ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog

Fin.

2011-11-02T13:38:00.001-05:00

This blog is no longer actively maintained. This blog was a personal journey and exploration of an old guy who loves playing OD&D (Original 1974 D&D), AD&D (Advanced D&D as published in 1979), the Basic versions of D&D (As published between 1979 - 1983) and the "retroclones" that have come in the past 5 years.

What remains here are the top 25 or so most viewed/commented posts, my solo game posts with my wife (of which there were quite a few!), and some links to downloadable content. A table of contents is below, behind the "Read More" link. The downloadable content links will remain to the right.

These remaining posts represents a compromise between my desire to nuke the entire thing, and my association with historical societies and museums that advocate saving content on top of readers asking to leave it all up. This is a personal decision and I'm sure this will make nobody but myself happy, but shigata ga nai. As someone said, "closure is valuable" and this is what feels right to me.

If you know me and need to get in touch with me, you know how. I'm not going to stop gaming, although that has slowed down significantly thanks to life. I won't stop reading forums or blogs and perhaps commenting here and there. I'm just done with blogging about it and with being as active as I used to be.

I have no parting words of wisdom, nor any great philosophies that I've learned by sharing a big part of my life from 2008 to 2011. It was, in the end, simply about gaming and sharing those games with others. I had fun, I learned some cool shit, I made an ass out of myself a few times. I guess what remains here is what probably best reflects what this blog and I shared with you all.

For those of you who shared back, or who bought my crappy little books for beer money, thank you. For those who gave their money to the TARGA fundraiser and Toys for Tots fundraisers, you have my extremely humble thanks and wishes for good karma to visit you.

Fin.
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Toys for Tots 2011

2011-10-03T15:57:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year again, as I begin to start wearing the thermals and heavy leather gear for riding that thoughts go to Christmas and the Chicago Toys for Tots Parade.

Last year, you all humbled me with your generosity and fellowship to donate to good causes like Toys for Tots.
Our family got together and shopped for toys with your donated cash - I chipped in the cost of tax so that your money

I'd like to appeal to you again to support us again this year. $1, $5, $10, $20 - it all makes the difference in the world, especially in this day and age with the economy sputtering and people long out of work. I will once again chip in the gas, the sweat equity and my cold ass shivering on a bike on parade (provided we don't get ICE like we did last year - that did keep me home, unfortunately, I donated the toys as a drop off to their warehouse.)

The PayPal button on the left over there will take you to a Paypal donation form. You do need a paypal account. If you'd rather mail me a donation, that's fine as well, just drop me an email.

Thank you so much, and blessings to you for your generosity.

Where are we at? A reflection of old school gaming.

2011-07-18T10:45:00.000-05:00

It's been roughly about 3 years since a little game called "microlite20" lured me away from the soul-sucking morass that was my 3e Ultima campaign design and back into playing D&D the way I remembered it. In that three years, I've seen some pretty amazing events happen in our little hobby, both old-school-wise and just RPG-wise. I've been wool-gathering on this for a little while (what the hell else are you going to do when you have no power... and it's middle of the night...) (OK, don't go there, ya perverts...) and I thought I'd share some of the mind-lint that I've found.

Old school is cool - but is it because of the "OSR" or because of the failure of 4e/success of Pathfinder? That was a bit of a puzzle for me, and still is. I'm pretty sure that 4e hasn't been the raging success that most at WotC had hoped for - the success of Pathfinder makes it clear that people like what they like and they like what they like and they'll BUY what they like. I'm pretty sure that this whole deal breaks the mold that had been established for the previous 30 years... that there is no other D&D than the official TSR/WotC D&D and thou shalt buy it or thou shalt be marginalized. No longer - Pathfinder said to the 3/3.5'ers "Come home to momma!" and they did. Going back wasn't just a bunch of fat-beards, there was real money, real impetus and a real concept of "going back to the basics."

Now I'm sure the grognards sniff at that.. hell, I did at first. But it's not as far fetched as you might think. You could say that the whole old-school/clone thing beget Pathfinder and beget the whole "go back" thing that people are talking about when they talk about 5e and "the future" but I'm not so sure. There's no doubt that C&C, OSRIC, S&W made a huge mark. Books like Dungeon Alphabet, Stonehell, and others staked out some territory that others have followed in. Yet I can't help wondering if the sheer size and impetus of Pathfinder pushing people "back" also made it easier for people to look beyond Pathfinder to see what else there is... momentum I guess you could say? Anyway, with the successes of the small print stuff, the hobbyist (and hobbyist-to-publisher/published author) path is alive and well. Yet I'm wondering if that path will slow down a lot...

... because there's nothing lately that has jumped out at me with the same intensity that OSRIC/S&W did back in 2009. Now that is completely a personal opinion. You can call me an ass, that's OK, but I found what I liked and wanted in those clones because they clarified and pointed me back to the games I love to play. What I play now is such a mashup of OD&D/AD&D/Holmes/B-X and the clones thereof that I can't call it any one thing. I also can't speak to the latest/greatest stuff - I haven't played nor was really motivated to play LotFP. The latest book that seems to garner a lot of blog attention - Vornheim? - never really piqued my interest and it's not something I'd shell out the hard earned cash for. These days, I've got so many riches from the free stuff on the web and the modules and information from the originals that it's hard for me to feel that "gotta buy it now" need. I suspect I'm not alone in that regard - the vast majority of my players in my AD&D tabletop campaign are very similar.

So I wonder if we're seeing what life would have been like had OD&D/AD&D been released and that was it. OK, so Matt Finch keeps fiddling with S&W Core and that's OK, that's his baby. S&W White Box has hit it's natural "final draft" which I think is appropriate. Anything further would be simply houserules tacked on. OSRIC has reached it's "fin" although we do see people creating supplemental stuff - again, houserules. I think the slow-down is good, even natural because it "feels" right - I've got what I need, I've got what works, I can find just about any additional piece from the "fanzines" of blogs/houserules and whatnot and that's an embarrassment of riches that will fuel a ton of games.

So combined with the "old school is cool", I have this personal satisfaction inside that we're all "set". OK, we could grind over Chainmail and reclarify it. We could even possibly do the same to Battlesystem. For those people who have a 2e love, I know there will be a time when a clone comes out... but in all honesty, I almost want to say "Mission Accomplished" and feel good about that.

Is there a desire for more clones and more clones and more houserules? Oh sure... and I get where that drive comes from. I'm going to keep digging into the old wargaming stuff to get a handle on it and plug it into my campaign, so I think that same drive will continue to get people to dig into the old stuff to mine new interpretations of it. I'm with Jeff Rients in "the more the merrier" although I have a personal belief that at some point, the spinning and respinning will hit an end point. I suspect that with the new movies coming out, we'll see more games about Mars and Hyboria and so on...

I wonder though.. if we haven't taken our best shot and it worked... and now it's just time to enjoy and play games and let those games show the way to where we want to go next?

If you're going to blog...

2011-07-07T08:40:00.001-05:00

... be authentic. Expect a ration of shit for it.

So hi, I'm Michael / ChicagoWiz, I play D&D old school style and I'm part of a cantankerous community of RPG blogging bastards, some of which are challenged in the social skills (myself included), so expect to get nailed to wall at some point. Maybe even in extremely painful ways.

I'd advise you to take Raggi's advice to heart. (Yea, imagine me saying THAT. Hell is freezing over.)

#1 - Nobody is your friend (unless you know them as a friend face to face); #2 - they really don't give a fuck about you unless they're your friend; #3 - once you put yourself out there, you're a target; and #4 - expect butthurt when they twist in the knife into the things you care about and put yourself out there about.

#1- #4 are always in effect, but so should your defenses. Don't feel bad if you have to do what you have to do.

The TARGA takedown was a huge kick in the balls and yea, if I ever see the instigator of that shit face to face, probably the first words out of my mouth will be some combination of "fuck", "you" and "asshole" but as far as my participation in the old school blogging/gaming community drama, it's over, done, and I learned my lesson.

As far as someone devoting a blog post to hating your happy ass, been there, done that. Hell, at first I was all up in arms when whats-his-face wrote his little diatribe. I haven't reread it, but it's easy enough find (or he'll be happy to share it with you, I'm sure.)

Now, it's a fucking badge of honor. You can feel the same too. Just be authentic and true to what you feel inside.

And on those days when you're really pissed, just imagine a little bit of this:

Clothe them in scraps (Quickie How To)

2011-07-05T09:05:00.002-05:00

I got an email over the weekend commenting on the Otherworld Skeletons I had worked on in February. Specifically, the dude on the left there:

Here's what I wrote about him in March:

I was working on the skeletons (UD1a) and decided to take the advice I read on the Otherworld forums and pin the arms. Unfortunately, my pinning was an utter failure. Either the pin was at a "bad" angle or I didn't have enough in the ball of the arm joint to make a good fit, but I just struggled with all of them.

One in particular (the spear guard) gave me fits. I was going to put the skeleton standing at attention with a spear/shield, and after 8 times (5 with superglue, 3 with JB Weld) of putting arms on, them not bonding/holding enough and working loose, me scraping clean, regluing, I just had ruined shoulder bones and crudded up arms/sockets. I thought I would have to put that figure away as a ruined one. I was given a great idea to get the shoulders in place anyway I could, then cover the shoulders with a "rotted" cloth. Great idea!After a search around the house for non-embossed tissues or cloth, I found that my box of industrial paper towels work great. So now the model has tons of JBWeld on the shoulders but it will be tabletop acceptable.

The emailed question was, how did I actually make the rotted cloth?

BTW, I apologize for the suckage of the photo. I probably should reshoot my minis since I now know how to use my camera properly for minis photos, later maybe.

Anyway, the recipe is as follows:

1. Grab some tissue paper, paper towel, or something that can stand up to a few dunkings in white glue.

2. Cut/rip the cloth to fit. I had to do this several times to get it to look right. It's easier to do this now than later when it's stiff and painted. If you're making rotted cloth, I ripped it so that the uneven ripped edges would look rotted.

3. Soak/paint it with Mod-Podge or Elmer's White Glue. When it starts to get dry, "shape" the cloth as much as you can so that it dries somewhat in the position you want. I also crinkled mine, then flatted it out so it didn't look perfectly smooth.

4. Repeat #3 if it doesn't feel sturdy enough. The white glue is to hold the shape and stiffen it so that when you paint it, the paper doesn't fall apart.

5. Basecoat/Shade/Highlight. For my rotted cloth, which I wanted to look leather-like, I used DecoArt Mississippi Mud as base, Devlan Mud as the shade and Khahki as a highlight.

6. Glue to your figure. I used superglue and there was enough white glue/paint in the cloth so that it held together nicely. Since it was already somewhat preshaped, it was pretty easy to get it to line up and look like it was hanging on the shoulders.

Easy Peasy and probably not worth so many words, but there ya go.

Post Vacation (NSFW art)

2011-06-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

So after 4 years, I finally had some time off. And apparently I missed Carcosa the Sequel. Well damn. Can't say I missed seeing the drama, because I had a blast exploring the East Coast, seeing whales and looking at the beauty of wild lands.
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The final say-so on 0e/1e vs. 4e...

2011-05-20T08:40:00.001-05:00

... comes courtesy of Cleverbot.

There's absolutely nothing that anyone can say to this except...

Apologies to my AD&D players who came last night only to see me in the throes of an allergy/lack-of-sleep attack. We had a nice discussion and managed to recruit a new member even though we didn't play. I'll see you guys on the 31st!

Not an Edition Warrior, but I have chosen a side...

2011-05-17T16:30:00.002-05:00

... and it dates pre-2e.

You play what you want, great. Doesn't mean I'm going to go all kumbayah with 2e/3e/4e. I have no interest in them, no real use for them and they don't influence what I do with my game. If that makes me an "Edition Snob" - well, I'm fucking guilty as charged - kinda like "If it's wrong to be in love, I don't want to be right!"

Really? Why is there this sudden kumbayah all over the place? Why isn't it OK to just love what you love, play what you play and get the fuck on with it? Why do we have to shove banners and warm fuzzy phrases all over the place and pretend like we are all supposed to embrace something that we really just have no interest in, don't care about and won't give a second thought to past this post?

*sigh* I really am getting curmudgeonly, aren't I? Ah well...

(Edited to add)

I'm reminded of a phrase from the Hagakure:

"It is bad when one thing becomes two. One should not look for anything else in the Way of the Samurai. It is the same for anything that is called a Way. Therefore, it is inconsistent to hear something of the Way of Confucius or the Way of the Buddha, and say that this is the Way of the Samurai. If one understands things in this manner, he should be able to hear about all says and be more and more in accord with his own."

This is not inconsistent with how I feel about the way I play D&D.

DM Dilemma - It's OK to say "No" - No, really. Say No!

2011-05-06T15:15:00.003-05:00

What is it about Fridays and this subject - last week's DM Dilemma and now again this week.

I just read the latest post on Roleplaying Tips titled "A Con, A Cave, a Troll" by Simon Woodside. I have to admit, I had to walk away from the computer, come back, walk away again, come back.. well, you get the idea. If you wanted proof and a great example of the myth/perception that the DM should be the (unpaid) entertainer/walking-talking monkey, this post is it.

This is not to pick on Simon - I don't know Simon, I've never seen another post by him, as far as I know - it looks like he's a guest poster. What I am picking on are concepts like these:

As the GM you are expected to be a storyteller for your players ...

... make your gaming material fit what the players want to do ...

In this specific example, the GM might scrap their previous plan to dive into a gritty underdark campaign and instead develop into an above-ground, interaction-with-the-locals theme. I’m just making that proposal based on what the PCs in the example seem to want. They seem to have expressed a preference, maybe, for building-oriented adventures over dungeon adventures. Don’t assume it, ask them. Use their feedback for your future designs.

The players ultimately get a campaign more closely tailored to what they want.

Now, in Simon's defense, he also writes:

But fundamentally he was right. He had prepared a troll cave. Why should he suddenly have to wing it just because his players didn’t want to play what he prepared?

I'm still trying to figure out how this perception, this myth that the DM needs to be the performing chimp came about. Is it just a sign of the times, this sense of entitlement and the sense that the DMs should have to do that, just because they're DMs?

I don't get it.

I know there's a balance and if I was running a game that totally sucked, nobody liked, then I would expect players to not play. But if the players got up and left because I ran a goddamn troll cave, well, great, you go back to town and we'll shut down for the evening. See you next game session. If I had players demanding things, with the expectations that they should get it just because they grace my table after I've put time/effort/thought/money into putting together a campaign world... I'd be hard pressed to ever want to put the energy into running a game.

I would like to beat a dead horse a bit and say that is why I like sandboxes - the players aren't constrained to a plot that they don't suddenly like. And perhaps that's why I don't run into these problems of the players requesting a "new plot" because they don't like the old one... in a sandbox, they can up and go do something else on their whim, which is expected and encouraged.

Go back to the wargaming roots of our hobby. When someone puts together a battle of Romans v. Gauls, the participants don't suddenly say in the middle of the game "Hey you know what, I really want to play Aztec warriors, so let's just cross the ocean..." the stated campaign was what it was and people played it and then decided what to do next. Now, if the DM doesn't supply players with what's on the WotC approved magic item list, they're a horrible DM. If they don't provide checklists and questionnaires and adjust their campaign to fit 4 to 8 different 10 page backgrounds, they're a shitty DM.

Well, guess I'm a shitty DM. Go figure. I just have no interest in being that type of performing chimp.

This isn't to say I don't participate in a mutually enjoyable game. We try stuff that works or we get rid of it. I run a game that I've found to be enjoyable. I've found a good rhythm with the game I like to run and the game people like to play. At the same time, I don't feel this slavish responsibility to do exactly what my players want, when they want, how they want. I evaluate requests on what's good for the campaign as a whole, not on whether I should always say "Yes". There's a difference between saying "yes" when it makes sense and saying "yes" because I'm expected to be the performing chimp.

If I were writing that article that Simon wrote, it would be less about what I'm supposed to do because the players demand it and more about how to be up front with what the campaign/adventure/story/mission is about and being flexible within a sandbox context to allow the players to shift their goals. I don't need to put the same troll cave in the players' path because I'm locked into the troll cave.

This post feels funky, only because I don't think I'm doing a good job of expressing my puzzlement at this supposed DM responsibility and what goes on at my table. I have players coming back, so apparently I'm not the sadistic, fuck-em-all, screw-the-players DM, yet I don't resonate with anything that Simon wrote.

DM Dilemma - It's OK to say "No"

2011-04-29T13:40:00.001-05:00

I've gotten some very nice email inquiries and comments about the sandbox posts and I'm very appreciative of that, thank you. One of the common themes of the inquiries seems to be regarding my boundary of "no in-town adventures" so I thought I'd talk about that for a minute, because boundaries/edges and player expectations are a dilemma that I read about DM's having.

That "no in-town adventures" boundary came about as a result of adopting Ben Robbin's "West Marches" campaign style. I bought it whole-cloth, including the "You must begin/end in civilization" and "No in-town adventures - civilization is boring - wilderness is exciting!" themes. I'm extremely up front about that in my player handouts and game introductions.

No capes! And no in-town adventures, dah'ling! Too ordinary!

Someone asked me "why" the restriction and it's a fair/good question. The best answer I can come up with is that I find them incredibly boring.

"But Michael!" you may gasp (and I've been asked in same emails). "What if the players want it!? What if they DEMAND it?!"

Simple. I would say "No."

Well, why I would do something that I have absolutely no interest in? Why would I waste their time and mine? Why is there the expectation that the DM is someone who simply supplies entertainment on demand (I really wanted to put "is supposed to be a whore?" here, but figured that would distract some. Wait, I did it. Oops...) to the players who are within their rights to expect whatever they want.

Crazy, right? I see this all over the place though - DMs who think that they have to do XYZ, or that the player's fun should come at the expense of the DM's fun. Bullshit.

Now I am clear and up front about what I will and won't do. I don't bait and switch and even if a long-running player got pissed and threatened to leave unless I provide an in-town adventure.. well... sorry man, thought it would work out, hope you find a game you can enjoy. That's not to say that I don't appreciate player input, that we don't discuss rules, that I ignore player requests or feelings. At the same time, I've got my own ya-yas. I've got what works for me and I know what doesn't work and trust me, an intrigue-filled, plot-rich mystery of Lord So-in-so who may be a vampire in the Enonian Keep zzzzzzZZZZzzzzz... huh? Wha'? Let me know what's beyond the woods over to the east in the wilderness. I may spend 10 days hex wandering, but by god I'm filling in my map and making plans for my keep to go there, my village to go there and I'll move those goblins right the fuck out! See? I'm cursing and getting all excited about the prospect. (Now you know why I needed 29,000odd hexes...)

Look, this isn't a post about why in-town scenarios suck. It's a post that says you as the DM have every right to run, to enjoy, to demand a game that you like as much as you try to provide a game that other people like. I know that in Chicago, I am extremely lucky to have a big population and lots of opportunties. I have a pool of players that enjoy the kind of game I run, that enjoy the way I do things. Not everyone has that... but in consideration, if I were in a player-poor environment, I still would not run in-town scenarios. Why would I play basketball if I suck at it and don't like it? Answer, I wouldn't. I'm not a masochist, emotional or otherwise. I'm not doing this to be of service to everyone else. I'm doing this to share what I do enjoy, to be with like-minded people and to have awesome games doing it.

So it's OK to say "no". It's OK to tell the players "you can't" and it's OK to set limits, boundaries and edges. Just be up front, be clear and be consistent. Be prepared to wow them with what you CAN do, with what you WANT to do and let the love of THAT shine through and you won't get asked for the things you don't want to do.

The sandbox problems and the DM skill level

2011-04-28T09:15:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's cross-blog discussion with JB of B/X Blackrazor over his post on sandbox gripes went surprisingly civil [1], so I thought I'd continue the discussion with some points that he brought up in his comment. They're good ones but most importantly, they reflect that issues with sandboxes end up being DM and DM skill specific, not necessarily a reflection on sandboxes in general. I tried to be very careful in disupting the myth about sandboxes, not to bash on JB's DM skills.

See for me, I AGREE that sandboxes should be "living/breathing/moving" things...that's exactly WHY I say they're a crap-ton of work! Or as I said in my whole quote:
"It requires a crap-ton of energy on the DM’s part to keep the campaign world LIVING/BREATHING/EVOLVING/RESOLVING..."
See? The work (and I'm just as lazy as the rest of y'all if not moreso) comes from trying to make a "living world;" that and the "keeping a couple steps ahead" of my players...which I don't do.

JB, I think you're overestimating how much work is involved - it's not as much as you might think, or made it be in your previous games.

The living/breathing world is a combination of how I see the world and how the players see the world. In so many ways, the players themselves shape the coming adventures. And while this may involve writing a sentence or two in a notebook as compared to the work of:

Players were expected to play their character/role in whatever scenario (I hesitate to even call them “adventures”) that the DM devised. The DM was expected to come up with adventures.

I'd be willing to bet it's about the same amount of time. In truth, the time I spend ends up being more reactive than proactive.

Here's an example - I had a dungeon full of ko-balds in an area held by ko-balds. The players wiped them out. A few weeks later, the players wanted to go back. I grabbed an encounter table and rolled up an owlbear and goblins. Since goblins are in the next forest over, and once the owlbear was killed by the freaked out players, the players wondered out loud if the goblins were going to move in. BOOM! There's my future story line "GOBLINS MOVE INTO FORMER KOBOLD BASE - WAR IMMENENT?" That added flavor and set up stuff for the future.

My point is that staying ahead of the players, for me, has been a combination of some prep (probably about the same time it takes to prep a module or grab the latest ScoobyDo adventure and rewrite it in fantasy format) and more of figuring out how the world reacts to the players. I listen to how the players see the world and it helps me to guide my hand. It's not always the truth - my players have come up with some crazy shit that just doesn't fit the bill, but that's OK. Heroes often get derailed on red herrings and I'll let them, they'll figure it out.

There's another quote I want to pull and this one is from Matt Finch's first adventure design book. I'm bastardizing it a bit, but it's the same jist: "Meaningful player decisions should have meaningful results." (Actually, his full quote is: "A good adventure should maximize meaningful player decisions." but you can see how I derived my interpretation.)

The players guide the sandbox a lot more than I let on because that's my job. I'm a con artist. I'm a scammer. I have this great sandbox with all the pieces, but in truth, the players do as much of the building as I do, through the things they do, or the things they don't do. I'm not some improv wizard, if I was, I'd be making money in comedy than being a boring IT manager. When my players make meaningful decisions, I want it have consequences, even if not right away, but it will in the future.

So what constitutes a meaningful decision? Well, that's one of those things that each DM and each player is going to differ on. For me, meaningful decisions involve - where are the players going? How do they interact with the elements of the destination (monsters, important objects)? What do their actions result in? What would be the reaction of all those involved who are not PCs?

Each adventure is not a meaningful decision kind of adventure in a world sense. Sometimes a "kick the door, grab the loot, kill 'em all" is exactly that. That doesn't mean that the weird sword someone grabbed from a kill/loot game now doesn't have meaningful results later on. It could. I planted a magic sword a long time ago and then in a place of Chaos, it shattered. Nobody has asked why, or what to do, or how to pursue it, so it remains open, but there's that potential. I'm not going to beat the players about the head with it, but at the same time, that thread is there. It's a line in my notebook.

This is a long winded way of saying that the two steps ahead thing and the Just In Time creation doesn't have to be about DM skill in crafting worlds - it can be just as simple as letting the players do what they do best and then letting the world react to that. And if you really need inspiration, grab that d12. 1-2, the world reacts badly, 3-5 the world is unhappy, but waiting, 5-7, the world is neutal, doesn't care, 8-10 the world is OK, but wants to see more, 11-12 it's the best outcome for the players' interest. Done. Next!

Whew. OK, JB continues...

And while I WANT my players to be independent and "go off doing their own things," I have a shit-hard time reconciling MULTIPLE players wanting to do DIFFERENT things at once...ESPECIALLY in a campaign world where the "maps" are static, even if the "world" is not.

Uhh, don't. Let them do it. It's not your job. You set the stage. They play in it. If they want to go in different directions, LET THEM! They'll figure it out, or they won't. Either way, you've done your job and you'll do your job as impartial referee.

Here's yet another example.

I have two main themes in my world - Chaos (the Dark Ones) is on the rise and the Bestials (orcs, goblyns, ko-balds) are wanting to kick human ass. My third theme is "you need gold. Lots of gold. There's riches out there. Go get it." but it's not the main oppositional them.

The first two YEARS of my campaign have seen the players wander from goal to goal. First, they wanted to clear out the monastery. No, they wanted to raid the ancient dwarf mine/kobold outpost. Wait, no, they want to explore the woods and rescue New Hope. No, wait, let's dig through the Inn and find the rumored magic sword. No, wait, wait... there's a second level the dwarf mines. Let's loot it! No, I found a map to a gold mine out in the Plains of Irecia. Let's go there! No, no, we should find my god's holy site! No, the chaos is stronger in the monastery, we have to clear it!

You get the point. :) They've finally focused lately and it shows. They've decided the orcs are too powerful right now and they want to eliminate the nearer threat of the chaos under the monastery.

And that's OK. They wandered, they had a good time, they learned and their skills as players have improved. My skill as a DM has hopefully improved.

Please forgive the length of this post, but there's another aspect I want to explore from JB's reply:

I was writing how they don't work for ME (at least the last three or four I've tried), and how there may be another "primitive" way of playing that still has some merits.
I think it's cool that you guys all do the sandbox thing...I think you have a lot of good tips for a newbie sandboxer like myself. So long as my players get to develop their own characters over time...strange as it might sound (coming from me) that's what I prefer to see more than the development of a campaign "world."

When I read your post yesterday, my goal in the rebuttal was to address the underlying myths that get perpetuated, you just happened to hit a crap ton of them. There's no way in hell I can judge you for being a good or bad DM unless I play in your game, so I tried to be real careful about not coming at you, but at the underlying themes.

I think all good or skilled DMs have that same approach - allowing the players to develop their characters. I know I do. I'm perfectly happy to let the players farm mustard, go genocidal on the countryside or even let Enonia burn while they set up their own new town. I've been happy to let them figure their world out for the last 28 months because it's been fun, we've all been learning and we all are getting invested in what we do. That's independent of how we construct the world we all play in.

I'd also like to say that there is no primitive way, no better way, no ONETWUEWAY of making a world tick. Sandbox is a tool, just like story telling is another tool. I've happily and liberally stolen as much shit as I can from all the blogs I read and all the games that I've watched or played in. Every DM has their thing that works and their thing that doesn't. I know that each game I walk away from, I feel like there's a dozen things I could do better. I could describe rooms/exits/layouts better. I could set better atmosphere. Hell, my fucking combat rounds sometimes are like keystone kops because I get so excited about fighting that Philotomy's sequence falls out my ass and I can't remember who is doing what. But I try to learn and improve my skills.

We keep coming back to that skill thing - and each style of play takes a skill but I think all these skills can be learned. It may not be easy, but it's worth the attempt, if you're interested. I have about zero interest in running a plot-driven campaign, but I will stick my toe in it now and then to see what I can learn from the experience. If you don't like sandboxes, think they're shit, cool... but I hope you learn something from learning about them. To me, that's no different than trying new video games to learn tricks, or trying a new sport to exercise a different part of the body. I'm a firm believer that if we don't push at the envelope, we don't grow, we don't find new areas to explore - and that at the end of the day is what drives me to do the things I do... to grow, to learn, to learn new things and express the crap in my head in new ways.

Well, if you read all the way through, you're a trooper and thanks for hanging in there.

[1] Not that JB isn't civil, but my experiences in the past haven't been so good on these in other areas, so this was nice that I could say "bullshit" and someone got what I was saying. :)

The sandbox myths - they continue and I stomp 'em

2011-04-27T09:40:00.001-05:00

The A to Z thing has really taken a lot more of my creative time/energy than I thought, so I was wondering WTF I was going to write about today, and JB over at B/X Blackrazor has given me the perfect subject.

JB writes some good shit, but I have to disagree with him perpetuating the myths of sandbox play.

Players often end up with a “huh, don’t know what to do” attitude (looking for clues or suggestions or direction from the DM)
Some players DO have a strong idea of what they want to do, but it’s “off the grid” (i.e. something the DM hasn’t prepped), leading to them being forced to go for the direction offered by the DM
PCs spend a lot of time combing through “tavern want ads” which is no more or less ridiculous than DQ’s “Adventurer’s Guild” (aped by many computer fatasy RPGs since).
The players (and sometimes the DM!) get BORED with the world/setting long before they’ve exhausted all the adventure avenues the DM bothered to prep, thus leading to (what I see as) a waste of the DM’s time and energy.
It requires a crap-ton of energy on the DM’s part to keep the campaign world living/breathing/evolving/resolving as the PCs podunk around the imaginary country-side.

I wrote about this two years ago (JESUS! Two years ago!?! Who the hell was I two years ago??) and even run local workshops on 2 hour sandbox campaign preps, but like birth certificate disputes, gas prices and bad pennies, this one comes up again and again. So let's once again dispel the myths and have some discussion about it.

Players often end up with a “huh, don’t know what to do” attitude (looking for clues or suggestions or direction from the DM)

I think it's a fallacy that sandboxes don't provide hooks or opportunities to adventurers. What sandboxes don't do is beat the players about the head with the chosen adventure of the month. If the players decide that the opposition is too tough, they know there are other opportunities, or they go looking for them. I think a sandbox doesn't hide, but it also doesn't force - they are just there. If players are too afraid to enter the bar, local Merchants Guild, talk to the local priest or lord ... well...

I can honestly say that in the 2 1/2 years in my sandbox, or in the solo game, I haven't seen the players have a "what do we do now" attitude because I present a living world. If you don't believe me, go look at the list of quests from both campaigns. It doesn't take a lot to do that either... just have a sheet of paper and when the players talk to NPCs or you drop a clue or announce what has happened between games, keep a note of it. Trust me, properly motivated (ie., poor) players will remember that 6 months ago, you mentioned that there was rumors of a gold mine beyond the ko-bald/goblyn infested forests.

This isn't rocket science, but it's also not requiring you build a rocket. Just leave hints and clues and let events transpire to guide you to how those clues/events build and develop.

Some players DO have a strong idea of what they want to do, but it’s “off the grid” (i.e. something the DM hasn’t prepped), leading to them being forced to go for the direction offered by the DM

That is exactly what I want! It's a fallacy that the DM has to "prep" for every player decision, in fact that's why sandboxes work! You put the pieces in place. You set the stage, but you also have broad concepts and brush strokes for those moments when the players do want to go "go off grid" and you have clear boundaries.

One aspect of my campaign that I do not hide is that I will not run in-town, in-kingdom adventures. I just don't do it. If the players wanted to pursue some sort of internal vendetta against the King, I would not run such an adventure. That's not my game, that's not my campaign and I'm really damn comfortable with that decision. If I'm a baseball player, why am I going to insist that the tennis players get up on a mound and throw tennis balls like baseballs to me? I'm not an in-town intrigue kinda DM. So my players know what to expect and they know the boundaries of my sandbox.

Within that, there's a whole world for them to explore and there's nothing "off-grid". If they want to ride 10 days to the Sithasten mountains, do I have 10 dungeons prepped? Nope, but I also give them and myself enough leeway that I *can* come up with something. My deal with the players to run a game is they tell me about 3 to 4 days prior what the mission is they want to do and who's coming. And I prep. If game day comes and we suddenly shift gears, I have no problem asking them for 15 minutes to figure out what is going to go on ... and I make some serious notes, grab some great tools and away we go - within the broad brushstrokes of my world and based on where the world has dynamically flowed since the first time I wrote those ideas down.

PCs spend a lot of time combing through “tavern want ads” which is no more or less ridiculous than DQ’s “Adventurer’s Guild” (aped by many computer fatasy RPGs since).

I also have to respectfully say "So the fuck what?" No more ridiculous than 99% of what we do anyway - wandering monsters, encounter tables, d30 tables, etc. If the players want to go to the Merchants Guild Job board, what do I care? 99% of those jobs are boring and the players are going to end up not caring. And if they do, then that's the world they want to play in. I'll run mustard farmers. It's not all that hard to drop hints and hooks to take the PCs away from "want ads." (see #1 above) and sometimes you go with a trope because it works. I can honestly say that the only time the PCs went to the Merchant's Guild Job board in Skalfier in my online game is because that's the mechanism I use to introduce players into how my world is structured AND that's my mechanism for dropping hooks or giving players a bit of income till they get the lay of the land. I don't force them to do so, but that's also not their primary mechanism for finding things to done once they get their feet wet.

The players (and sometimes the DM!) get BORED with the world/setting long before they’ve exhausted all the adventure avenues the DM bothered to prep, thus leading to (what I see as) a waste of the DM’s time and energy.

That's an interesting observation because I don't think that reflects sandboxes as much as it reflects the type of games/players/DMs involved in the campaign. I don't have bored players and if I do, they end up causing their own messes that get them quickly involved soon enough. It's also a fallacy that DMs have to prep every adventure that the players are going to participate in. I'm constantly a "just in time" preparer. I'm maybe 2 game sessions out, unless I'm using a module or third party adventurer. If the players run into something that I'm not ready for, I invoke the 15 minute rule or I'm not afraid to put up the "Under construction" sign.

If players are bored - ask why? Sandboxes are not static worlds - they shouldn't be. I set the pieces in place, but I also wind up the key and start the little toy soldiers staggering about. If the players get involved, the world reacts. If the players don't get involved, the world moves on. Broad brustrokes, remember? I don't have to "waste [my] time and energy" until the players are ready. When they are, I'll meet them there.

It requires a crap-ton of energy on the DM’s part to keep the campaign world living/breathing/evolving/resolving as the PCs podunk around the imaginary country-side.

Bullshit. Pure and simple. This is the single-most biggest fallacy I have seen to date and I don't know how it persists. OK, if you look at World of Greyhawk, First Fantasy Campaign, Conley's Majestic Wilderlands and so on, yes it looks like a crap ton of energy - THAT HAS BEEN BUILT UP OVER ONE/MANY DECADES!

I started Dark Ages with three dungeons of 1st level only. One was James M's monastery. Took me 10 minutes to adapt it. I added another module (which I can't reveal - yet) as the 2nd and beyond levels. As the players go through it, I spend maybe 10 to 15 minutes adjusting stuff prior to a game. Another dungeon was generated through Gozzy's online tool and I spent about an hour stocking it and tweaking it. As the players cleared it out, and I dynamically refilled it, that took maybe 15 minutes. And so on.

The area around Enonia, my PC's homebase - I took an hour or two. The map you're gonna see this afternoon as my "L" entry - all 29,000 odd hexes? I have about 10 filled with some sort of crap. And this is a 28 month ongoing campaign. My wife's solo campaign has nothing but one page maps for each 30 mile hex. As I need them. And it takes me maybe 15 minutes per map to generate it, figure out the general "feel" for the area and have it ready. I probably spend way more time painting the minis for her game than the actual writing.

I don't think my campaign takes me any more energy than the work I see going on with the story-based games, with the "gonzo-include-em-all" games. Over the years, yea, it's gonna build some layers and you're gonna see a lot of work, but it's no different than a Pendragon campaign, a Battletech/Mechwarrior campaign, a *gasp* White Wolf campaign and so on. The fact that sandboxes are some mythical high energy requirement type of deal is perpetuated only because someone went down that path because they bought the fallacy.

You can do this. No, really. You just have to get away from the one central myth that I hope to crush as mercilessly as I can... that you have to spend a ton of time and energy to provide a living/breathing space for your players to play in without having some sort of railroad or just abandoning the idea altogether.

If all else fails, I think you can build an awesome starting point by taking a gander at Jeff Rients "RPG Stud God"'s latest awesome work - the twenty questions for a campaign. I don't think, after answering those questions and sticking to my Myth Buster suggestions, any DM that can run a game would have a boring sandbox, unless they really want to believe those myths. And if that's the case, well, I can't help ya then.

Chainmail - Battle of McGuillicuddy's Farm, Fall 46 AD

2011-04-11T08:00:00.018-05:00

Sunday, I solo-gamed the small Chainmail scenario that I had planned out last week. Rather than three-peat the play-by-play and questions here, I'll point you to the OD&D Board thread and Knights & Knaves Alehouse thread where I have some specific questions. This post... is a flight of fantasy... a tale of bravery and woe.

It was a bit before dawn on the 13th day of Fall, 46AD and Gilroy squinted off into the distance. A bit of light bobbed and weaved, much like a will-o-wisp of legend. Gilroy spat into the ground and nudged his partner, Vomin. Vomin was a young lad, newly enlisted into the guard. Most landowners and homeowners within the town walls would grudgingly serve their requirement, but Vomin was excited to be doing something to mark his ascent into adulthood. Gilroy didn't begrudge him that, but it was still annoying all the same.

"That's someone with a torch." Vomin said, peering off into the pre-dawn gloom. "He's runnin' awful fast."

Gilroy grunted in response and waited. Soon enough, they heard gasping shouts as the figure approached.

"Wassat he's sayin?" Gilroy asked.

"I ... I think he's yellin' goblins." Vomin said, a twinge of excited fear in his voice. Gilroy sighed and started to tighten his helmet. He hoped it was nothing more than an excited farmer's nightmare, but deep down, a disquiet grew in his stomach.

Horses neighed and snorted as the knights pulled up before the troops. Most of the Town Guards were red and puffing from the long forced march, while the Keep's soldiers drew deep breaths and drank some water. The bowmen were already stringing their staves and checking their quivers.

William shifted his lance and watched in pride as Marshall Henrick Roehm rode out before the troops and squinted off into the distance. The old warhorse had been out with his knights to do a small patrol when the word came in that goblins, goblins!, had come raiding. The Marshall hadn't blinked an eye, but upon querying the frantic farmer, he rounded up some lances of his cavalry, a few platoons of foot soldiers, collected the Town Guard that had been summoned and immediately marched north. William couldn't remember a time when old Hardtack Henrick hadn't been decisive, although some said he had often gotten into more trouble than he could handle. Rumor had it that his son was soon to be raised in status and leadership within the Keep, a sign that Henrick was relinquishing control due to his age. William hoped it wouldn't be true soon... he trusted the old warhorse more than he could name.

"Alright men! It looks like the goblins are setting themselves up in a line just beyond McGillicuddy's farm. Let's ride forth and see what they're up to. Archers and foot, form a line and follow behind!" Henrick bawled. William turned his horse in line and drew his sword. Today would bring victory, with Henrick in charge!

"Bah! They're moving the archers forward, cowards!" Henrick snarled. "Damnable creatures."

He waved to the cavalry. "We ride through the archers! By the time those green-skins know what hit 'em, we'll be through them and can trap the others between! Then we'll get on down the road. I know what those cowards are after, our harvest!"

Gilroy watched the horsemen line up and begin to ride as the lieutenants and sergeants bawled their commands and got the foot and archers moving up behind. He watched Henrick wave his lance and everyone cheered them on. As they advanced the archers fired volleys of arrows over the cavalry's charge to pepper the goblins. The knot in his stomach tightened further as the missiles didn't seem to have much effect...

William couldn't believe his eyes! The goblins had moved more troops from behind the woods and they were bearing down on their right. Even more unbelievable, the goblin archers were tossing down their bows and reaching for their swords rather than retreat from the charge! Henrick was to his right and yelling at his knights to ware the flank, but they were already among the archers and lances and swords were flashing as man and bestial fought.

Goblin blood sprayed in the air as the horsemen pushed their way into the archer's lines. William stole a glance to his right and watched as Henrick's knights tried to halt their charge and face the flanking danger. Then...

Three goblins jumped at Henrick from the side and one plunged his sword into the old man's neck as the other two pulled him off his horse. His knights milled in confusion as the goblin foot soldiers beat them to the side and rear and more men fell as horses died and goblin blades drank human blood....

The cavalry finally halted their charge some twenty to thirty yards behind the now destroyed line of archers. Some fled away, broken by the advance, but the spirit had broken much harder for the Enonians. The goblins were cheering and hooting... and they were advancing!

"Back at 'em!" called out one of the cavalry lieutenants. "For the Marshall!" William wheeled his horse around and gripped his lance tightly as the horsemen advanced towards the jeering foot. With a crash, the two lines hit each other. The last thing William saw were two goblin blades coming from either side of his horse...

"They're all dead! I don't see the horses anymore!" Vomin cried out. Gilroy nodded grimly.

"Keep your eyes to the front, boy! Those goblins advancing on us only care if we're dead... and we don't want to end up on a goblin's spear!"

The two lines crashed together as Enonian footmen hewed at the goblins who stabbed and gibbered as they thrust their blades at the troops. Men screamed and fell and slowly the Enonians were pushed back till they retreated.

Gilroy wiped goblin blood from his face as the sergeants pulled the men back in line to face the advancing goblins. "Stand ready!" they called out urgently. Beside Gilroy, arrows flew as the archers desperately tried to hold the goblins off, but again, few fell and then the goblins were among them.

Gilroy was sporting a deep gash in his arm from a goblin blade. Vomin seemed none the worse for wear but he was clearly frightened. Around them, the battle seemed to go well, but men were falling, much too fast. Already, the humans were starting to pull back, but the goblins seemed to be doing the same. Then, several goblins advanced towards them. More and more men were starting pull back from the goblins onslaught. Gilroy saw that they were about to be cut off.

"Get going!" he said as he shoved Vomin towards the retreating men. "I'll hold them off!"

Vomin's grateful glance heartened Gilroy and Gilroy's grim look burned itself into Vomin's memory.

There's too many of them! The Marshall's dead! Retreat! Get back to the city!" screamed a bloody lieutenant, his nerve broken. The few men remaining from the foot soldiers began to flee, their resolve having fled. Vomin started to run with them, casting glances backwards in vain attempts to see if Gilroy was among them... but he never saw Gilroy again.

History records that on the thirteenth day of Fall, 46 AD, the goblins launched a successful raid of a particular rich harvest. A diversionary force had been sent towards Enonia while the remainder of the goblins plundered the grain stores and livestock to be carried back to their dens within the Dark Woods. Unfortunately for Enonia, Marshall Henrick Roehm was killed in the Battle at McGillicuddy's Farm, where Enonian forces responding to the attack encountered the diversionary force.

The knights were virtually wiped out, with only a couple of nobles surviving, and the cavalry was lost as an effective unit. The Town Guard and Keep footmen, losing their nerve at so many of their fellows dying, as well as shock over their Marshall's death, fled the battle alongside the archers. The goblins never attacked the city itself, but the loss of grain and cattle caused a great deal of privation in the ensuing harsh winter. Victor Roehm, Henrick's eldest son, assumed the title of Marshall, but some say he never was able to get over the death of his father.

Gaming on the cheap: DIY Miniature Carriers

2011-03-23T08:00:00.008-05:00

Back at GenCon 2009, I purchased a Battlefoam(tm) bag- a Battlefoam 216 pack. I've been pretty satisfied with the bag, I have two of their Imperial Guard trays and a 72 figure troop tray. With this bag, I get carrying capacity of 204 figures. More if I double up on the figures, which I do for my "mass troops" like the kobolds, goblins or bulk orcs. As I keep cranking out the miniatures with my painting push for this winter, I'm nearing full capacity, in fact I've ran out of the 1" x 2" spaces. I had purchased a second 216 pack, but I bought custom foam to make my own, and I've been using these for the minis that don't fit standard rectangles.

I've looked at their more expensive packs, I've looked at the Sabol Army Transports, but the idea of spending $75 to $150 for carrying around lead/plastic figures just isn't in the cards. Then I happened to see this post on DIY Foam Trays on the blog House of Paincakes. They've been doing a series of post "Gaming on a Budget" which I've enjoyed greatly. This all seems to have been inspired by an Oct 2010 blog post on DIY foam trays at a site called "War Builder."

This was all good, but I wanted some sort of a carrier - something that I could buy on the cheap, and it would work as good as the Battlefoam PACK or the Sabol. I examined a Sabol Army Transport that was for sale at Games Plus's semi-annual auction and to me, it looked no different than those soft sided cooler bags and lunch bags I've seen and used. Hmm...

(Pictures and info after the cut...)

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OD&D Solo game w/wife - How one woman nearly starts a war

2011-03-22T08:00:00.002-05:00

No miniatures were put on the table this game, nor were any attack dice thrown. The only table referenced in this game was the "Carousing" table from Jeff Rient's The Miscellaneum of Cinder. And yet we had a diplomatic incident, tons of roleplaying and lots of laughter. What else could you expect from a game?

The defeat of Alaxus netted the brave adventurers quite a bit of loot and some XP, but @thePrincessWife's character Aeli was lacking 550 XP to make fifth level. Being the generous and kind-hearted DM that I am (why did I just hear a ton of raspberries?) I offered her a chance at the carousing table for 275gp (I give double XP to go against the Carousing table) and even reminded her about the d30 rule. @thePrincessWife was hoping that she'd fail her saving throw...

I've never seen a "1" rolled on my d30 before, but she did it. That was not only a fail, it was an epic failure, the kind of failure that would have long lasting consequences for the character, the kind of failure where you hear a pin-drop and a gasp of breath... and then the gleeful laughter from @thePrincessWife as I made her roll her fate. A 7. According to Jeff's chart, that means: "Insult local person of rank. A successful Charisma check indicates the personage is amenable to some sort of apology and reparations."

Well crap. So far, Aeli has managed to completely befriend just about everyone of note in Valetown. It was going to be hard to find someone that might be insulted by her... hmm.. think, think, think... I asked for 5 minutes to figure out her fate. Flip over to Finch's City Encounter table, roll a few dice... no, I don't think a "local guard" counts as a local person of rank... hmm... roll again... "Sporgo Frogface, carrying the Pennant of the city’s Overlord, exhorting all to courage in the face of adversity, and loyalty to the city’s government, 1d6gp."

Well, doublecrap, there is no overlord to Valetown, so probably no Sporgo... although what kind of overbearing, stuffed shirt would be in Valetown, which is just a small farming/agricultural center, almost a market town kind of place... Wait a minute... Sporgo's kinda like an ambassador. What ambassador would care about farming? One on a trade mission. What would be best for a stuffed shirt ambassador that Aeli could insult?

Only one answer - the hidebound, strictly-by-the-book, lawful-stick-up-the-rear Southron Empire! Prepared with a name "Gale Merry" (snicker), I introduced Aeli's carousing efforts. I asked @thePrincessWife how she would have insulted the honorable ambassador during her two day-long rip-roaring bash over killing the Minotaur Mage.

Her: "I step on his toes and call him a buffoon!"
Me: "OK, he looks down his nose at you, calls you a typical Northern drunk trollop and tells you to go home to your husband who should keep a leash on you."
Her (warming up): "Oh really? Well, I laugh at him and point to his 'wee weenie' and call it that. I also tell him to wear loose trousers or stuff something into those tight pants of his." (gales of laughter)
Me: "Well.. that's impressive! The ambassador's face goes beet red and he says the only loose thing around here is you and your lips! That any man who would want you would have to keep you locked up to keep you from running them so freely."
Her (really into it now): "Oh yea, I tell him that the only thing he needs to worry about locking up is his ugly pig wife from leaving him! Hahah! I'm insulting his wife now!"

At this point, her friend and NPC party-member Tironell intervenes and attempts with help from her henchmen, to hustle her away up the stairs. As she was being escorted out, the ambassador had a parting shot.

Me: "Well, he says I would expect no less of rudeness from the so called Hero of Valetown, a swine living among pigs!"
Her: "Yea? If you're lucky, we'll give you leftover slop!"

So at this point, she passes out and wakes up to find out she has to make amends to the good ambassador. At first, Aeli was going to blow it off, but when told that news would go back to Lord Risz, the noble who the governor of the area, and that word would be passed on to the King himself as the Ambassador was threatening to end his trade mission, her face fell and thus the making up happened. Aeli ran around town, spending a good chunk of gold to find the best dress possible and she agreed to give up the two large gems found in Alaxus's tomb.

The "apology" would have to be done according to strict Southron custom, which involved Aeli taking a submissive, secondary role while Tironell acted as a proxy for a male member of her family making amends. She had to enter, assume a bended knee position and hold the gems while Tironell gave the apology. Here's where the CHA check came in. Given she was of nobility, I deemed the difficulty "normal/easy" and made her roll 3d6 to equal or be less than 12.

15. She could not make a roll this game to save her life! @thePrincessWife told me how her sword scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaped across the floor and ruined the mood of the apology. While the ambassador took the gems (duh), he also declared that she should never step foot in Southron lands, lest she fall under his rules - an implied threat!

So while the apology temporarily assuaged the ambassador's anger, it's clear that Aeli now has a possible enemy! I wonder if she'll ever have to travel to the Southron empire...

I really enjoyed the chance to broaden Aeli's/@thePrincessWife's view of the world, introduce an element that could play into her future (should she ever need to travel that far) and see how she'd roleplay it, especially since Aeli's background was nobility. We had great fun and I always enjoy bringing an element into the game that we've not had a chance to explore - this time being the relationship between the Southron Empire and the Northern Kingdom. We didn't get a chance to play much more than this, but I'm looking forward to her next game as she deals with the aftermath of her successful adventure... and maybe even find more ways of draining her gold from her. I think I got about 1,000 gp through this whole carousing deal and aftermath - thanks Jeff!

I need more time! Land of Two Rivers musings

2011-03-18T14:20:00.001-05:00

James's post over at Grognardia about Historical Campaigns had me breaking silence about my regrets over not running my long-thought about Sumerian campaign in an alternative historical setting. It is something I greatly regret - both not having the stones to write the setting and not having the time to run the setting.

I remember the exact moment that "Tombs of Hulkursag" and my Two Rivers setting book projects came to screeching halts. It was the day I sat down with Michael Curtis's Stonehell and realized I was the worst module writer in the world.

No, really. I know that's funny, but it's true. There was no way I could write something half as good as what the esteemed Mr. Curtis wrote and as I picked my way through my own writings, it just seemed boring. What good was having another dungeon with reskinned orcs, goblins and gnolls (as jackalmen, insectoid invaders, jackalmen warriors)? OK, the traps and whatnot, but I really messed up with the dungeon design (only one way between levels. Dumb. DUMB!) and ... well, then I realized that what I really needed was a setting to wrap around the Tomb. The Tomb in and of itself might be a curiosity, but what would make it work was to have the Two Rivers alive around it... with the gods involved, the sorcerors who use demons to cast spells and the warrior priests who perform quests for their deity... and average joe who might be working to establish a trade route with some nearby city-states, but you have to worry about getting involved in the latest war, avoiding the plague devils and negotiate with the river goddess to be allowed to cross so you can get your goods to the other side....

... and that kind of richness is not something that just falls out of my ass. Writing the Quick Start was easy for me - take S&W Core, tinker/refit/rebolt and boom-badda-bing, you're done! The dungeon was already drawn, I just had to populate it. This though.. this requires that I know/feel/live Mesopotamia in my head. Look, it took Rob Conley playing for 30 years to get him to write Majestic Wilderlands, who knows how long Kyrinn has been gaming in Urutsk, and McKinney's probably been seeing Carcosa in his dreams for years.

So I know that in order to make Two Rivers come to live, I have to game it. I have to play it, live it, get things to work the way I want... and then maybe, just maybe, I can match my writing to the level that the above 4 named authors is at. If I'm lucky. And have a good editor. And party like Kellri. Wait, that last one I want to do first!

Anyway... I have to have some gametime and fleshed out the setting that the Tomb of Hulkursag lives in. Then, I think, things will *feel* right and Hulkursag becomes a portal to the Sumerian Underworld.

Problem... no time.

My Dark Ages campaign is rocking. I'm back to running 4 to 5 times a month. My players are busy plotting behind my back to meet the challenges I've laid before them. @thePrincessWife has taken a step into a story that is going to feel like a roller coaster to her... if she continues the path she's been taking so far. I hope to keep playing that once or twice a month... so when can I run Two Rivers? I'm mentally taken up by both tabletop and two online games - the Modern OD&D one (which may finally see some action... my players decided to go back and equip a bit more, since the portal spell to the Underworld has a finite duration and they are afraid of getting stuck over there...) and the Dark Ages online implementation (which the characters are busy looting a tomb of what seems like innumerable coins)... I'm an extremely lucky guy to have all this, and still, Mesopotamia sits in my dreams.

It doesn't help I'm painting my Sumerian DBA I/1a army and imagining how the players would get involved in a mass combat and somehow be a part of it...

Anyway...

Maybe once a month? Maybe I can game it once a month? But then that means giving up a Dark Ages game and I'm not going to do that. It's too cool of a campaign and things are really getting wild and crazy now.

Memo to Father Time, can I have an extra couple of warp days a month, so I can pull people into it to game with me?

So the Land of Two Rivers sits in my head...

Tids and bits

2011-03-18T08:00:00.001-05:00

- As of the 3/13 AD&D Dark Ages game this past Sunday, we've reached the 50 game milestone. That's pretty damn cool! If I were a more prepared DM, I'd have some compiled statistics and trivia, but all I got is me trying to prep for the Garycon game. If I do have a dwarf visit from another realm, it's going to be epic... the last dwarf was seen about 257 years ago by elves. Visiting characters from other campaigns though... very cool!

- The online game keeps rolling and I may have a new player. Welcome Slatz! Good luck and don't pick up any dolls. :) You might also just start cursing Kellri right now, all my other players are. It seems to rain A LOT in Skalfier. For some reason, the players blame his CDD#4...

- I started painting my Sumerian DBA I/1a army last night and realized what all shiny-new army painting n00bs realize... this shit is hard! And I was just working on the flesh areas. This is not as easy as slopping together 18 or 25 orcs...

- Been ruminating about how I'll be incorporating a megadungeon into my campaign and realized this is going to be tricky with an already skittish bunch of folks who saw a high level (for my campaign) PC die and another fall the next game. The players are convincing themselves that they're not ready for what lies to the East, although I think this is more the first time they've really struggled. The world has presented them an opportunity and while I'm not going to push them there, they've opened Pandora's Box. I'm now walking a fine line between coming off as some sort of "you must follow my plot!" DM and presenting the consequences of their actions.

"Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson? That's the sound of inevitability..." - Agent Smith, The Matrix

Yea. Tricky. I know how I'll navigate it (without giving anything away to the players that read this blog. *waves* Hi there!) but it's gonna be tricky. You ever run into that?

Have a great weekend!

Zombie Fungi == Zombie Shriekers

2011-03-17T10:05:00.003-05:00

(Inspired by joethelawyer's post and the Huffington Post article/BBC video here.)

Zombie Shrieker
Armor Class: 7
Move: 6" (60')
Hit Dice: 3
No. of attacks: 1 slam (Dmg. 1-8)

---

Special: Nil, Frequency: Rare, No. Appearing: 3-24,

% in lair: Nil,

Treasure Type: Nil, Magical Resistance: Standard, Intelligence: None, Alignment: Neutral, Size: Medium, Psionic Ability: Campaign dependent, usually nil.)

The zombie shrieker is a horrid combination of a fungus and it's dead host. The zombie shrieker is not undead in the normal sense, rather it is an animated corpse controlled by the fungus in order to reproduce. The fungus spreads by releasing it's spores, infecting those who breathe the spores. Those infected will die a slow, painful death and then sprout stalks and tendrils, while still "moving" and even attacking other creatures near it in an attempt to be hit to cause the spores to release. It will periodically release a deafening shriek (1 round) in order to attract attackers, especially in response to light (within 30') or movement (within 10'). This shriek has a 50% chance of attracting wandering monsters in the round after.

Anyone attacking the zombie shrieker in anyway has a 50% chance per attack of causing the spores to release in a 1"x1"x1" cubic area. Any creature/person within that area must make a save vs. poison or be infected by the fungus. Infection will take 1d4+2 days to complete, at which time the creature is dead, but still animated for up to 2-24 days after by the fungus. Each day of infection causes the carrier to lose 1-3 points of each attribute, a zero score means the carrier is dead. In the latter half of the infection, the carrier will have an uncontrollable desire to be within as populated an area as possible or to stay around people.

A cure disease can remove the fungus from the carrier.

(On the XP side, you might want to give them the equivalent of 4HD XP, considering the special attack with the lethal spores and shriek.)

(This monster and its description is designated as Open Game Content.)

Sneak peek at latest painted dragon miniature

2011-03-16T16:00:00.001-05:00

Light posting today - but I thought you might enjoy a (blurry) sneak peek at the latest paint job - Reaper's Dark Heavens Silver Dragon (#02539) by Sandra Garrity. I've re-purposed it as a Gold Dragon, one of my all-time favorite D&D monsters.

The sculpt came in 6 pieces and unlike the WotC Red Dragon, this one fit fairly well together. The only issue I had was gap filling the tail, I have a bit of a ring/bump but it's not all that noticeable. Click the thumbnail to enlarge - sorry for the blurry quality of the picture, but my phone is almost 3 years old and it was early in the morning, still getting my coffee fix!

The base is a CD with a rock from my stone walkway that's breaking apart, plus a slurry of sand/modge-podge, basecoated with 50 cent Home Depot paint reject, inked with Devlan Mud and drybrushed with Bone White (sand) and Fortress Grey (rock). The dragon is mounted on the stone with epoxy - I wasn't taking any chances!

I'll do a step by step paint on it later.

Interest in playing Dark Ages AD&D at GaryCon?

2011-03-15T14:00:00.006-05:00

(UPDATE 3/16 - Confirmed/Maybe count is at the end of the post.)
(UPDATE 3/21 - added links to wiki, chargen/houserules and player handout that covers the basics)

GaryCon is coming in less than two weeks (Mar 25th to 27th) and judging by how the weather is shaping up, there's a good chance I can hop on the Harley and have a nice ride up to Lake Geneva for a Saturday day of gaming. One of the hallmarks of GaryCon is the huge number of open gaming tables and pickup games - it was only last year (GaryCon II) that they started doing events and event registration.

If there's interest in exploring a bit of my Dark Ages world, I'd be more than happy to lug the campaign binder and minis up for the event. If not, I'm fine with that as well, I'm hoping to get into some great games and have a good time and meet a lot of great RPG'ers.

If you're interested, just leave me a comment. If I get 4 to 8 players, I'll definitely plan on it. Say about a 4 hour scenario? Please note that this would take place "in-situ" in the campaign world as it exists right now and anything that is done will be canon and affect the ongoing tabletop game. I'll also be happy to look at people who want to bring their AD&D/1e (and OSRIC) characters from other campaigns to visit. Levels can range from 1st to 4th level and we can judge on magic items and other devices brought into my world.

Locations available:
1. A troll mage is rumored to live under the bridge on the road from Enonia (the PC Home Base) to the fabled/lost city of Irecia. It has claimed the lives of many adventurers and rumors hint it may also be opposed to the marauding orcs who've begun to threaten Enonia.

2. Dark rumors have been heard now and again about a sacred druid's temple or tomb somewhere to the north of the old Enonia Wayfarer's Inn. Of course, that's goblin-infested territory, and with the goblins now outright attacking Enonia, it's sure to be a contested journey.

3. The Dale Woods have not been explored since the Doom of Man fell 57 years ago. A generation of hunters and locals have begun to die out, making the area one of mystery and rumor. It is said a dragon lurks in the woods, as well as a "Crystal Lake". Nobody knows for sure, but now that a mysterious mage's tower has arisen from the Dale Woods, some say it's time for exploring. Who knows what could be found... or what local tales may lead to riches.

Let me just say that I'm somewhat intimidated by making this offer, knowing the high caliber of DMs and games that will be running at GC. It would be an honor to have people there play in my world, which is why I'm making the offer. So we'll see what happens...

UPDATE: Player list -

Confirmed:
1. Delve Lord
2. Friend of DL
3. Friend of DL

Maybe:
1. Mr. Zed
2. grodog
3. Jon K.
4. Charley
5. Druvas (GC Forum)
6. Tron (GC Forum)
7. Totan (GC Forum)
8. Smokin (GC Forum - maybe w/char)

UPDATE #2: Links
Player Handout - brief summary of my campaign
Campaign Chargen/Houserules
Campaign Wiki - has a lot of information and adventure logs

AD&D/OSRIC campaign - Sometimes the vise squeezes the other way

2011-03-15T08:00:00.004-05:00

Sunday's AD&D game saw the players discover the reaction to their previous adventure in freeing the human prisoners and killing an orc shaman. The orcs have become more deadly, more organized and, most importantly, have learned to turn the tables on the players. This time, the orcs were using ambushes by suicide troopers, traps by multiple mounted patrols and using the players' habits against them - which resulted in a loss of another brave warrior. It also didn't help that the players lost a third of their group to a temporary paralysis from a disastrous encounter with giant wasps.

In coming back, the players found that the homefront has a new sheriff, and one that might not be as appreciative of the players as before. Time will tell ... alliances fall, only to see new opportunities and new challenges. The players ratcheted up the action and the orcs have responded, will the players?

I'm finding that I'm enjoying thinking about the reactions and the ways that the monsters will react now that the players are making their mark in the world. Make no mistake, disrupting the slave trade in enemy territory and killing a shaman was a definite mark and the orcs will not soon forget it. Now I'm looking forward to seeing how the players will react. It's a fine line thought. Squeeze the vise too much and the game becomes grim and hopeless. Don't raise the bar in response to the players and it becomes boring. The world will move without the players, but it will also move when the players have enough leverage. Things are starting to get very interesting.

Unfortunately, along with the death of another PC [1], I also learned that one of my longtime players, Lu, will be leaving us in April to go back overseas. In the time Lu's been with the campaign, he's taken his human thief, Irem, to fifth level - the highest of any of the players. He's a smart player, thoughtful and has adapted well to my campaign while also challenging me to come up with things in response to his play. Unfortunately, there are two avenues that had opened up during his time in the campaign that I won't be able to explore with him directly.

One was a bad roll on the Rient's Carousing Table. Lu found himself with a "black mark" on his forehead that faded... or did it? I actually was going to start exploring that again, but with his departure, we'll have to send that hook/path on to the realm of possibilities. The other avenue was a previous contact with a man with glowing eyes. Lu never returned to that contact, but who knows what the other players may find if they start turning over some rocks?

Well, in any rate, I plan on doing something special for Lu at our final game, which looks to be April 3rd.

I've made suggestions to Lu that he join my online/Google Wave game, but time will tell. He's going to be busy with his move and whatever happens, I wish him the best and a very heartfelt "THANK YOU" for playing at my table. Lu, you're welcome back anytime.

[1] - what is it about PC deaths coming in clusters. I've gone almost a year without any and now I've had two in two games. I knew that the players were ratcheting up the game, with exploring new areas/levels and riling up the orcs, but this seems to be very coinky-dinkal. It wasn't that the monsters were more powerful.. yellow mold and orcs.

Sidenote: I really enjoyed Monday's DM Dilemma discussion. Here are some of the topics I'm going to explore in future posts:

Mounted combat - between two mounted combatants
Poison and how it works
Other spell interpretations

DM Dilemma: Charm Person

2011-03-14T08:30:00.005-05:00

I thought that it might be useful to group some posts together under the heading of "DM Dilemma." We all run into things that cause us to scratch our heads, make rapid rulings on the fly, then we go back later and dig through the manuals and forum posts for some sort of inspiration on either solidifying a houserule or realizing we had it wrong in the first place. Dilemma might be a strong word, but it's a catchy title, so I'll go with it. I often find myself busy Monday morning looking up things that have puzzled me from the game from the weekend. I hope these posts are useful to some of you.

It's been my experience that players are pretty forgiving of a DM when the DM says "I'm ruling this way now, but I'm going to solidify my understanding to make it right for my campaign in the future." It's part and parcel to improving our skills as DMs, thus challenging our players to improve on their skills as players.

So... that said, I'll post my first "dilemma" which is more of a challenge...

So imagine this. You're a blood-thirsty orc leader. You are on a religious crusade to rid the earth of humans. You just sent your warriors to encircle a party of humans and you've watched this damn human spell-caster deal serious damage to them. In a bloodlust, you and your bodyguards charge the spell-caster, to remove the immediate threat. To your rear, a druid casts charm person on you. He then attempts to persuade you to stop your charge. (Imagine a bearded druid running after a charging orc yelling "Wait! Stop! That spellcaster means you no harm!")

As a DM, how do you rule how the charm has affected the orc?

Charm Person (druid) - AD&D Players Handbook

"The creature then will regard the druid who cast the spell as a trusted friend and ally to be heeded and protected. The spell does not enable the druid to control the charmed creature as if it were an automaton, but any word or action of the druid will be viewed in its most favorable way."

(NOTE: the magic-user spell description refers to the druid version for effects)

I'll tell you what I did. The orc leader assessed that his new friend, although human, was no immediate threat to him or his orc troops. He did not order his bodyguards to attack the druid. He assessed his new friend's entreaty to not attack the magic-user. While trusting that his new friend had the best intentions, the orc concluded the mage's continuing aggressive actions were the biggest threat to the orc's survival, as were the other humans attacking him and his friends. To not protect himself and his brothers would be suicide. So the orc leader attacked the mage and damn near killed him.

I think my players were a little surprised at the way I ruled on charm person and I've chewed on it all week and come to the conclusion that my initial ruling was the right one for my campaign/table. Charm Person is an amazingly powerful spell, but it's usefulness in the middle of combat, in the middle of a charge, is dubious. A charmed being doesn't go instantly stupid, nor does he somehow completely change his way of thinking in an obedient automaton. Rather, he has a changed data point to deal with - a powerful one, but only one.

In combat, with life and death on the line, charm person will have mixed results. In the middle of a charge, probably not nearly as much as at a moment of indecision, or if the target of the spell comes into a one-on-one with the charming spell caster. If this were a non-combat situation, the charm might have led to an extremely favorable result, depending on how the magic-user or druid steered the discussion.

Now, had the party ceased their attacks, this might have turned out different with regards to the charm. Weighing the threat versus the words of the druid would have led the orc leader to different conclusions and he would have found the datum of "the most favorable way to view the druid's words" to be more powerful than immediate survival.

It's an interesting spell and ruling to chew on.

Next week will be mounted combat, as I ran into this issue yesterday (3/13/2011) and it's going to take me a few days to chew on.

If there are any DM Dilemmas that you'd like to cover, please feel free to suggest or post your own and I'll link to it.

Re-imagining AD&D orcs and monsters

2011-03-12T10:50:00.001-06:00

What a great topic to talk about (hattip to Grognardia)... except what a bad topic for me!

You see, I've done a lot to my orcs, and many other beasties in my AD&D world. My tabletop players have ran into more differences, changes and odd things that vary off of the standard AD&D definitions... but there's a lot more they haven't run into or figured out! I can't spill all the beans here So, I will try to give you some broad brush strokes of things they already know and see how we do.

In my Dark Ages campaign:

Orcs - are pig-faced and a bit larger/bulkier than humans. Their genesis is rumored, but the exact facts are lost to history. They are religious zealots, smart, cunning, have no problem with sunlight, are very militaristic, resemble Planet of the Apes gorillas in coloring, dress and armor. They will commit suicide rather than be captured. They remove the heads of their victims after battle, and burn the bodies. They do not leave bodies of their fellows behind. They are extremely racist and view humans and elves as no more than cattle or a sub-species. They may also be breeding hybrids of some sort for some reason.

There are some specific influences to my orcs and some clues here that may give you further insights. Orcs are right now the Big Bad Guys in my campaign and have the players full attention.

Kobolds - the players ran into a strange new type of kobold a couple of games ago - these are winged kobolds that spit poisonous saliva into players' faces. In my campaign, kobolds can climb walls and ceilings like spiders.

Troll Mages - take one orge mage, reskin it as a troll, merge the best of both monsters' abilities together and you have the feared troll that lives under the bridge right outside of Enonia in the Dale Woods. This guy is responsible for one near-TPK and a lot of angst. The players still plan on taking this guy out.

Trollkins - are the "children" of the troll mage. Mysterious and fey. So far, they seem curious and childlike, but extremely wise beyond what seems normal.

Dwarfs - are a lost race. They were once slaves to the Dark Ones (ancient evil beings of Chaos that ruled the lands) but once freed, they've not been seen since.

Elves - are a seafaring race, grouped by families/clans.

Dragons - are generated using EG Palmer's amazing Dragon Generator. First published in 2009, I have a copy of that in my "Best of Old School Blogs" folder. Now that is probably news to my players that dragons will not be dragons, but they'll learn soon enough. My tabletop players are already familiar with one, even though they don't realize it... or maybe they do!

One thing that is common for all my monsters. Unless otherwise specified in the Monster Manual, they're intelligent, ruthless and committed to their own best interests. They don't particularly fear the players. They have their own agendas and I prosecute those agendas to the best of my ability.

This has caused some issues, and led to one player being asked to not come back when he couldn't deal with the changes. In his mind, kobolds should be groveling at the feet of a first level character. In my mind, these are starving kobolds who are desperate enough to try and bluff their way into robbing the players, as far as they can, because they have NOTHING ELSE TO LOSE! I'm very proud of the players that I do have that were able to deal and adjust to the world as I've presented it. I think that's something to be aware of when you alter from the "norm".

I'm looking forward to reading the other entries in this meme. I hope you've enjoyed mine and if you have any questions about them, just ask! Stats are available - feel free to email me. Bryan, close your email, I won't send them to you. :P

AD&D/OSRIC campaign - Requiem for a warrior/mage

2011-03-11T08:40:00.002-06:00

I had a post set up musing about charm person but events at last night's game are worthy of note. Last night, one of the more powerful characters, Teela the elven fighter/mage, played by Bryan N. fell.

The party crept into the strange room, populated by a large metal table and chairs. A very thick layer of dust covered the furniture, but strange ridges in a pattern could be seen in the dust covering, as if the table bore some strange symbols in its surface. At one corner of the table, the dust appeared disturbed, as if someone long ago had push it aside, the covering here was much lighter. The chairs around this area were lying on their backs, pushed away in a haphazard manner.

The party was exploring an area of the Dwarf mines, searching again for the "Hall of Records" to find treasure. Their other paths had not been fruitful and they found themselves winding through rooms with corroded, rusting metal shelves and debris, gear-works and strange pipes.

Rhys, the ranger, moved over to the eastern wall to cover the other exit. Dargellon, the ranger, stayed close to Teela, peering at the table while Talos, the druid, hung back at the south entrance to the room. Teela looked at the disturbed dust and confidently swiped her arm over the table and strange symbols, which revealed themselves to be part of a map!

"Look!" she said excitedly. "It's a map with ancient Dwarf symbols wri...." and then the dust "exploded" with a burst of yellow spores, filling the corner of the room her and Dargellon stood in!

Yea... Yellow Mold. This is the same Yellow Mold trap, in the same room, on the same table, that claimed a character almost two years ago. Bryan's character moved the dust, the 50% chance of spores popping hit and then the dice rolled for saving throws. Both players opted to invoke the d30 rule to give themselves higher chances of rolling their saves.

Dargellon coughed and gasped, stumbling away from the cloud of spores as both Rhys and Talos shouted in horror at the sight. Dargellon hacked and spat phlegm a few times and stood up, his face pale.

"I'm OK." he gasped. Then they both turned to look at Teela, who was lying on the floor next to the table. Her breath wheezed in gasps as she clawed at her throat and chest. The spores were settling down, but Teela's fate was already sealed.

Bryan needed to roll a 13 on the d30, he rolled a 7. The stunned looks on everyone's face, including mine, and even the store owner, who had been watching us play, told the tale. Teela was dead from poison. After 11 sessions over 14 months, gaining 10,354 XP, the third level fighter/third level mage was brought down. It was a pretty heavy moment and the mood grew extremely somber.

I gave Teela 6 turns to do as she wanted, I left it up to Bryan. Bryan plays another character, Jorann the cleric, and he willed most of his wealth and possessions to Jorann, which I allowed. Bryan has run both characters faithfully especially for moments where he might lose one. He's been cooperative in not linking the two as mules or trying to exploit them once we figured out how playing two characters worked best in my campaign. Teela had become a somewhat mysterious, but visible figure in the town of Enonia - becoming friends with the only NPC mage in town and serving as a type of informal ambassador for the Elven nation. She had faced terrible monsters, seen the effects of Chaos under the abandoned monastery of St. Eggyx and helped to explore the wild lands east of Enonia. This was someone that Bryan had put 14 months into, and it required consideration, respect and some understanding.

"Please give these to Jorann... and take what you need. I am almost gone." Teela gasped as her party members lay her gently on the ground. They had trekked as quick as they could to escape the mines, but civilization and help was just too far away. Her companions looked shocked and bereft and the two hirelings Aldred and Killas stood quietly in respect.

The end was quick and merciful and Dargellon swore to take her to Jorann and pass word to the elves so that her family could bear her away.

Bryan stayed in the game as one of the hirelings and he had a good nature about it. Bryan and I had to come to an understanding early on of how things worked. Bryan's a good player, he knows the rules, he is skilled at many things and most importantly, he understands the fairness and risks of the game. He was disappointed, but he was a good sport. We all were sympathetic. It was hard for Bryan to shift out of "Teela" mode, and we all joked that somehow Teela had gotten into "Killa's head" as Killas suddenly seemed to know a great deal about the mines, similar to how Teela had known.

It was a shock, to see a powerful character like Teela be brought down by lowly Yellow Mold, but that's the game. The remaining party made sure to burn the mold and pushed on, facing an undead shadow which they killed with fire and the use of the druidic shillelagh spell. They pushed on to places dark and deep, but the Hall of Records eluded them and they were forced to turn back.

Silently, the party made their way back to Enonia. Their grim visages warned the usually inquisitive guards away, who watched in a bit of awe as the returning adventurers bore Teela's body between them. They made their way to the humble church of Tangorin where a distraught Jorann ushered them in. Slowly, the rumors started spreading that one of the mightiest of of the strange adventurers of Enonia had fallen in the deadly Dwarf mines.

Farewell, Teela. You were fun to have in my game and you will be missed.

Hot Elf Chick welcomes you to Classic/Old School D&D

2011-03-10T09:45:00.004-06:00

What, you expected some anime-style shmexy babe? Ha! Not the way I roll - this is old school, baby. Horror could lurk around every corner, that pit trap may just contain a few of these and if you're prepared with the flasks of oil and spearmen in the second row, you'll stomp on this ugly creature and go looking for the loot that you're sure is somewhere ahead of you...

Now you've probably seen some posts with the same damn links to the same resources. I'd like to point you to some different, but invaluable resources that will probably benefit you right off, being that you're interested in the old school and I figure you already have the rules that you like to play...

Original D&D Message Board (1974 Little Brown Books and other out of print TSR games from the 70s - high signal to noise, extremely low drama)

Knights & Knaves Message Board (about as rabid of an AD&D board as you can get, but the best for AD&D - cranky bunch, but damn smart/experienced/worth the etiquette landmines to get to know)

Dragonsfoot Message Board (the longest running 'old school' Classic D&D forum, and tons, I mean literally tons of adventures and homebrew modules of quality, plus reviews and discussions/navel gazing.)

Jeff's Gameblog (Jeff Rients is one of the coolest DMs that I've ever run into and his posts are treasure troves of ideas)

Kellri's Classic Dungeon Designer #4 Encounter book - this + AD&D DMG could be the best D&D DM resource combo ever created. This book is invaluable for generating months of adventures)

Now, a bit of opinion for ya...

There's a lot of buzz, discussions and not a small amount of snarking over what "OSR" this and "Classic D&D" that means and even some thoughts to how much lint a navel on a D&D player can collect before you can shape it into a d20 or some shit... but if you're someone not familiar with this online D&D group of people who love the old school, original games, well... go look at any religious, political or teen-age-Justin-Bieber fan club and you'll get the idea. We're a cantankerous, creative, argumentative, self-absorbed, generous, passionate group of people who happen to love playing D&D - we just don't really know what the hell else to agree on.

So if you're feeling alone about Classic/old school D&D, take heart. You're not! It's a vibrant community. There are a lot of us continuing to play games and I'll testify to that. I've ran a 28 player Classic D&D marathon last week. I'm running an over two year old Advanced D&D campaign with two games this week - one tonight, one Sunday. I've got an online game set in the same AD&D campaign world and a smaller game/experiment in Shadowrun/Cyberpunk meets OD&D.

There are a lot of local conventions still being held and at almost everyone, there's someone running old school Classic D&D, or an out of print RPG. Ask around... do a google search or go visit the local gamestore - there are still a few around!

There are still a lot of us and we game. Hard, passionately, and with a lot of love. I hope to see you around.

Oh yea... and one final link. Joesky's blog. If you see a post on another D&D blog with a lot of "blah blah" and no "Joesky tax", you'll see Joesky getting VERY upset. You won't like making Joesky mad. Trust me. It's cool though. Joesky is one of those drunk dudes that somehow pulls wisdom out of his ass while throwing up on table, but making it look like the most fun thing possible.

Now... for my own Joesky tax, based on the pic above

d6 tricks to fool your players, like the title of this blog made you think I had an Evil DM Wednesday girl here...

1. On the next failed thief check or some sort of ability check or task, instead of failure, give them a false positive of the worst kind, make them paranoid for hours.

2. Classic Tomb of Horrors trap - open the door, the ceiling falls. Through the floor into the 10' pit trap underneath. 1d10 + 1d6 + (other damage you see fit to assign from spikes, boiling oil, poison gas, etc.)

3. Next combat, instead of describing everything, just have the monsters bum rush the players, surprise! "OK, you open the door and there are monsters. Roll for initiative." If the players want to take time to assess situation, that counts as their action - or they can just attack whatever is nearest.

4. That hot elven chick guide is really that horrible harpy vampire creature in the picture above. And she just cast charm person at your most powerful fighter as a 6th level MU. Save vs spells!

5. You're in a 50'x50' room where there is an incredible treasure on the other side... and a maze of invisible walls which shift/rotate/slide like in the movie 13 Ghosts. And yes, there are wights here.

6. The dust here is impregnated with oil or petroleum. You can smell it. Every round, for open flames, cumulative 5% chance of explosion like fireball at 6th level

Classic D&D Marathon - Recap

2011-03-09T08:00:00.005-06:00

This past Saturday, I held a Classic D&D marathon at Unique Gifts & Games in Grayslake, IL. This follows the Classic D&D marathon from 2010. It was scheduled at 10 hours, I halted at 9 1/2 hours mainly because the players hit a logical stopping point and there was really nothing that could be done in 30 minutes.

First, I have to tip my hat to Ken and Kathleen, the owners of UGG, for making this a welcome event. We had half of the gaming area for a large table for 9 people and they were very accommodating. They also supplied freebies to give out to players and provided me a complimentary sandwich for dinner, that was much appreciated!

It was an awesome event! I had 28 people play throughout the day. I had two of my AD&D campaigners show up for about 8 hours of gaming. My youngest player was in the range of 7 to 10 years old - Juan - and he was a great player. I had a wide range of ages and genders play. The average session was about an hour or two, and I had complete table turn-overs almost the entire day. By the end of the day, I was exhausted, the players had tromped through the Isle of Dread and survived!

Yes, Isle of Dread - the great wilderness exploring module X1. I've had a soft spot for this module ever since the Expert box set came out - I remember diving into the box expecting great things and I was never disappointed. I remember killing many PCs on just the journey from the mainland to the island, as wandering monsters on the ocean are particularly deadly! My "rules" of choice was D&D - a huge mishmash of Holmes, OD&D and house-rules. I had my pregens from my 2010 B2 Keep on the Borderlands, so I bumped them to 4th level, updated the character sheets and away we went.

A side-note before the recap... in preparing the module, I was impressed once again by how easy it is to make this module your own. You've got a dragon, nasty dinosaurs, enough races to set at each others throats and lots of places to throw your own wrinkles. The downside was the heavy-handed wording of the module in how players should be wrestled/coddled/fudged into success. There are places where it seems as if the 2e "story first!" approach was already taking root, nine years early. Those admonitions can be easily ignored, but the proliferation of magic items in almost every treasure is not. For a one-shot, I really didn't care, but for a long-term campaign, depending on your magic flavor, this module could tilt it fast.

So I put in my special sauce - changed things, modified things to my liking, grabbed my S&W Ref Sheets to make wandering monster rolls easier (as well as have other tables handy) and threw the players onto the Island!

Stealing a page from Jeff Rients and Gilligan's Island, I started the game with combat as the players found themselves marooned...
Me: "OK, let's get started. You see skeletons in front of you and zombies are pulling themselves over the rails. Everyone else is pretty much dead. You have initiative. What do you do?"
Player: "What is going on? Where am I?"
Me: "Is your action to look around and assess the situation?"
Player: "No, no.. I'll attack the nearest undead!"
and so on...

The cleric made quick work of the undead and the players found themselves shipwrecked somewhere on the Isle of Dread. A quick search of the captain's quarters found a roughly drawn (by the DM right there) map of the coastline of the Isle of Dread.

"So where are we?" the players asked.
"Somewhere on that map." I replied.

That was some people's first introduction to Classic D&D as I had a couple of requests for "What do I need to roll to figure out where I am." (Answer: "Well, you can see you're on a beach, there's a huge mountain to the NW and ocean to your east and south. Jungle is to your west. You don't need to roll for that...") Once they got over that bit of a shock, characters picked up their gear and hiked along the beach. We had a brief segue with some harpies that charmed all the demi-humans (go figure) and then the players reached the village of Mora - the outpost of the Kingdom!

Upon learning that the next boat is 30 days out, the players began looking for opportunities to kill things and take stuff. The two teenage boys were all about looting and pillaging the village, but soon enough they were heading to the jungle with "Ron the Hunter" - a guy who had a really bad Aussie accent and a cowardly streak of hiding behind the adventurers until the monster was dead, then dashing forward to plant his boot and sword in its steaming carcass.

The first adventure found one the more unusual results of dice telling the story - the constant reappearance of the damn green dragon in the game. After melting two of the players with it's breath and clawing a third to death, the players gave up most of their magic items to the dragon who flew off. Bamf! Replacements appear and on they go. (Ya gotta love just dropping the veil of verisimilitude and concentrating on just playing) This dragon ended up showing up three more times (!!!) as a wandering monster.

The players hunted down a dinosaur that was eating a villager and netted some gold and good will from the natives. They returned to hunt more animals for gold and ran into some flying-squirrel-monkey-racoon things - the famous Phanatons of X1. After some non-verbal negotiation, the players convinced the phanaton to trust them and to do some trading of intricately carved doo-dads for silver.

One of my special sauces was to have a ton of hooks for each major encounter, both prior and within the encounter. The Neanderthals would want the players to go after the Lizard folk and vice versa. The Rakasta would ask the players to join them on hunts if reactions went well. If the Arachnae captured the players, they would force them to attack the Phanaton and so on. In this case, the Phanatons got the players to go hunt Arachnae.

That ongoing hook took up most of the day. Players died to poisonous snakes, giant - 24 foot tall giant - sloths (heh, wonder how that'll go down when you reach the Halls of Valhalla...) and other misfortunes. The biggest "kill" belonged to the slimy witch-doctor and his wandering monster band of 11 zombies. I threw Hold Person on the thief and cleric and had two to three zombies per other PC. Two PCs were killed in the melee. Three PCs fled and the held players were left to their fate...

In the end, everyone had a great time, got loot, killed things and felt good about helping out cute little spider monkey/squirrel/raccoon/George Lucas wannabe Ewok things. I spoke to a number of people about my AD&D campaign and may have netted another player or two and perhaps I'll be running campaign games at UGG. We'll see.

Thanks again to everyone that showed up and UGG!

Updated 3/11/2011:
Two players have posted their recaps, I thought I'd share them. Thanks again for playing!
The Delve Lord's recap
APlus's recap

I will be doing another Marathon next year, I'm just not sure what the hell I'll be running. Maybe a megadungeon... something bizarro... I've got a whole 11 months to think about it...

February Minis Painting Roundup

2011-03-08T08:00:00.003-06:00

Started the month with: 168 unpainted minis. (8 from my Jan "primed project list")
Purchased/added: 23 minis
Painted: 20 minis. (8 from my Jan "primed project list")
Removed: 8 minis (my 3 DBA armies will use 84 of 92 figures from the infantry set)
End the month with: 163 unpainted minis.

Completed:

Fire Beetles (x6; Otherworld Miniatures #DV4a; 3 as Fire Beetles, 3 as Generic Beetles)
Damien, Hellborn Wizard (Reaper Dark Heaven Legends #03321)
Aziz Al-Jawar (Reaper Dark Heaven Legends #02426)
"Amathor Arch Mage" (Reaper Dark Heaven #02319)
Orc Brutes(x2 Reaper Dark Heaven Legends #02550 Orc War Party)
Pig-nosed orcs (x3; Otherworld Miniatures #O6; combined with the Orc Brutes above to form a command unit)
Ghosts (x2; Citadel Warhammer #8572F)
Red Dragon (Wizards of Coast #40017)
Skeletons (x3; Otherworld Miniatures #UD1a)

Purchased/Added:

Egyptian Archers (x8; Atlantic Egyptian Army Set #1502)
Persian Archers (x15; HäT Persian Light Infantry Set #8057)

So only a net movement of 5 minis in the right direction. It was a short month and I spent a good chunk of time in modeling and prep mode as versus painting - orcs, the skeletons, two dragons and starting the conversion of figures for my DBA army. As a result, I didn't quite hit a figure a day, more like about 7/10ths of a figure a day. Good news is I can eliminate 41 minis next month with my DBA army! I'm also happy that I completed the last of my Jan "primed project list". 39 miniatures that sat around primed for almost a year are now in the case, ready to play.

Some highlights from the month:

Winsor/Newton Series 7 brushes - extremely huge difference and well worth the cost. I made the vast majority of my brushes obsolete with two of these - #1 and #2 sizes. Amazing how well I can paint now with them. It's challenged me to get even better with my technique. I'm not sure I'm there - I think I'm hitting a plateau, but I keep trying harder stuff to improve.

Green Stuff sculpting - After my success last month with the mule's packs, I attempted a hand and shield with one of my OWM pig nosed orcs. I didn't want to use the hand holding the Dwarf's head - mainly because there are no (living) Dwarfs in my campaign. So rather than hack the hand, I decided to do something even more difficult and make my own shield and hand. First one came out very rubbery, couldn't superglue it - my ratio of blue to yellow was all off. Second one was a bit rubbery at first, but after 4 to 5 days, it hardened rock solid. The hand looked terrible though, so I ended up using the dwarf head's hand. I hacked off the Dwarf head, made greenstuff thumb/finger and shield straps. It's not OWM quality sculpting but with dark paint/black wash, it's acceptable! I'm not displeased with how it turned out.

Reusing recipes - The Citadel ghosts (which, BTW, I love the personalities of their expressions - there's something about the slightly sinister/slightly goofy/slightly whimsical nature of them that I really like) were painted with two separate recipes or schemes - the shrouds were painted as I did for the Mega-Minis ghost last month, and their faces were painted using a scheme from the bell clapper of a Games Workshop Skaven "Screaming Bell." I just liked the look of how the bell clapper went from this sickly green to white/green and decided it's perfect for how I see non-corporeal undead.

I have a book where I write down my recipes for later use. I also do color tests on 3x5 cards and keep those for later use, in case I want to figure out how I did something.

OWM Skeleton - I was working on the skeletons (UD1a) and decided to take the advice I read on the Otherworld forums and pin the arms. Unfortunately, my pinning was an utter failure. Either the pin was at a "bad" angle or I didn't have enough in the ball of the arm joint to make a good fit, but I just struggled with all of them.

One in particular (the spear guard) gave me fits. I was going to put the skeleton standing at attention with a spear/shield, and after 8 times (5 with superglue, 3 with JB Weld) of putting arms on, them not bonding/holding enough and working loose, me scraping clean, regluing, I just had ruined shoulder bones and crudded up arms/sockets. I thought I would have to put that figure away as a ruined one. I was given a great idea to get the shoulders in place anyway I could, then cover the shoulders with a "rotted" cloth. Great idea!After a search around the house for non-embossed tissues or cloth, I found that my box of industrial paper towels work great. So now the model has tons of JBWeld on the shoulders but it will be tabletop acceptable. It was fitting that these were the last minis I completed in Febrary, considering I was about to give up on them. They ended up looking really good.

DBA Army - I decided to go with the I/1a army, even though I didn't have enough archers. I was going to use foamboard "flats" with labels glued to the top. Some email inquiries landed me into new territory - figure trading! Mike Monaco of Swords & Dorkery had some spare Biblical figures, as well as plenty of teaser plastics to try and lure me into the addiction of army building! In return, I traded Mike some NIB Reapers that I have laying around. Thanks again, Mike! (Although, so far, I've made my Saving Throw vs. temptation.)

After I convert a Nim skirmisher to look like an archer, and some minor conversion to be done on the Persians and Egyptians, I will have my 32 bowmen. Wahoo! I wasn't able to get started on this army in February, but that's on the roster for minis I'll be painting in March.

BTW.... one genuine ChicagoWiz-No-Prize to the person that can guess the TV show that influenced my choice of coloring for the orcs... :) (My AD&D players cannot guess, as they already know... oh yes... *evil grin*)

Here's what I'm dealing with today

2011-03-07T06:55:00.001-06:00

If the plumbing in my house is this:

Then I'm the dude wrapped up in it... I hate plumbing/sewer pipe issues. No posting until I get it figured out.

Awesome recap from the awesome Classic D&D Marathon this past Saturday coming later this week, as is more minis pics from what I did in Feb.

Have I mentioned that I hate plumbing?

(BTW, the pic was stolen from Daddy Grognard's "Ettin vs. Otyugh" post from last year. Funny sh... uhhh... stuff! Not sure which original book it came from.)

The strange places minis will take you

2011-03-03T09:35:00.003-06:00

I'm just about finished doing up my special sauce for the X1 - Isle of Dread D&D Marathon this weekend, but tomorrow to Monday will be jam-packed, so this is gonna have to do it for the week. Hopefully I'll get my February minis photos completed and we'll have a nice post for Monday or Tuesday.

Speaking of miniatures, I've found that my hobby and my particular obsessions with getting the info on the particular figures I have takes me into some strange places. My minis have influenced the direction of my game at several points - most notable are the Otherworlds troll, the figure I'm using to represent Calypso (villian in @thePrincessWife's solo game), the figure that became the Mountain Ogre and the Otherworlds orc shamen holding a heart in his hand.

How so? Well, when I was constructing my Dark Ages world, I had just started putting together the OWM troll. Putting him under a bridge on the main path to a tempting exploration destination came to me while assembling the big guy - making him a troll mage was probably the result of me slicing my finger open or something. If I feel pain... everyone feels it! The Mountain Ogre was a creation of imagination from having just played Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and looking at this figure and wondering how I could convert it away from the "Hellborne" look. The story wrote itself. The orc shamen influenced the game I just concluded on Sunday... what would be special that would cause so many orcs to show up? Hmm... shamen is doing some sort of sacrificial ritual... and that story wrote itself. The Calpyso figure was holding an orb and looking young and suave - and thus I've come up with more info on that villain and how he acts/thinks.

I also find myself discovering unusual things. For instance, did you know that FASA had released a game called Crucible that sounds an awful lot like they were wanting to take on WarHammer? (here, here and here). I found this out because I got a figure in a trade that I could not find or identify. It wasn't until I started a search based on the tiny words from the "slotta tab" on the bottom of this winged, demonic looking creature. "Olley" and "C 99 Ral Partha" led me to the photo on the left. Viola! Mystery figure found and a game that I had never heard of... and probably will never play. Sounds like it was an interesting game though. (Picture is from collecting-miniatures.com - the Olley Armies wiki)

And yes, I am going to find some reason to stick this guy in one of my games somewhere!

Some people find their inspiration from the books and magazines they collect, I find a chunk of mine in my minis. How about you?

Kids D&D

2011-03-02T08:00:00.000-06:00

I don't know how widely this has been talked about, but I just found Jimm Johnson's version of an attribute-less, extremely simple D&D game for kids. It's very much in the tradition of the microlite games. I'm talking the kind of game a four year old could play and enjoy, while remaining a bit faithful to the game we all love.

The PDFs (and picture of his sweet Dungeon Forge setup) can be found on his blog - The Contemptible Cube of Quazar - here at this link. Very nice and thank you, Jimm! I can't wait to give this a whirl.

AD&D/OSRIC campaign - Player's recap

2011-03-01T09:30:00.000-06:00

Following yesterday's post, one of my players posted a recap from his character's POV. I really wanted to share it. For him, Sunday's AD&D adventure included:

Winged kobolds that spit poison - I've been waiting for awhile to pull these guys out of the bestiary.
A 3 to 1 monster/human ratio, at over 90 monsters in a little hamlet, we were in skirmish territory. I brought a lot of d20s. As soon as the players heard the NPC reveal what was going on, you could hear the needle scratching on the record as the players' initial plan went south in a hurry.
Orcs riding warhorses and riding down players. The ranger took 15 points from one charge which got everyone's attention in a hurry. In this case, the treasure from the adventure wasn't gold, it was light warhorses. At 200+ gold a pop, and the ability to charge into battle and stay mounted, this was real profit.
Orc shamen performing evil rituals by ripping the hearts out of human prisoners... and I managed to make the players all say some version of "yuck!" (@thePrincessWife jokingly asked me "What is WRONG with you?!?" to which I replied "Hey, YOU married me...")

The Orc Shamen from Otherworld Miniatures made an appearance, complete with heart and blood spattered arm/blood dripping from the heart. That picture is coming in a couple of days.
The funniest wandering monster result I've had to make in a long time. I rolled a hit for an encounter on the day the players were going to ambush the goblins to free the human slaves. It was my not-zombie-but-zombie-like monsters - the Damned. Well, howinthehell do I work this out? While the players are figuring out their ambush, I'm rolling dice like mad to figure it out - do the PCs encounter them before or after the ambush (3 in 6), do the PCs find them or are they active, etc.... and it ends up that one of the hirelings sat on the grass-covered Damned in their somnolent slumber. Imagine a poor hireling sitting down in garbage disposal... that's about what it was like. The groans heard 'round the table as I pulled out the zombie miniatures was funny though...

AD&D/OSRIC campaign - Happiness is...

2011-02-28T09:45:00.000-06:00

... surveying the wreckage that the PCs have caused over the campaign setting and enjoying the glorious chaos that will ensue as the world reacts.

... watching a miracle missile attack succeed with a natural 20 and derail the villians' plans.

... sacrificing a favorite NPC to save a PC and seeing real emotion from the players as "a short female scream is heard... then cut off and silence."

... watching half your monsters cut down by a well executed ambush and contemplating the screamings and cryings when you (the DM) pull off that same tactic in the future.

... hearing players say "Wow, that was an awesome/amazing/fun/crazy game!" as they pack up to leave.

I'm exhausted, mentally, from the game yesterday, so this is the extent of posting today. I'm going to be busy this week finishing up my tweaks and prep for the Classic D&D Marathon this coming Saturday (11am to 9pm at Unique Gifts & Games, Grayslake IL) using the X1 Isle of Dread module. Don't be surprised if you see Morrowind influences here... something about both module and setting go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

But man... what a cool game. Nothing like doing a warhorse charge on the players. Good thing the hirelings weren't there.. immediate morale check. Oh yea...

Taxation, again

2011-02-26T08:00:00.006-06:00

My online AD&D group has just had almost the same exact reaction as my tabletop players had about 2 years ago when they came hauling a load of loot to the city gates... and then were stopped for inspection and taxation. The screamings... the wailings... the plotting of how to get around it... there were machinations that rivaled anything else in the game to avoid paying gold to the King.

I'm amused for two reasons. One, I don't charge for training to increase levels. I take care of that via taxation on goods brought in and in "cost of living" which I have a published formula and cost for. I confess that if I weren't so against training costs, from a personal "I don't like it" POV, this wouldn't be an issue. Second, from the perspective of their characters - taxation in this form would be normal. Yes, it can be avoided, but the lengths both the tabletop and online group wanted to go through would seem crazy to normal people in the imaginary world.

... and the players in my online game were coming up with some funny ways of getting around it... from casting charm person on the guard (there are multiple guards and people around... that would be an attack. A Bad Thing, especially for a 1st level guy that's probably not going to last long against guards.) to levitating over the wall with the loot... to trying to somehow transport the NPCs outside the city to to the loot...

I had this to say to them:

Me: BTW, just as a note... this is not unusual for this world as this would be the practice in almost all human cities and places where a goverment existed. Only in small villages, hamlets and places where mostly locals operated would this activity not appear. It's a common custom of taxing incoming goods/items that had been "found" or brought in or even items being shipped.

Player: Do you mean that our backpacks are checked everytime we go into the walled part of the city, but since we're not usually carrying anything unusual we don't RP it?

Me: No, you've just never presented the profile of a merchant or someone who has goods to be checked.

Look at it from the perspective of a guard. He probably is looking at 5 to 10 people a minute coming in, on a busy stretch. He'll look at what they're doing, if they've already entered and are leaving, what they're carrying, if they appear to be a merchant or not, if they have some sort of reason to be searched, etc. The times you've entered the cities, you've presented the profile of mere travelers. With urns, boxes and sacks, you're going to look a bit different.

(Just as an aside, I'm astounded - again and I don't know why I should be - at how the brakes screech and the heads snap around and the "WTF"ing starts when I mention taxing ... imaginary... gold :D)

So yes, you'll definitely look like merchants, you'll probably be stopped and checked. This would, from your character's perspectives, be business as usual and unless you really were interested in saving every last gp, most "ordinary" people would not go out of their way to avoid it.

I swear, I'm starting to channel Alexis more and more each day... ;)

BTW, this is not a bitch at my players, we've had a good discussion and they're actually more worried about the guards opening the urns that they wish to keep intact till they deliver them to the NPC. That's a valid concern and I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

It's just funny, to me, that they're doing the same thing my tabletop guys did 2 years ago.

Do your players do the same thing when you extract gold from them?

OD&D Solo game w/wife - The (second) death of Alaxus

2011-02-25T09:20:00.002-06:00

"WHO DARES TO DISTURB MY SLUMBER? IS IT YOU, ANNOYING RAT KING?" thundered a sepulcherous voice from the elaborate coffin at the top of the dais. Before it stood 8 hulking, rotted minotaur zombies. Behind the dais crouched 8 piles of bones, with a bull skull perched ominous on top.

"No, it's just me!" Aeli (@thePrincessWife's character) called back. Beside her stood her loyal henchmen, Turchao and Rather. Behind her stood 6 hirelings with flasks of oil and torches, her mage companion Tironell and the mysterious Osash - acolyte to the Patriarch of Valetown.

"A WOMAN?!" boomed the voice. "NO... NO... I SAW YOU DIE AS LIFE LEFT MY BODY. I KILLED YOU ONCE. NO... NOT THAT SWORD! NOT THAT ACCURSED SWORD! NO, IT CANNOT BE YOU AGAIN! I WILL KILL YOU AGAIN!" With that challenge, a cadaverous form of a minotaur skeleton wreathed in a layer of rotted skin stood in the coffin, draped in rotted mage robes. This had to be Alaxus, in some type of evil undead form.

Aeli and her companions waited. Hands gripped swords and spears with white knuckles. Short breaths were heard as everyone stared in dread at the sight before them. In the rear, Tironell muttered as he desperately tried to figure out how to activate the thin "Fizbin's Shooting Stars" wand he had recently acquired but not yet figured out.

"GO AND DESTROY THEM, MY MINIONS!" Alaxus thundered and he gestured towards the group standing in the doorway.

"This is it!" Aeli called out. "Stand your ground and force them to fight into the door. Osash, can you turn them?!"

"I believe so..." called out Osash in a strangely untroubled voice. He chanted words that made the group's collective skin crawl and Aeli felt a chill run down her spine. The zombies lurched to a halt, and then turned around!

"Aha!" called out Tironell as Osash triumphantly concluded his chanting and gestured the zombies away. "I've figured it out... FIZBINS SHOOTING STARS!" and the wand's end burst into a silvery/purple glow and a small glowing "star" shot out of it and smashed into the hulking minotaur mage.

"ARRRGH!" Alaxus groaned and then he lifted his right hand. "ARISE MY LOYAL WARRIORS! CRUSH THESE INTRUDERS!" Behind him, to the left, four of the piles of bones began to spin in a circular motion, rising up from the ground to form shambling skeletal minotaur warriors. They lurched forward at the door.

"Down and throw at the mage!" Aeli commanded. The front rank immediately went to one knee and hunkered behind shields. Behind them, Osash again chanted his odd words and Tironell sang out "FIZBINS SHOOTING STARS!" again. The skeletons immediately spun on their heels and fled for the opposite wall of the sepulcher, scratching at the wall to get out. Flasks of oil sailed towards the mage as another silvery star smashed into him. One flask sailed overhead, but the other two broke on him and the coffin, covering him in dripping oil.

"NO! ARISE MY WARRIORS!" Alaxus called out and he gestured to his left. In similar fashion, two more piles of bones spun in the air and arose to skeletons. Alaxus boomed in laughter. "YOU WILL NOT LIVE TO SEE THE SUN AGAIN!"

In answer, Osash again chanted his faith in his religion and the two skeletons were repulsed. As if to answer in challenge, three torches sailed from the second rank towards Alaxus. One hit the doorway and broke apart, covering the party in cinders, which they quickly beat out. One sailed over Alaxus but the last skittered across the dais and touched the oil puddled at his feet. Almost immediately, the oil burst into a conflagration which burned away the rotting robes and charred the mage's undead skin. (**1) Once again, Tironell called out the words that caused the wand to spit a magic missile at Alaxus.

"NOOOO!!!!" howled Alaxus. "PROTECT ME, MY FAITHFUL!" and he gestured one last time to the remaining two bone piles, which arose into warriors.

"Tironell, why aren't you using that wand?" Aeli called out urgently, still hunched over behind her shield.

"I... I... if I use this wand up, it's gone! It's the only one I have!" confessed Tironell.

"If we make it out of here, I'll buy you all the wands you want! Kill that damn thing!" snapped Aeli.

Tironell muttered, but his response was lost due to the chanting of Osash, who faltered and then trailed off... the skeletons continued to advance.

"Up and hold! Wait till they get close enough! Second rank, spears at ready!" Aeli barked. She hefted the Blade of Runes which was shining a bright blue light so painful, it was almost too much to look at directly. As Turchao and Rather glanced at her, she almost seemed to look like the famous heroine of legend that slew Alaxus originally. In their stupefied state, they almost immediately dropped their swords as the skeletons charged in their attack.

The skeletons clawed at Aeli and the front rank, ripping flesh and bone on Turchao who screamed in pain. Alaxus laughed coldly and gestured at Aeli.

"NOW YOU DIE!" and he snarled words that seem to stab at her, in the form of three small red/silver balls of energy that smashed in her, nearly knocking her on her feet. Behind her, the hirelings stabbed at the skeletons with their spears, smashing bones and destroying one completely.

"Tironell... use that wand!" Aeli groaned in pain as she staggered to her feet and battled the last skeleton, her sword slicing it into an unmoving pile. The flaming oil encasing Alaxus had burned out, leaving scraps of skin hanging like tattered curtains on the undead mage's bones. He snarled another spell and before the party's unbelieving eyes, he grew.. and grew... and grew to a huge form! His evil laughter filled the sepulcher.

"YES, LOOK UPON YOUR DOOM... " began Alaxus and then a small voice was heard "FIZBIN'S SHOOTING STARS!" and a silvery/purple missile shot out and smashed into Alaxus. He staggered...

"NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo....." he wailed as his form began to crumble into dust from the inside out. A whistling sound was heard as the ancient mage of Evil fell.. again...

The party stopped moving for a moment in disbelief... then Aeli turned, grabbed Tironell by his waist and hoisted him so high, he almost hit the tunnel's ceiling with his head.

"We did it!" she yelled. "We did it! We won!!!"

And that, my friends, is how @thePrincessWife slew the proto-lich Alaxus, found his treasure haul (which gained her about 5,000 XP), found a blackened skin covered spell book, found his notes which may give her clues to her ancestor Kellus and found a mysterious silver-filigreed black crystal ball, which she had to pry from the coffin's lid. She almost forgot to check the coffin, she was a bit in shock and awe of having achieved her goal.

Mechanically, I made Tironell do a 5d6 attribute check to figure out the wand - he passed quite handily. That wand, the oil, and the discipline of Aeli's attack at the door, holding her ground and forcing Alaxus to commit his forces, were the keys to success. I was going to have Tironell stop using his wand, but Aeli made him continue to fire it. @thePrincessWife really roleplayed the session well.

Turchao and Rather, her henchmen, both fumbled at the same time, in the same way, when the skeletons charged. Aeli used the Fighting Man - Multiple Attacks rule and we successfully converted to DAC so I could use the Target20 algorithm. I use it in my AD&D games and it's just so easy for me now.

We also had a treat that I used my big Battlemat for the first time with her. She liked it! I may have to use it again. I don't want to focus on the miniatures as boardgame pieces, but she enjoyed "seeing" the room.

Now Aeli has a lot of things to do. She's got the books, written in the Black Tongue of Mhaldor(**2) to translate. She has a mysterious orb she knows nothing about. She has a favor to return to the Patriarch for use of his acolyte. She also still has to find out why her arch-enemy Calypso was so interested in her ancestor Kellus that he'd kill her entire family over it.

I can't wait for the next game!

**1 - in my OD&D campaign, I've ruled that most physical undead can be affected by fire, the more powerful at half damage. Non-corporeal cannot.

**2 - one genuine ChicagoWiz No-Prize to the person who not only can identify where Mhaldor came from, but has virtually been there and can tell me what my use of this place probably means... :)

No game tonight - but here's a free AD&D/OSRIC tool

2011-02-24T10:30:00.001-06:00

... thanks to this miserable cold. I've had two this year already and I'm really ^@#$@#$%#@!!! done with the cold season, thankyouverymuch. I hate cancelling games, but as I told my players, if I can't give 100%, I won't waste my time or their's. Nor do I want to get anyone sick with this crap...

There is quite a bit of planning going on the campaign email list, much of it centering around coming up with a strike force to attack a slaver town. A couple of games ago, my players were exploring the plains between Enonia (their home base) and Irecia (the abandoned city that everyone wants to get back to) and they stumbled onto a hamlet that seemed to be occupied by orcs and goblins! They were about to mount an attack when a mysterious figure rose out of the ground in a gilly suit - it was the former mercenary Anya! She seems quite off her rocker now, but she's waging a one-crazy-woman campaign against the orcs, leaving heads on spikes all over the place. She let the players know how overmatched they were, as the force was at least 30 orcs/goblins but that they met at the location approximately every 30 days or so.

Now the effort is to raise a force to strike at the orcs and the players are discovering that things are expensive. It's not like hiring a two or three zero-level meatshields for a jaunt to the old dungeon, no, this requires planning, it requires expert hirelings and it requires gold. Lots of it.

One of my Dark Ages campaign players, Tyson, made a spreadsheet for figuring out how much a force would cost. I made a copy of it and updated it against the OSRIC/tables. It's AD&D compatible. It's a Google Spreadsheet (AD&D/OSRIC Army Calculator) and the only thing it lacks is a lookup dropdown list - if you want to use it, you're more than welcome. I'm not sure if you have to copy/paste to your own document or if you can save your own copy, but by all means, go for it! You will have to unhide the data to update for your own campaign prices, but it should be fairly straightforward. The prices are all in silver (as OSRIC listed silver for the wage) and the wages are on a monthly basis.

Here are the valid names to put in the cyan column header in order to populate the calculator. If you need to expand the number of calculated columns, don't insert a column, move stuff over. The columns under the grid are the data for calculating all those numbers.

Archer, Longbow; Archer, Mounted; Archer, Shortbow; Crossbowman; Footman, Heavy; Footman, Light; Footman, Hvy Mount; Footman, Light Mount; Horseman, Heavy; Horseman, Light; Horseman, Medium; Pikeman; Slinger

Sgt, Longbow; Sgt, Archer Mount; Sgt, Shortbow; Sgt, Crossbowman; Sgt, Hvy Foot; Sgt, Light Foot; Sgt, Hvy Foot Mount; Sgt, Light Foot Mount; Sgt, Hvy Horse; Sgt, Light Horse; Sgt, Med Horse; Sgt, Pikeman; Sgt, Slinger

(To create lieutenants or captains, simply replace Sgt w/ Lt or Capt)

Some assumptions - Sgts are first level, Lts are 2nd level, Captains are 5th level. Although it's not automatic, my metric is a Sgt for 5 to 10 men, a Lt for every 10 men, a Capt for every 20 men.

Enjoy!

A few bits...

2011-02-23T08:00:00.002-06:00

In lieu of a real blog post, I'm going to post a few links.

Dark Ages Elves - my online Google game has encountered some elves on a pilgrimage to their home base of Skalfier. So I've been busy fleshing out more details on elves. It's interesting how sometimes the online game pushes me, then the tabletop does and so on.

The different thing about my elves is that they're more human than most D&D games allow for. Think of Norsemen sailors that are shorter than humans. Or think of the iconic OD&D elf picture to the left there. Those are my elves. I've never quibbled about the ears thing, but I've never seen elves as almond-eyed, pointy-eared in my campaign. I've mostly let the players go about elves as they typically seen them. As I'm maturing into my campaign and growing comfortable in how to articulate (and document) these little tidbits, I'm stressing them more and more.

Solo Game - Blade of Runes - @thePrincessWife finally freed herself of the influence of the "Fancy Blade" and now she has a nice shiny Blade of Runes. If you own "Wrath of the Minotaur", you can look up the stats on it - it's a nice little blade! We're still trying to get some peace and quiet time when neither of us is exhausted to try and finish the Tomb of Alaxus. In speaking of the solo game, I've also codified the Combat - Fighting Man attacks houserule and the Combat - Fighting Man Cleave houserule. Nice additions for her to survive better in a solo game, maybe you'll find them useful.

Oh yea, and one other thing - the Classic D&D Marathon is coming up in 11 days! This means that 1) It's time to officially PANIC [haha] and 2) it's time to repimp the game. This year, it's at Unique Gifts & Games in Grayslake. I know 4 people have RSVP'd on the meetup group and the owner tells me he has some signups. Whether I have partial or full table, there will be a lot of fun to be had! I'm running X1 - Isle of Dread with some quirks and twists... no telling if Dragon Turtles will be seen or not... muahahaha...

AD&D - XP for magic items

2011-02-22T08:00:00.000-06:00

I've had a mental back and forth for a few days on the subject of XP for magic items. By the book AD&D Dungeon Master Guide says:

(Those magic items not sold gain only a relatively small amount of experience points, for their value is in their usage.)

Well, this is all well and good, but let's look at an example - a wand of magic missiles. Now while acquiring this wand spanned multiple games, got people really excited and has resulted in some hilarious "off line" emails in how they tested it to figure out how it works, but the DMG says this sucker is worth 35,000 gold pieces and 4,000 experience points.

Uh, woah.

Now I know, BTB is BTB and for my campaign, not always applicable, but I'd like chew on this a bit here. Based on those values, I can say that the XP value for this item is roughly an eighth and a half of it's value. That's not a formula that follows in the XP/gold value ratios for other items. It seems there's a relative value based on the difficulty of making the item, but that is still a huge jump.

Now, for wands, there is an interesting note that says "Assumes full charges are in the item", which I'm not quite sure how that would affect XP, unless they are ranking the value's "worth" and XP on how many times this lil stick is gonna pop a monster for 1d4+1 (twice a round too!) OK, so the max charges are 100, so lessee... that's about 40 XP per charge and 350 gold per charge. While I can understand the cost, given it takes a 6th level spell enchant an item which can be cast only by a 12th level wizard or higher, and requires a crap-load of components to make, for a 90 charge wand (on average) that's 3,600 XP. So some first level wizard who was on a quest and participated in finding this magic item and somehow gets to keep it is going to now be 2nd level just for holding Fizbin's thingie. Same with 2nd level - it's an automatic upgrade.

Is this how AD&D balances things - mages usually get the magic items, so because they need more XP, they get more powerful by dint of finding the magic cookies? Am I just being stingy with the concept in my head?

I'm leaning towards thinking that I'm going to go BTB for several reasons. Mages are already on fragile grounds, unless they're doing double-duty as a multi-classed demihuman. The human mage is still 2nd level, but close to third, if I remember correctly. I also go back to the eXPloration justification - if a fresh/newly minted first level character picked up a wand of magic missiles, should they get 3,600 XP for a wand of magic missiles? Should that bump them to 2nd level?

Given that magic is so rare in my game, yes. I think I don't have a problem with that. The players are slowly beginning to find stuff, but not anything near what most people might expect in a D&D game. I want magic to be mysterious and cool and valued when found. To me, XP isn't just about a person's own ability, it's also about their standing in the world, their ability to do things and their overall "power" that comes with the stuff they carry about. Heroes in Chainmail were powerful in many ways, not just because they'd crossed swords with hundreds of orcs.

Side note - It's a testament to one of my player's tenacity that as an elf fighter/mage, he's hit 3rd level in each. If he'd been in one or the other as a human, he'd probably be the most powerful character. Of course, he's coming to almost every game.

Red Dragon mini painting musings

2011-02-20T11:00:00.003-06:00

I'm just about to start on the "POS WotC Red Dragon" that I've complained about for awhile now. It was a difficult sculpt to assemble but the figure looks nice enough when it finally stays together. :) A picture of what it looks like is below. (paint job is NOT mine..)

So speaking of paint job, I'm trying to figure out how to paint the damn thing. My mind wanders back to 1979 when I first got involved in D&D. My intros to Red Dragons looked a little something like this:

(Holmes box picture from http://xeveninti.blogspot.com/ )

Yea, I like that, iconic, old school, always how I picture.. WAIT!!! What is up with those damn wings!?!

The grey wings are a theme that has popped up before, with the cockatrices - they had leathery grey wings according to ye-olde AD&D Monster Manual. A check of the AD&D book, and going back to OD&D Monsters & Treasures doesn't help - colors were not really described. That's not a problem, per se, but I'm still at a loss what the deal is with the grey wings. There's something I'm not liking about this deal.

(Anyone know why the fascination with the grey leathery wings theme?)

Then I saw this by an artist known as Kevin Mayle. (From here... http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=workshop&thread=969&page=1#22807 and he was still doing posts in 2010... very nice work.)

I like the way he has the wings - a more developed black/grey theme that hews to the original and yet has a much nicer look than the dull grey from the covers. Now we're cookin here! Thanks for the inspiration Kevin.

So the dilemma is this... stick to the simple or go off the ranch? I'm not looking to go much beyond this scheme, but I'm going to be digging to see how I can enrich the red/orange/yellows here to make them more evocative. Interestingly, the picture I used in my post last year has a lot of influence from the same old covers - that artist and I have the same idea.

Wish me luck on this one...

Plans for the weekend

2011-02-18T11:00:00.000-06:00

Plumbing & Furniture... that should be some sort of game. "I rolled a 1! The pipes leak all over the place!"

Wait, that's probably gonna happen anyway. My first time soldering copper piping. If you have small children or weak constitutions, you probably should stay away - the cussing will be epic.

Anyway, I'll finish up on my 5 OWM/Reaper orcs. It took about a week to crank out 5 of them - probably about 12 to 15 hours of work in them but it's worth it - they look great and the emulation of a particular theme came out like I hoped. I'm also extra-grossifying the OWM orc shaman, but I'll let the Februrary minis recap tell that story.

Next on the list is a quick 'break' of two old Citadel ghosts in a neat fashion, then I'm moving on to "the piece of shit that shall be cool" WotC Red Dragon. With that, I'll conclude all 39 of my "primed" list I started in January. What will I do after? I should be getting some archers in a minis exchange soon, so I'll have my DBA Sumerian I/1a army waiting to be done... but more OWM pretties first!

Oh and if anyone has a spare Merry/Pippen for the Games Workshop Mines of Moria game... I tossed them out by accident when I was separating the sprues. I'm still a little WTF over that...

So all that and hopefully, hopefully... @thePrincessWife will take on Alaxus in our OD&D solo game! She's rid of the cursed "fancy sword" and hired some extra muscle to take on the 8 rotting things, 8 piles of bones (they're not sure if they're alive or not.. and I'm not telling -yet-) and one "something" that closed a door by pointing at it. We'll see how it all turns out... I'm excited! :)

HOTT + OD&D Swords & Spells

2011-02-16T16:00:00.026-06:00

While the OD&D Swords and Spells supplement has been beaten and bashed by guys who are smarter/more experienced at wargaming than I am, it still has some neat/nifty stuff in it. Philotomy liked it enough to name it as an inspiration his awesome Combat Sequence. I get a kick out of the illustrations from it. I've had the flarghin' PDF for awhile now...

I'm an idiot because I didn't think to look at how it adjudicated magic - probably the biggest thing keeping me from implementing HOTT style mass combat into my games using PCs. It wasn't including PCs into the elements that bothered me, no, I handle that like this:

When a PC/NPC becomes a HOTT element or "leads" (is merged with) a HOTT element (a PC/NPC may be integrated with a unit, like a HOTT general is part of a unit), they have Hits To Kill = their # of HD. Each time a PC/NPC has a kill scored against the unit they lead (or themselves if they are an individual unit), they lose a HTK. Upon 0 HTK, they are dead.

If a PC/NPC leads a HOTT unit that is destroyed and the PC/NPC survives, they become their own element.

PC/NPC individual elements function as regular HOTT elements for purposes of movement, flanking, closing the door maneuvers, melee, etc.

A PC/NPC may be designated as the side's general - a general does not have to be a PC/NPC.

Easy-peasy. I'm still tinkering on any bonuses/minuses, and number of attacks, but I'm leaning towards Chainmail inspiration to say you have to be 4th level or above to add any bonuses to the Combat Factor.

Anyway, it was magic that gave me heartburn. I wanted the mages and clerics to be able to do their thing. Turn a unit of undead? Sure! Frag a unit with a Fireball? You betcha! Magic Missile? Uh... wait...

Magic Users and Clerics would not waste spells of an individual basis, like Magic Missile, unless they were in a man-to-man or skirmish battle (at which point, we'd move from HOTT to Man to Man and adjudicate the contest.) They would use area effect spells or spells that would influence multiple men. But, you may say... what about scale? Ah, that's a very good point.

HOTT makes no real distinction of how many men a unit ("element") represents. It could be 10, 50, 100 - the idea was abstract. So while a Magic Missile might affect a unit at a 10:1 scale, at a 50 or 100 to one, it's not really worth the effort. So when would *I* use HOTT instead of the normal D&D rules?

Well, HOTT says you create an army from 24 "points", and DBA (HOTT's Ancient Warfare parent) puts you at 12 units per army. So let's average that. The biggest battle I've run with my players is about 30 enemies and 15 PCs/hirelings. So a 20 or 50:1 scale feels about right... 12 * 20 = 240 creatures and I don't ever see myself adjudicating 240 enemies versus the players on a 1:1 scale, and at 50:1, we're up to ~ 600 guys in an "army" which I definitely would not adjudicate at 1:1!

So.. the magic missile. A magic missile taking out a single person in a 20 man unit is not going to seriously affect it all that much. So we can ignore Magic Missile... but what about sleep? A sleep spell taking out the max result of 2d8 HD affected could degrade/disrupt a unit consisting of 20 1 HD creatures.

Swords & Spells put the area of Sleep's effect at an inch (10 yards) and punted the specifics of the effects back to the spell listing in OD&D. In my mind, at @ 2d8 HD affected at 1", it's enough to hit a unit or two, although the Game Referee might have to be creative on how low you could go before a unit as a whole wasn't affected. Chainmail didn't have Sleep, but it did have Slowness and Confusion which affects 1 figure: 20 men (at the 20:1 scale - which the Fantasy Supplement is scaled at.)

The end result of all this comparing S&S/CM to my HOTT+D&D is that I have some metrics to help me in deciding how to "whittle down" what spells will truly affect a unit. In all honesty, CM is probably going to be the bigger help, although S&S does a nice job in ranges.

Now I just need to find some of my Dark Ages guys/gals who are brave enough to test some of this out...

Pendragon Solo game w/wife - Laughing giants and Picts

2011-02-15T08:00:00.006-06:00

For about a year or so, I've been reading SirLarkin's blog The RPG Corner for updates of his Great Pendragon Campaign solo game with his wife. As far as I can tell, we're the only two who are actively blogging about RPG'ing with our significant others. I'm not sure what that says, aside from maybe we're either very lucky or very crazy ... or both ... but it's been a fun ride reading about Sir Herringdale, his wife's character. I have to confess, when the old valiant knight finally passes on, I'm going to feel some sadness.

Anyway... the whole deal sounded like great fun and I know that @thePrincessWife loves the Merlin tales. I've never been much of any opinion about them, but between SirLarkins and her, I was convinced to seek out a 1st edition box of Pendragon and give it a shot. It's sat on my bookshelf for about 6 months now, and it wasn't until I could get the Great Pendragon Campaign sourcebook as POD book from RPGNow that I finally decided to start playing.

@thePrincessWife's RPG experiences are singularly D&D, so I wanted something that we both could "quick start" into. Fortunately, Green Knight provided a "How To Play Pendragon" demo that is available on the web (not sure if it's legal or not, but since it's billed as a demonstration module, I'm guessing it's nothing I'll get sued over.) This covers the basics of combat, traits, passions and skills as well as providing an easy-peasy scenario that leads right to the wacking of swords and stabbing of lances.

So my wife was given the character of Sir Caradoc of Malahaut (I don't know if it's supposed to be the same Caradoc as of Arthurian legend, but we weren't focused on that.) and after being told he was a giant of a man, she played him as a fun-loving, lets-all-have-a-ball knight, even when he was getting punched off his horse. But more of that in a minute...

So the scenario has Sir Caradoc about to cross a bridge when he notices a knight's party tent (aka pavilion), a couple of warhorses and a shield whose heraldry Caradoc didn't recognize. (she didn't make her Heraldry roll... off by 1!) A squire with a ridiculous Monty-Python-esque French accent asked Caradoc to halt and joust with his Lord, as the mysterious Blue Knight wished to see if all zeeze Breeteesh kin-ites are ze bezt zat zey all zey zey arrrrrr! (.. if all these British knights are the best that they all say they are. Told ya it was bad.)

Sir Caradoc, being all chivalrous and honorly (and the wife wanting to do some old fashioned Medieval wacking) accepted the challenge. Now he being squireless, Caradoc was on his own lugging his crap, so he set up while the Blue Knight waited on the other side of the field. There would be three passes of the lance and three swings of the sword.

The combat system of opposed rolls at or under the skill used is a neat and easy mechanic and very much concentrates on mano-v-mano. Unfortunately, it went badly for Caradoc on his horse. The first pass, Caradoc was able to bring up his shield and deflect the Blue Knight's lance, but it was clearly the visitor's point. The second pass, Caradoc shattered his lance and took a nice glancing blow that he'd feel tomorrow. After dismounting, getting his own backup lance and remounting, Caradoc took to the field for the third pass. He didn't get himself and his lance set right because the Blue Knight not only connected, but Caradoc was knocked out of his saddle and landed in a heap. THUD! (@thePrincessWife fumbled the final pass, so I ruled she fell off her horse due to not having a squire help Caradoc prepare adequately.)

So it looked like the Blue Knight was going to best Caradoc, but we had the sword battle to deal with. This whole time, Caradoc was laughing and saluting his opponent. Despite being knocked for almost half his hit points, he was enjoying the contest.

The sword fight was short, brutal and composed primarily of Caradoc knocking the Blue Knight around. @thePrincessWife lost the first blow which her armor soaked up, but handily beat out the Blue Knight the last two, landing a pretty damn good shot that rattled the Blue Knight through and through. Having each won a contest, the Blue Knight revealed himself as Sir Norman St. Germaine, here in Britain to travel to the tourney at Camelot and pit himself against the best. Having seen that British knights were indeed honorable, chivalrous as well as being able to take a lot of punishment and then dish it out, he asked Caradoc for an invite, which was gladly given. The crazeeee squire with ze out-rahgious French ahhc-cent applied a great deal of effective first aid to Caradoc and off they traveled to Camelot. Close curtain.

We then decided to start rolling up a character for @thePrincessWife. Thus, Sir Smitely of the Wall, a Pict knight with a family who knows a thing or two about heraldry, was born. We got most of the way through chargen, which is a game in itself, when the eyes started glazing over and we knocked it off for awhile. We were up in the Dells to have some alone time, not crunch numbers! Still, the whole deal seems pretty neat, and I'm going to use one of the beginning adventures from the Pendragon adventure book "Tales of Chivalry and Romance" to put us on our way to learning this game.

No, I'm not buying Arthurian miniatures... er... yet...

Quick Review - Knowledge Illuminates

2011-02-14T08:40:00.001-06:00

This is a quick review of the new module Knowledge Illuminates by Tim Shorts of GM Games / Gothridge Manor blog. It is in PDF format for $4.00. Tim generously sent me a copy and it's much appreciated. I've not played the module. It's made for Swords & Wizardy - although I'm not sure if the flavor of S&W is Complete or Core.

So... quick review in a list of pros and cons. There are spoilers so read no further if you intend on being a player.

Read more »

Minis Madness

2011-02-11T11:05:00.000-06:00

I'm in full swing of the winter Minis-madness that seems to grip me. I think I have to be a bit crazy to be putting in all this time for little figures that people are going to push around the table and (in the case of monsters) try to get removed from the table as fast as possible.

Part of it is that when I'm modeling or painting, I'm in a zen place. This probably is how I spent some of my happiest moments as a young lad, downstairs working on my model balsa airplanes or plastic models while my Dad was working in his woodshop. One of my earliest/youngest memories is of putting together these small three or four piece biplane models and then going to watch Emergency! after a fun-filled birthday party at my best friend's father's house. So none of this is probably a surprise.

I've given myself some definitive goals of getting my backlog reduced. I'm doing my best to not purchase any minis in February and March (until the Spring Auction at Games Plus where I hope to fill out my need for Sumerian or generic Biblical archers. If you have these in 1/72 or 20mm size, let's talk trade!)

Anyway... it's a madness because I'm finally feeling "good" about what I'm doing and thus it has become a positive feedback loop. An addiction of sorts. I have my new Winsor/Newton #1 and #2 brushes (quick review - OMGBUYTHESENOWTHEYROCK!) and I've set up my space down in the basement (I feel the influence of Dad there...) and I just do my thing. I have my assembly line, my quota/primed/modeled box and my "waiting to be picked" box. I come home and as soon as I'm done with required stuff, I almost feel like a kid escaping to his favorite game or hobby - back to the brush and modeling.

This month, I've done some serious customization on one of the Otherworld Miniature orcs - eschewing the dwarf head hand for a hand holding a green-stuff shield. I've also had to do some creative adjustments on an Otherworlds skeleton - pinning the shoulders resulted in a nightmare and I thought I would have to trash one of the figures. That was prevented by a timely suggestion of a rotting tabard over the shoulders to cover the mound of JB Weld I put to hold the damn arms in place. Great figures, very easy to fuck up if you get the pinning and gluing wrong.

I should mention again the new brushes. Up till now, I've been using mostly Loew-Cornell brushes. Not the worst in the world, but these guys have been beat up and no good points at all. When I started using my Winsor Newtons - wow. I felt like I gained a level in painting just by tools alone. I'm amazed at what I can do with these brushes. They require more attention and I definitely lick/shape these brushes a lot more, but the results hopefully will speak for themselves. Provided I can take decent photos this month... Anyway - the tools definitely make the job.

This weekend will see me heading to the Dells for an "adults only" get-away to be alone - maybe play some more solo OD&D and a sample game of Pendragon.

So why is there a tiny bit of me grumbling about the loss of two painting days...? Madness, I tell you. Wait till the weather changes and Harley in the garage starts growling. *sigh*

Internetpeeps Power Activate!

2011-02-10T14:52:00.003-06:00

(I have heard that phrase somewhere else...)

Anyway... I am looking for a generic CCG card creator - preferably online. I've tried Trading Card Maker.NET and it was too clunky for my purposes. The rest are geared specifically towards Yugio and other genres. I've tried using a MtG card creator for the desktop and it kinda works, but I'm not 100% happy with it.

Why?

With all the discussion on cards and people liking "having" things, it occurs to me that having someone's magic items (or items they suspect are magic) as "cards" might be an interesting possibility. I can put the legendary name on it, if they know it, or just a generic reminder. This also does something for me, I can have a master sheet of what's been handed out so that I'm not doing a character sheet inventory every so often. It could make it more engaging to them and gives them something tangible.

I just thought it'd be kinda neat and I didn't want to do something that looked too generic.

(Edited to update)
Paladin in comments pointed me here: http://carjackedseraphim.blogspot.com/2011/02/old-school-gamer-bling.html which points me to GoDeckYourself.com. I think this is simple enough even for this old guy. Thanks!

Followup on "Revisiting Alignment"

2011-02-10T08:00:00.001-06:00

Inspiration comes from unexpected places.

I have a slight confession to make. I'm very much the tinkerer, but I also have this odd habit of avoiding sources of inspiration from other people's games. I've taken some great rules (d30, Shields Shall Be Splintered!, Philotomy's Combat) but for the most part, I tend to be Mr. Homebrew/Homegrown. So I'll download and read a lot of great stuff, but I don't lift it as-is.

So while I posted my thoughts Monday on alignment, I still wasn't entirely happy. I didn't like the thought that to the players, this all would still be arbitrary and I still was missing "something". Then Rob Conley laid a comment on me:

For clerics and paladins (myrmidons and the other crazy stuff I use in MW) I spell out what the creed and exceptions are in my one page handout. Players taking those classes catch on pretty quick to how things work.
...
However it is import to have some type of culture/society. Even if it the default merrie olde england fantasy kingdom. This give context to the player in which to make moral decisions.

That sound of "click click BOOM" was the gears in my head sliding into place. Pretty much every religion has it's expectations and limitations - so write them down and codify them. Make the players figure out how to follow the Light, but with something to anchor on, they can figure it out and explore it themselves. It gives me the yardstick to measure their actions.

BTW, reading Majestic Wilderness was a treat to jogging the brain cells. Get it. No really, it's worth it, just for some seeds. I know all 137(x2) of you already know that but hey...

So this is what I came up with for "the Light" and sent to my players as a starting point for discussion:

The Tenents of the Light

Protect your fellow human against the forces of darkness, but do not let the acts of Chaos and Darkness become your weapon of protection.
Show mercy for the weak and unprotected, but show no mercy to the forces of Darkness and Chaos that threaten our great civilization.
Truth shall be the beacon of Light that clears the darkness from our souls and brings us back to our rightful place. Be truthful and honest in all that you do.
Stand forth and show no fear, lead your fellow humans to work together to overcome all that is lost.
The Holy Priests, Champions and the King are the flames of the Light that shine in the darkness. Follow them and their orders. Without their orders, Chaos will darken the world.

Simple and direct, but gives my clerics something to hang their hat on. I've also started talking to clerics of the "old gods" (Jorann who worships Tangorin, and Kjeld who worships Vanir).

Edited 2/10 to add:
Here's a link to the campaign wiki's description on Tangadorin - one of the Judges Guild "Unknown Gods" entries that a player of mine uses as his cleric character's deity. The creed/rules for Tangadorin are there. The player helped me to come up with some of these.

OD&D Solo game w/wife - The fancy sword of "I don't think so..."

2011-02-09T08:00:00.003-06:00

Calypso (the miniature)
Yes, I'm painting him.

Aeli and her merry band of fighters and one long-suffering mage once again entered the dark tunnels of the Tomb of Alaxus to recover the famed Runeblade and investigate the tomb. Aeli is still looking for clues as to why her family was killed by the mage Calypso. Having been thwarted from entering the sepulcher by a skeletal hand reaching out of a coffin, Aeli began searching other areas of the tomb. She hoped to find some means of opening the newly formed locked on the sepulcher doors.

I took the opportunity to help @thePrincessWife plot some strategy on how to fight the things that she saw surrounding the probable coffin of Alaxus. I suggested ways of using the dungeon terrain (the door) and gave tips on how to use oil/missile weapons, plus spears in the second rank. So off they went... and shortly, they found themselves confronting the ratling king, his host of ratling followers and two very nasty giant weasels. The vast majority of ratlings went down from an NPC's Sleep spell, but the weasels proved very difficult. @thePrincessWife sacrificed her shield arm (Shields Shall Be Splintered!) to prevent a blow that would have taken her to 3 hit points (the weasel attached and was sucking hp automatically per round until successfully damaged to cause it to break off). The brave cleric of Patharcus healed Aeli, only to die from a weasel's bite shortly thereafter. In the end, the other hirelings proved their worth by defeating the weasels and the Ratling King was killed in a fight to the death (he wanted to retreat, but there was no other way out, so it was to the death.)

I am coaching @thePrincessWife on using some of the variant rules for OD&D to make the fighter an interesting choice, as well as giving her some options to increase her survivability as a solo player. The ones I have been using mainly are the "Cleave" (if she kills an opponent, she can immediately attack another opponent of lesser HD in that same round, provided the opponent is within melee range - 10') and the "Multiple Attacks per round" at FM Level - Creature HD = # of attacks.

With the ratling king dead, she could now retrieve the sword with crystal runes embedded in the blade that glowed an odd blue. Tironell, the NPC mage, saw the blade for what is was: the fabled Runeblade that legends say slew Alaxus! So Aeli bent down to pick up the blade and...

... 10 minutes later, she realized she was happily cleaning and sharpening her "fancy blade" (the one with runes on it that say "Covet Me"). Everyone else is looking at her like she's out of her mind. Shrugging it off, she took the large silver key that dangled about the ratling king's neck, noting that it was very similar to the key displayed in various murals found in Alaxus's tomb - and hopefully the key that would open the sepulcher doors! With only 8 hp and no cleric, she decided to return to town to heal and discuss the Runeblade.

Thus began some of the better roleplaying that we've had so far in the two plus years of this on-again, off-again campaign. Aeli was very reluctant to admit that there might be something wrong with her "fancy sword" but when pressed by Tironell, she tried to pick up the Runeblade again. 10 minutes later, she realizes Tironell is staring at her while she's cleaning her precious fancy sword. So, as a test, he offers to trade her his dagger for her sword as a permanent exchange. 10 minutes later, she realizes she's cleaning her sword (AGAIN) while Tironell is hiding behind the door, with the dagger stuck into the door about where his head HAD been!

It was at this point that Aeli finally admitted that yes, something might be wrong. Next game, we'll be resolving this with a trip to the Patriarch priest to have Remove Curse cast upon her.

In game terms, @thePrincessWife has a sword with some personality! She's not entirely sure that the sword has been beneficial to her, although it seems to have been a good sword. She is playing up her character to be a "damn the torpedos" type of person who doesn't like to admit she's wrong and wants to present a brave front. She also likes her pretties as well (life/art imitation? *grin*) and this "fancy sword" has been her mainstay, although @thePrincessWife said she really does want the Runeblade.

So on to the next game! Will she be forced to confront whatever lies in Alaxus's sepulcher with the Runeblade or the "fancy sword"?

This is why the d30 rocks...

2011-02-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

“... Still more Goblins poured forth. Irem and Mazlor took grave wounds and a score of Goblins converged on our four man front, threatening to drive them back into the river! Then, to our horror, the great Goblin shaman and his elite guard emerged from the tunnels. Our forces were split, our front line crumbling and our most powerful adversaries had now just entered the fray.

The situation was dire. Then, when things looked darkest, a brilliant flash of light erupted from Treen and streaked across the cavern, striking the Goblin Shaman. The Shamans head turned to pulp, like a rotten tomato under hammer and he fell to the floor lifeless and twitching.”

This is a completely awesome adventure recap from a player's POV. Man, I want to play in this game! Oh wait...

Heh. It was a fun Sunday.

26 goblins + one shaman vs. a party of 8 PCs + 7 hirelings. I'm running the goblins like the slimy bastards that they are, pinning the players down with crossbow teams and the goblins charging the ford to cut off the attack. The players were unloading spells left and right.

Then... the Goblin shaman comes out and the player of Treen invokes the d30 rule and wastes the shaman with a single magic missile that somehow delivered 17 hit points of damage. Blam! One d12 = 12 roll later and there are now 12 surrendered goblins (4 were KIA, 10 magically sleeping) keening a lament over their fallen leader and the fact that they will "never reach perfection" from "the Master."

Talk about awesoming up the players. Now they have a new pretty wand and some very evil looking arm wraps with bits of a strange ebony rock embedded within to play with.

Revisiting alignment

2011-02-07T10:51:00.000-06:00

Quick recap on my opinion on alignment. I'm ambivalent towards alignment. I use a form of Jeff Rient's "Ragnorak" explanation of Law vs. Chaos with the opinion that most of us probably lean towards Neutral. For the first two years of my AD&D campaign, I've kept alignment out of focus because there was no need. For my game, alignment's not important.

Except when it is.

Clerics are a good class to be in. You advance quick, you have decent HD (d6) and you get the best of both worlds - spell-casting and fighting. You can use all armors, there's no real disadvantage to blade vs. blunt and you can be assured of at least one chance at saving your own ass - Cure Light Wounds. You have access to ALL your level spells (assuming you're not a DM like me that makes the clerics go ask the gods for 3rd level and above spells...) unlike the poor mage that has to collect/amass libraries.

So where' the catch? Ah, you're subordinate to a deity(ies)/religion that might have its own agenda. Membership has its privileges and responsibilities.

I have two clerics of "the Light" that are 4th level. In OD&D terms, they're "heroes" and they are starting to gain a reputation of their own. (It also helps to have an annoying hireling who runs around proclaiming the grand stories of the "Mighty Mazlor" and "Amazing Alana"! The other players are cracking up now everytime "Isty" is hired to come along.) So they are cranking along... except now I'm starting to show them a new side to being a cleric... being responsible TO your ideals.

The Light is "lawful" in that it has rules, structure and believes in a code of conduct and morality. The good of mankind, the benefit of all, we're all in this together, kumbayah. No, really. It has a hierarchy but it also has people at the grassroots who really do believe and are trying to do the best they can. The people want to have some hope and after the Doom, "the Light" became the official religion of the Kingdom.

So now Mazlor and Alana are more than just joe-priests running around exploring dungeons and getting rich. The actions they do have consequences. The choices they make will affect more than just the party. The hirelings look to them (as they do the other 4th and above level players) as heroes, as bigger than life and they watch what they do. So do the deities. They're not high priests, but the choices they make can and will affect them.

So if the characters do something that I as the deity in question would not like, the clerics will face consequences. At this point, it was the "light" not giving Mazlor a 2nd level spell back for a couple of days. He'd not stood up to what was (in "the Light"'s opinion) a chaotic/evil act and so there was a small consequence.

Alignment won't be a huge DM hammer. It'll be reactive, but there will be reminders. This gave the players on Sunday a stage to really have a discussion on what was right (from their character's POV) and they thought hard about it and RP'ed it pretty good. I only asked "clerics, how do you feel about this" and now Mazlor/Alana are giving thought to actions - as they should be! They are heroes of the Light, they should be promoting what the Light is about. Benefits have costs.

It's still a fine wire and I want to avoid what Mazlor's player spelled out:

"But trying to restrict/penalize player actions very easily and frequently slips over the line into rigid stereotypes and/or a DM trying to dictate values.
So far, I haven’t had problems with feeling handcuffed or being pigeonholed, but I’m a little bit apprehensive and I hope whatever you’re planning involving alignment isn’t going to change that.
For example, I liked how Phalleum and Averin have both served as heads of the local Temple of Light, but were totally different people with very different attitudes and philosophies towards the Marshall, other religions, etc.

Trust me, buddy, neither do I. I won't stop players from doing things, nor do I have a "code of conduct/values" that everyone has to follow. If Mazlor wants to tie up helpless prisoners and brain them, I'm not going to stop him. If "the Light" disagrees with his actions/choices, he'll find out. If he goes over to the Dark Side, well, that's awesome as well and I'll have no problem with helping him adjust to his new world - but it will be his choices and his decisions, not mine. I won't use alignment as a limit, but I will use it as a consequence or reaction.

That seems to fit well with me and it's something I'm going to continue to explore gently.

In the minority...

2011-02-04T13:37:00.000-06:00

Hello all! I survived the Great Chicago Blizzard of 2011, although I made myself very sick by too much exertion at the snow removal. I was already with a cold and I pushed myself too hard. Go figure, me do that? Heh.

Anyway, back for a moment and I wanted to mention something that's an unexpected item that I have to take care of due to the nature of my campaign being "drop in/drop out" ... player/character maintenance.

Judging from a recent thread I participated in on K&KA, I'm apparently in the minority when it comes to gaming. Most of the people I chatted with seem to game with mainly an already established group of social friends, and that doesn't lead to much new blood? Me? I have had close to 30 people participate in the campaign since it started two years ago. About half of those stay in touch or continue to game, most have been onsie-twosies. That's OK! That was something I brought into the West Marches game and while it has given me grief a couple of times (in the form of players who didn't match the social/campaign style/flow that we have going) on the whole it's been a positive, rewarding thing.

Still, I'm in the unusual position today of "doing maintenance" in the form of contacting long silent players to see if they ever plan on returning or if I should retire their characters. I've already heard back from a couple, which is a nice surprise - it's always nice to hear from the original players who've had to break away for life reasons. It's probably something that is particular to my style of campaign - the people with established gamer/social circles probably don't have to do this.

Another thing that I seem to be in the minority of, when it comes to "old/original gaming" is using email to conduct business or "in between games" activities. I do have a limit on what I can do/accomplish between games, usually subject to my ever-shrinking amount of free-time. I usually also limit this to transactional type of things or the results of stuff done off-table, like making scrolls, carousing, etc. To me, if I can limit the amount of "paperwork" like activities on game day, it's a benefit. And sometimes we have some great discussions/RP via email. Maybe it's because I'm comfortable with the medium, or maybe it's an aspect that my campaign group isn't a social friends group, although there are some overlaps between the two?

A couple of quick minis notes...

- Painting with a Winsor/Newton Series 7 brush is like moving from a demolition derby car to a NASCAR Sprint Cup series Late Model. Holy crap! I may have made the vast majority of my other brushes obsolete!

- JB Weld is going to become my friend. I love Otherworlds Miniatures, but some of the figures are decidedly difficult to pin/glue and one particular arm on one particular skeleton is giving me fits. I'm up to attempt #5.

- I also attempted serious sculpting with green stuff by making an orc shield! We'll see how it goes, I had to make the hand as well. It's going on one of the Otherworlds pig-nosed orcs, so I'm feeling "meh" about doing such a radical modification. If it works, I'm going to be thrilled!

January Minis Painting recap

2011-02-02T08:00:00.003-06:00

I'm going to start doing my minis recaps/picture posts as monthly updates, we'll see how this works.

I started the month with 103 minis primed/unpainted.

I added 104 miniatures this month:

2 Mega-Minis cockatrices
Mega-Minis ghost
Mega-Minis Guthrie Druid
3 Mega-Minis dogs: bull terrier, Scottish terrier, German Shepard
2 unnamed Reaper monsters (Dark Ages campaign-specific)
92 HäT Sumerian infantry (1/72 DBA Army)
3 HäT Sumerian chariots (1/72 DBA Army - 12 donkeys, 6 figures, 3 war wagons)

I ended the month with 168 miniatures primed/unpainted.
Read more »

Black Blade and Usherwood to produce/sell OSRIC hardbacks

2011-01-31T11:30:00.003-06:00

In followup to my post from last Friday, there is big news on the OSRIC front. (I think I rolled 1 on the d30 for psionics last week...)

http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=101572#p101572

I'm thrilled to see OSRIC get a little love from them and some "oomph" in terms of making books available. Having worked with both BBP and UP, I have a lot of confidence that they'll do an awesome job.

We were just discussing on K&K that there's an anecdotal ratio of about 6:1 between old school AD&D players still playing, and those people who are active on the Internet participating in the old school discussion. Having OSRIC available to bring in more new players, bring in people who don't know the old books are available... it's all good news for this old edition of D&D.

AD&D/OSRIC campaign - this is why he plays

2011-01-31T09:50:00.001-06:00

Awhile ago, my players stumbled onto a treasure map in the form of a letter, indicating a great treasure was in a particular place. It took a little while, but my players finally returned to attempting to find the location.. and what they found totally thrilled one of my players who plays a cleric of Tangorin. (Tangorin is based off of the god Tangadorin from the old JG "Unknown Gods" supplement.)

I've had this place set up for awhile, but without a real story behind aside from a cryptic entry in my hex map notes. This is the best part of "just in time" DM'ing and sandbox creation. Here's a location, now plug a story around it. You've got cockatrices, a treasure map and a temple to a forgotten god nearby. The story practically wrote itself and the result on my treasure generation just fit to a T. Taichara's Little Treasures finished it off, as I got this result from her table: "A cultic text: furled hundred-page scroll of golden parchment, inked in black and crimson and mounted on crystal rods."

And thus the players now had a meaningful purpose to the treasure map and since it was near a recently discovered sacred site for my player's god...

Long ago, when Tangorin's Tower of Light was erected, his most highest and fervent of priests (who had just about bankrupted himself in erecting this strange edifice that most called "folly" as it was stone/metal but mostly of glass) journeyed with a few faithful to fill the tower with the treasures of Tangorin as well as his most holy words, enscribed on golden parchment, with crystal rod ends. Unfortunately, this unknown priest never made it to the tower and it remained empty (some said haunted) until it was long forgotten after the Doom. Forgotten... until someone stumbled onto a treasure map, had a vision and then quested to rediscover the holy text.

Jorann's player was almost beside himself when the chest from the cockatrice lair was opened and gave up all claims to other treasure in exchange for the magic mace and text of Tangorin. (which was about the equivalent of about 4,750 gold pieces. It was a huge haul, representing the wealth of this dude. Imagine a lonely guy, not quite like a cult leader, but definitely on the fringe, investing all his wealth into this tower, then journeying with the last of his belongings... anyway, you get the idea. Sad ending. Cha-ching for the players.)

You'll see her when she kills you.

It was a fun game, full of divebombing cockatrices (my first time using Aerial combat rules), five of the six players wanting to strangle the last one due to some unscripted combat, the "Mighty Mazlor" being smacked on the back of the head by his religion for overlooking a Chaotic act (the Light wouldn't give him his forgotten spell for a couple of days... alignment post coming later this week!), death-from-above large spiders, and a half-crazed woman commando who is on a mission to rid the world of all orcs, one severed head at a time.

It was one of those games. Totally awesome!

AD&D/OSRIC campaign - many books, many meaningful options

2011-01-28T10:00:00.010-06:00

Last night was the forty fifth (45) session of my AD&D campaign "The Dark Ages." This party continued on their explorations of the deep Dwarf Mines that had been discovered. These mines are "Moria-like" in their vastness - roughly a half-mile between main junctions. The party had one member knocked below 0, rendering him incapable of combat for the rest of the game, and a ranger that kept getting whacked by dice and monsters, but somehow managed to survive. Surprisingly, all of the hirelings lived. There was a lot of laughter about that!

First, a picture:

Yes, there are three OSRIC books at the table - my hardback and two softcover prints. My apologies for the bad cell phone pic. When I spoke about the availability of AD&D 1e books to this group, I got the impression that OSRIC was just considered "easier" to get? Maybe that's my own impression, but I may invest in a couple of 1e PHBs to pass along. Still, we end up using the OSRIC books as much as the PHBs. It makes me smile, though, to see the pace-setter for the retroclones steadily chugging along. Many of the other clones get more press, but OSRIC seems to have amassed quite a bit of traction under the radar. If one of the more vocal "OSR" publishers got behind it in a major way, I wonder what would happen?

A couple of notes from the game:

Guys?!? Help! They're eating me!

A way to make your sub 1HD or 1HD small insect or invertebrate creatures a lot tougher? Have them in a swarm. Take your basic centipede. Depending on the D&D you play, or how you implement your 'pede, it probably does minimal damage by itself and is 1 or 2hp and has a weak, non-lethal poison. Not so tough!

However, put them in a swarm (for purposes of movement and grouped together to attack the same target) but have them attack individually, and take damage individually, and you could have 6 to 10 small creatures suddenly acting like one big tough one. 1 centipede attacking ain't nothing. 8 to 10 attacking at the same time... one target and now you're rolling lots of d20s at once and players are turning various shades of green and blue. My worm swarm last night chewed through one guy and took aim at another before two quaking hirelings chucked oil and torch (thank you Dr. Holmes, for the nice oil rule) at the cluster, burning them up. (The swarm can cut both ways, I ruled that the oil and subsequent burning applied to the entire swarm.)

"Make your player's meaning choices have meaningful results." That has been one of my personal implementation issues with sandbox campaigns. The players are free to do as they like, including chasing their own tails and never finding anything meaningful in their trips. This can dissuade them from continuing on, if they are the type of player who is after a quick hit. So while I will not spoon feed a guaranteed ending, I will also make sure that the major choices, the destinations and the things they seek, have the possibility of meaningful results, especially over a period of time.

My Dwarf mines are based in part on ICE's implementation of their MERP "Moria" supplement. It's a fascinating book about how to run Khazad-dûm and I've used it for generating my Dwarf mines. It is completely random, I have an organized one-pager that allows me to quickly determine what they'll find and it's contents and then my own improv on the area they are exploring. To that end, though, I sprinkled some meaningful results that they could find randomly (or perhaps follow clues they may find...) so that in the end, their choice to explore what is a random dungeon does have some odds of finding something.

They hit that last night with a wandering monster encounter. The party holed up in what appeared to be a 40 foot tall tower in the mines. In the middle of the night, they awoke to soft whispers and someone trying to enter the tower - and they were speaking in Elf! They ended up being the only survivors of the elf encampment that had been utterly wiped out by orcs a couple of weeks earlier. Definitely meaningful - they had been lost in the mines for weeks, barely surviving and starving to death. Now the players are not only heroes for rescuing the elves, they also gained some valuable information on the mines.

I won't spoon-feed results, but the results are there and I'm doing a better job of ensuring that. I probably walk a fine line between Alexis's uber-realistic-uncaring world and the more standard fantasy hero game. I'm never 100% comfortable one way or the other, which is probably a good thing.

Line of the game, by Mazlor (played by David): "Bet you 5 gp you won't eat them!" - said as Talos, the druid, opened a door and a swarm of worms with humanoid faces greeted him.

(edited to clarify what I meant by "swarming")

OD&D Solo game w/wife - The doors on the tomb go "open and shut..."

2011-01-26T09:20:00.000-06:00

(If you're humming "Wheels on the Bus" right now, that's where the title is from...)

After a brief distraction with confronting and capturing some wandering bandits, Aeli and her band returned to the Tomb of Alaxus to crawl through a ratling tunnel (more of a natural crack in a hill) to see if she could find a different way into the tomb. We had a little time to spare, life has gotten quite hectic in January, with something going on almost every evening. This was a treat to have a couple of hours to play.

We also play short sessions. @thePrincessWife isn't the type to sit at the gaming table for 10 to 12 hours, unlike her idiot husband, so I try to take it in short bursts and I'll let her stop the game in dungeons. Since it's just her and I, there's that luxury.

So... on to the game and the meaning of the title...

After crawling through bugs (a "small" giant centipede dropped on the NPC mage who promptly decided he did not like crawling through tunnels...) and into a room that looked suspiciously like other tomb rooms, Aeli found herself back in a hexagonal chamber with a skeleton in plate armor and a shield with a sunburst. One of the henchmen decided to take the shield, but Aeli was more interested in the jet black double doors that lay to the north.

Brief segue.. I hate it when my screw ups in directions lead to player confusion in mapping. Talk about a way to kill a great game flow... kinda like this segue... anyway...

So the jet black doors, with bas-reliefs of minotaur heads and silver bull-head door ring pulls. She pulled the doors open and she saw a dias with a coffin in the middle. Between the dias and the door looked to be 8 rotting minotaurs and behind the dias were 8 piles of bones. It was the tomb of Alaxus!

In the meantime, I've been waiting for her to finally find this tomb. So I'm excitedly setting up the minis, putting up the terrain and just all happy. @thePrincessWife's eyes are as big as plates right now and she's considering the backing and the pedalling. It's a huge climax ...

... and then as I reviewed the description to make sure I had everything, I saw a single line at the very beginning of the room description, where it is describing the jet black stone doors... "These doors are locked."

...

...

...

Yea... so what to do? Do I leave the doors unlocked? Do I go "oops. Wait.. this didn't happen."

No.

So Aeli and party are still at the door, gaping at the sight before them, when a skeletal hand reaches up out of the coffin, points to the doors AND THEY SHUT! Right on those adventurer's noses!

So Aeli and company plot and get oil and cleric ready.. they're going to go in... but the door will not push open! The two silver bull head ring pulls suddenly liquefy (ala Terminator 2) and form one solid bullhead, it's mouth now a giant keyhole.

(Insert sudden dawning realization on @thePrincessWife's face and then the glaring and growling and "WTF'ing"...)

Heh. A cinematic moment made more cinematic by an old school "GET OFF MY LAWN!" performed by something in the coffin.

Aeli and party returned to the skeleton and she took the plate mail armor and dressed in it. Now if you're familiar with "Wrath of the Minotaur" module by Jeff Grubb, you know that this is most likely the armor of the famous mage-killer/Hero that slew Alaxus a long time ago with the Sword of Runes. The henchman who had taken the shield sheepishly (and a little in awe) gave it Aeli saying the shield probably belonged with the armor.

That's something I've started giving to Aeli (and to my Dark Ages players as well) at 4th level - some respect and admiration. In OD&D, 4th level was equivalent to Chainmail's Hero, making 4 attacks per turn instead of 1. These were the bad-ass knights, the snarling ferocious barbarian leaders or the dudes that were gonna go get some serious ass-kicking on. Well, they get some deference and notoriety. Aeli saw a bit of that when she captured the bandits, and now that she's donning platemail that may have been worn by an ancient hero.. well, that's just the shit!

She exited the Tombs on that note, and went back to town to drink. A wandering minstrel took note of her and sang a song of the famous fight between the unnamed female Hero and Alaxus the Blackest of Mages.

The screwup with the door has presented itself with opportunities for her and for me. For her, it means that "peek" gives her a tactical edge - she knows what to expect and she can prepare better for it. I won't begrudge that to her, hell, it was my screwup and her gain. It gave me some fun with a moment that you won't see in most fantasy movies and depending on what she does/where she goes to find how to unlock the door, more opportunities to have some fun. So not too disheartening and just a quick improv - thank gods I pulled that outta my ass!

I can't wait to play again!

OD&D Psionics - my take

2011-01-19T09:00:00.000-06:00

I don't like psionics. Wait, let me take that back. I don't like the psionics from Supplement 3, or from AD&D or from the web and it boils down to the same thing for me... tl;dr - too many dice/too much paperwork.

Now that's an oversimplification and this is a personal opinion - I like my games lean, mean and many options, few rules. Many of the psionic systems that I've taken the time to really read and grok end up following a similar pattern:
1. Figure out how powerful the psionics are (and in some systems, figure out how much psionics you can do for this level/day/combat.)
2. Figure out the attack/defense
3. Figure out if an attack/effect was successful (usually matching results from #1 and #2, comparing, and making dice rolls for saves and damage.)
4. Track points/power levels.

There are a lot of people who like that type of mini-game, I'm not one of them. Call it thick-skull, maybe I inhaled too many fumes from that "dope" when I was building model airplanes as a kid, but I like my in-game systems quick and easy.

That all being said, I do have a psionics system I do like, and it was written by Gary Gygax in 1975 in the magazine Strategic Review #1. In it, he described the Mind Flayer for the first time and it's Mind Blast power:

Intelligence  Saving Throw at Range   Effect of
of Opponent        1-2" 3-4" 5-6"     Mind Blast

3-4                19   19   17       Death
5-7                17   16   15       Coma, 3 days
8-10               15   14   13       Sleep, 1 hour
11-12              13   12   11       Stun, 3 turns
13-14              11   10   9        Confuse, 5 turns
15-16              9    8    7        Enrage, 7 turns
17                 7    6    5        Feeblemind
18                 5    4    3        Insanity, permanent

Magic users add +1 to their saving throws, and clerics add +2. 
A Helm of Telepathy adds a +4 to saving throws, and when such 
saves are made the attacking Mind Flayer is stunned for 3 
turns.

Now admittedly, to my own taste, there's a lot wrong with this chart, such as why someone with 18 INT would suffer insanity if they fail their save versus the 13/14 would just be confused, BUT it's the simplicity of the effect and approach. Attack. Save. Ouch or Haha! So let's expand this just a smidge.

1. Figure out if you have psionics - prereq is a 13+ INT. 1 in d30 gets you the freaky mind!

I do like Carcosa's system of using INT/WIS/CHA to determine likelihood, so I'll add that a WIS of 16+ and/or CHA of 16+ adds +1, cumulative. A person could have a 3 in 30 if they have high enough stats. 10% chance.

And yes, you can simulate a d30 with a d20+d10 but really... the d30 is so cool, this system will make you run out and buy one. Right? Guys?

2. You have 4 powers - Mind Blast (like the mind flaya' [although I may redo this to do some damage dice and save the effects for a failed save]), ESP (like the spell) and Charm Person (like the spell). You also have Telekinesis (like the spell). You can use the number of powers per day as your level/3 (rounding rules apply). So choose wisely at first level.

It was my thought that 10th level should be able to use all powers at least once, so I may allow 10th level 4 times since that's the cap on most classes. Maybe not, maybe those freaky high level mages should allow themselves some extra oomph, since we are talking about OD&D here...)

3. To attack, you declare like a spell and let your mind do the talking. The target makes their save based on the chart above. Your powers are limited to 60'. If they save, you are stunned for 3 rounds (in combat use) or 3 turns (non-combat use). If the target fails, the power works (per spell description or Mind Blast - which we would redo the chart)

Now, in accordance to the Alexis TestYourBullshit! rule, I have not tested these because I'm still noodling them. It's my (perhaps incorrect) suspicion that psionics are one of those campaign tilters, just like tossing a +3 Vorpal Sword into a pile 'o treasure, so I tend to tread lightly. Do these seem doable? To me they seem fun.

OD&D Solo game w/wife - The return of Aeli

2011-01-18T10:10:00.000-06:00

After 10 months of trying, @thePrincessWife and I finally sat down at the table and tossed some dice, shoved metal figures around and had fun playing OD&D again. With the step-daughter, 4 year old granddaughter, 2 teenage daughters and a constant revolving door of people coming and going, it's hard to set aside time to get to gaming, but we manged to do it. I had recapped the previous adventures of Aeli and her band of rag-tag misfits (heh) earlier on the campaign wiki, and we picked up much where we left off.

Now I'm not one for the blow-by-blow recaps, but I would like to point out a couple of neat things:

1. I'm noodling around with a house-rule that says a Fighting Man can attack multiple targets at rate of Level - HD attacks. It basically breaks down like this: Fighting Man Level - HD of creature = Number of attacks per round. Any numbers < 1 = 1.

Here's a chart:

HD      <1  1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9+
Level          
1       1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
2       2   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
3       3   2   1   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
4       4   3   2   1   1   1   1   1   1   1
5       5   4   3   2   1   1   1   1   1   1
6       6   5   4   3   2   1   1   1   1   1
7       7   6   5   4   3   2   1   1   1   1
8       8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1   1   1
9       9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1   1
10      10  9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

The math checks out. The problem is that I keep forgetting to give Aeli the extra attacks! I bet if I tell her this rule, she'll make sure to ask me if she can get extra attacks! :) This really will help with the solo game survivability as well.

2. Tying up loose ends. A few adventures ago, Aeli captured some bandits with the "help" of a local neer-do-well by the name of "Nib". Well, he fled her company once the bandits had been caught and she suspected him of attempting to double-cross her. So in this game, she ended up with a bandit encounter and guess who I ruled was leading the bunch? Nib. This wilderness encounter, which the dice told the story, ended up derailing her plans for the day. Thanks to her charge through the line of ill-prepared bandits to grab Nib, as well as the monsters rolling "surrender" after the first death of the opponents, Aeli had to take the bandits back to town for a justly deserved reward... which she can collect once she takes the Writ of Reward to the Keep to cash in.

I am a big/huge proponent of taking the story the dice tell and weaving it into the narrative. Had there been no bandit encounter, Nib would still be out there, but now he's in chains awaiting trial and @thePrincessWife has a nice conclusion to that tale, as well as a bit of cash.

3. The story lives. OK, this is more of a thought after the game and a bit morbid but... do you write out the thoughts in your head as to where the story might go... just in case?

This is probably really damn personal and a bit odd, but if I die, the story dies and @thePrincessWife would never know how it would end. Now I know this is the fear of any writer anywhere, or any artist that creates... but it strikes me that DMs really do show a personal side of their creativity and if they pass on - well, we don't know where things would've went.

There are no notes about Castle Greyhawk that point definitively to how it was supposed to really look, all fleshed out. I don't know how detailed things were for Blackmoor, and I get the feeling that Tekumel/EPT is so well fleshed out that people would be able to see Prof. Barker's notes.

So OK, it made me worry about my lovely wife, so I actually wrote out where things are going IF she continues on her path. It's a constantly evolving story, as she makes decisions and things change, but if God forbid something were to happen to me, I'd want her to know. OK, morbid.. sorry. But the solo game has become such a thing that I feel between her and I that I want her to have this. No matter what.

OK, go hug your SO and kids now. :)

Where's our EPT and Blackmoor? Is the "OSR" doomed to retreads?

2011-01-07T08:38:00.001-06:00

This all started because someone asked John Adams (he of Brave Halfling Publishing) over at the Swords & Wizardry forums about doing the old S&W Core Monster Book as a Whitebox release.

Something snapped in my head - it was painful - and over the past couple of days, the following blog post wrote itself in the cockles of my heart. So here you go...

I think we (the people who actively support/write/advocate old school style of play - call it what you will) can, we should, be doing better.

Look, I know John Adam's gonna do what John's gonna do to make a buck. And yes, 90% of our little band of 137 grognards are going to snap up WB Monster Book, WB Advanced Classes and all the other stuff that people want in order to either have the latest and greatest of the brand or because they want to show support to the little press. At the end of the day, I really don't begrudge John, or Matt Finch, or any of the small press / old school related guys making a buck. I know I made a buck or two on my Ref Sheets, as Bullette pointed out over on that forum thread and that's OK.

I think we can and should be doing better.

Where's our EPT? Where's our Blackmoor?

Where is the truly different and unusual that will have people really rolling? The only one that really pushed boundaries, so far, has been Carcosa. No matter what you think of the subject matter, the point is that Geoffrey took D&D/OD&D and went somewhere very different with it. I loved it. I've used a lot of it as stuff to prod my games along. That's why I love the crazy and wacky from Fight On magazine. That's why I have orcs with guns, fallen shiny spheres, crazy creepy dolls and a whole bunch of other stuff that my players might never see, but it's there because I'm inspired to put it there.

I may think Raggi's an ass, but I dammit sure respect him for trying to do something other than a retread. I may not buy his stuff, but I give him props. There's little other stuff coming out that I want to buy though, because it really is more of the same. Same orcs. Same plate mail. Same Stinking Cloud (except when Matt Finch forgets to include it) and just more restating of the same stuff we've been doing for the past 30 odd years, but with a shiny new name on it.

Say what you will about Alexis over at Tao but at least he's trying to perfect the craft of AD&D and push it into areas that some of us just back up and say "Woah, you are one crazy mofo... now how do I do that?" It's new, it's fresh and it hews true to the old school camp while taking us places where we need to go.

Where's our EPT? Where's our Blackmoor?

We should be doing better. We've been doing this little old-school stuff for what, almost 5 to 7 years now? We have retroclones of virtually every D&D flavor you can think of up to 1989. We have a retroclone of a Chick tract, for cryin' out loud! Are we really that tapped out that we can't do something different?

An orc is an orc. We can describe the same orc in 50 different retroclone ways, or we can do something new with this orc. Mash him with Mr. T. Put a laser in his hands. Put a laser on his head. Do *SOMETHING* different with the orc but please don't restate him with WB stats, then with Complete stats, then with OSRIC/AD&D stats, then with Holmes retroclone stats and on and on and on...

Look, I love the style of play that the original editions give us, but I also hope to see inspiration and movement to something that explores the places we haven't gone. OK, I may be derivative myself, but at least with Ultima RPG, Modern OD&D, I was trying for something new. That's why Tombs of Hultep Koa remain hidden. It's retread shit and I don't want that.

At the end of the day, I hope John makes a buck. If he does that with the same Orc with a shiny new label, Gods bless him and I hope it does well.

I just hope he does something different... or SOMEONE does something different. Otherwise, I think we're just going to end up cutting the same game into tiny pieces and saying the same thing until it just doesn't matter anymore.

I want 2011's EPT.

OD&D Solo game w/wife - Falling in love again

2010-12-21T12:10:00.000-06:00

ThePrincessWife and I are about to start gaming again, both with OD&D/Swords & Wizardry and in Pendragon. To that, I've been going through all my old game notes and coming up with recaps that she can read and get back up to speed. I thought I would share them here as well.

Here are the links:
A recap of the game so far - Part 1
A recap of the game so far - Part 2

(Should I reproduce the text here? Or just the links?)

Anyway, in writing these out, I found myself remembering a lot of ideas, memories and half formed plans - those "Oh yea... what about this... and this..." and I found myself wanting to go back to The Vale again and being the exploration. It was like pulling back the curtain and falling in love again with this setting and what was so exciting about playing it.

I think I'm really healed from the drek and scum from the TARGA and YesNoOSR deals. It feels good to just be excited to game. Now if I pick up my miniatures painting brush, I'm REALLY in trouble. I still have almost 100 left to paint! LMAO!

Using my DM skills for "good"?

2010-12-20T13:13:00.001-06:00

This is an odd post to write because it's not as much about gaming as it is about the exercise of my skills in creating alternate realities and fantasies that are consistent that other people can "exist" in. In our hobby, it's called DM/GM/World building skills. From someone else's perspective, it could be called the art of bullshitting or con-artist.

Which is where this post gets to.

We all get spam. We all get those funny letters that start off with "HELLO DEAREST" and proceed to tell us how about some bigwig somewhere died and left a trunk full of cash and all we have to do is agree to help this person and we'll get a big fat check. About 2 emails into the deal, we're asked to send $500, or $1000 or something to help with "demurrage" or "document fees" or "security certifications" or some other shit.

Or we'll get emails telling us this woman is a refugee in Sudan, or that gent is a lonely US soldier in Iraq that just stumbled onto Saddam's lost palace... or the worst, where an older relative is taken in by a supposed relative who is stuck in Greece and needs bail money and surely you remember me, the fourth cousin of your brother's father-in-law's niece's nephew?

Yea. Those fuckers. These con-artists who send these kinds of scam letters can teach us GMs a thing or two because they spin their shit daily just over the Internet or phone or IM and they rake in millions! Don't believe me? Go read it for yourself. Yea, they're getting paid to spin fantasies, but it's loot from preying on victims.

This Halloween, I'd had enough.

I have been reading about the reverse-419 tricks played by people who call themselves "baiters." They "bait" the scammer (aka "lads") into believing they are for real, that they can be duped and they have money. Baiters use a wide variety of tricks, techniques and traps. They take advantage of cultural differences. They use the power of the Internet against these scammers much as the scammers use it against their victims. The results can be hilarious - ranging from silly photos and videos ("trophies") to more interesting results - lads getting tattoos, or going on trips to try and find the baiters ("safaris") to even scaring the lads into fleeing their country.

Vigilantism, to be sure, but when the US Govt won't do anything under a fraud of $50,000 and the Nigerian police are often in cahoots with the lads, it's one of those deals where you decide which side of the line you want to stand on. I should also note that there are lads/ladettes in all countries in the world - but predominantly in Africa/Russia/India/Indonesia.

So I've been baiting a lad since October and I can honestly say that my DM/GM techniques worked to lure him into my story. Have a plot/idea of your end goal and how to get there. Get the scammer to buy into your "world" and even contribute to it. Give the scammer some rewards but always be one step ahead. Make your world consistent. Use tools around you to present the situation as if it were real.

The lad presented himself as a young woman who is studying in Nigeria and is being held hostage by an evil hotel manager who has seized her passport/airline ticket so she could pay her bill. Yea. Likely story. The story I concocted is hilarious: I'm the president of a porta-potty company. I am the possible recipient of a vast fortune of money. However, to fulfill my parents' wishes (who are both dead) my brother and I must compete for the money by seeing who can have the most heirs in 25 years. He has 8 sons. I must have 9. I had to spin a consistent story between 3 NPCs (the main character, his brother and a lawyer) and keep track of where each was.

At the end of the day, I had my lad give me a trophy of him holding a picture saying "I love BoN'ers". Yea, y'uck, y'uck... "I love boners"... but I also wasted his time, hopefully his money to pay for Internet cafe charges and maybe kept him busy enough to not scam someone else. (The BoN'ers is a nod to the social networking site where he first contacted me - BikersOrNot.com. My mc buddies are having a good laugh at this.)

Here's my lad - aka Adebisi Kehinde:

Yea, he's real and that's his name - I know this because he used it so that I could send him money via Western Union. I have a couple of other pictures that are consistent to where I'm 99% sure this is the guy. That's the face of a criminal and someone who wants to steal your money and your relative's money. For him, I have no pity or feelings other than anger and scorn.

And one other thing. Please, please, please... tell this story to others. Sure, have a good laugh at the Nigerian crook who got double-crossed into holding up a humiliating sign - but the real story is that these guys are organized, ruthless, without pity and they will do whatever they can to con people into sending them money. AND IT WORKS! Go to scamwarners.com if you don't believe me - it's heartbreaking to read of people duped. And it'll piss you off.

Education is the key to keeping him and other criminals like him away from your friends and loved ones. I hope this little story helps in that regards.

So you never know where your DM/GM skills are useful. Am I using them for good? I dunno, but I'm satisfied in the end.

Failure IS an option

2010-12-07T06:47:00.001-06:00

The next time...

... your elf fails a secret door check, they really DO feel something is odd about that wall and that secret door is right there, plain as the nose on his/her face! It must be magical!

... your dwarf fails a detect traps check, every 10 to 15' or so, he/she sees another trap, very similar. This continues on for another 1d6x10 feet.

... your Magic User fails some sort of an attribute check[1] against their Intelligence, or Saving Throw, say to suss out the arcane formula that either explodes like a fireball or gives him the Big Secret... well, he's for sure he's got it right... all we have to do is displace that dragon 3 days over and then grab the cocktrice's tail and...

... your thief type character fails to detect traps, she really DOES find a trap and spends quite a few turns trying to disarm it, but for some reason, it's not working.

... your fighter fails to open a door, no, he really does open the door and keeps on steaming through the room unbalanced, falling over everything and slams into the other side of the room, knocks himself out for 1d6 turns/rounds (rounds if there's gonna be combat from the other dudes looking in amazement at the idiot human who just knocked himself out...) and worse indignity, suffers 1d2 points of damage from the crash and door falling on his face.

Failure doesn't just have to be "No" - take what would have been a successful outcome, or what would have happend IF there was really something there, twist it so that it's going to be an obstacle or setback and make it a red herring, an event that wastes time/resources, puts them on a temporary bad path... something that they'll talk about for months down the road - "Hey, remember when George tried to kick open that door that led to the Imp's breeding grounds and he knocked himself out falling right at the feed of the Barbed Flaming Devil?!?"

[1] I love the 3d6, 4d6, 5d6 or 6d6 attribute check dealio. Not only are you rolling a lot of dice, but it's intuitively cool.

The retroclones have taken me back to the originals

2010-10-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

I've noticed something lately... I'm not playing the retroclones as much as I'm back to playing the originals. This has less to do with the clones themselves than with the fact that the retroclones have done something invaluable - they've opened the door to me to *understand* the originals.

When I played AD&D and Holmes, I had no freakin' clue what I was doing. We just got together and killed things and took their stuff and made the world safe for... something. Gygax's prose, the intricacies of B2 and X1, the concept of the "underworld" - it meant nothing to me as a 14 year old hopped up on puberty hormones, MTV and Atari 2400.

Coming back to those games many years down the road, the retroclones opened my eyes to what I had missed in all that time. OSRIC laid out AD&D in clearer tones, and that was good! But now I find myself going back to the original DMG more than I crack open the OSRIC book. Hell, Kellri's CDD4 is probably referenced more than even the DMG. Swords & Wizardry gave me the simplicity of OD&D and Whitebox S&W gave me the OD&D "toolkit" to make my own game - the Ultima RPG. Yet now I keep going back to just the Ref sheets and the LBBs to tease out little bits on my own, or I open up Holmes.

It's not that the clones are bad, but I find they've taken me back to the originals and I'm happy with that. I've found myself almost at the same place I was back in 1979 and 1980 - mashing together Holmes and AD&D, but now I've got more stuff and more importantly, I've got more experience and understanding. I've got the blogs, I've got the forums and I've got the experience.

I still own the retroclones, but I'm finding my enthusiasm has waned a great deal in purchasing Yet-Another-Clone, especially in this economy. The Whitebox boxed set is the last RPG purchase I've made this year and probably will be the only one.

I don't know that this *means* anything, except that retroclone and simulacra publishers are going to give me the fat finger because my wallet is closed and I can't really recommend any clones save the ones I've already publicly supported.

I am collecting monetary donations for the 2010 Chicagoland Toys for Tots Parade to be held on Dec 6th. This is a great charity where the Marines distribute Christmas toys to needy kids. I am raffling off some RPG items as well - the more you donate, the more "virtual tickets" you'll get. See this post for details and thank you!

So much for the hobbyists...

2010-08-25T10:16:00.004-05:00

From Frog God's website (and hat tip to Sean at Bite the Bulette for pointing this out):

We are not the guys who are going to offer bargain basement junk for a quick buck. We won't sell you hand drawn maps and clip art laid out by amateurs and posted up on Lulu.com as a cheap book that you look at and discard.

Wow.

That just makes me sad, considering that the original Swords & Wizardry Core Rules were filled with "hand drawn maps" and "clip art laid out by amateurs" - I was one of those amateur artists, as were a lot of other people that Frog Gods just took a dump on. I mean, Fight On winning Lulu contests - Knockspell was done by volunteers up until the last issue, I believe.

I had high hopes for Swords & Wizardry moving (yet again) but this gives me serious pause. Man, I wish Matt and Black Blade well, but if that's the attitude of Frog Gods, I'll stick with my Core Rules hardback made by amateurs when the love was for the game, not for one's damn fucking Froggy ego. We'll have to see how this plays out.

ETA: Made a screenshot of the page in case the inevitable re-write and "who us?" comes.

I have the cure for Gamer ADD

2010-07-28T09:48:00.000-05:00

1. Have financial woes during a economic slowdown. Mix in paying for high school, fixing vehicles, granddaughters and the Harley tax.

2. Continue running your campaign, but use what you already have or rely on free stuff.

3. Realize that you don't need to buy the latest/greatest, that this stuff works as-is, that your game still rocks.

Viola! Your ADD is cured and you can move on to a bright, shiny new world using what you have already - because there is a TON of good ideas and inspiration already there on your shelf.

(It also helps if you are still in that financial crunch and your mindset is starting to go into frugal mode.)

I think my days of just buying it because it's the latest/greatest blogoland flavor are over. I'm not shelling out anymore treasure or gold on RPG products, until I've wrung out all that I can on what I already have. I think I greatly appreciate the Depression-era thinking that my grandparents had.

Has the economy affected how you use your gaming materials? Have you become more frugal?

Civilization forming

2010-07-14T10:13:00.000-05:00

You're not an adventurer. You're some poor schmuck whose father had a farm, same farm his grandfather did and so on. You're a guy who toils in the fields, who happened to be on the wrong side of the road when the Lugal came by conscripting those surrounding his city for a little hike over the hill and down to the river valley to face the army of the opposite city. Oh, and he has a job for you that involves raiding the other guy's camp and stealing away the Cup of Indrikal, which they say contains the power that Irrup-sa-gal uses in battle. Good luck there, Sparky! If you manage to take a noble prisoner, well, that ransom money might allow you to do a few upgrades and increase your standing in the world.

You're not an adventurer. You were supposed to be married off to some idiot, but what your father DIDN'T know was that you've been hanging around with the sister of the smith. Yes, the smith, that strange man who knows how to fold and beat the metal that brings strange power to your world. The sister even knows... WRITING! Somehow, that's made a connection in your head, but the dark little being that sits at the foot of your bed hasn't been persuaded yet to tell you, even as he teases you with the promise of power. He started showing up when you started wearing the metal around your neck and Gil-a-kel's voice in your head grew less.

You're not an adventurer. You're sweeping the halls of the Lugal's second home. You know that the fervor of worshiping Ish-ri-kal fills your blood and that you've had a knack for chasing away the flu demons and healing the wounds of battle. You've also smited a few enemies while screaming the cries of your god. The Lugal liked that, especially when he was taking the spoils of battle from you in exchange for giving you a place in Ishrikal's priesthood. But man, sweeping halls suck! But something is going on, because there is a lot of talk of sending people to the Underworld to try and bring back Al-kas-hag's soul back to his body. Strange tales of what lies there... riches and strange rewards. Maybe you'll get lucky... or maybe you'll never come back.

And did I mention that you'll be stretching your timeline from your Father to your sons/daughters and their sons/daughters? There's a civilization to be made... and gods to serve.

What if, when civilization was first forming...

2010-07-12T09:04:00.000-05:00

(These are notes that I had compiled a while back when I was foolishly thinking I was good enough to write modules. I had considered publishing an alternative history deal centered around a Black Ziggurat. Ha! Boy was I dumb. So, I'll just muddle around here with it, and maybe get together some players for it someday...)

What if ...

... the god/dess/es were real, and they influenced PCs on a much greater level - similar to a charm person, or to where the player had to make a saving throw versus an attribute to do something against the will of a god inside of the god's city? And what if this was easier at lower levels, because everyone is basically a grunt, and as you grow in levels/importance, you grow in the sight of the god/dess?

... magic users were really sorcerers and your very first "first level" spell wasn't Read Magic but Summon Demon so that you could use the demon to cast spells? And what if the mage had to have a high Charisma as well as high Intelligence? And what if the mage had to make a Charisma save to have the Demon cast the spell (ala, EPT's Spell Fumble roll prior to casting a spell?) And what if instead of sucking up the Demon's HP when the spell is cast, on a failed save, the Demon would still cast the spell but the hp cost came from the Mage?

... only those who wanted to risk disfavor with the Gods could write?

... technology was something that caused the Gods influence/power to be less? So that yes, you could use the higher technologies of refined metals, writing and what-not -- but then those Cleric spells might not work so well?

... everyone had a shot at divine favor/intervention?

... you could move up in levels, but you also had some measure of how happy your God or the city's royalty were with you... and that depended on how much of your "stuff" you gave?

... gp/sp was only a relative "measure" - coins and money was not as prevalent as jewelry, cattle, slaves, property?

... going into the "Underworld" meant you really did go to a place where the rules changed in how things worked?

... Resurrect spells were really opening portals to the deepest parts of the Underworld where you had to battle to regain the souls of your lost comrades.

... the end game was your quest to become a lugal so that you could be equal to a god through technology, control of the people and worship of a god and how the god's influence was spread to other cities, territories?

... Jeff's game of EPT at Winterwar had influenced my view of "Land of 2 Rivers" a lot more than I had realized?

OD&D Solo game w/wife - 4th level

2010-03-17T13:10:00.001-05:00

My @thePrincessWife reached an achievement in OD&D/Swords & Wizardry; she attained 4th level. On the eve of her birthday no less! In OD&D, she would now be a "Hero" which was significant in Chainmail - she would be considered a special type of character and now able to confront the truly fantastic of creatures. I mentioned to her that word of her accomplishments and travels are starting to become noteworthy not only in the immediate area, but regionally.

We played a bit last night - much of it was concerning "paperwork" in reviewing things like how Hit Dice worked, her various skills and abilities and her henchmen.

We also had some fun watching the dice give @thePrincessWife fits! She has concluded that there must be a back entrance to the Tomb of Alaxus, given that these ratlings seem to be living there and probably did not come through the front door. She is not a ranger or skilled woodsmen, so I gave her character, Aeli, a base chance of each hour finding something, if something was there. The more she searched, the more I raised the likelihood of finding something, or positively concluding that nothing was to be found. The only downfall was wandering monster checks.

[Spongebob Announcer Voice] Five hours later... [/Voice]

So the dice were not kind and five hours passed in-game while the group trekked around this hill looking for something - anything! It wasn't until the wandering ratlings cued Aeli to the location of the secret entrance that she found it. We all had a good laugh on that and had to regretfully stop playing for the night as we just ran out of time. Either tonight or tomorrow, she'll enter this narrow hole in the ground and see where it leads to.

I'm really looking forward to getting her new "true" 25mm miniature all painted up and ready to go - as I am looking forward to completing Tironell's miniature (the NPC mage that accompanies Aeli.) Although I have no problem killing him if needs be, I have come to enjoy the banter between her character and Tironell. Unsurprisingly, it mirrors some of the same banter she and I have. Go figure!

OD&D Solo game w/wife - Small steps

2010-03-12T14:30:00.000-06:00

Previously, about two months ago, my wife braved the depths of chambers beneath the Tower of Alaxus to find clues to her ancient mage ancestor, Kellus Therran. She had defeated the Smoke Dragon guardian, but had fallen afoul of a nasty gelatinous cube, losing her "magical" sword in the process. She was subsequently robbed at the hands of a large band of goblins and slunk back into Valetown, broke and depressed.

The Patriarch of Valetown agreed to trade some of the valuable old books from the Tower in exchange for coins and a refit. Tironell, Aeli's erstwhile mage companion, agreed reluctantly. Subsequently refitted and rearmed, the group of Aeli and Tironell, along with her loyal henchmen Turchao and Rather and three hirelings - Fan, Jan and Chin, made their way back to the tower. (Hey... I wasn't feeling all that original and hirelings need easy names to remember... at least with the turnover that Aeli's group experiences...)

They planned on using oil to flame the cube to death, but that involved luring the cube into an ambush. Aeli volunteered to be the bait, so she crept down the corridor to the room that the cube was in. Her sword was no longer stuck in the wall, no doubt now in the belly of the beast. She peered into the room, and got the cube's attention to follow her. That's when disaster almost struck!

Aeli wasn't quite quick enough to dash away before the cube had a chance to lash out at her and paralyze her - beginning the process of enveloping her! [See DM Note #1 below] Her companions, hearing her cry, rushed down the hall and were able to kill the cube before it killed her - a short while later, she recovered. There was a great deal of happiness at the recovery of her sword, along with what appeared to be a potion of healing and some coins and a bejeweled dagger.

The cube had been sitting in front of a crack in the wall, a winding passageway that was barely wide enough for a human to squeeze through. Since the main passage forward was blocked by a cave-in, and apparently some creature(s) on the other side, Aeli chose this route. After awhile of squeezing through this passage, she found herself in another room similar to the one the cube had been in... except this one was populated by rat-like humanoids roughly 4 feet tall.

Aeli, not being much of the diplomat, asked if she could pass through. The ratlings were not impressed by her speech given that it was her vs. 10 of the creatures. She pushed forward to allow others to get out of the crack, but the fight went poorly for the party. It wasn't until Tironell cast sleep that the party was able to overcome the ratlings. Unfortunately, they had little in the way of treasure, a single ancient coin and a dead spider charm.

Aeli made her way out of another exit in the chamber and boldly walked down the corridor and opened the door to peek inside. [DM note #2] Something was peeking at her.. more ratlings! There was another group of 10, but this time, 5 of them were across the room with bows. Recognizing that this was A Bad Situation, Aeli backed up down the hall and managed to close and spike the door before the creatures were able to yank it open. The party decided to cut their losses and head back to town to regroup and restock - as well as persuade the mage to memorize TWO sleep spells (which I've not decided if I'll allow in this campaign.. I kinda like the thought of only one of a spell able to live in your head. Tironell might make a scroll though... )

@theprincesswife had a tough night with the dice not favoring her. She did get her sword back and she's now somewhat annoyed at these rat creatures for blocking her progress. Funny how princess fighters get annoyed at the world... LOL! ;)

Zack over at RPG Blog 2 is running a Friday article about our Significant Others supporting our gaming. I'm a very lucky guy that @theprincesswife enjoys playing our game and is very supportive of my gaming. She puts up with the games out of the house, with me obsessing over miniatures, she does enjoy playing in my game and hearing about my AD&D campaign (although she freely admits she would have a hard time playing with others... )

I'm a very grateful and lucky guy to have a wonderful woman like this.

She is, however, still insistent that someday there will be a Carebare-LittlePoniesw/Lasers-Tinkerbell-CutePuppies D&D game. I may not survive that one.

DM Note #1 - The cube is slower than Aeli, but she was trying to lure it away. In my head, movement is not simultaneous, giving the winner of initiative some advantage. So it caught up to her and next round, when she tried to run away, it won initiative again, so was able to get a free attack on her in her running away.

Now that's an interesting point and one that could go either way. In a way, that's why I like Philotomy's more complex rules that break down movement to "half" steps - it breaks up the movement to give running away a bit of a chance. Since she was probably moving slower to lure the thing, it was easier to rule that it caught up - had she been running full tilt in retreat, it wouldn't have had a chance. Still, this was made even more sticky when she was knocked out! At that point, @theprincesswife was pretty sure she was dead. Fortunately, it takes a few minutes to actually kill someone in a cube, so the hirelings quick blades were timely.

DM Note #2 - This is one of those times where I have to balance the NPCs going "What, are you nuts!?! Don't just yank open doors!" and allowing @theprincesswife to learn (relearn) some of the cautious lessons. It had been a couple of months and she's still new... so I ruled that although there was no surprise, the ratlings weren't in a killing position yet as she had basically marched straight down the corridor and opened the door. No time for anyone to prepare. If they had been prepared, there would have been a hail of arrows shooting at the players. Yea. 20 arrow shots in a round? People would have died.

Miniature-less abstract combat in AD&D/OD&D

2010-03-02T15:35:00.003-06:00

Sometimes I come up with weird ideas. Sometimes those ideas happen when I'm on the second throne, sometimes they happen when I'm reading totally non-related things.

r_b_bergstrom of the blog Transitive Property of Gaming wrote about WFRP 3e today and I was wandering through that post, having made a side trip to Delta's blog to print out the Target 20 system because I love it and must have it and have been using it already in my head...

... so r_b writes: "So I was pleasantly surprised that the game uses very abstract positioning rules, with the assumption that a melee is "like a rugby scrum" with everyone in constant movement. If you're part of the melee, you're engaged with everyone. If you _need_ to get somewhere, you just do, but it costs you a few fatigue points. This is a completely different paradigm, and it feels fresh and innovative."

Now a few months back, I played 3:16, a player narrative type of game that had 3 rangers. Close, Near and Far. It was easy to tell who the D&D'ers were because they wanted to operate on the range based on a number that gives a discrete amount. Once they/we wrapped our heads around what the various ranges really meant in terms of narration vs. actual mechanics, things worked better.

One of the games I'm running is an online Wave game in my Dark Ages world. In that setting, ranges can get fiddly as we're not dealing with minis or such. It occurs to me that the abstract 3:16 type of range could be laid on top of simple combat systems, such as OD&D/AD&D.

If you're at Close range, you're in melee. Mechanics such as flanking, back-stabs, rear attacks, 2nd row spears don't matter in terms of range, but in terms of spending time/abilities to do so[1]. Close could be 10' or a circle of 30' or whatever - it's more about going face to face with your enemy.

If you're at Near or Far, you're limited to missile fire. Near weapons are hurled or smaller missile weapons. If you're at Far, you're doing missile fire with Far weapons (long bows, firearms, crossbows) or adding +2 to Near range missile weapons.

If you're Out of Combat, you've fled the combat zone, whatever that is.

This doesn't take out determining who attacks who, and you can still deal with spell-casters being in melee.

[1] To flank or rear-attack, you would indicate an opponent (or just say you wish to try to do so on someone - if the DM rules that there's the possibility, say in a rough terrain area or the number of participants would mean a type of scrum, then I'd allow it, if it was a narrow dungeon corridor or very military based opponents with lines and shield walls, I'd disallow it - I would rule it would take a round to set up the flank/rear attack, next round's attack gets the bonus. Same with monsters. Back attacks require the thief to hide in shadows or move silently, whichever the DM ruled appropriate... then the next round, they get the back-attack.

I don't really use inches, grids or the like in my combats, and indicating abstract ranges can remove the argument of who is in the range of something exploding - if you're at Close and a spell is flung into the melee, say a Fireball, everyone at Close gets nailed. DMs can still rule on effects (I'll aim the sleep spell so that it affects the monsters only - DM makes a gut check if that sounds plausible... if the players have been describing a general scrum... PCs might be zzz'ing.)

I wonder if I'll lose my OSR card for this. It's an interesting thought exercise, nonetheless.

DM Failure (long, freakin' long post)

2010-03-01T15:45:00.001-06:00

I've been writing and rewriting this post for about two weeks now, and I'm hoping that I can still say what I'm thinking and it doesn't come out as tripe and trash.

Anyway... back on the 16th, my players encountered quite a bit of difficulty in their game. First, one of my players decided to try to confront the troll mage that has caused the party a few problems in the past. This was a complete surprise as this player's character had become one of those PCs that you "count on" to help grease the game to be good. You know what I mean... there are just some PCs that really keep things moving. Well, this PC was one of them and he waved a bag of candy in front of the Troll Mage. Well, one charm person spell later and the PC was now a slave to the troll. The rest of the party did a "Oh crap, sucks to be you... let's move on..." -- so now the player took over a hireling for the evening.

They hit a Wizard's Tower that appears to have quite a few wards & guards in it, from webbed staircases to gusts of wind, to random confusion to doors that have to be nearly battered down. After figuring out a way to struggle past these wards, they encountered a room where a Magic Mouth boomed "Be sure to read the words in the correct order!" After dealing with a Damned, the party found a mirror that may have entrapped the wizard (according to a sarcastic imp perched outside on the balcony) and a door with writing in common on it. A player read the inscription and the Explosive Runes blew. Scratch one player, another player's spellbook and some clothing.

Faces grew grim around the table, but the party pressed on. They found a ladder that seemed to have strange properties and the thief made it to the bottom, only to find a very strange dungeon underneath. Facing the timelimit of our session, the players were forced to retreat back to town, along the way encountering a mounted guard of orcs that they hid from.

After the game, I thought everyone was OK with what had happened, despite it being a rough game, but the private and public emails that I got over the next few days proved otherwise. One player who I thought I was more "in tune" with, meaning that I thought he grokked my game pretty well hit me with some good criticism, but it hit me in a sore spot. Another player (not the mage) groused at how I had not tracked the individual flamelets to ascertain the precise location of where the mage's spell book should have been so it would not be burned. The player who had the charmed PC was OK with what happened, but he was eager to know where things were going. The player of the mage who lost the book was "WTH do I do now?" and I received some other criticisms from other corners.

I snapped. One player kept emailing about the upcoming game on Sunday. My head was not in the right place and I decided that I needed a bit of time to process everything. I wrote on the group's email list that the Sunday game was cancelled. This same player immediately wrote back "OK, so let's start putting together the roster and schedule for the next Tuesday game." At that, I snapped even further and sent a terse "All future games are canceled."

Yea, snap big time. I spent a good chunk of the day in a "fuck 'em all" mood. I felt like nobody trusted me as a DM, everyone wanted a smooth flowing game, but heaven forbid that I actually destroy something, because now it was "game over" and yadda yadda... I was righteously pissed, hurt, and just down in the dumps. I was probably about >< this close to taking down the wiki, the blog, the whole nine yards.

(I should also mention all the pressure and financial stress and worry over my wife's illness and other life stuff... but although it contributed to my state of mind, it's not germane to this...)

But I didn't. My DM mentor told me to "take a chill week" and I wrote a terse email to that effect, apologizing for my snap but letting them know that I needed some time to think.

Think I did. What exactly was my problem? I was hurt... hurt that after a year of playing together, after a tough game my players would think I would permanently fuck someone over with a no-win scenario. I was mad, mad at my players for wanting to not have any risk. I was also down on myself, I apparently had made the Worst Campaign Ever that everyone *should* hate.

But after a few days of thinking, and painting minis, and just backing off, I rethought everything and came to some equilibrium. The majority of complaints were probably the initial "Oh shit" reactions. It was a tough game. There was no payoff because the players had either missed a HUGE hint and they hadn't gotten far enough. Death is never fun, but it is a reality in my campaign and one that I've grown somewhat impassive about. Not a dick, but more of "man, that sucks... but it happens..."

I'm still struggling with one of my players. Nice person, but I think a little much, even for me, but I'm trying to struggle as to "why" I'm having struggles with this person. The player is obviously excited and enjoying my game, but I think I got used to the types of players that I already have, so this new player is a bit different. I'll adjust but it still is something that I chew on.

Last week, I wrote a pretty big missive to my players, each one, a personal note. I then wrote an email to the group and reopened the doors. Some things I heard loud and clear from the feedback, some things I tossed back to players and gave them advice on how to work in my world. I may lose players and I accept that. A game has to work and mesh for everyone and even after awhile, you may discover that things are not going to work out like you hoped.

Some things that are on me to help with:
1. Make some defined missions available. Not everyone wants to go out and explore and just figure out the world on their own. The thing about my sandbox is that while I made this wide open dynamic world that keeps moving on, the players don't feel connected. So I will give them direct opportunities to get connected.
2. Provide opportunities for smaller missions. I had an adventure earlier that was a quickie. It was the knife adventure, where the players cleared the place out, but the payoff at the end was borked by an out of game disagreement. Some players liked that, so I'll make them available.
3. Keep tweaking the rewards. The nature of West Marches means you either lock onto a mission and keep hitting it, or you spread yourself out. The majority of play has been spread out, a little here, a little there. I've got big payoffs, but they do require some getting to. So, I need to make that a little more spread out - smaller, more frequent rewards. OK, I get that. That makes sense for the type of game I'm running.

Things that I laid back on the players:
1. Yea, you're right, don't assume. You were just in a wizard's tower, where everything was decaying. Except this one room with completely bare tables. Nobody looked on the tabletops. A thief said "I'm looking under the table." I asked specifically how they were doing that. They didn't touch the top, so the illusion didn't break and the many magical workshop items weren't revealed. Now they're gone - since I had to explain how things can work in my game, they're not there anymore.. but yes, I don't assume what a player does, especially when it pertains to something that can be chance, or can reward careful, thoughtful behavior.

2. Trust me. If I burn up your spellbook, I'm not going to rape you by making you be a forever mage with only one spell left (Joel Rosenberg already explored that in his Guardians of the Flame series. Exec summary? It fucking sucks.) But... you're in a WIZARD'S TOWER! Spellbooks are probably going to be there. Don't tell me I'm being a dick DM.

3. If you want a fast flowing game, I'm going to abstract some things. Rather than.roll.every.goddamn.item.saving.throw, I simply said, let's roll for most vulnerable things - paper, clothes, glass. That doesn't mean your backpack, having not had a saving throw, is somehow invulnerable. It means I don't want to freakin' deal with it and I'm trying to give you the effect of having read an exploding rune and make it important to avoid traps. I tried to make the puzzle as flowing as possible, but there was some rolling for it. That's an aspect of my game that may be there... you can use brute force (rolls) or you can somehow figure it out.

4. The game is up to you. Yes, the world moves on, and yes, you'll see it happen, but if you want to get involved in the Goblyn/Ko-bald war, you have to go out there and get involved. If you want to clear out a dungeon, you have to stick to it and schedule games and make it to games so that you can get it done. Going two sessions at the monastery, then changing your mind and heading to the mines, then changing your mind and heading to the abandoned inn... that's going to result in visiting a lot of places, but it's also going to mean you're facing a lot of 1HD monsters and low treasure. BUT, if that's what you want to do, I won't force you down railroads. It's your game. Do what you want to do... but understand that you are getting the game you ask for.

So we'll see how things go forward. I'm willing to keep trying and tweak my approach, but up to a certain point.

So did I fail? Probably more in my snap than anything else. Everything else is more of a tweak or just a good honest discussion.

One final thing.. I've had some people indicate they want a party leader. I was at first against it, but now I'm going to leave it up to the players. If you want a party leader, designate one. If not, that's fine too.

I think what may happen is that some people decide they are going to take charge of the roster, of the games and start laying out their own agendas. I think it's time, after a year.

The "Great Pendragon Campaign" in the 31st Century?

2010-01-28T13:15:00.000-06:00

I like to tinker. That's what I do. I get ahold of things and I want to twist and bend them into new ways. That's probably why I'm not as successful of an independent RPG author as some of the OSR bloggers... I'm more in the "Oh, let me make this do that and something else."

Lately, I've been utterly fascinated by SirLarkins's posts on his blog RPG Corner about his solo Pendragon game with his wife. Pendragon is a game about life and family in the mythology of King Arthur - and it's one of the few games that assumes and encourages a campaign that spans generations of a family. I've found myself extremely intrigued by this concept, so much so, that I found the first edition boxed set on Ebay and got it for less than $10 - and now my wife and I have something new to try. I'm also going to pick up the PDF version of the "Great Pendragon Campaign" book which is essentially a chronological campaign setting that one can use to run their Pendragon campaign in tight context to the Authurian legends.

Add to this mix another bit - Erin and I have been discussing on comments and twitter about the old school concepts of Battletech and Mechwarrior - the fact that when first conceived, Battletech was similar to knights on their steeds coming to battle. 'Mechs were rare, extremely valuable and most often were family heirlooms to be passed down. If a family owned a Locust, it was likely that they'd always be Locust-drivers, even if they were fortunate enough to gain a bigger 'Mech somehow. I equate the training and 'loyalty' to their class similar to that of a light cav knight compared to a heavy cav knight.

The Battletech Universe is widely understood with a well documented canon to it, much like Arthurian mythology. It occurs to me that a grand campaign spanning generations of Mechwarriors across the Succession Wars as technology and governments reverted back to scavenging and almost 21st century technology would be fascinating! Add in the aspect of a family focus across generations and this could be a very interesting

Now it could be that this has already been done, to some degree. I don't recall all the supplements but I don't remember one that dealt specifically with family type issues or generations like Pendragon does. One could look at the Mercenary supplements to Mechwarrior for some inspiration. Still - creating a "Grand Mechwarrior Campaign" book/approach that follows the Succession Wars would be a fascinating exercise!

I don't have enough hours in the day to do all the neat crap I want to do. *sigh*

OD&D Solo game w/wife - Misfortunes

2010-01-10T09:30:00.000-06:00

You just know this can't be good...

After Friday night's victory over the smoke dragon and opening of Alaxus's Tomb, @theprincesswife's PC Aeli was ready to plumb the depths of the ancient Black Mage's final resting place. Things, however, didn't quite turn out the way she hoped. Sometimes the dice love players, sometimes the dice hate players.

After a brief survey of a room with a rune-carved plinth, she found a room littered with bones ankle-deep. The bones were packed down to a smooth surface and a shimmering distortion could be seen. As they approached it, it reached out suddenly with a pseudopod and slammed one of her hirelings. Down he went, paralyzed. It was a gelatinous cube!

Thus began a disjointed retreat from the creature. Aeli attempted to hold at the door, but she fumbled and now her glowing, possibly magical/weird sword was stuck in the wall! With only 3 hit points left, one man down and the rest injured from the smoke dragon, Aeli had no choice but to flee. The party had to leave behind the chest of gold they'd taken from the dragon, as it was slowing them down. They fled the tomb and dungeon proper to the forest outside. Fortunately, her paralyzed henchman recovered.

The party was dejected as they bedded down in front of the tomb. Sleep came to them, however, sleep that was rudely interrupted by a harsh laugh and a croaking "Well-ho, boys! What do we have here?" and the answering laugh... from creatures encircling the party's camp! A band of goblins had stumbled onto the party and now had them in a bad place. Aeli looked to make a fight of it, despite being surrounded and without armor (you can't sleep in armor in my game), but the NPCs and hirelings told her this was a bad situation. Aeli and the goblin sergeant negotiated and he took all their coins and a couple of weapons and left them alive.

Thus Aeli and company marched back to Valetown, now injured, dejected AND penniless. The Patriarch (spiritual leader and mayor of Valetown) took them in, healed them and agreed to keep some items he'd borrowed from them in exchange for coin and weapons refit from the town guard. Tironell, the mage NPC, knew the books were worth 5 times what the Patriarch could spare, but the party had little choice. The evening ended with the Patriarch directing the innkeeper to allow Aeli & company to have a barrel of beer, which they consumed to drown out the memories.

The dice were just not with @theprincesswife. This time, the cube did not fall so easily as had one in the past and Aeli was still injured from her previous encounter with the smoke dragon. When the follower fell, that was the cube getting a good hit, and the fumble (with following roll resulting in "weapon stuck in wall/floor") was further bad luck. I thought for a minute that my wife would stay, but when she realized they could outrun the cube, she pulled back and tried to bomb it with oil. That missed, so they fled proper.

What made it worse was the wandering monster result I rolled up during their camp-out. When I came up with a large band of goblins, I thought of how this might go... and I decided that the goblins were in a good place to try and pull off a bluff. Goblins are sneaky and canny, and they don't want to sell their lives cheaply. The leader had the advantage, so he pressed it to get some easy coin and a couple of weapons. A good score for the goblins without them losing any lives - made perfect sense to me. It was a low point for my wife, for sure, but if this had gone to combat I think it would have been a very bad go. She was, in a way, lucky that the goblins felt they had a good advantage AND she's lucky in some sense her glowing magic sword was stuck in the tomb's wall. If the goblins would have seen that and tried to claim it, it would have been bad, bad, bad. My wife does not give up her sparklies and pretties easily.

The dice sometimes are with you, and sometimes they really kick you in the ass. So Aeli lives another day, but she's been taken down a peg and she doesn't like that! I have no doubt my wife will return to the Tomb, but I think in retrospect, she should have healed up before venturing further into the dungeon. Even at 3rd level, a good hit from a tough creature can bring you down fast. So last night was enjoyable from just playing, but in the words of my wife - "That adventure SUCKED!"

That'll make the next success all the sweeter.

OD&D Solo game w/wife - Dragons!

2010-01-09T09:45:00.000-06:00

Last night, I got to do something that I've not done as a DM - I got to run a dragon. OK, it was a smoke dragon - a construct - but it was still fun to have this thing billow forth, put the Black Dragon miniature on the altar and have it thunder "BEGONE INTRUDERS OR DIE!!!" It was a guardian to the Tomb of Alaxus, so it was rather limited in scope, but it still was powerful enough to put 3/4ths of the party out of commission with it's choking breath weapon. It roared forth a streaming, billowing cloud of smoke around the party and most of them went down choking and coughing with failed saving throws.

That was when I could the "screw it, I'm dead" look on my wife's face. She was overwhelmed with her plans and party falling apart almost from the get go. It was at that point that I slowed the game down and walked her through what she knew:
- The dragon was a construct, linked to some sort of anchor - clues in the tomb told her it was a cup. She had just gone through a few days worth of adventure to get a sage to give her some advice on how to defeat it, but all that ran out her head when she faced the danger.
- Where was the cup? She had assumed she could just walk in, grab the cub and control the dragon. She had forgotten that the first time she entered the huge chamber, the dragon appeared right away. She wasn't putting the clues together in her panic - that the smoke originated from the stone altar in the corner. By slowing down the game and walking her through it, she realized that the cup was probably on the altar, but hidden now by the smoke from the dragon.
- What to do now that the original plan was up in smoke? (hehehehe) She had herself and another party member left. "What can you do?" She thought about it and came up with the remaining active hireling to go grab the cup while she confronted the dragon, distracting it. That was a reasonable plan, as the dragon recognized Aeli as the strongest party member. It's confidence was it's undoing as the dice had favored my wife... this thing had on 13hp and it was a 4HD monster!

The plan worked! Aeli chopped into the smoke dragon, disrupting it's cohesiveness with a nice series of blows. The hireling named Rather dashed up to the altar, found the cup and just as the dragon was turning to throw it's breath weapon at him, he smashed the cup while Aeli sliced through for the final blow!

One relieved wife looting the chest of gold later...

I also ran into a classic potential dead end myself... there's a tomb here, she legitemately found the symbol indicating the door, but she was failing rolls to find the way to open it. She knew what was going on, but the dice were saying that she wasn't getting it done right away. Well, sometimes you let the dice tell the story and sometimes you have to figure out what else to do. So, I gave her a tradeoff. She spent two hours figuring out the hidden double doors, then using swords from fallen skeletons to pry it open a crack, then her and a party member testing their Strength against it to pull it open enough for one person to squeeze through.

I think the new gamers call it "taking 10", but I called it 5 wandering monster rolls that came up empty (argh!) and the loss of 6 ancient swords that could have been worth money. Man, talk about the rolls going her way with monsters! Dead end overcome through resource exchange and risking combat. I'll take that and now she's got a dark, damp corridor beckoning...

So we've frozen the game in place (a luxury that I indulge in when we're going to play the next day) and we'll see what happens as she begins to plumb the Tomb of Alaxus. I can't wait!

From Bad To Worse - Winter War Mechwarrior scenario

2010-01-05T16:35:00.000-06:00

It was supposed to be a smash & grab mission - quick in and quick out. Everything went By-The-Book... Until Recon told us that everyone at the Steiner base was dead, and we saw that ancient Drop Ship circling the planet. What happened next... I don't want to talk about it. 'From Bad to Worse' combines a horror-sci/fi Mechwarrior RPG scenario with Battletech miniature battles. Pregenerated characters will be available.

The scenario is going to consist of three situations that I'd like to get through.

Situation 1:

The first is the opener. You're a member of a mercenary assault that attacked the small Steiner world of McFierney. Your unit's objective was to smash the small Mech outpost near one of the major cities. The jump to the pirate point was text-book and lucky, the landing unopposed. Then you saw them... all the dead bodies. Hundreds of them. Securing the base wasn't a problem, it was figuring out what the hell happened. Your lance dismounted to investigate the main base facility. You found more bodies, but none were decaying. That's when you saw it, a lab that held a strange piece of black metal that didn't seem to be there. Problem was, your presence there triggered a response and you found yourself locked in a sub-basement level, with only a "BIOHAZARD" flashing alert to keep you company. Then... about 30 hours later, the power failed and everything opened. That's when you noticed the bodies were moving...

The scenario objectives are simple - get something that will transport you across the city to the starport where your Drop Ship is. Will the players survive? This portion of the game will use the microMechwarrior rules.

Situation 2:

Now at your transport (Mechs, or tanks, or trucks or whatever the players have survived to find) you discover that things have gotten worse. This is where I'll be prepared with two different paths.

If the players made it to their Mechs or tanks, they have to make it through the city to get to the landing site. They will be opposed by a surprise Steiner Mech lance that had been out in the field. This portion of the game will use Classic/Intro Battletech rules. I'm prepared to go with QuickStart rules (heat, no internal structure) if most players are new to Battletech.

If players made it to other vehicles, it'll be a microMechwarrior encounter till they get to the star port, at which point, I'll have Mechs there that they can use to repulse the Steiners who've come upon them.

(In other words, we're having a Battletech fight at this point, dammit... how you get to fight big stompy robots is your decision.)

Once they reach the Star port...

The players will find out that there is a strange looking battered Star League era drop ship, sitting on the launch pad. They can go explore the drop ship, which will come to life and take them to Situation 3. If they choose to not go to the drop ship, or we're out of time, they will be taken up to their Jump Ship, where they'll be told there is a Star League Jump Ship in orbit around the planet. It's not responding to hails and it looks dead... and like it's been burned.

Situation 3 -

One of two deals - the Merc Leader wants to get that ancient drop ship with the possible Mechs AND he wants to explore the Jump Ship.

If the players want another Mech battle:

They go down in their Drop Ship only to find that the other Drop Ship has different ideas... and it's Mechs inside are rather protective of things. Undead Mechs. Ghosts in the Machine. Dont'cha love it? (no, I'm not using the Wizkids Undead Mech thing... no clue what that is and not sure I want to :P. However, zombie mechs will have an unusual twist or two... Oh yes. :> )

If the players want to do more RPG and explore the ship or they got into the ancient drop ship...:

Let's face it, you know what's coming. This ship has been to Hell and back and it's brought death with it. They'll dock at the Jump Ship and explore - they'll see other drop ships there full of Mechs, but no people, as far as they can tell. This is where the weird shit begins - and if you've watched Event Horizon, you'll know where I'm going... NPCs are going to start going nuts and yes, there will be real undead. The ship will begin prepping for jump... will the players make it out in time? (if they were shanghai'd there, will they survive/make it to the rescuing drop ship from the mercs?)

Playing RPGs with your family this holiday season

2009-12-17T09:47:00.002-06:00

I was thrilled to be accepted as one of the guest blogger/columnists for Obsidian Portal's weekly front page article. I wrote about introducing your family members to RPGs. For many of you, this may be a no-brainer, but I enjoy reading articles about this and wanted to share some of my thoughts there.

OD&D Solo game w/wife - One year campaign anniversary

2009-12-01T11:55:00.001-06:00

A year is a neat milestone to achieve in a campaign. A year says that despite all of the obstacles that life throws at you, despite all of the issues of learning and adapting a game to the DM/players, despite setbacks and sometimes bad sessions, you've hung in there to make it through a year.

It was roughly a year ago that I played OD&D with my wife(@theprincesswife on twitter) as a solo game for the first time. I took a campaign setting that I had dreamed up long ago and took her into it. I started off using microlite74 as our game system, then switched to Swords & Wizardry to get more options and to bring it to the D&D I had grown up with. We started off in "Westport", with her exploring the Tower of Zenopus from the 1979 Basic D&D book.

It was fitting that over the Thanksgiving break, her character Aeli revisited the Tower to regain books for a sage, and to investigate the possibility of bandits using the cellar as a base. It was also fitting that she finally ran into the loot stash of the Tower - the underground beach base of the bandits. In the year that we've played, my wife has gotten quite good at various strategies - using doorways as choke-points, recon, and using the element of surprise to her advantage. She's also gotten quite ruthless at dealing with prisoners. Last game, she marched Notuk, a goblin, through town in the daylight tied up. This game, she forced a bandit prisoner to strip so he wouldn't run away.

In that year, her character Aeli has made some interesting discoveries and encountered some strange creatures. She's still on her quest to avenge the slaughter of her family. We had a good session where I recapped what has gone on and she took some good notes. We've also started using Obsidian Portal to document the setting and what she knows. That way, she can keep the thread going.

That's probably the biggest issue we've had. By the time we get home at night, done with the kids, the chores, dinner and all the other stuff we have, we're exhausted! We've tried shorter games, we've tried scheduling, but life for us has many things going on, and that makes it hard to get in some games. We both "get out of the habit" and have to shake it off and get back to playing. Memory fades though, and sometimes I forget something that she'll remember, or vice versa. Having a "recall session" to set up the next game helped.

One other cool thing happened in my campaign world - my son and youngest daughter also adventured in the same setting - making it a family campaign. My eldest daughter also played with my wife a game or two -- however, my wife has since learned she prefers to play solo! Ha!

So Aeli is now richer, she has finished some important missions and she's looking to get back to her original mission - find the murderer of her family. She's been given some interesting clues, there are still some adventure hooks dangling in front of her and some new places to explore. The next year should be very interesting!

Ancient Vaults Spellbook Index

2009-11-27T10:50:00.000-06:00

If you haven't been following or reading the blog Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets by the incomparable bat, you have been missing a cornucopia of unique, new, fresh ideas for original edition/retroclone D&D.

Not only does bat provide a new spell or magic item daily, he also provides an amazingly cool "backstory" featuring a cast of Rogues: Chalk (the ever suffering mage), Koram (about as close to Yeagar from Nodwick as you can get...), Gynbaro (a thief - 'nuff said) and Valence (the creepy Spider cleric - who's taught me how to play a Chaotic cleric). Pursued by Stork and Vistus, the Blue Mage, this band of outlaws rips through more spells and items than you can imagine, but the story never gets old. Bat releases all this material under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Sharealike license, open to all as long as he gets attribution.

I've started going to his site regularly using google "site" searches keyed on various similarities of his posts - this is because he doesn't tag or categorize his site! :) I don't mind one bit, I'd rather he use that creative force and keep on doing what he does, and I'll be the librarian.

So, for your ease of use, here are links to Google Searches of his site to present an "index" of sorts to bat's amazing collection of spells and magic items. I can't guarantee the searches will be 100% accurate, but they get the job done until Bat goes mad, publishes a book on all this stuff and makes off with at least my money.

Arcane Spells
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6
Level 7
Level 8
Level 9
Level 10

Divine Spells
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
Level 6 (none yet as of 11/27/09)
Level 7
Level 8 (none yet as of 11/27/09)
Level 9 (none yet as of 11/27/09)
Level 10 (none yet as of 11/27/09)

Magic Items

OD&D Solo game w/wife - Restarting

2009-11-25T18:55:00.000-06:00

I needed to get back to what makes me happy - running games. So last night, @theprincesswife and I reviewed where our campaign had taken her character, Aeli and her merry band of henchmen, hirelings and other miscreants... er... followers.

The outcome is that I've started a new Obsidian Portal campaign wiki for the Vale Campaign: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-vale-solo-campaign

Tonight, she's plunging back into the Tower of Zenopus to seek books for the sage Nikodemos. She knows that there are goblins and bandits within... I wonder what else she'll find?

The Wargaming Roots of D&D - Revisited

2009-11-23T10:20:00.001-06:00

(As part of my self-imposed slow-down, I'm reposting some articles from 2009 that I really enjoyed writing or the comments really sparked some places for me to explore. This one, and the subject of wargaming, has never been far from my thoughts. One of the things that I did in 2009 was explore a bit of wargaming again and I'm really happy how its went. I thought I would bring this article back and update it a bit.)

This post comes by way of an ongoing reading of a 1st edition TSR supplement - "Dungeon Master's Design Kit", an ongoing slow education into miniature wargaming and some various blog readings, this post by Rob Conley at "Bat in the Attic": Into the First Fantasy Campaign Part 1.

Many who play original editions of D&D pay a lot of attention to the pulp aspect of the hobby, and rightly so, as the pulp fiction that Arneson, Gygax and others grew up with definitely influenced the hobby. That's why we have "fire and forget" magic, fantastic monsters, paladins and many other little idiosyncrasies that pervade our hobby. I think, at times, we tend to focus on that too much and forget that there's another leg of the stool to D&D - wargaming.

When I was first playing D&D in 1979, 1980s, I really didn't give it much thought. I didn't buy/play the modules so much, and our games were more of the "Heavy Metal" type than the plot driven type. I didn't play Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or any of the 2nd edition settings. We weren't caught up in the movement from sandboxes to stories to railroads. It's only later, by looking back at the whole picture and reading some of the books and modules that I can see the movement from where OD&D had it's roots to where the game is today.

The Design Kit, written in 1988, is a perfect case in point. I intend on reviewing this accessory later, as a study for myself so I can write one for a sandbox, so I won't get too deep into it. It is, however, demonstrates the emphasis in the mid/late 80s onward of plot, story and three acts - intro, drama, conclusion. I find this book particularly useless in helping me in my sandboxes. [Ed note: I just couldn't bring myself to doing so. It was that bad, to me. I ended up giving it away on paperbackswap.com]

Contrast that to wargames, at least wargaming as I understand it. When I play a wargame, it's usually based on a scenario. I have a tactical (or strategic) goal, usually involving battling for territory or objectives, resources to use or obtain, terrain to deal with. The focus is small (usually) in scale.

When I read OD&D/AD&D/Holmes, I can see that lineage. When I read how the games were conducted, I can feel that direct influence. Dungeons were seen as the scenarios. Towns and NPCs provided resources. The clearing of the land and obtaining of treasure was a means to an end (holding territory) and a desirable objective so that one could move to up direct wargame scenarios. After all, why have a castle if you're not going to have followers and soldiers? Why have soldiers if you're not going to campaign on a vast scale.

This may be why OD&D's end-game (the castle/keep and the army) faded in importance. Allow me to speculate for a bit. As D&D got bigger in the 80s, people didn't want to go from adventuring to army wargaming. Although for some of us, that would have been fun, for most of the kids I played D&D with, wargaming was the domain of creepy, boring old men who cited from mysterious historical tomes and pushed cardboard counters around with the seriousness of life/death struggles. No, most of my friends wanted either more, more, more story/adventure and they wanted their person to matter to the world. Enter Dragonlance and the plot/story driven module and the rest is history.

As I play my current sandboxes, I can see the differences very clearly. My two campaigns are focused on area/territory adventuring, with player driven plots. This follows nicely of what I understand from wargaming - when I sit down to re-enact the Battle of Stalingrad, for example (you can see my Squad Leader leanings now...) it might be the Germans that win. And if we were conducting a campaign where my victory influenced the future battles of Stalingrad, well, I've just driven the "plot" of the campaign.

Maybe I'm just really as uneducated as I joke - probably most of you are nodding your heads and saying "Well, duh..." because now it does seem obvious. I think I'm going to be thinking a lot more about the wargaming roots and how they influenced the history of D&D.

In the meantime, if you see me at my FLGS picking up a few packs of 15mm miniatures and lugging around Chainmail or Horde of the Things books, don't be alarmed -- unless you want to play in my sandbox.

Addendum:

I had the pleasure of finally playing DBA face to face last week and it was a blast. I'm going to be playing a lot more DBA solo and hopefully find some more Chicago locals to play with. The gent I played with has offered to invite me to some of his get-togethers to play and I can't wait.

I've also found myself noodling about a bit with the rules on HOTT and how one could convert OD&D/Swords & Wizardry type characters into HOTT elements and make the rules "feel" like an extension of OD&D. Naturally, one would ask "Why not use Chainmail" to which I have to honestly reply "I've never played Chainmail". I do get the impression that games run long when playing Chainmail - while DBA/HOTT battles seem to be quick and dirty. I like that thought - the ability to run a mass combat game within an OD&D session, rather than the mass combat BE the session. Maybe even do this for AD&D?

If you've got some thoughts or suggestions, take a look at the thread I've got going on the OD&D Boards and let me know what you think (or here as well)? And don't be surprised if I'm buying 15mm orcs, goblins, fantasy figures and the like next year... I've caught the bug.

Some fun links: Make HOTT armies more fun, d20 D&D and HOTT

More illustration previews for Tombs of Hulkursag

2009-11-03T10:10:00.001-06:00

There is something about the process of art where you start off with ideas and see them come to creation and fruition. It's true whether you're writing or whether you're drawing - and when the two go in sync, it's just a whole lot of fun to be part of the process.

Mark Allen/marjasall has completed the back cover illustration for the Tombs of Hulkursag as well as an overview map and the Title/Credits page illustration. Last week, I posted a portion of the pencil sketch of the back cover:

Here's the same portion from the completed, inked, colored version:

"Yes, come on - there's riches and glory untold in the Black Ziggurat!" he seems to be saying...

Mark's illustrations continue to amaze and awe me - he really captures the feel I'm going for in my module.

More on Tombs of Hulkursag and setting

2009-10-30T12:45:00.000-05:00

Before I get to the Tombs stuff, I wanted to say this - tomorrow, I'm running a Swords & Wizardry demo at Unique Gifts & Games in Grayslake, IL. It'll be from noon to 3. I have no idea how many will be out there, but I'll have my miniatures, my terrain and my quick start plus some old school stuff to show people. If you'd like to come play the Quick Start adventure, please come on out!

Now, for Tombs related stuff. Monday or Tuesday next week, I'll be sneak-peeking some art that the incomparable Mark Allen has done for the back cover illo. I'm up to 3 of the 4 pieces from this man and his work is amazing! I'm very lucky to have his services.

I am still working out the magic stuff in my head, on how to explain the differences of how clerics will be the "main guys" and magic users are going to be more demon-centric than anything else. So I thought I would talk about how demi-humans will fit into the picture.

In Sumerian mythology, the god Enki and goddess Ninmah, at the urging of the primeval sea goddess Nammu, created man to serve the gods and toil for them. Ninmah created six imperfect beings, which Enki decreed "fates" for. In an attempt of one-upmanship, Enki created up to two beings were also flawed.

In the Land of Two Rivers, 6 beings that Ninmah created form the basis of the major races: human, elf, dwarf, goblin, kobold, orc. The two races that Enki created are the basis of giants and nagas.

The humans, elves and dwarves are the favored races to serve the gods. Dwarves live in the hills and mountains while elves are a sea-faring race, found near the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea as well as on the legendary Isle of Dilmun.

The orcs are also a sea-faring predator race - fighting the elves for control of the seas and rivers. The goblins oppose the dwarfs in their caves deep in the mountains. The kobolds are like hyenas - they are pests and vermin to man, living in small burrows and constantly raiding the cities and villages.

The giants are found all over, but they are not very numerous. What they do have is a whole lot of power, strength and fearsome abilities. The nagas are sorcerous and cunning, using the various races against each other to further their own aims. Like the giants, they are not numerous.

Previews of illustrations from Tomb of Hulkursag module

2009-10-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

Mark Allen of Marjasall Productions is producing the larger pieces of art for my Tombs of Hulkursag module. The winner of the Fight On!/Otherworld Miniatures/Erol Otus contest, he did the cover for the Quick Start (you can buy the color prints of the artwork here, for extremely reasonable prices!)[1] and he's done a lot of work for Troll Lord Games.

He's given me permission to leak a portion of the pencil of the back cover illo. In the distance, the Black Ziggurat of Hulkursag beckons to those brave enough to enter...

The inked version is going to be awesome!

And for another sneak peek, here's a tiny bit of the dungeon overview illo... I don't want to reveal too much and spoil the surprise of what Mark did...

The full view is amazingly cool - Mark did an awesome job!

The Land of Two Rivers - General Concepts

2009-10-16T16:15:00.000-05:00

More musings for me, but I'll put them here for general comment. These are basic concepts I'll be plugging into my Tombs of Hulkursag, to introduce my Mesopotamian-based setting. This is Swords & Wizardry we're talking about (Core/Whitebox - if values or something differs, I'll mark Core rules prefixed by C: and Whitebox prefixed by WB:)

Classes -

Cleric and Fighting Man are the primary classes. Magic Users are seen as in league with the demons or the dark waters under the world. Elves are a type of human, albiet with strange attitudes and powers. Dwarfs are similar, but from the hills and mountains.

Equipment / Weapons / Armor

Economy is "based" on grain and silver. A silver "talent" is a measure of silver - everything is expressed in "s". The "currency" is silver nuggets, rings, "pieces" (think like nuggets but shaped), spheres. The silver is measured. Grains, items are traded either by their weight or their worth in silver. Copper is a less valuable metal, but is also used.

Metal items are rare and expensive. Most items are stone, clay or wood.

Armor available: Leather -2[+2], Cloth/Padded, -1[+1], Wood shield -1[+1], Leather cap

Armor less available or very expensive: Copper Ring -3[+3], Metal helmet, Metal "plated" armor -4[+4], Breast plate (adds +1 to Leather or Cloth, or is just -1[+1])

Weapons readily available: Club, Hammer (stone head C:1d4 WB:1d6-1), Hand axe (stone head 1d6-1), Light Mace (stone head C:1d4, WB:1d6-1), Spear (stone head), Staff, Short Bow/arrows, Javelin, Sling

Idea is that the stone items don't do as much damage.

Metal Weapons, less readily available, but no reduced damage: Hand axe with copper head, Penetrating Axe with copper head (use Battleaxe stats) Maces with copper head, copper dagger, copper short sword, copper sickle sword (1d6+1 Core, 1d6 W/B)

Bronze swords are considered +1 weapons. These are extremely rare.

Cleric spells/Magic User spells - more to come on this, as the cleric is going to be the "magic heavy".

microMechwarrior Character Sheet

2009-10-16T12:40:00.000-05:00

If you have a ruleset, then the unwritten rule is you have to have a character record sheet. So here you go: [mmwcrs.pdf]

It's pretty simple - like the rules. I got look at pics of a lot of cool military body armor while creating it, though. That was neat.

microMechwarrior

2009-10-15T09:00:00.003-05:00

This post will serve as the permanent "link" location to the microMechwarrior rules. You can download the rules by clicking on this link: [microMechwarrior PDF].

What is microMechwarrior? It is an adaptation several rulesets: 1st edition Mechwarrior™ RPG, microlite20 and microlite20 modern. In 8 pages, it covers chargen, task resolution, combat, healing, equipment, advancement and conversions to use your characters within the Battletech™ boardgame.

From the designer notes:

These rules are best used for quickly adding an RPG “rules-light” component to a Battletech game, for playing a convention game that combines RPG and the Battletech boardgame, or if you simply wish to have a quick alternative to the current Mechwarrior role-playing games. The idea is that these rules are simple and that the Game Referee will usually say “Yes” or “Roll dice” to most situations. Not all situations are covered by these rules; a certain amount of flexibility and Game Referee creativity needs to be employed.

To have the best “rules light” RPG/board game experience, my recommendation that you combine these “micro” rules with the Classic Battletech Introductory Rulebook and the Vehicle and Infantry Combat rules from the Classic Battletech Quick Start. No attempt has been made to include any of the other vehicle types, such as conventional aircraft, Aerotech or Starships. The GM should employ their best judgement and houserule as they see fit to make the characters work within the boardgame in a straightforward fashion. I’ve also left out a lot of things that are going to be campaign dependent, such as creating a unit, figuring out Battlemech assignments, dealing with salvage and a 101 more things – but these are all things that you as a GM would want to figure out either on your own or from existing source materials.

These rules have had some playtesting and I'll be using them in my upcoming WinterWar convention game as well as any Battletech/Mechwarrior campaigns I might start. Your feedback and input are always welcome to help make the rules better. I'll leave this blog post up as the permanent home to the rules, as well as record any discussion on the rules in the comments.

A character record sheet is available here.

Further legalese - Battletech and Mechwarrior are trademarks and copyrighted IP of Whizkids, FASA and Microsoft. This is a fan-derived set of houserules that I'm sharing for the general interest of others and to bring value to the Battletech game universe. In other words, I ain't makin' a dime on this and please don't sue the crap out of me.

Announcing microMW

2009-10-08T09:15:00.005-05:00

microMechWarrior is an adaptation of 1st edition Mechwarrior™ RPG, microlite20 and microlite20 modern. In 6 pages, it covers chargen, task resolution, combat, healing, equipment, advancement and conversions to use your characters within the Battletech™ boardgame. You can get the digest/booklet sized mMW.pdf here. (Update as of 10/9 - this link has changed as the file has been updated. Errata and skill/task resolution mechanic changes)

From the designer notes:

These rules are best used for quickly adding an RPG “rules-light” component to a Battletech game, for playing a convention game that combines RPG and the Battletech boardgame, or if you simply wish to have a quick alternative to the current Mechwarrior role-playing games. The idea is that these rules are simple and that the Game Referee will usually say “Yes” or “Roll dice” to most situations. Not all situations are covered by these rules; a certain amount of flexibility and Game Referee creativity needs to be employed.

To have the best “rules light” RPG/board game experience, my recommendation that you combine these “micro” rules with the Classic Battletech Introductory Rulebook and the Vehicle and Infantry Combat rules from the Classic Battletech Quick Start. No attempt has been made to include any of the other vehicle types, such as conventional aircraft, Aerotech or Starships. The GM should employ their best judgement and houserule as they see fit to make the characters work within the boardgame in a straightforward fashion. I’ve also left out a lot of things that are going to be campaign dependent, such as creating a unit, figuring out Battlemech assignments, dealing with salvage and a 101 more things – but these are all things that you as a GM would want to figure out either on your own or from existing source materials.

Now, having said all that, let me say that these rules ARE NOT FULLY PLAYTESTED! I've rolled up a few characters and run a couple of simulated combats, but I will be shaking these out over the next couple of months to prep for WinterWar. Your comments, suggestion and feedback will be immensely helpful and earn you some credits in the book. After looking at the size explosion of Mechwarrior RPG rulebooks, I wanted to go back to something simple and microlite-ish. So here you go. 6 pages of rules, 1 page of blah blah and one page with a paragraph of legalese.

Further legalese - Battletech and Mechwarrior are trademarks and copyrighted IP of Whizkids, FASA and Microsoft. This is a fan-derived set of houserules that I'm sharing for the general interest of others and to bring value to the Battletech game universe. In other words, I ain't makin' a dime on this and please don't sue the crap out of me.

micro Mechwarrior RPG

2009-10-07T21:50:00.001-05:00

My latest distraction - distilling down Mechwarrior to a microlite20-esque size. The actual rules for Mechwarrior 1st Edition are roughly 67 pages (not counting the fluff and setting info). The rules for the Classic Battletech RPG (the redo of 3rd edition) are maybe 150 out of 210 pages. The Time of War RPG (beta) clocks in at 402 pages! I have no idea what portion of ToW is rules vs. fluff - I still need to read through it and after doing what I just did... I'm not sure I want to.

Anyway, my version of Mechwarrior - 4 pages. The fifth page has some sample NPCs and designer notes - my fluff. Mechanics for attributes/stats, skills, combat, hazards, healing, equipment and conversion to the Battletech boardgame - check. All there. This is the set of houserules I'm going to use to run my WinterWar combo-fest, if they approve it. I need to playtest it - the skills and such are different from "stock" Mechwarrior - I use GM assigned Target Numbers (think DCs) versus the old MW 1e mechanic of the TN being an aspect of the stat. Anyway... some differences, but the basic thrust and 2d6 + modifiers mechanic is there.

Aside from scenario/campaign info that a GM would whip up themselves, what else do you need? Salvage rules? If you're doing that type of campaign, you probably have some source materials already to give you some ideas. Unit creation stuff? See aforementioned source materials. Actual Battletech boardgame rules? There are the free Quick Start and Introductory Rules downloads to get you going.

I'm so stoked about this. I need to get to work tomorrow so I can avail myself of the Adobe PDF creator and get this document uploaded and I'll throw it out there on the Intertubes. I just hope Catalyst Games and/or Whizkids don't DFA me - this is a free interpretation/houserules document meant for the same type of GMs that would like microlite20 or OD&D-esque games. If they're out there... after reading the Battletech forums - I'm not so sure? Some of the discussions remind me of 3E and 4E D&D mix/max discussions.

I mean... 402 pages for an RPG? Man, I started to go thru that thing and all I could think was we had Star Fleet Battles as an RPG now. At my calculations, my rules are roughly 1.2% the size of that big boy. Holy freakin' cow! Maybe there is no audience for microMW and I'm just weird.

(Although if anyone from Catalyst wants to hire me to create a really cool rules light version of ToW for umm... pay? Yea, I'd do that. :> )

(picture gakked from an abandoned Geocities website...)

Solo Gaming with the wife

2009-10-02T16:20:00.001-05:00

Today's main post is about solo gaming and meeting expectations - co-written by my lovely @thePrincessWife (she of the "tie goblins up and parade them about town" gaming).

What started this post was something that Archmage writes in his blog:

We have different priorities when it comes to gaming. We both want to have fun, but our ideas of fun are light years apart. ... The mistakes I'm making when I try to run D&D with her include:
I over-prep
I say no when i should say yes
I get impatient that she isn't interested in the aspects of D&D that I'm interested in
I become upset and feel guilty that I'm not running a fun game for her

I don't know how to break out of this. Could it just be that I can't DM D&D for her? Should I try a different game? Am I just so out of practice, and so stuck in a certain style of gaming that I'm ruining gaming for her?

Trollsmyth, over at his blog, gives some great advice:

- As much as you can, outline what you want from the game ahead of time.
- Prepare to compromise, and to stand fast where it's necessary. And then honestly adhere to this social contract.
- Demolish all the boundaries you've created in your minds about what the game “must” be about.
- Obviously, you both love the fantastical, so there's some strong overlap there. Find those points of interests in the movies and shows and books you both enjoy and mine them for ideas.

So I sat down (virtually, over GTalk) with @theprincesswife (tPw) and we talked about it - this is a condensed version of our discussion.

Me: So you've had a chance to read those posts, what do you think?

tPw: I think no two people "imagine" in their heads alike. To me, the entire game is in my head. Since I don't really know (care) about the rules, it's more about the story in my head.

Me: It sounds like these two have come to the table and they have two different games they want to play.

tPw: No, I see it as the same game, two different ways to play. Imagination creates your style

Me: Right... so if they both imagine in different ways, then it becomes difficult. Do you think we did/do that?

tPw: I am sure we do. For us, yours (way of playing) does not really rub mine the wrong way. Mine pretty much just flows in my head. I think you and I are very different in how we play, maybe ?

Me: How so? [Ed. Note: I was REALLY surprised...]

tPw: I see you pouring over the books and writing them and all the rules and stuff and it just doesn't interest me. Instead, my head is always wondering, what am i gonna do when i get back to the dragon... whats next ...

Me: If I'm more into the "game" than you are, why does it work well for us at the table?

tPw: You're not more into it, just into it in a different way. I am busy picking out the pieces that interest me. It doesn't bother me - the other stuff that you are into. I'm always busy with the "story" in my head. If you were trying to push the story, we would rub.

Me: So the way we play, my interests and your interests don't collide so much. And the fact that I'm letting you tell the story helps?

tPw: It's (the story) everything to me in our game, the part I enjoy the most. You set the stages.

Me: So your expectation is to tell your story, and my expectation is to set the stage by which your story is told.

tPw: Yes. If the DM cant help the expectation of the player, quite frankly and honestly the player is not gonna have fun. They wont want to play.

Me: Right... can you think of anytime where we did rub?

tPw: Ahhh, I can only think of one time i didnt have so much fun. The whole puzzle of the doors with the statue. Frustrated the crap out of me. [Ed. Note: The turning statue in the Tower of Zenopus from the Holmes Basic book.]
Me: Right - you were pretty stumped there. What ended up helping?

tPw: My imagination was "stuck!" LOL. Your patience helped and you gave some big hints. When you're solo, you dont have anyone to bounce ideas back and forth. Sometimes the NPC has to be a player. You think it's railroading ?

Me: We've talked about that, how I worry about that fine line between you being in control and me being in control.

tPw: DM's don't want to be players? You have to, or I might as well play by myself.

Me: I do want to play.. but it's a different play. The problem I've always worried about is Tironell "taking charge" too much so that you're playing in my story, rather than me presenting, the stage for you to play your story. We've done pretty good so far though.

Me: What would you tell this couple with the game issue?

tPw: I don't know. It is kind of like giving marital advice to a couple you don't know. They are locked in their own expectations, maybe? Why should they care what the expectations are, can't they both have what they want ?

Me: What advice would you give her and him?

tPw: For her: Play it how she see's it (in her head). For him: Give a game to her how she wants it, but if he can't - he can't.

Me: True. Archmage talks about wanting to do a lot of stuff he likes. I was thinking in our game, I have alot of stuff going on that I like... but your story overlays it. I have a sandbox, but your focus is your story, so I go with that.

tPw: I get what I want, the fun imagination story, so when you put the other stuff in there it doesnt really rub me?

Me: I get what I want -- dungeons, hard tough monsters, a world that continues to revolve with or without you... some old school things like hirelings and the real threat of death.

tPw: Thats all cool to me to though.

So in retrospect, I guess what has worked for us is that I have a game where we both are getting the elements of what we want. I have a setting that I'm able to put into motion and have elements of the game that are important to me, but in reality, it's the story she's following and concentrating on (finding the murderer of her family) that sets the tone and pace. It's a sandbox with a plot that she drives.

Thank you, @thePrincessWife!

Treasure and Mesopotamia

2009-09-24T09:45:00.001-05:00

"Currency evolved from two basic innovations: the use of counters to assure that shipments arrived with the same goods that were shipped, and later with the use of silver ingots to represent stored value in the form of grain. Both of these developments had occurred by 2000 BC. Originally money was a form of receipting grain stored in temple granaries in Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia, then Ancient Egypt."

- Wikipedia, currency.

"In the earlier second millennium there are references to kaspum kankum "sealed bags of silver." Sealed silver is also noted in texts of the late third millennium and the Old Assyrian documents from Cappadocia mention silver "marked" (uddu) with its weight (CAD s.v. idu 4.a). Copper might be packed into purses called (c)hurshianu (CAD s.v.; Dercksen). "

- ANCIENT ECONOMIES I, Morris Silver

"The ancient economy was mainly based on subsistence farming. The Shekel referred to an ancient unit of weight and currency. The first usage of the term came from Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and referred to a specific mass of barley which related other values in a metric such as silver, bronze, copper etc. A barley/shekel was originally both a unit of currency and a unit of weight... just as the British Pound was originally a unit denominating a one pound mass of silver."

- Wikipedia, Economy - Ancient Times

My research into Sumerian history and Mesopotamia for the Tombs of Hulkursag has taken me into some really cool mental exercises. Part of the module will be to introduce my take on an alternative history of Mesopotamia, where the Gods really do walk the Earth. (This, by the way, has made me very aware that I don't have a single source book on Deities - no OD&D or AD&D books). Reading up on the culture and viewpoints makes me realize how cultural D&D really is. I know this is no surprise to the smarter of my readers, but it's the difference of "hearing" it and really seeing it.

One such area is the concept of treasure. We, as players, are used to gold pieces, gems, scrolls and things that "feel" right - we're not that far removed from reality in how we view wealth and things of value. Taking a step back into history means that we're winding back the clock and our conceptions on how wealth was collected and distributed. The above quotes really point that out - coin currency wasn't widely used until maybe late in the Mesopotamian era, more likely in the early Greek era. Trade was based on barter and a rough conceptualization of the value of commodities against each other. Silver was the standard and it's use wasn't a "coin" but a weight equivalent. This means that our intrepid band of adventurers exploring the Lands between the Rivers aren't going to be finding chests of gold.

Wealth was also expressed in jewelry and adornments, as well as possessions. Mesopotamian tombs (what few have been found) are not filled with coins, but with rings, necklaces, crowns and headdresses and items of value like musical instruments, oxen carts and even slaves. Now everyone seems to love finding lots of gems and jewels, but what is the very first thing the vast majority of the adventurers do? They go find a fence in town and get gold coins. That's not going to happen in Mesopotamia.

This brings me to a design issue - how far to do I "break" the conventional wisdom of D&D? When players sit down for D&D, there are expectations based on previous play and based on what we perceive D&D to be. Presenting a module and setting that breaks those expectations too much makes it possible that people are going to get frustrated and give up. Do players really want to buy equipment based on trading 5 shekels of grain that they have to store and carry somewhere? I doubt it. I know I wouldn't want to do that - and that's a metric I usually use on my first decisions about a game - would I like it?

I think I may change the terms, but leave the basics the same - gold is now "silver (ingots/shekels)" (same diff), silver becomes "copper" - there is no equivalent to copper pieces in my game. Players won't find mounds and mounds of gold, but if I cast it right, the difference is more in the names, not the feel.

Treasure is going to be more about finding the jewelry and gems and things that can be traded. I'll give equivalent values (in silver) but players won't be able to fence the 3 rings and 2 copper helmets into coins - so they'd better find a secure place to hold their stashes.

Another interesting point is that metal is rare - so much so that finding a metal weapon is equivalent to finding a +1 to +3 weapon.

Does breaking the convention too far limit what you can do, especially in terms of the "rewards"? I think we're all used to strange settings and even limits on classes and races, but the treasure and methods of economy in D&D? I'm not so sure.

What do you think?

(Picture from studio22k.com)

OD&D Solo game w/wife - The Parade

2009-09-21T14:10:00.001-05:00

It has been a month since I last sat down at the table with @theprincesswife for Swords & Wizardry/OD&D play. She's just been feeling so worn out, she hasn't felt like playing. I was really surprised when Saturday night she asked if we could play. Could we? I think I had the dice, minis and campaign binder out in record time.

When we last played, a bit of player/DM miscommunication led Aeli and her band of henchmen and hirelings to the Tower of Zenopus rather than the Minotaur Mage's tower. She had been sent there to look into the issue of possible bandits in the tower, who'd been plauging Westport for weeks. She took her first steps back into her old stomping ground and ... [insert record needle scratch noise here] ... except we had to pause for a moment where her almost 8 month old map confused her and I had to tell her what she was seeing versus what she'd put down on paper.

Right, so we got that all set and she marches up a familiar hallway to find doors that are spiked shut. After a rather noisy series of attempts at yanking them open (and requisite wandering monster rolls), she came face to face with an unexpected sight... bandits AND goblins with a green fist on their tunics! (Note to my AD&D campaign players - yes, I reuse ideas. This is one of my favorite metal songs!)

A bit of nasty negotiation happened and resulted in Aeli slamming the door shut on the group and hightailing it out of the dungeon. She didn't like the odds of almost 2 to 1 and decided to go get reinforcements. A quick trip to the Keep and discussion with the Captain of the Guard ("You *are* the Champion of Westport, right?") and a very annoyed Aeli had 2 militia men and one 1st level fighter.

Back to the dungeon and the band of bandits and goblins sprung an ambush with a volley of arrows down a corridor as soon as the our party of adventurers entered. A chase through the Tower and several rooms found one goblin dead and another cowering, begging for mercy.

DM Note - this is one of the areas where I have a bit of a mental block - adjudicating running battles. My MO up till now has been if movement rates are equal, if the ones doing the chasing get initiative, they can perform a "charge" attack. Otherwise, if the pursued win initiative, I feel they'd somehow kept out of range for an attack. If there's a difference in favor of the pursuers, they can chase and end it with a charge attack. If it's in favor of the pursued, well... keep running, boys! It's probably not the cleanest ruling, but it works.

So Aeli and company tie up the goblin and start to drag him out of the dungeon. He starts raising a ruckus, so one of the hireling whacks him in the mouth! Aeli was in no mood. They drag him out into the sunlight, at which point No-took starts screaming in pain. They cover him with a sack and drag him through the city.

So here's an armed party, dragging a moaning, crying goblin tied up through a bustling seaport. So what does my wife do? "What tavern is nearest? I'm thirsty!" Probably one of the nastiest, lowdown places in Westport, but at the sight of almost 10 well-armed warriors (and one mage - my NPC Tironell - who at this point was getting a neck-ache shaking his head in disbelief...) the whole bar cleared out. Aeli had her drink, they proceeded to the Keep at which point the game ended. Next game, she'll get the results of the interrogation.

Sometimes you just have to let your players really do crazy stuff - I was rolling the entire time Aeli/@theprincesswife were parading the captured goblin through town. Not too subtle, my wife's character... it's great!

I'm really hoping we can keep doing these 1 to 2 hour sessions - she was cheered up after it was over.

Mesopotamian Tombs

2009-09-12T12:00:00.004-05:00

When I was designing the Tombs of Hultep-Khoa back in March, I stumbled onto this fascinating atlas of the Valley of the Kings tombs at Thebes, Egypt. I still love going to that site.

You'll then understand the pleasure I had in finding an interactive map of the Royal Tombs of Ur at the British Museum's website. It's fascinating that this is a complex, very similar to VotK. I won't have to change much on my maps, then. :)

However, the Tombs just became enclosed in a ziggurat.

(Photographs Copyright by Lasse Jensen, all rights reserved.)