you had me at "busty elf decapitates lizardman."

I like Hook-Hand Jack, he is my kind of creepy NPC.

The "House of the Axe" by Calithena is a pretty cool adventure. I really like how the ghost is handled and the apartment level. If I use it, I will probably just use the house parts though. Personally, I think all the dungeon crawling in the basement levels will lessen the haunted house feel. They are well done though.

I am probably going to use "Random Rooms" by Michael Curtis to flesh out my sub-level for Stonehell. I have some stuff I want to work in fairly early. I'd like to stick with the whole random/megadungeon spirit where I can.

"Home Remedies for Common Dungeon Ailments", "Carousing Mishaps" and "Random Facial Hair" by Jeff Rients are clever. I got a kick out of these.

I am torn about "The Tower of Duvan'Ku". I enjoyed reading it, it is a clever idea, it would be fun to run as a GM. I am not sure that it would be fun to play in as a player. It is almost like an Andy Kaufman skit, or Borat set up. They aren't really a lot of fun for the targets, just the people who are in on the joke. I will need to think about this one some more. I like it, but I could wind up with a table full of angry players too.

Gabor Lux is as productive and creative as always.

"Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer" makes me very interested in Carcosa. I like the style here. I really like the picture on 73. I know there is a lot of controversy around this setting, but none of it sounds like something that would even come close to bothering me.

"The Mysterious Crystal Hemisphere" by James M. is a dungeon level I want to use. I find this level to be far more focused than the other Darkness Beneath levels. The whole thing is just really cool. I like the weird effects outside the ship, the mystery of the whole thing, the alien wierdness, and the puzzle-like nature. I have a pretty good idea how I want to use it too. I will probably have it be a stand alone dungeon. With some minor changes to the background I could tie it into my loose Stonehell plan along with the Stone Wombs (Knockspell #2) and some crazy portals (Knockspell #3).

I am really glad to see a review of Tunnels and Trolls. I picked up a new copy at GenCon this year. I am a long time Flying Buffalo fan, we played many, many hours of Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes as kids. The guy at their booth was really nice, and talked to me for almost half an hour about MSPE.

All in all a good issue. I liked the more generic theme to this issue. The Arudin specific adventure could easily be used anywhere. I still don't grok Tekumel, I think I need to learn a lot more about that some how. Everything I read about it seems interesting.

Blogging Habits

2010-01-08T12:32:00.002-05:00

Tim at Gothridge Manor wrote about his blogging habits, how he goes about commenting, reading etc. I use Google Reader. According to Reader I subscribe to 106 blogs, all of them are RPG or video game related. Most of them are pen and paper RPG blogs.

I rarely comment on blogs. I don't really know what to say most of the time. When I do comment I use Cocomment to track responses to the comments. I find this tool to be very helpful. I don't have to remember what blogs I commented on to follow the conversation. I only found out about it a few weeks ago, perhaps I will comment more now that I have a way to track it.

I am a creature of habit when it comes to blog reading. Every day I scroll to 1Up's Retronauts Blog, Grognardia, and West Karana first to see if there are new posts. Then I bounce around to see what else catches my eye until I have read the all the posts.

I usually read all the posts for the day. There are some exceptions, I usually skim monster, spell, and magic item posts. I enjoy these, but rarely read them in depth. I usually just read the headlines from commercial blogs like WotC. And on Gamesetwatch.com and some other multi-blog sites I am usually looking for specific blogs that post there.

I need to get better at commenting, and at pointing out posts I really enjoy by calling them out on this blog.

Sustainable RPGing: A Letter to the OSR

2010-01-07T20:59:00.005-05:00

As I gathered my resources for my OSRIC game I couldn't help but notice something. There are only two books, both out of print, by a major publisher. The City State book is by Sword and Sorcery, I am pretty sure they are White Wolf. The Gygax Names book is by Troll Lord and I am not even sure they qualify as a major publisher. The setting is coming from Goodman Games, some of their stuff is available in B&N so I guess they could be major. But, Points of Light II is written by Rob Conley so it keeps its small community cred as far as I am concerned. Everything else is self published in some fashion. Written by people whose blogs I read.

I get a lot of use out of the Names book, so it was hardly purchased for this campaign. The City State book has been sitting on my shelf for years, I just saw a chance to use it (maybe, if needed). So every single dollar, minus printing costs, spent on this game went right back into the gaming community. Those dollars stayed in gaming. They didn't get taken out for dividends, the weren't used for more popular things by a corporate entity. They went to the creators who will most likely use them to make/buy new gaming stuff.

I am going to nickname that sustainable gaming. Not in any real economic sense, obviously everyone has day jobs, but in the sense that we can get everything we need from each other. I am just using a popular buzzword to describe it. We could do this electronically, or through word of mouth before. Now we can do it by buying actual, quality print products.

As I have said before, I am not an old school purist. I love 4th edition, GURPS, and I am looking forward to trying out this WFRP 3rd edition box I have here. Old school gaming is one of many, many styles I enjoy. I even enjoy "story" games. That means that you are sustainable from the point of view of an outsider to your movement. You can draw people in, and they can make do with only your products. I don't know if this was a planned goal or not, but you accomplished it.

The idea of that much quality, community generated content is something I can get behind. You have created your own little RPG economy. So give yourselves a hand OSR. This can only make it easier to get new people in.

You have several excellent rule sets, a good volume of modules, you are really starting to put out different and interesting campaign settings, and you have the two best gaming mags out there right now. Keep up the good work.

Gaming with Kids: Sir Kevin and the Leprechaun

2010-01-06T18:28:00.002-05:00

Sir Kevin decided to follow the unicorn as it fled the goblin hut. He quickly lost sight of it in the forest though. It wasn't long before he realized that he was lost and it was getting dark. He decided to rest on a log while he got his bearings. Once he sat down he started feeling very sleepy. He managed to jerk himself awake and find a strange little man dressed in green nearby.

"Who are you?"

"I am a leprechaun, and I want to make a deal with you."

"What is the deal?"

"I will tell you where to find my pot of gold, if you will dig it up for me. You can have all the gold in it, I just need the pot."

"Why can't you dig it up?"

"An evil witch put a curse on me."

"We should kill the witch."

"I am afraid she is long gone. I have had this curse for 100 years."

"That is horrible. I will help you get your pot back."

"Very good. Just follow this path to the bridge, cross the river, and dig where the rainbow ends."

"What path?"

"The one we are standing on!"

"Oh, I didn't notice it before."

"It's magic...." The leprechaun vanished into thin air.

Sir Kevin finished resting and set off down the path first thing in the morning. After a few hours Sir Kevin came to the bridge, a knight in black armor sat atop a black horse on the bridge.

"You shall not pass"

"But I have to get over the river to get the pot of gold!"

"You shall not pass"

"I'll give you half of the gold if you let me through."

"You shall not pass"

"I am going to walk around you now"

"No one has crossed this bridge for 50 years"

"I'll wait till you eat"

"I do not eat"

"I am coming through"

"I will strike you down if you try"

Sir Kevin walked towards the Black Knight, drawing his sword. The Black Knight charged Sir Kevin, lance in hand. Sir Kevin dodged to the side at the last second, the Black Knight charged by. Sir Kevin ran for the brideg. Behind him the Black Knight turned and started to run Sir Kevin down from behind. When Sir Kevin felt the horse's hot breath on his neck he turned, grasping the mermaid statue's spear in both hands. The spear took the Black Knight in the chest, his armor exploded in every direction in a flash of light.

When Sir Kevin's vision cleared he saw that there had been nothing inside the Black Knight's armor. It was scattered on the ground, crackling with electricity. Sir Kevin decided to put on the Black Knight's armor and take the horse to ride down the path.

Shortly after crossing the bridge Sir Kevin could see the rainbow. He followed it to where it hit the ground on a grassy hill. He began to dig.

Sir Kevin dug for three days and three nights before his shovel hit something metal. The pot of gold! He pulled the pot from the hole and turned it upside down to pour out the gold. Gold came streaming out of the pot, soon it covered the entire hill. The gold kept coming! Sir Kevin tried to turn the pot upright but it would not budge, he let go of it and it hung in the air. Soon the gold covered the ground as far as Sir Kevin could see, a foot deep. The gold was piling up around the hill and Sir Kevin struggled to stay on top.

From somewhere nearby he heard the high pitched cackle of the leprechaun.

OSRIC Campaign Resources

2010-01-06T17:48:00.003-05:00

With my OSRIC campaign starting in just a little more than two weeks, it is time to nail down what will be in from day 1.

Rule Set: OSRIC. I think that for the group I will be playing with this is the best rule set. They have all played 3.x and have come to expect a certain level of complexity. This will let me keep that while being much easier for me to run. It also gives me a lot more room to mod the game than 3.x does, I can tailor it to this group. XP for gold and exploration will be the primary advancement mechanisms.

The Group: Looks like I will have 4 players. I have, to some extent, played with all of them before (maybe not 1). One member is part of my original gaming group and we go back to middle school and Mentzer. His wife will also be playing with us, she played in at least one of my 3.5 Monster Feature games (I think the one with the Kraken). I played with the other male player in a Shadowrun game last year and I think his wife also played in it. It is possible I met her at a different time though. They are all nice, and very smart people. Two lawyers and two engineers makes for a group that will pick up the rules fast. Four players is my ideal group size.

Additional Rules: From Knockspell #1 I will be using the "Random Hireling Generator". From Fight On! #2 (The Awesome Issue) I will be using "Shields Shall be Splintered", "The Entourage Approach", and "Random Inn Generator". I will also be using "Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names".

Setting: The campaign will be set in Amacui from "Points of Light II". The players will be arriving in Magnus Aquila in search of fortune and adventure. They will be fresh of the boat from The City State of the Invincible Overlord. This allows me to fall back on Supplement VI: The Majestic Wilderlands if I suddenly need to flesh out world details for some reason. It also allows me to incorporate the lovely Sword and Sorcery 3.5 version of the City State that has been sitting on my shelf for years. Very little detail about any of this will make it into the campaign for a long time. If the players decide to get back on the boat and go home, I have something to work with.

The Dungeon: I am using Stonehell. I won't go into a lot of detail in this post about changes I will be making since one of the players might read this. For those of you in the know, I am putting Stonehell in hex 0411. What you would expect to find several levels down in 0411 of Amacui will be taking the place of the nixthisis in Stonehell.

Changes to the setting and dungeon will be discussed in separate spoiler posts.

Table Rules: Mapper and Timekeeper. No real need for a caller with four players. I will be fairly strict about the map. The mapping player's character has the map. Try not to get him too wet or set him on fire.

Gaming with Kids: Sir Kevin and the Daring Rescue

2009-12-26T13:48:00.003-05:00

Continued from Part I

Sir Kevin was able to convince the mushroom men that he was not hostile through gestures, hopping around, and making funny noises. The mushroom men surrounded him and herded him down a corridor. Soon he was in the throne room of the queen of the mushroom people. He was surprised to see that the queen was a teenage girl named Ariel. She explained to him that she had fallen into a hole when she was a young girl and the mushroom men had raised her. As she got older they learned to trust her judgment and made her their queen. Sir Kevin explained his quest to rescue the unicorn and Queen Ariel ordered the mushroom men to escort him back to the surface.

Once back above ground Sir Kevin set out in the direction of the Goblin's shack. As he made his way through the forest he saw what looked like a beehive dangling from a tree. Since there had been nothing to eat in the caves other than rats Sir Kevin decided he wanted some honey. He used his sword to knock down the hive. Little flying men came swarming out. Sir Kevin tried to swat them away but they were too small, their poisoned arrows easily slipped through the cracks in his armor and numbed him. Paralyzed, Sir Kevin was at their mercy.

One of the flying men explained that they were pixies and that Sir Kevin had destroyed their palace. Sir Kevin apologized and offered to hang their nest back up. He explained that he was trying to free a unicorn and needed something to eat. The pixies accepted his offer to help and insisted on helping him free the unicorn.

After the nest was back in the tree Sir Kevin and the pixies snuck up on the Goblin's Shack. Sir Kevin told the pixies to draw the goblins out of the shack while he rescued the unicorn (not bad for a 7 year old). The plan worked without any problems and the unicorn took off into the forest.

Stonehell: Halfway

2009-12-26T13:25:00.002-05:00

I am halfway through reading Michael Curtis's Stonehell and it has ruined me. I have always hated reading dungeon adventures, and now I will hate them twice as much. Nothing irritates me more than having to flip back and forth between the map and the entries. It makes it very hard for me to enjoy reading map heavy modules, even campaign settings. I keep getting yanked out of the flow by having to flip back. It will be even more irritating going forward, because I now know that IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!

If he has done nothing else with this book, and trust me he has done other stuff, Mr. Curtis has set a new standard for how dungeon adventures should be presented. Each chapter starts with a map of a whole level of the dungeon. There is also a brief discussion of the level and a list of all the monsters, with stats, on the level. This is followed by four sections, each detailing 1/4 of the level. Each of these sections starts with a more detailed description of that quarter and then discusses anything that requires extra description like stat blocks, traps, special rooms etc. The next two pages consist of a half page map of the quarter with a wandering monster table and the keyed entries for all the rooms. That's right you can always glance over at the map while you read the entries.

I have to admit that the quarters seem a little bit artificial at this point and they seem unnecessarily walled off from each other at this point. I am sure that will improve as the format gets used more. There is no reason that it has to be this way, I am sure a more organic feel will develop over time.
I'll have more to say about the content of Stonehell when I finish. For now, the presentation is awesome.

Knockspell Issue #3

2009-12-26T12:52:00.003-05:00

Finally back at it after exams and a nasty sneak attack by pneumonia.

Alright, Knockspell #3 is a great issue. Let's start at the start!

From Kuroth's Quill: First, I appreciate the bibliography. This is one of the most academically written old school articles I have seen yet. It is an interesting classification system for dimensional gates. Usually, when I run fantasy, I am very much a "keep the magic parts magic" kind of guy. I don't like to get into how magic works, I like it to be a mystery. When I run sci-fi I tend towards hard sci-fi so I go the other way with fantasy. That said, it is far easier to construct interesting puzzles when there is a basis for how everything works. I am talking about puzzles that challenge the players' creativity here, not just the match the color kind from video games. As usual I found myself coming up with some ideas as I read grodog's article.

Pulp Heroes and the Colors of Magic: Akrasia has written one of my top 5 favorite RPG articles ever here. It has given me a reason to use a whole rule set. I have struggled with Swords & Wizardry, it is rules light and easy to mod. But what would I use it for? My friends and I grew up with the Mentzer sets, I am going to go with Labyrinth Lord if it is nostalgia I am looking for. That would be my go to rule set if I wanted to concentrate on kingdom building too. The later sets just make it so easy to do with those rules. My next campaign will be a dungeon/hex crawl. I am going to use OSRIC because I can start out simple and gradually add complexity over time to keep the combat interesting. OSRIC is really strong here, it would be very easy to one piece at a time turn it into Hackmaster Basic when it comes to combat if that is what my players want. But what to do with S&W?

I'll be honest, I have never thought that D&D really supported pulp style adventures all that well. It has some pulpy, gonzo feel to it, but it has always been way too high magic to convey anything like Conan. And just taking out classes doesn't really help because you just wind up resting and dying all the time. But the rules in this article will make S&W my go to system for a Conan style game. It has the love side of my love/hate relationship with Iron Heroes. The revisions to damage and especially the revisions to the spell system are great. These three and a half pages are worth the price of the magazine alone.

The Font of Glee: This is a fanciful adventure, I like seeing these lighter hearted adventures. It is a nice break from the usual doom and gloom, evil wizard affairs. The chance to play factions off against one another gives it a level of complexity not usually seen in lighter games.

The City of Vultures is an interesting city by the always imaginative Gabor Lux. Interestingly I was reading this at the same time I was reading the Fritz Leiber story where the birds are stealing all the jewelry in town. Make sure you read the entry on page 32 for The Society for Optimalised Objectivism.

The Labyrinth Tomb: it is what the title says, a hack and slash dungeon crawl. There are some cool little puzzles in here though.

The Tower of Mouths: I like this dungeon because there is plenty of room to customize it. The poison gas adds an interesting dynamic to the whole thing.

Hello Readers

2009-12-15T15:33:00.002-05:00

I have not forgotten you. I am just in the midsts of my final exam period. I actually wrote several posts over Thanksgiving that I have not put up yet. I intended to just have to edit them and put them up during exams. Sadly I got pneumonia the day before exams started and have been playing catch up ever since. The end is near though, it is all over Friday.

Gamist v. Simulationist

2009-12-03T01:29:00.003-05:00

I want to start this post by saying that the first blog I scroll to in Reader every day is Grognardia. I find James' posts to be very insightful and well thought out when it comes to designing and running your game. The main reason I enjoy his blog so much is that we have completely opposite styles. His profile even states his interest in philosophy. I, on the other hand, am an engineer working on becoming a patent attorney. I like to think that I am a pretty good DM. I have brought quite a few new people into the hobby over the years and I haven't had a lot of complaints. I personally find James' work in Fight On!, Thousand Suns and other places to be excellent. He comes to a lot of the same conclusions as me, and produces stuff I like, but his way of getting there fascinates me. It is totally opposite of the way I do things.

An illustration. In a recent post he discusses keys in dungeons. He feels that every lock in a dungeon should have a key hidden somewhere. He talks about how he thinks of dungeons as puzzles. When I first read this my mind protested. People walk off with keys all the time. That is why we have keys and locks! So you can protect something while you are not there. People are often inside a locked area, with the only key in their possession. To me, the assertion that you should always have a key on the unprotected side of the door that can be used, Zelda style, to break in is silly.

But, he has a valid point. There should be some way to get through those doors. When you put a door in a dungeon you have not only put an obstacle in the players' path, you have given them a challenge. Sometimes I might have the key where they can find it. It is far more likely that I will put the door there, have it locked, and react to what the players do to get through or around it.

As an engineer, worse a perimeter security engineer, I know that doors are not denial devices they are delay devices. They force an intruder to make noise that is followed by time before they can fully breach the portal. This allows security to react before they can get in. There is always a way through a locked door. It is just a matter of time, effort and noise. You can get through most real life doors in a few D&D turns at the longest. But in real life, this is more than enough time for security to react. A locked door does not force a party to have a thief, it forces them to be creative. It also forces the DM to know enough about the physics of breaking through a door if he is not going to provide a key.

I am not trying to say that James' dungeon as game/puzzle philosophy is wrong here. Ultimately our conclusions can be expressed in the same broad statement: there needs to be a way through that door, and it is your duty to provide it. My strength as a DM lies in my ability to construct a world that players can effect in a physical way they are familiar with. I feel this really helps me when I have to improvise and make stuff up on the fly. I know why my dungeon was built and how all the creatures whithin interact. I can quickly calculate how the players' actions at one end of the dungeon will effect the other.

My DMing style will never produce James' Crystal Hemisphere from Fight On! Issue 4 though. When I get my review of that issue up you will see that I love that dungeon.

Hex Crawls

2009-12-02T21:56:00.004-05:00

Those of you who have been reading this blog know that I have never run a megadungeon before. I have always used more realistic dungeon settings, keeping all underground areas to a minimum and keeping the over all size of castles and the like fairly small. There is another style of gaming I have never indulged in: the hex crawl.

I have never seen hexes as discrete chunks of the map. I always just used them as a guide to find distance if they were present and not worrying about themif they were not. I have always taken a more continuous view of overland maps. This is another streak that will be ending with my upcoming OSRIC game. I will be using James M's Outdoor Map as a starting pont in my campaign. I will be heavily modifying it for my purposes but most of the features will stay the same. I will be adding my own versions of Castles Blackmoor and Greyhawk to the map.

I have been struggling with how a hex crawl works. How do I know if they find features in the hex and isn't 5 miles a bit large? It turns out that I am not the only one wondering about this. Chgowiz has an interesting post on the subject.

The only real hex crawl experience I have is playing Tolkein Quest gamebooks. You read numbered entries based on the hex you entered

Coup de Gace

2009-11-30T18:43:00.002-05:00

In a Dungeon Magazine editorial from last year Chris Youngs talks about how Chris Perkins loves to use the coup de grace. He also talks about how it makes the enemies more memorable and satisfying to defeat. I couldn't agree more.

In D&D, regardless of the edition, death is the threat that gives the game meaning. The threat of your character dying is what makes the game fun to play, it is the other side of the risk/reward balance. D&D is not Burning Wheel or WoD, the players do not assign soft goals that have mechanical meaning to their characters. The goals of D&D are to find monsters and make their stuff your stuff. Though in recent editions the scope of the goal has been narrowed to killing monsters and making their stuff your stuff. Either way the reward is for putting yourself in physical danger and surviving. If you are never in actual physical danger the reward is meaningless.

I often have the monsters stop to kill a KO'd character. Do the players get mad? Yes. Do they really hate that guy and go after him with a vengence? Hell yes.

Gaming with Kids: My Nephew's First Quest

2009-11-27T21:00:00.006-05:00

On Thanksgiving my nephew, 7, brought Risk with him so I could teach him to play. As expected it started out fun but eventually devolved into mindless dice rolling as giant armies clashed in lopsided conflicts. By halfway through the outcome was obvious and he was getting bored. He insisted on playing on to the bitter end, but was ready for adventure.

In the past I have played Descent with my nephew and during our vacation this summer we played through The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game. This is an introductory RPG that follows the plot of the Fellowship of the Rings through three battle scenarios. We completed it and he even explored deeper into Moria. I did not have Descent with me and since playing another made up adventure in Moria would basically be playing D&D, I drug out the D&D 3.0 starter box. Sir Kevin was born!

Sir Kevin was hot on the trail of some unicorn stealing goblins when he came across their cottage outside of town. He crept up to the splintered wood door and pressed against it to listen. He could hear the sound of goblins talking inside. Kevin stepped back and charged the door, intending to break it down with his shoulder. He bounced off and was knocked off his feet into the black mud.

As Kevin struggled to his feet, rubbing his shoulder in pain, the goblins pored out of the house. He took off running with the goblins in hot pursuit. As the goblins gained on him, spears clattering of the path, Sir Kevin saw an abandoned farmhouse with a well ahead. Putting on a final burst of speed he dove head first into the well.

Kevin knifed into the cold, dark water far below. He started to struggle, his heavy armor was pulling him down! As Sir Kevin sank to the bottom he saw an opening off to one side with a strange glow. He pulled himself into it. After pulling himself up the side passage he found the water was not deep here and stood up into a strange chamber.

The walls were rough hewn rock and firelight sparkled off crystal shards in the ceiling. There was a small campfire off to one side and an old man was cooking a rat. Kevin called out to the old man. A brief discussion revealed that the old man had fallen into the well over 20 years ago and had been surviving on rate ever since, he could not find his way out of the maze like cave. Politely declining the offered rat, Kevin set out into the cave with only his sword and a torch.

As Sir Kevin ventured deeper into the cave, he became sure that something was following him. He could barely see some glowing eyes just out of range of his torch. Before long the cave opened into a large chamber, there was a fountain with a statue of a mermaid grasping a spear. Kevin carefully approached the statue and slid the spear from its hand. Suddenly the eyes were closing in on him, there were hundreds of them.

A strange figure stepped into his torchlight. A mushroom with legs, eyes, arms, and a mouth. It lowered its spear at him and said "Glarspink!"

Thanksgiving Reading

2009-11-24T14:31:00.002-05:00

Looks like I have a pretty good pile of stuff to read through this weekend.

Fight On! Issue 5
Fight On! Issue 6
Knockspell Issue 3
Stonehell
Hackmaster Players
Hackmaster GM
(I found the two Hackmaster books in a used book store for $15. They look like they have never even been opened)

I will probably cheat and read Knockspell first because I am excited about it. I hope to get my Fight On! Issue 4 review up, one for the Knockspell issue and maybe, if I am lucky, get caught up with Fight On!

I am currently working on an inn to use as a home base in my OSRIC game that starts in January. If I get that finished I will get it up. Then I will work on setting some of the elements I want in the Outdoor Map

Supercrocs

2009-11-23T15:26:00.002-05:00

These would make awesome monsters

Anticipation

2009-11-19T22:00:00.003-05:00

I pre-ordered The Dungeon Alphabet and ordered Stonehell today. These are both from an author, Michael Curtis, whose work I have enjoyed online and in magazines. I also ordered WHFRP 3rd edition today too. I think Stonehell will show up first and I can't wait to see it. Since I will be running my first megadungeon soon I hope it will be helpful.

Fight On! Issue 3

2009-11-19T21:19:00.003-05:00

I am going to preface my review by saying that this issue was not as appealing to me as the first two. My main problem with it was that much of the content is specific to old Judges Guild stuff. It is well written and much of it I could still use in some ways, but I kind of feel like I am missing something when I read it. I realize that this magazine is aimed at the OSR and I am somewhat outside that target group. My review will be coming from that viewpoint. Frankly, I think that Knockspell and Fight On! are the two best gaming magazines out there right now, even if you are not in the OSR.

I no longer go through the issues article by article in my reviews, although I do read the magazines from cover to cover. I think you can get an idea of what the overall feel for these magazines is from my other reviews. I will just hit on the articles that really stood out for me.

The Wild North by Rob Conley. I point this one out because I enjoy Rob's work. I have both of his Points of Light books and read his blog. This is a well written hex key with some interesting entries. The problem is that it is an add on to the Wilderlands setting, and I don't know anything about it. You don't need to know anything about Wilderlands to appreciate the article, but I feel like a lot of it is lost without being able to put it in perspective.

Khas Fara by Jason Morningstar is a neat little adventure and breaks the usual dungeon crawl mold for these magazines. There isn't even an interior map and it is very character driven. This could be a fun one to just throw into a hex on my world map.

County of Haghill and Environs by James Mishler is another Wilderlands addition. This one works better for the uninitiated though. There are some cool NPCs, a neat fort and a kickass picture on pg 33. This one just feels more self contained than Rob's.

Tables for Fables is good in this issue it covers NPC parties met in a dungeon. I am fond of having my players come across rival/ally groups of adventurers.

Spawning Ground of the Crab Men is the next level in the Fight On! megadungeon, The Darkness Beneath. It is a neat level with two factions for the players to play off each other. There is also intrigue within one of the factions that can be exploited. The crab men are also really creepy.

The columns on Bob Bledsaw were cool since I knew nothing about him. I would have liked an "Introduction to the Wilderlands" piece though.

There are some demons for Empire of the Petal Throne. I know nothing about this setting and it is not really useful to me.

Gabor Lux is as productive as ever in this issue.

There is a level of Hell expansion to an old Judges Guild product. i don't really have a frame of reference to put it in.

The next two parts of the Wilderness Architect are cool, it is always interesting to see the ways that other GMs build their worlds.

I had no interest in the fiction. Sorry, I always skipped these in Dragon. It was a good story, just not what I am looking for in a gaming magazine.

Plastic Imitation of the Amulet of Yendor

2009-11-18T21:09:00.001-05:00

Most evil thing in a game ever. If you know what I am talking about, then you know.

Mutant Future Game 1: Postponed

2009-11-15T00:04:00.003-05:00

Didn't get a chance to play Mutant Future. This will actually give me a chance to flesh stuff out more and get a few more people together for the first game. I did wind up getting a chance to make a map and key I am pretty happy with for the battleship New Jersey.

I also got a chance to develop some things that we be ongoing threads in the campaign. The first is the Multipass. The Multipass will be a combination EZPass, PATCO Freedom Card (public rail system), and admission pass. The idea is that the pass gets you through just about any gate you might have to pay to pass through. At some time in the distant past the country was basically run by corporations and Multipass basically had a monopoly on the pay portal business. They also installed killer robots for people who jump the turnstyle. There is the added benefit that few geeks can resist the word "Multipass".

I also decided that the currency for my world will be Skee Ball Tokens.

Mutant Future Game 1: Prep

2009-11-11T22:31:00.004-05:00

I am preparing to start my Mutant Future game on Saturday. The game will be set in and around the City of Camden in NJ. The game will be starting with 1 player. This works out well, he is the guy I started gaming with. It will be easy to test out the new system in that setting.

While the campaign itself will be a sandbox, I find it is best to start things off with a bang. I am going to use Grodog's suggestion and have the battleship New Jersey be in the hands of pirates. The player will start as a prisoner in the brig of the ship. I will leave the rest of the evening up to him. He can try to escape, join the crew, take over, or whatever else he can come up with. This means for the first session I will need a map of the ship, some NPC's, and a land area for him to escape to if he manages to get free.

I am struggling with the map, but I found some game stats (Robotech) for the ship here.

I am going to use Jeff Rient's Slimy Lake map from Fight On! Issue 6 for now if he gets ashore.

I can grab Kordon, Queen of the River Pirates to use as the captain.

I can throw in some of the Savage After Worlds encounters if he gets ashore

I am not usually this lazy, but I like to use the resources available if I can. Plus, I want to concentrate on getting the rules right for now. If it goes well I can put in the time to flesh things out.

Getting Started

2009-11-10T22:43:00.004-05:00

I am going to talk a bit about what I think is missing for people starting out in the hobby. To set things up I am going talk about how I got started in the hobby.

I first learned about RPGs through gamebooks. Gamebooks were like Choose your Own Adventure books with a conflict resolution mechanic. The first one I had was a Car Wars gamebook purchased at the school book fair. At 10 years old I was a Tolkein nut and it didn't take me long to learn that there were Tolkein Quest gamebooks. I grabbed the two availabe (they have a sordid publishing history) at the time and was hooked at once.

I have learned in the years since that these are considered by many to be two of the best gamebooks ever made. They had a full color hex map for overworld exploration and there were entries in the book keyed to the map. When you entered a hex you flipped to the entry for the hex and from there choices might lead you to another numbered section of the book. Underground sections were entered this way.

The books had a combat system of their own but they also had stats for something called MERP. What the heck is MERP? My friends and I started to ask around about it and found out that it wasn't available anywhere near us, but we were told it was just like a game called Dungeons and Dragons. We wanted that.

Sadly it was 1988 and D&D was forbidden by our parents. The level of penetration that the smear campaign against D&D had is amazing. My family is not even religious and they managed to scare my parents.

My friends and I managed to figure out that D&D was like gamebooks but with just the rules, you made up your own adventure to go on. We did the next best thing to getting D&D, we made our own game by taking rules out of gamebooks. We played this for several months before our parents decided that D&D was like Tolkein (safe) and we were allowed to play it. Enter the Red Box.

The smartest thing done in the Red Box was to make the instructional section like a gamebook. We picked it up right away without any trouble. We were literally playing by the end of computer class.

Now I will turn to the topic of how to introduce new players to RPGs today. It seems to me that there are two main geek kid markets at this point: computer games and Japanese manga/anime. Probably the best chance to grab these kids is through the manga section in Barnes and Noble and World of Warcraft.

I think that Fantasy Flight Games is on the right path for grabbing the WoW kids. They make pseudo-RPG board games that have mechanics very similar to a MMO. Descent and the WoW board game are great bridges to RPGs. Their upcoming Warhammer RPG also looks to be a great bridge game. I think that in the early '90s HeroQuest played this role, although in that case it was bridging the gap between traditional board games and RPGs.

I think that one way to grab the manga kids would be through gamebooks. These would have to be gamebooks laid out in the manga format, involving known manga properties, that are illustrated and sold right on the same shelf in B&N as the manga books. I think it would be great if these gamebooks were tied to things like the WoW manga or another property that already has a large draw to kids disposed to gaming.

The key is that today's kids are not going to be interested in a gamebook where you pretend to be Conan or John Carter. They don't want a board game where you take a barbarian and a Middle Earth elf and raid a dungeon with them. That is not their fantasy, that is their dad's fantasy. These products have to be designed to draw on the modern pulp fiction aesthetic not one from the first half of the 20th century.

I still think that a gamebook like product is the best way to explain the hobby and get people into it. I would love to see a Swords & Wizardry introductory gamebook, or a line for Labyrinth Lord. I would love to see an eastern animation style S&W gamebook even more. To kid young people you need to have something that looks familiar and put it on the shelf next to the books that they are already buying. I think the dream of some magic, modern, basic set in a box is for yesterdays market.

Fight On! Issue 2

2009-11-10T18:25:00.002-05:00

I am not going to step through every article on this one, just call out the ones that stood out for me.

Patrick Farley's Penguin character race reminded me of the old Dragon Magazine races and classes that sometimes just cam out of nowhere. It is wacky but seems like it could work. I am thinking about throwing them in as NPCs and seeing how it goes over. If it flops we can just not come back to it.

The Darkness Beneath is going to be Fight On!'s community megadungeon. I will probably not use any specific levels from it, but as I am starting work on my first megadungeon it is cool to see what they did.

Shields shall be splintered offers an optional rule system for shield where they can be used to basically cancel a hit. I like this a lot and it is likely to be the first rule I add to my OSRIC campaign after the first session or so if my players want more detailed combat.

The Entourage Approach by David Bowman adds depth to the henchman system. He creates a head henchman that becomes the primary character in the event of death. I love this idea. One of the main dangers with old school gaming is that it is... dangerous. As a whole I see this as a plus, but it can lead to players feeling disconnected from the action if they have a few bad sessions. I will be implementing The Entourage System from the start in my OSRIC campaign. This is just a plain cool idea.

James Raggi gives us a really cool random inn generator that is packed with great stuff. As I have said before, these "idea" articles are my favorite. The whole time I was reading this I was thinking, "I could do this... and this... and this." You can use the table here to make a really dynamic feeling inn as your players' base. This one is going right into the game too.

James M.'s Outdoor Map is one of the prime contenders for the backbone of my OSRIC game. The other contenders are all from Rob Conley's Points of Light books, Rob also drew the map for this one. Usually I would make my own setting up, but law school could put me in a position where I can't keep up so I am going to go with help where I can get it. One of the main advantages to this map over the others is that some of the areas get developed on Grognardia so I have an additional source of inspiration in a bind.

Victor Raymond's Wilderness Architect article is a good read. I have never really done things that way, but it is interesting to see how he works.

The articles on Dave Arneson are fun, and of use to me since I plan on slipping Castle Blackmoor into my game.

A couple of issues:

This becomes more of a problem in later issues (I'll get to them), but Fight On! runs a lot of stuff specific to some really old campaign settings. In this issue it is Empire of the Petal Throne. While this is cool to an extent, it can be a bit much. I don't know enough about Empire of the Petal Throne to really follow those adventures. There are some later issues with a lot of old campaign specific stuff in them. I am torn on these, on one hand it is cool. On the other, it can make large parts of the magazine hard to follow.

That said, I am not really part of the Old School movement. I may not be their target audience. I enjoy that style of play, but I also enjoy White Wolf, GURPS, 4th edition, and other games.

One thing that Knockspell is doing much better: At the end of each article Knockspell gives you a little blurb about the authors, including their websites. Both of these magazines are community magazines, this aids in that feeling.

Knockspell Issue 2

2009-11-09T17:19:00.003-05:00

Issue 2 continues the strong run for Knockspell. It opens with another good From Kuroth's Quill. This entry in the series deals with dungeon dressing and gives some cool things that can be done with doors. As I have said before these idea articles are the kind I get the mist use out of. I often times find myself putting down the magazine when reading an article like this and spending 20 minutes just thinking about the possibilities.

The next article is Dungeon as Mystical Underworld. This is a good read and deals with dungeons in a way that I never have in my games. My dungeons have always been small and geared towards realistic layouts.

The next section presents some views and class definitions for thieves. I know there is a lot of debate about thieves but I have no dog in that hunt. It was interesting, I may try my OSRIC campaign without them just to see what happens.

Next up is another setting description by the insanely prolific Gabor Lux. You will understand what I mean if you also read Fight On! Seriously, this guy is a bottomless pit of good locations.

This is followed by a series of articles with the retro-clone articles. I was especially happy to see the one with Dan Proctor. I think Labyrinth Lord is the most well written of the retro-clones and could function the best for people who had never encountered the original source material. I also appreciate that it does not have the adversarial tone that Swords and Wizardry (which other than the tone I really like) has.

The jousting rules are interesting to me since I just worked out jousting as a skill challenge for 4ed earlier this year. A totally different approach, obviously.

Next up is an article on dungeon oddities by Michael Curtis. At this point I am willing to say that if Curtis is writing it, I am going to read it. I have enjoyed his articles and his blog. The Stone Womb is going in my game.

I think you have the idea by now so I will just hit on a few more highlights. Surviving Old School Dungeons by Sean Ahmed, and Magic Swords and Treasure Maps by Philotomy are can't miss.

Overall I found this issue to be even stronger than the first.

City in the Worm

2009-11-09T02:08:00.002-05:00

For centuries Noxxe was the most powerful city on Ocama. It was the seat of the great Xnips empire and the center of technological innovation. It was a gleaming metropolis of steel and concrete. That all ended when the Chaos Worms attacked. Four hundred years ago giant worms rose up from the earth and began devouring the works of man. Noxxe fell victim to the Chaos Worm god, the World Worm. The World Worm swallowed the city of Noxxe whole. But the city was too big for even the greatest Chaos Worm. The World Worm choked to death on the city of Noxxe and the Chaos Worm invasion ended. Few have dared to enter the body of the World Worm to plunder the lost city of Noxxe, and fewer still have returned with tales of their adventures.

The first stages of the journey to Noxxe will be the descent into the tunnel that the World Worm retreated into before dying. This will be a natural cavern exploration and the characters will have to deal with the standard cave dwelling monsters.

The second stage will be inside the dead body of the worm itself. The body has been preserved by its magic, so the characters will be travelling inside an organic complex. The characters should face bizarre enemies here. Standard Monster Manual opponents should be avoided in favor of mutations and organic weirdenss.

The final stage of exploration will be Noxxe itself. What has survived? Have people continued to live in the city for all these years? Have the organic monsters from the worm moved in? What remains of the high tech society?

Religion in my upcoming campaign

2009-11-06T10:37:00.006-05:00

All of the following assumes a campaign world where there are multiple gods, who are real, and are actively involved in the running of the world.

One thing I want to avoid in my upcoming campaign is modern style religion. Clerics' prayers are actually answered, the gods walk the earth in the form of men from time to time, many gods are known to actually exist, and they kind of act like children. This will make for a different kind of religion. In fact, by modern understanding, it wont be religion at all. It will be science.

Faith isn't needed in a world with a traditional fantasy pantheon. A god's followers are not taking his existence on faith when he can show up and lightning bolt someone. Clerics' prayers are actually answered. Religion in a world like that isn't about faith, it is about reacting to reliable evidence and things you directly observe. Religious people are not the ones sticking their heads in the sand denying verifiable phenomenon in a fantasy world. Furthermore, you know that all of the gods are real, not just yours.

Conversion will work differently too. It will not be about getting people to stop believing in their god and start believing in yours. It will be about convincing people that making sacrafices or praying to your god will be more effective. They are going to expect you to back this up too.

The idea of "my god" will be blurred in many ways. Some people may have a god that they are more loyal to than others but everyone has to deal with all the gods. If you are going on a boat trip you will make a sacrifice to the sea god, even if you are a cleric of the war god. The idea of a personal relationship with a god will be very different too. It will not be based on some personal interpretation of what the god means. The people of the world will have a pretty good idea of what their god want, they get feedback.

Since interpretations of what a god said 2000 years ago will be less important, people will not be able to use them to gain as much power over others. If someone was using an interpretation of what a god says to force others to do what he wanted, and the god did not agree with that, he could make it very clear. Any time someone is saying that a god told him to do something chances are he will be right or will be dead very soon.

With real gods, people get feedback and responses from their actions. They will record the response and attempt to connect it to their actions. They will develop theories about what causes gods to act the way they do, theories that can actually be tested. Clerics will have to take a far more logical approach to religion, it is likely that religion and science will not be at odds with each other in a society like this, but will actually be closely intertwined.

In a game with fantasy gods, religion would be nothing like the religions in our modern world.

Upcoming Campaign

2009-11-04T21:02:00.003-05:00

My plans for my next campaign have changed. It looks like I have a group of pretty experienced players who want to play D&D. I managed to convince them that AD&D was the way to go, so we will be using OSRIC. I am planning on starting with just the core OSRIC rules and tacking on weapon speed and some other things as we go. I anticipate working in a count initiative system with Hackmaster-like movement eventually.

I am seriously considering using the entourage rules I saw in Knockspell. I really like this as a way to make old school death sting less without having to nerf the difficulty. I also like how it ties the players more to the setting in a continuous fashion.

I will be running my first megadungeon in this campaign. Now I just have to figure out how I want to go about that. I will likely set this in either a setting from one of the Points of Light books or James M's outdoor map from Knockspell (or was it in Fight On!)

Megadungeons 2

2009-10-29T02:26:00.002-04:00

I have read a lot about megadungeons over the last week or so, and the more I read the more I want to run one. I have never run a megadungeon before. In fact I hardly ever run dungeons at all. I can think of two real, multisession dungeons I have run. The most recent was the 4th edition module Keep on the Shadowfell. This combined two things I am usually wary of doing in a game: a pregenerated module and a dungeon crawl. It was one of the worst modules I have ever read,let alone ran. We made it maybe 4 sessions in before going back to Traveller.

The first dungeon run I did was shortly after high school. We had been playing for around 8-10 years at this point and I put one into a long running campaign purely because we had never done one before. It took about three long sessions to run through the dungeon and many great and memorable stories game out of that adventure. So this one was overall very positive.

Generally my players pretend to be in the political thick of things, even at low levels so we tend not to do a lot of dungeon crawls. Oddly my Traveller games have always had a lot in common with a dungeon crawl. The players always have hirelings or troops of some sort, I start them in the thick of things, and most of the actual roleplaying in those games occurs in the retelling of the story later. I just never thought about megadungeons that way until reading about the recently.

But even then I don't want to do things totally traditional. Mutant Future is on its way to my house right now, I want to use it to run a megadungeon. I want to take the city of Camden, NJ and have huge chunks of it swallowed up by the earth. Anyone I am likely to be playing with at this point is going to be familiar with Camden and the idea of an event so cataclysmic that Camden would get worse is just wacky enough to fit into a Gamma World type game.

I already have a bunch of ideas floating around that I need to figure out how to glue together. Most of them are faction ideas (I love wacky cults):

1) A cult that worships Walt Whitman's statue

2) The RCA cult

3) A cult that worships the statue of the Campbell Soup kids

4) A cult that hires the characters to find special offerings to their god. Their god is a nuclear missile and the offerings are parts of the launch mechanism.

5) Philly has turned into a hellish wasteland and there is a creepy guy who operates the ferry to hell

6) The entrance to the megadungeon is through the base of the Ben Franklin Bridge

7) People smuggle food into the city from South Jersey farms through the PATCO tunnel

8) The guy who lives down the street from me who wears a Cat in the Hat hat and talks using a sock puppet, who is running for mayor. Just use him, somehow.

9) All the big scary churches need to be standing. Obviously Father Doyle will have to be still running one of them because he is just that much of a bad ass.

I haven't really thought it through more than that yet.

Has anyone else run a megadungeon in Mutant Future? I'd be interested to hear about it, especially if you keep a blog record.

Megadungeons

2009-10-28T15:36:00.003-04:00

There has been a lot of megadungeon talk around the internet for the last week. I am hardly an expert on the subject, having never run one myself, but I do have some things that I would like to see in a published megadungeon.

1. It should be pretty short. I don't need to see more than 100 pages for a whole world campaign setting (and I can go with FAR less) so I'd like to see the megadungeon come in at 64 pages or less.

2. Most of that space should be spent on a description of the rooms/areas. I am not talking about boxed text to read aloud here, I am talking about good physical descriptions that give me more than I will probably give the players at first. Historical information will be really useful here.

3. I would prefer that, in general, an area of rooms was described with random tables given for things that could be found in that area. Give me good historical information, a good description of what the stoenwork in that area is like, and random tables to use to populate the rooms with the kinds of traps, monsters etc. found there.

4. I would prefer nice looking poster maps. Don't put grids on them, don't number every room. Just call out the areas, point out special rooms, and give me a scale for the map.

5. Good descriptions for special, cool rooms. Don't bother with the other rooms other than the general information. I wasn't going to use what your detailed description of the mess hall anyway.

6. NPCs that inhabit the dungeon and the surrounding areas. Just the important/cool ones. I won't bother to read about the ones that are just run of the mill blacksmiths.

What I don't want:

1. A room by room description. *Yawn*

2. Adventure hooks

3. Adventures/quests

4. More than 64 pages

5. A bunch of gridded maps in the book that I have to keep flipping back and forth to

6. A poster map with no scale on it.

Here are some more posts on the subject of megadungeons:

The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope
Grognardia
Grognardia
Greyhawk Grognard

@ttack Thoughts

2009-10-26T14:26:00.004-04:00

I have come to prefer a blend of sci-fi and fantasy over either in their pure form. This can take the form of science fantasy like Star Wars or Expedition to the Barrier Peaks style UFO's in a fantasy world. Post apocalyptic fantasy like Gamma World is also very appealing.

I do not like prophecies, supermen, or chosen ones. Anyone like that is likely to be a villain in one of my games. Actually a villain is likely to be someone pretending to be genetically superior to others to control them.

I want to have a megadungeon in my game. I have never run a megadungeon, in fact I have run very few dungeons period. There have been caves and ruined castles, but they were always realistically small in size. In order to have a megadungeon I will need to come up with a reason for it to exist that makes sense.

I do not want to have character classes or races in @ttack. That isn't to say that players cannot have a character of a race other than human, just that they will not be forced to adhere to any mechanical definition of the race.

D&D Editions: BECMI Basic Set

2009-10-25T14:34:00.003-04:00

From time to time I will be writing my thoughts on different editions of D&D. I take a very expansive view of what counts as an edition of D&D. There are several games that are heavily D&D based that will be included.

BECMI stands for Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal. These were box sets published throughout the '80s by TSR and put together by Frank Mentzer. They detail the system that is commonly referred to as Basic D&D or Classic D&D. Each box set was intended to cover different levels of play. Basic: 1-3, Expert: 4-14, Companion: 15-25, Master 26-36, Immortal: after the characters ascended to immortal status. They are easily identified by their Larry Elmore cover art.

The Basic Set was my introduction to D&D. It was not actually my introduction to the hobby, More on that later. This edition is laid out to teach the game. After a short introduction there is a very simple adventure in which you only roll the D20 to play. That is followed by another, slightly more complex, adventure that is laid out in numbered entries like a gamebook. This was a great choice, gamebooks were very popular in the '80s and school book fairs were full of them. Twelve year old boys were very comfortable with this format. By the time you finish the gamebook section you have learned the basics of mapping and the rules of the game.

The next part of the book details the different character classes/races and how to make a new character. The rest of the book is spent detailing combat, equipment, and tips on how to play the game. The reader leaves the Players Manual with a very good idea of what goes on in a D&D session and how to play the game. They know about mapping, using their equipment, retainers, light and many other subjects.

The second volume is the Dungeon Masters Rulebook. Like the Players Manual the meat of the book is taken up with an adventure. This is also done by slowly removing the amount of help the DM gets. The ground level of the dungeon has very detailed notes for the encounter, the second level has less boxed text and the third level is left up to the DM to create. The introduction on how to be a DM is just as well done as the introduction on how to be a player.

The next section of the book details rules for different situations like morale, traps, and retainers. Then there is a list of monsters and treasure. The final section is a how to guide for dungeon making.

For me this is the best introduction to the game ever made. You could learn to play D&D from this even if you didn't understand what a roleplaying game was when you picked it up. The main drawback of this set was that it was not very useful for looking stuff up later because of its teaching layout.

L5R

2009-10-24T21:11:00.001-04:00

Spending the evening helping my friend plan his major battle for the Imperial City.

Knockspell Issue 1

2009-10-22T02:36:00.003-04:00

Knockspell is another magazine catering to the old school gaming market. It is published by the same people who make Swords and Wizardry and is aimed mainly at that game, although the articles work for any pre-WotC D&D.

The first issue has a great Mullen cover, I really enjoy his art style, especially the way he draws people. Inside you will find an editorial from Tim Kask, the first employee of TSR, an article on one way doors and trick stairs, several character classes, 2 adventures and several other miscellaneous articles.

The high points of the issue for me were:

From Kiroth's Quill, an article on one way doors, variable stairs and sub-levels. These kinds of articles always give me good ideas for things to do in an adventure. Even if I don't use any of the things listed in the article, it sets my mind down that path.

The Random Hireling Generator, I always enjoy random trait generators. They are one of the best tools a GM can have, especially for improv.

Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent, a level 4-7 adventure that features some great atmosphere and some really nasty encounters in the crypt. Room #14 is my favorite

The Dungeon Alphabet by Michael Curtis of The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope is highly enjoyable and is getting published in book form.

I have to admit that I enjoyed Knockspell Issue #1 more than I did Fight On! 1. But both were good.

Fight On! Issue 1

2009-10-21T02:48:00.002-04:00

Fight On! is an old school gaming publication. It will be most useful to people playing OD&D, Basic D&D, or 1st Edition AD&D. By extension it is also useful to people playing Swords and Wizardry, Labarynth Lord, OSRIC and other "retro-clones". That is not to say that it will not be useful to players of newer editions or other games. It is the kind of publication that gets the gears spinning in your head no matter what kind of game you play.

The first issue is a slim 30 pages, but it is packed with gaming goodness. Inside you will find random description tables, a new character race, three dungeon descriptions, some magic items and other various articles full of gaming ideas including a primer on sandbox building. The dungeons are presented in very sparse detail, this gives you enough to work with but leaves plenty of room to make it your own.

Overall I enjoyed the first issue of Fight On! and trust me they only get better, more on that later.

Expedition to Castle Blackmoor

2009-10-21T01:48:00.003-04:00

I have been thinking about running a game set in the dungeon of Blackmoor Castle. I started my research a few days ago and thanks to some very nice people (you know who you are) I was able to read Supplement II: Blackmoor and The First Fantasy Campaign. Both of these were interesting reads but didn't help me as much as I thought they would. The First Fantasy Campaign was very difficult to work through. It was basically a dump of Arneson's campaign notes, and in many cases assumed that the reader already knew a lot about the players and the setting. There were some great maps of the dungeons, so I will be using those.

Luckily, a guy named Harvard has an awesome site dedicated to Blackmoor. He also has a rockin' blog on the subject. Thanks to those sites and some articles in Fight On! I was able to read accounts by the actual players of those early games. I found the accounts by Greg Svenson to be especially useful.

There is no way I can reconstruct the actual story of what happened for my game, and I really wouldn't want to anyway (then it wouldn't be my game). I did get enough information to get an idea of the feel. It seems that many of the excursions into Castle Blackmoor were made by a group of PCs with a large retinue of guards and soldiers. I also managed to get enough plot ideas to grab some of the old style.

I am planning on using Searchers of the Unknown to keep it as rules light as possible. I thought about using Swords and Wizardry: White Box but I don't want to spend any time on rules explanation. I plan on giving the players a large number of soldiers to take into the dungeon, SotU will make the combat really easy to handle.

My basic plot idea revolves around Baron Fant and his transformation into Lord Fang. I actually couldn't figure out if they were historically the same character, but I am going to go with it.

Purpose

2009-10-17T02:18:00.000-04:00

This blog will deal with pen and paper roll playing games. I previously had a blog that dealt with many different kinds of games and with movies. I will concentrate only on pen and paper games and related items in this blog