Swords & Wizardry Quick Start - Second Draft

http://sites.google.com/site/chgowizsite/Home/Swords_Wizardry_Quick_Start.pdf

I want to thank you all for the awesome comments and suggestions you've made in helping me to tweak the Quick Start rules. I've made some changes and corrected a great many things. Here are some of the bigger changes:
- Added a character sheet
- Moved the ref's help tips after the dungeon to the ref quick start info
- Cleaned up the grammar, tense, headings and capitalization
- Dumped all references to halflings
- Reworded a lot to remove duplication, unnecessary prattling

So, with that - I'm releasing this second draft. This is the last of the "text only" releases - once I get feedback on this, I'll go to layout, which frankly scares me a bit. I've never done layout before, I don't know the Scribus application. I don't know how much art I'll have in this thing, probably not a lot as I want to keep this under 25 pages. And given my lack of layout skills and desire to put this at 25 pages, it probably will not be in digest format, unless I make it font size 6.

I've come to realize, as I've written this, that the Quick Start is less for players and more for the Game Referee. At the end of the day, the only thing I think I can really give players beyond what I've already done are examples of play and more "options" that aren't needed to play the game. It's the Game Referee that I'm really talking to here, as I have included a lot of examples on various situations. I hope it helps the new S&W Game Ref.

Please, let me know what you think of this. Again, this is less about layout and more about content.

For those of you who've helped out with comments, you will be named in the final release. Least I can do...

Suddenly, those "lame" Giant Ants aren't so lame...

From the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm

Ant mega-colony takes over world

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

OK... if that doesn't spur some really cool campaign/villain ideas, or apocalyptic scenarios like Mind Flayers using millions of ants to enslave the surface-dwellers at the same time...

(images courtesy of Karen's Whimsey - and some Photoshopping on my part...)

OD&D Solo game w/wife - quick bits

Last night, we continued our "quick sessions" style to conclude my wife's investigations of the ancient tower and underground areas that she's been exploring for awhile. Last night was one of those "all role playing information dump" kind of games.

I will not love my NPC or plots

From day 1, I've been very leery of how much to involve my NPC. I've treated him like another character in terms of advancement and opportunities, and I've tried to always play him second fiddle to my wife's character, Aeli. He gets spells as he finds them - he doesn't even have Detect Magic and wants to find more spells to trade with. He tries to help but not be overbearing. I've come to like this mage though - and although I find it easy to keep him hamstrung because I don't want to make a mistake and create a "DM's favorite" - I find I am developing a bit of emotional investment to him. Probably time to kill him off. :D I don't want to fall into that trap.

I have, however, gotten over my reluctance to suggest directions and point out things that the NPC knows and would want Aeli to know, and last night, my NPC semi-lectured/chided Aeli for some things. It was a moment where the NPC showed Aeli that he really is fond of her and is now involved in her goals and priorities, and was able to deliver his thoughts and suggestions without me feeling like I was railroading her.

I think that the solo game has a slightly different danger than I had first supposed - the DM becoming emotionally involved in the goals of the player to the point where it could have the DM railroading for success. It's harder when you're dealing with just one person - especially since this is my wife and I am having fun as she's having fun. It occurs to me that the danger of "falling in love" with her plot is real - and that I have to remain as impartial as possible.

I realized this because of the NPC talking to Aeli about his thoughts on her actions and possible things he's seeing from her. I realized what a slippery slope I'm on - and that I have to let her develop her own story without railroads. Gah, I think I'm never going to be truly comfortable with this edge - and maybe that's a good thing. It keeps me honest so that I don't abandon her to no help at all - in a group setting, she'd get it; at the same time, I don't railroad her.

Identifying Magic without Identify

I am playing D&D without the Identify spell and it's making it interesting as Aeli puzzles over the items she's found in the ancient mage's library/tower.

Potions can be sipped and at least hints of the effects can be noted - Cure Light Wounds is an obvious one that Aeli knows full well now. Aeli's strange sword (inscribed with script that reads "Covet Me") has given her some interesting moments, but she's not too concerned about it.

For the ring that Aeli just found, she's had to jump through some hoops. Since the NPC mage doesn't have Detect Magic, he was limited in what he could do. Through Detect Evil, they found that the ring doesn't have an evil enchantment. So they went to see if someone else in the farm town could help them. The Detect Magic that the Patriarch cast shows that the ring is magical in nature, but it will require a sage to study the ring to discern its properties - in the meantime, she's wearing it to see what happens.

I like this "figure it out" approach - it just feels right. I'm sure she's curious and now I have the fun of making some sort of effect happen when the ring does what its going to do.

I also got to plant some "magic can be nasty" seeds in her head - the NPC mage did not just want to cast Read Magic on ancient mage robes with runes - some of them may explode when read and he didn't know if they were enchanted or not.

Another Just In Time sandbox prep - combined with published modules

My sandbox is based in large part on the old late-2E Fast Play rules (1998 Fast Play and "Crypt of the Smoke Dragon" Fast Play) and setting, as well as the . I've now started incorporating both of the follow-on modules Wrath of the Minotaur and Eye of the Wyvern.

One of main points to "Wrath" is the ancient mage Alaxus, and that this dungeon is related to him. Now the trick was how to integrate Alaxus to the sandbox and campaign.

- In the module, he was an evil mage in control of the area called "the Vale". OK, no problem, we'll keep that.

- How does he relate to the history of my campaign? Aside from controlling the Vale, he was also one of the founding members of Um-Loran - the black school of magic. That was a spur of the moment decision, and since I have broad brush strokes on what Um-Loran is all about (except that they're hunting Aeli), this was an easy detail to fill in.

- How does he fit into the "overall timeline and events of the world"? Oh, I can't reveal that just yet, but Aeli has to do some digging and exploring (not to mention, face an actual Dragon) to see if he does fit in - this was thought up as I was just mentally exploring how Alaxus fit into things.

- Can the campaign continue if she decides to not explore further? Yup, it can and will. She's got the freedom to do what she wants.
- Can I tie in the monsters to other things going on? Yup, already made changes.

All in all, the changes to the module and the details took me about 15 minutes. I have some notes to make now after the game, but it was the play that really pushed how he integrated.

The really neat thing is that I can also include "Wyvern" into this as well, as I've planted the hook in front of Aeli - if she takes it, then I can run that module - if not - then she doesn't and it's doesn't mean the campaign collapses. It'll be interesting to see if she does.

Announcing ... the winners of the One Page Dungeon Contest

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a ChattyDM approached a skeptical Chgowiz... no wait, that's not it...

Ah, yes, here we go!

Two wild and crazy guys, Chatty and Chgowiz, mustering an army of Chatty-wizzzzessss... no, no, that won't do...

Oh the heck with it, I'll just get on with it!

The judging for the One Page Dungeon Contest has concluded and we have chosen our winners. It was a tough contest to judge - we had 112 entries which far exceeded our expectations. Some of us had a lot of things going on in June, but we managed to get through it and we now have the list of winners in hand.

Before we announce the winners, I'd like to give a big sincere Thank You to our sponsors, who we will rename at the end of this post. Without them, we would not have the fantastic prizes that we're about to hand out. Please be sure to thank them yourselves, and make sure that you consider them all for future purchases.

So ... without further ado, here are the winners of the first ever One Page Dungeon Contest:

Honorable Mentions - these dungeons will not receive a prize, but they are extremely worthy of note and made it into the final Judges Picks before we had to whittle the list down to the last winners. These dungeons will be included in the Winners publication. The category listed was the decision of the judge who selected these honorable mentions.

Best Aquatic Entry: The Barnacle Caves - Sam Kisko

Best Classic: Ruffthroat's Rathskeller - Lee Barber
Best Dungeon Circa 1974: The Crumbling Dungeon - Lord Kilgore
Best Dungeon Crawl: Shrine of the Savage Jungle - John Laviolette

Most Elegant: Clockwork Crypt - Gary S. Watkins
Funniest: The Vareh'gra Depths - Gary McCammon
Best Geometry: Halls of the Mad Mage - Justin Alexander

Best Homage: The Omenous Portent of the Highlands Meteor - Tim Hensley
Best Introductory One-Shot: The Tomb of Durhan Oakenshield - Dyson Logos
Best Non-Dungeon: The Great Cloud Caper - Jonathan Lee
Best Unconventional: Traps-R-Us - Chris Torrence
Best Use of Tables: Mountain Lair of the Misanthropic Magus - Sean Wills

Runner Ups - these dungeons were the top of the Judges Picks, after we had picked the top 3 winners. Each of these represents an outstanding dungeon, certain to appeal to most everyone. These dungeons will be awarded prizes as noted. The category is as the Judge picked it:

Best Hack-n-Slash: The Gray Goblin Warrens - Christopher Brackett
Prize: Random Esoteric Creature Generator

Best Non-Fantasy Entry: The Horror of Leatherbury House - Michael Wolf
Prize: Bundle of Goblinoid Games products

Best Pub: Arendt's Old Peculiar- Antti Hulkkonen
Prize: Tabletop Adventures bundle: Bits of Darkness, Deck O'Names

Best Replayable Entry: The Infinite Tower - James E. Raggi IV
Prize: Otherworld Minatures - Pig Faced Orcs box set

Best Retro Use of 30x30 Space: Megadungeon of the Mad Archmage Gary Stu - Adam Thornton
Prize: Bundle of Knockspell and City Encounter PDFs

Best Silly Dungeon: Maze of NAMCAP - Patrick Riley
Prize: Bundle of Wizards of the Coast 4e Adventure Modules

Wow - those were fantastic dungeons, but the best is yet to come...

These top 3 dungeons represent a lot of hard work, imagination and a very interesting situation from a judging perspective - these 3 were the easiest to agree up on as nearly all of us had them at the top of our lists. So, here are the Best of Old School and Best of New School entries:

Best New School Dungeon: Cry of the Gravegod by Heron Prior
Prizes: Bundle of Necromancer games product, Fantasy Grounds II License, Wizards of the Coast - Dungeon Delve book and Adventurer's Vault book, 6 month membership to Obsidian Portal, AvatarArt free artwork, Quarterly membership to Monte Cook’s DungeonADay.com

Best Old School Dungeon: Valley of the Necromancer Kings by Andrew Gale
Prizes: Bundle of Brave Halfling Production products, Demon Idol Miniature, 6 month membership Obsidian Portal, Fantasy Grounds II License, AvatarArt free artwork, Bundles of Fight On and Knockspell issues

And finally... the best of the best. This dungeon was highly favored by almost all of the judges for various reasons and after much screaming and ranting and throwing of keyboards...er... after reasoned and balanced discussion, we came to the conclusion that this entry was the winner of the One Page Dungeon Contest...

Best Overall One Page Dungeon: Secrets of the Old City by Simon Bull
Prizes: Patron membership of Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design, Kobold's Guide to Game Design by Kobold Quarterly, Quarterly membership to Monte Cook’s DungeonADay.com, A full License for Smitework’s Fantasy Grounds II, 1 year membership to Obsidian Portal, 50$ Gift Certificate from One-Bookshelf, Bundles of Fight On and Knockspell issues

Also, please note that we will also be offering passes for the Las Vegas NeonCon gaming convention to any of the honorary mention, Runner ups and Best of winners, that would like to attend. Vegas, baybee!

Wow! There you have it... the top entries and the prizes! We want to congratulate all the winners for their efforts and their achievement and thank all of YOU for entering, participating, asking questions, being flexible and understanding when we had issues and snafus and for being patient while the judges read and enjoyed each and every entry.

What are we going to do about releasing all of these entries? Chatty and I have batted this around a bit and this is what we've come up with:

The winners and honorable mentions will be placed in a PDF with a color cover to be created by the recent winner of the Erol Otus/Fight On!/Otherworld art contest: Mark Allen! The cover will feature a scene from the Secrets of the Old City winning dungeon. The PDF will also have some reprints of the One Page dungeon posts, the posts Chatty and I did on how to make a one page dungeon key, as well as a copy of the template itself for your use. This PDF will be distributed by Tabletop Adventure on most of the RPG PDF outlets - and it will be FREE.

We are going to make a second PDF which will feature the winners and runner ups, but will not feature the color cover and additional freebies. This PDF will be placed into an archive (ZIP) file which will also have all the entries for you to download. Yes, if you want to see all 112 entries, you will be able to do so. We'll work out where that will be hosted, but be warned, it's a large 68 MB file. The PDF will be for you to use if you wish to see/feature the winners.

I want to thank our hardworking judges -Sham from Sham's Grog n Blog (http://shamsgrog.blogspot.com/), Amityville Mike from Society of Torch, Pole and Rope (http://poleandrope.blogspot.com/), Dave from Critical-Hits.com (http://www.critical-hits.com/) and Alex from Alex's Diary/Wiki (http://www.emacswiki.org/alex/RPG). I'd also like to thank Graham from Critical Ankle Bites (http://criticalanklebites.com/) - Life prevented him from serving as a judge, but we thank him for his input and comments.

So, how did we judge this contest? How did we come up with old school/new school? From day 1, when we started trying to decide how to judge entries, we agreed that the "old school" and "new school" attributes would be strictly subjective to each judge and that we would go by majority votes, otherwise we would have quickly bogged down into the same issues we were trying to avoid. Alex/Kensata has written an awesome summary on how the judging was accomplished once we got OS/NS out of the way, so I'll let him tell the story.

At the end of the day, we felt that this process was subjective, but the ones we picked were usually fairly high in everyone's list, so we had a general consensus. We all felt good about how we went thru the process, and we hope you enjoyed the results. I know I'll discuss the entries and my thoughts later on, and perhaps the other judges will as well.

So... that's it! Congrats again to the winners! I personally am truly humbled by the amount of fun, joy and creativity that went into these things - no matter what game you play, these dungeons represented a place you wanted to take us. Some of them left us laughing, some of them left us wanting to twist our head into strange shapes due to font sizes and creative artistry, but they all were really cool to see.

And before you ask - I need METRIC LITERS of beer before I even think about 1PDC 2010. :)

Our sponsors!
The prizes awarded were generously donated by our sponsors - they were key to getting this thing rolling and we hope you appreciate their support as much as well do. Please be sure to show them your support as well.



Brave Halfling Publishing




Fight On Magazine

Goodman Games


Malhavoc Press/DungeonADay

Mythmere Games
Necromancer Games
Obsidian Portal
Open Designs


Otherworld Miniatures

Smiteworks
Tabletop Adventure

OD&D Solo game w/wife continues

Last night, @theprincesswife and I picked our solo game back up after a monthlong hiatus. June was a particularly stressful month, with many things planned and the ongoing health issues with my father. It was nice to have a couple of hours of game-time and enjoy some simple fun.

When we last left my wife's character, Aeli, she had just gotten herself extricated from jail after a run-in with some bandits. After preparing a fairly interesting version of a large slingshot, Aeli and party set forth to explore an area of a dungeon guarded by skeletons in a tough defensive position.

In an anticlimatic resolution, the hireling cleric turned the skeletons and the party mopped up on them cowering against a locked door. Beyond that door, Aeli found more interesting situations.

One room literally was 10x10 - except instead of an orc with pie, there were the remains of an exploded chest, an intact chest, a burnt body and it's apparent protector, a small dog. My wife kept expecting the dog to morph into a fantastically nasty creature, but it didn't. What the dog did do was prevent Aeli from approaching the body and second chest.

The ensuing ... resolution ... has given the NPCs and hirelings much mirth - Aeli has several new nicknames. However, I've been told that if I reveal exactly what she did, she will post rather embarassing photos of me in revenge. Let me just say that she chose the most difficult way of resolving the issue.

The climax of the evening was when the party followed a group of turned skeletons in a huge cavern and I got to do something I hardly ever do in the game "Dungeons & Dragons" -- I plopped down the miniature of a black dragon in front of the characters. The cavern had a huge brazier on an altar and a "smoke dragon" had appeared to intone a warning to the players.

Aeli promptly turned and high-tailed it out of the cavern. I have to admit, I was proud of her and slightly disappointed - but I know she'll be back. She just has to hire another posse. She had only 3 fighting men with her, a 2nd level cleric and 3rd level mage - but Aeli likes to have armies when facing hard foes.

In the 10x10 room, Aeli found a mysterious set of robes with possibly arcane writing on them, as well as a mysterious iron ring in a silk pouch. I've been told she wants to do some research on these items, as well as the mysterious minotaur symbol found all over this dungeon. Hmmm...

Congratulations to Mythmere Games for winning Lulu contest

It's been announced that retroclone publisher Mythmere Games has won the May lulu.com sales contest. Swords & Wizardry is now featured prominently next to Fight On! magazine as putting the OSR on the map in terms of exposure. This, on top of the announcement that S&W will be published and distributed into your local FLGS harbors many good things and a larger potential audience for those of us who enjoy Original Edition game.

Congrats to Matt and all of us who support Swords & Wizardry!

Ultima sandbox prep

My Ultima prep of late has fallen by the wayside as summer slows down gaming activities in my local group. I still owe Jeff Rients a print of these games, and I'd like to playtest the rules before GenCon, so I'm getting my act back together.

Part of the Game Referee's Guide will include a premade adventure area - and to pull this off, it's important to me to have at least a few things completed for game masters to use. This is different than the Quick Start - I'm going to assume that a DM using this Ultima game will know a thing or two about putting adventures together - but I want to have examples.

I also see this as a perfect way to show how I would prep an initial sandbox using the ideas from my post about sandboxes last week.

Now I'm going to cheat a bit and preload my sandbox area with the knowledge of the overall map of the world. Most of the time, I would not have all this mapped out, but we'll start with this:



This is the continent of Sosaria - aka "Lands of Lord British" from Ultima 1. This represents the landmass that I would use for my entire sandbox. However, we're going to concentrate on that upper left area.

Now, here is what I know about that area, just as "Broad brushstrokes" encourages me to do:

1. This area is called Perinia. It is a dangerous place, with the forces from the Lost King's castle barely able to hold back Mondain's forces swarming from The Dungeon of Perinia. There are many abandoned hamlets and farmsteads, with most people near the Castle, outposts and keeps, and Yew. The Plains of Perinia are grasslands and smaller streams and sparse woods, the land is old but fertile. The foothills around the Perinian Mountains are worn from age. The Perinian Mountains are also ancient and worn - covered in trees and not very high, but many lost valleys and hidden things. The Perinian forest is old and fey - some say the trees are alive, remembering a time when humans did not walk beneath their branches.

2. The town (by the forest) is called Yew. Rustic, not quite a town as much as a very stretched out, rural, tree filled collection of buildings spread out over a stretch of land forest. There is a harbor. Yew has suffered attacks by forces of Mondain.

3. The Castle of the Lost King is an ancient castle with many older buildings and the main hall made of wood. The King of the castle is allied with Lord British against the force of Mondain, but he is sorely pressed to keep Mondain's forces at bay.

4. The Dungeon of Perinia is a deep and dank underworld - mainly consisting of mines, caverns and dark places that lay forgotten until Mondain begain his attacks upon Sosaria. It is filled with bestials and worse - there are many entrances and caves with tunnels leading adventurers to their doom.

So... I have two possible home bases for the players. (Castle, Yew) I have a great candidate for a megadungeon, or many small dungeons in a central area (think The Caves of Chaos). I have some possibilities for random encounters - fey creatures in the woods, possibly ents - orcs and goblins marauding - abandoned hamlets - lawful outposts/forts - normal creatures.

The nice thing is I don't have to put too much effort into it right now, but we will give a bit of prep to all of these. Most important is to do what is needed to get the players started: flesh out Yew/Castle just enough so the players can get rolling, put Level 1 of The Dungeon of Perina together, put together a couple of of random encounters and possibly some random charts, then let players loose on this place. Since their adventures are going to flesh out a lot more, I'm going to let them and their play (random encounters or stated goals) fill in the map.

You'll also note that although I have the whole map of Sosaria available, I'm only doing the Perinian Peninsula. There's no need to do Britannia. There's no need to map out the Dungeon of Mt. Drash. I don't need Lord British's stats. I just need the starting points.

Next post - Just in time preparation of Yew/Castle - what would I do for the new players?