Gaming on the Precipice

Hating on Upkeep

2011-11-23T10:22:00.000-08:00

Let me begin by saying that this post mostly stems from me being a lazy GM.

I HATE spells, powers, and game mechanisms that have upkeep effects.

Goodberry, animal familiars, druid animal companions, etc...

The druid class has always been one of the worst offenders in AD&D. I really don't like to keep track of a bunch of little NPC's or keep track of how many semi-permanent good berries a character is holding on to.

The reason I brought this up is that I've been reading the Stormbringer 4th and 5th editions. I really like them both for different reasons, but I didn't really like the magic systems presented in either book. The 5th edition brought in Sorcery spells identical to those presented in the BRP system which are similar to sorcery spells from Runequest. These spells have a limited effect and cost ~1-4 MP. In the Stormbringer 4th edition, it is all about summoning and binding elementals and demons (which are really aliens and not demons of the traditional sense). I think this would make for a tremendous amount of book-keeping - which I find tedious and lame.

I've never read all of Moorcock's works, but I'm currently re-reading them to get in the spirit of this game system. The 4th edition spell system of Stormbringer is pretty close, but one thing I noticed is that Elric tends to summon things up pretty quickly in game terms.

I'm thinking about trying to conceive a magic system where you call on the immediate aid of chaos or elementals/ beastlords, etc... and the GM would arbitrate on the level of MP that would need to be sacrificed to induce the effect.

I would still keep the summoning/binding system - but make it so you need specific grimoires to make it easier to call up specific demons, otherwise it would take even longer and use even more power. Once a demon has been bound you could release it, and bring forth a magical effect. This would allow for demon bound magical armor and magical swords but maybe a little bit more limited versus the versions presented in the Stormbringer 4th and 5th.

Riding the Storm Out

2011-11-17T02:59:00.000-08:00

I recently picked up Stormbringer 4th and 5th editions.

I really like both of these games and I might spend a couple of posts discussing various topics related to them.

I think there are two primary aspects of the game that drew me to it:

1. There are no "character levels". I also like that in the BRP based 5th edition there are no "classes". I really like rolemaster but at the end of the day it is a D&D game with class and level and a huge number of options thrown in for crunch. The magic system and combat system have been changed and you have skills, but you still gain experience points for stuff and you still go up levels and have classes. I really wanted to see if you could play a fantsay RPG without the exp, class, and level systems.

2. The chaosium d100 system is similar to Rolemaster in that your character may grow more powerful, acquiring more magic and skills, but they still can be killed relatively easy with a single (or several) hit. The stormbringer setting brings in a random die for armor level into the runequest system and I think that is a brilliant piece that adds tension to the game. In addition the major wounds section brings realistic "critical" type hits to the game. I've tried adding critical hit tables with detailed wounds to D&D in the past. However, I always felt that it changed the game from being D&D to something else and my players always hated me for it.

I've read both the 4th and 5th editions over at least in part and there are things about each that I'm really loving and some things that I'm not sure would play out well in the type of RPG I'd like to GM.

Character Death

2011-11-13T01:52:00.000-08:00

I've been branching out and trying some new RPG podcasts. I ran into one that seems wildly popular "Fear the Boot".

The first episode I listened to was entitled Character Death. First off, before I start blog trashing these guys, I thought this podcast was totally awesome. The hosts are completely animated and very fun to listen to. Another reason why they were so interesting to me was that I found myself disagreeing with them quite often throughout the show. I find it very stimulating to listen to points of view that run counter to mine own (he he he, I just said mine own).

Anyway, from the first part of the argument they seem to espouse the idea that:

1. They are ok with character death at the "climax" of the campaign, but don't want to be killed by a poison needle trap on a random chest that doesn't seem to be tied to the "plot" of the game. They later also discuss how they wouldn't want to be killed in a D&D game on a "random" encounter that seems to have nothing to do with the plot.

2. They think that the GM should let the players know his philosophy about killing PC's upfront at the beginning of the campaign.

3. PC's could have failure consequences that are different from death. They bring up Spirit of the Century and other games of the sort which can have negative character altering mechanisms that allow the GM to punish failure without resorting to death.

There were definitely other ideas that were brought up throughout the show, but I'm forgetting them right now (since I listened to the show yesterday) and I remember most of them being related to the above points.

Let me tackle the first point first. I'm ok with character death in just about any dangerous situation of the game. I would be mad if the GM just told me my character was dead without any explanation, but otherwise, in most games that I play - my characters are adventuring in some pretty dangerous and sometimes horrific places. If there was no chance of PC death (or at least the "perceived chance" of PC death) then it would make the game boring to me. I like to at least give my players the "perceived chance" of real death to give them that same feeling. I can do this with a whole host of very simple GM tools.

The other thing that bothered me in this podcast was the idea of the "random encounter" being inconsequential. If it truly has no point in your game, take it out! I believe that every minute of gaming at my table should be there for a good reason. I don't create the entire plot of every game and dictate "here is the big bad boss" and here is the "sub boss #1" and "sub boss #2" etc... Things may fall into a similar rhythm to that due to the inclusion of "move tropes" into my game, but I allow my players to have almost as much narrative control as I have... therefore, every encounter, every trap, and every monster I throw their way is important. I typically do have a loose plot in my head or a mystery story laid out in very general terms (maybe in a flow diagram) but my PC"s could choose to leave it all behind and set sail on a boat to foreign island in search of treasure - at that time I will throw out the original concept that I had and start trying to figure out what they are going to find on the island. Sandbox loving GM's find themselves running their games like improv musicians - it is difficult but highly rewarding!

Point 2 - should the GM let the PC's know his philosophy on PC death up front. I think this is pointless - it completely demystifies your game, makes it completely predictable and boring. Don't do this, keep it vague. If your PC's ask you about your views on PC death answer them Yoda style - "I'm not out to kill you, but there is always a chance your character could die depending on the circumstances"... something like that... don't say, "if you are only fighting sub boss #3 you won't die! I think even if you told players that there is the likely chance of death at any time, you are always going to get players that are angry when their beloved PC dies....

#3 - use other mechanisms for PC failure. This is one point where I completely agreed with the hosts. I think this is used far too little in most games. I remember lots of circumstances in my games as a youth where PC's were imprisoned, lost limbs, eyes were blinded, etc... Also, infamy and fame could be introduced to the game where once your character is famous you are noticed at every Inn in the country, such that you can't use stealth any more in your adventures. I think I use non-death punishments for failure already, but I like the ideas of coming up with more and more creative methods here that improve the roleplaying experience.

Anyway, while I didn't agree much with the folks at Fear the Boot, I really liked their podcast and I'm planning on listening to more episodes soon!

Skipping Quickly over Glorantha

2011-11-11T04:44:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to reading like 70% of the books I purchased in my Amazon gift card bonanza!

I thought I would talk about the Glorantha second age book first. I hated it.

Maybe since I never got into original Runequest products in the past I'm missing some key element that gels everything together. To me this product sucked. Nothing about it made me want to play games in that world. It was extremely jarring how the author of the product used acronyms for different empires. Empire of Wyrm Friends was EWF, etc...

This game world was almost "too personal" for me to get into. Maybe that is why I like game worlds like Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk so much since they are general enough for you to make your own and tell the stories that you want to. I didn't get that feeling with this material. Although, I also read Stormbringer 4th and 5th editions from Chaosium which details a very specific non-generic game world and I LOVED them. So maybe I'm just missing something with Glorantha.

Anyway, someday in the future there will be another copy of Glorantha 2nd Age up on EBAY. Until then it is going into deep storage. The bright side is that I didn't spend much on it.

American Horror Story

2011-10-27T03:23:00.001-07:00

Most octobers in the past I have spent a lot of time hunkered in front of the tube watching horror movies. This year my schedule is actually bat shit crazy so I'm lacking the time for that kind of activity.

So I've been getting my horror fix from a new FX show American Horror Story. It is a fun horror romp with all the cliches. Check it out, it is pretty creepy and fun:

D100 Gaming

2011-10-23T04:37:00.001-07:00

I've been pretty silent on this blog for about 1-2 months now. I had a wicked bout of migraine headaches that forced me to limit my computer usage. Since I'm not sure I'm completely over it I'll make this quick.

While I have been away from the computer I did get an amazon gift card a present... I made pretty good work of it scoring:

Rolemaster Express (love this book!)

Chaosium BRP hardcover
Stormbringer 4th Edition
Glorantha 2nd Age
Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition Rulebook

Yes that's right, lots of d100 gaming goodness!

I've been reading them over and when time permits I plan to review some of this stuff. The Chaosium skill based system has me the most interested. It really works for Call of Cthulhu - I've been playing the PBEM game with Daddy G, DungeonMum, and O4E for a while now and it runs smoothly for that style game. The question is can it correctly handle all the other genre that it advertises in the BRP book. I like that it has so many options that can be brought in and out of any campaign yet the core is straightforward and simple.

Well, that is all for now, hopefully my head will stop this nonsense and I can cover some of this game material in better detail.

The Shadow over Innsmouth

2011-09-16T01:57:00.000-07:00

In august the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast covered The Shadow over Innsmouth, covering it in 4 parts with Andrew Leman doing some EXCELLENT readings. I finally got around to listening to it and it was just an excellent podcast.

Also, good was the wrap up show with Robert Price and Donovan Loucks (who runs http://www.hplovecraft.com/). While Robert Price's interview was intellectually stimulating as always, Donovan spoke alot about the architecture that inspired lovecraft and spoke about how you really need to spend time in New England and get the feel to really enjoy this particular aspect of Lovecraft.

I can tell you that I brought one of my Lovecraft collections with me on a trip through New England, Salem, Boston, Gloucester. I remember one morning that I woke up early in a B&B in Gloucester before light and read some of The Shadow over Innsmouth. I reread the ending passage as the narrator speaks of strange longings to find that strange reef off the coast and then I got up and went to the window and looked out through flowery curtains at the grey sea, the sun just coming up in the horizon and the sky a mixture of yellow, grey, and crisp blue. It seemed to me I could remember a genetic calling toward the sea... perhaps a strange desire to step out past the spired churches and abandoned buildings, to tread over the rocky beach line, and to slide back into the waters that birthed a primordial ancestor long ago and explore the glories and wonders below...

Anyway, this is definitely one of my favorites of Lovecraft, listen to this podcast and read the story, you won't regret it.

No More Infravision!

2011-09-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

I think in my next B/X campaign (or possibly later on in the campaign that I'm running) I'm going to replace the infravision that is explained in the core rulebooks with Twilightvision and Darkvision.

Twilight vision would be the ability of elves and possibly other faery types to see in the moonlight/starlight as if it were daylight.

Darkvision would be the ability to see for a short range in near perfect darkness conditions. The range of vision would be 60-90ft in most situations. Nobody knows how this works, perhaps characters with darkvision can see some other exotic radiation source that is present in the underdark? Or maybe it's just magic?

You Can Call Me Al

2011-09-12T01:02:00.000-07:00

Meet Allessandro Mancini, my Call of Cthulhu character for the Decade of Darkness campaign initially helmed by Daddy Grognard who also plays as Chester Allen, followed up by Old 4 Eyes who also plays as Solomon. The game is currently being ran by Dungeonmum whose character is currently indisposed but normally plays a mildly alcoholic millionaire pilot.

My thesis for Allessandro is:

A passionate bare-knuckle boxer who spends his days serving espresso in coffee bars and writing poetry.

Initially, I thought it would be fun to try playing a character in an investigative game who has almost no investigation skills. I would have to make my way though encounters with my punching ability (not good when facing things with tentacles) and my witty turn of phrase... I figured since CoC characters have such short lives, that it wouldn't matter much anyway.

However, over time, Al's personality has really grown. I see him as a tragically heroic character in a nihilistic universe. He believes in right and wrong, goes to church every week with his mother, he was forced out of his boxing career by gangsters who wanted him to throw fights, he spends his days serving high quality coffee to rich people and his nights dreaming up poetry. He is a dreamer, and an optimist in the face of everything that has happened to him. He relishes the good things in life, art, food, wine, coffee, etc... maybe he is a bit hedonistic, but hey, it is the roaring 20's!!!

"his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night."

Quote from The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

X4 - Alternate Intro

2011-09-08T01:35:00.000-07:00

Upon returning from the extra-dimensional adventures with Stephen Amber, you found yourselves in the midst of Glantri. The laws of this magocracy were almost hostile toward the dwarfs and fighters of your group and so you traveled south into Darokin to escape imprisonment or death. Darokin was a land of wealth and splendor where the vast amounts of treasure your party acquired during your adventures allowed you to literally live as kings!

You lived it up in the social circles and intrigues of Darokin city for weeks until you tired of the backstabbing and strict rules of etiquette that the elite have created for themselves. Finding a noble in financial troubles you were able to invest nearly all of your wealth in a great villa and surrounding vineyards along the southern edge of a great plateau that lies to the west of Darokin west of the Great Swamp.

Traveling there with hired experts in horticulture and winemaking you spent the next year living in splendor, feasting on lamb and steer and making wine. Bards came from all around to live in your villa, hear your stories, and sing you tales from abroad. Traveling princes, wizards, and wandering knights all made your stone villa a favorite respite from the harsh wilderness. Life is good and you began to forget the tiny song of adventure that once resounded in your head.

It was then when disaster struck! A massive army of humanoids, mostly orc and goblins but supported by cruel men, ogres, trolls, and worse stormed your villa in the night. You fought back with magic and swords but you were out of practice and unprepared for such an onslaught. Their numbers were immense and finally you were forced to flee east toward Elstarath with only your fastest horses and your most precious weapons and magical items and books.

On your way you began to alert the small villages and keeps that you found along the way, but most of them had already been evacuated. It seems that the army was much larger than you had even begun to imagine. The main army of Darokin had already marched west into the desert following the humanoid army that had retreated to find reinforcements.

Weeks went by and your party joined in with a rag-tag group of reserves who was planning to meet the main army that was now deep in the desert of fire fighting the humanoid force. You find yourselves entering a small village that was only recently taken back by the Darokin army, still among the smoking ruins of the village were the signs of nomad enemies - humans, orcs, and other unknown creatures. The leaders of your rag-tag group halted at this place and awaited the field commanders orders. He is held up in the largest house of the village and spends all day assigning orders and processing information. It seems that the reserve effort is pretty unorganized and mostly you have spent the last three days camped near the edge of town with no orders or information about what you should do to help. The fires of vengeance still burn in your chests, life on the road has hardened you once more, and you would love to be able to do something effective against this unknown army...

My buddies will be back in town this weekend of Sept 10-11 and we might be able to organize up and throw down another tabletop gaming session! I'm still trying to catch up from a week on vacation so this was the best introduction I could come up with for X4. I tried to come up with a more plausible (still very rail-roady) reason for the players to be involved in this adventure that made sense from coming out of the Castle Amber X2 adventure module. I think this will serve the purpose of emptying them of nearly all of their coin and give them a reason to care about facing down this strange army and give them the idea that stealth and not strong-arm tactics will be required (since they already faced this army and were all nearly killed). I'm not trying to make this a really open ended campaign right now, I'm basically railroading my players through a group of old-school adventures one by one and having fun just playing in them. My plan is to run them through a beefed up version of X1 next followed by something maybe placed in Alphatia or the hollow world or maybe both... I may have to make something up for the next two adventures because I'm expecting the players to make it up to ~10+ level by the time we finish the X1 adventure.

Magical Dwarves and Sneaky Halflings

2011-09-05T01:25:00.000-07:00

"They brought up their ponies, and carried away the pots of gold, and buried them very secretly not far from the track by the river, putting a great many spells over them, just in case they ever had the chance to come back and recover them."

That line is from the Roast Mutton chapter of "The Hobbit". I'm reading the Douglas A. Anderson annotated version of J.R.R. Tolkien's book before the movie comes out and re-reading the book I read as a 4th grader in elementary school as an adult has been really interesting.

That quoted line really struck me as I read over it. It didn't say specifically that Gandalf cast the spells... I got the picture that the dwarves know some spells which really got me thinking about dwarves in general and how in the Middle Earth world dwarves are more like their Norse mythological roots.

Douglas A talks about how almost all the dwarven names are pulled directly from the Poetic Edda (1923 Henry Adams Bellows translation) which I have never read, but I'm thinking of looking for a copy in English. I also found it interesting in his annotation that he spoke of a dwarf who cursed a man to roam the woods as a wild bear in the Blue Fairy Book 1889 edited by Andrew Lang (Douglas was making the point that the bear man is a Beorn prototype, however I was thinking more about the fact that the dwarf had magical abilities). In our ancestors folk myths of dwarves, they are magical creatures with magical abilities; I wonder why Gary decided to make them almost "anti-magical" in D&D? As I keep reading this book I'm going to think more and more about how (and if) I should adopt this stuff for my next D&D game. I kind of like the idea of dwarves having some magical abilities...

On a completely different note, it really spoke to me that Bilbo not only can hide in the woods at will (as the BX Halfling can), but in addition Bilbo shows that he can "move silently" with ease, and attempts to pick pockets of the trolls in this chapter. I think the current BX halfling abilities mock the hiding ability, but maybe the halfling should have a marginally better aptitude at moving silently and some other thief abilities than the average human does (not trained thieves). Perhaps it would be as simple as giving halflings some bonus to surprise checks (they may already have that in the B/X system or I might be crossing my systems) or give them a +1 on a d6 or approximately a +20% chance to attempt these things.

I probably won't implement any of this in one of my campaigns without a lot of thought, but it is interesting to imagine how one could adjust the B/X system to increase the Tolkeinishness of the system. I've also been reading the MERP roleplaying system and while I love rolemaster (it is a perverse sick love) the system as it stands really doesn't exactly match the flavor of tolkien. The art was amazing IMHO, the background they put in the MERP books is great, but the system mechanics are pretty far away from the Middle Earth universe as presented in the Hobbit and LOTR.

Forgotten Realms

2011-09-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

I have both the 1987 Grey Box realms and the 1993 Forgotten Realms boxed set redone for 2nd edition rules. I have studied both of these boxed sets in detail and I have to say that the 1993 version by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb is the better of the two. I think it is really the Cyclopedia of the Realms from the grey box that I have the most issues with.

The 2nd edition boxed set presents the same gameworld that folks learned to love through the original modules and the grey box but it is represented in a more organized format. In the "Grand tour of the Realms" the entirety of Faerun is covered along with hints of what lies "off the maps" and it is presented in a way that provides for tons of adventuring hooks. The art is minimal, black and white, and provided from a bunch of different artists with rough wood cut and charcoal drawings that really hooked me as a kid.

I LOVED that they separated the prominent NPC's from the geography in this version of the realms. I pretty much never use an NPC that has ever been in a realms novel in my games of the realms. Each time I run the realms I like to try to put a slightly different spin on it. The characters are not just going to wander into Florin Falconhand, or Elminster, or Khelben Arunsun. I don't use these characters in my games at all. Most of my players have read more realms novels than I have so I like to draw inspiration from the novels but exclude all specifics.

The fact that all the NPC's are tucked into a small section of the Running the Realms book in the 2nd edition printing of the game means that they are easily bypassed when looking for something out of these books. The dieties are all organized well and all of the 1st edition gods are present in case you just want to play a "historical" realms campaign before the ToT.

Speaking of the fact that all the gods from the original edition are still there, I think that Jeff and Ed tried hard to keep cross compatibility between the two versions of the game. There are almost no actual game statistics for anything in this boxed set. All NPC's are listed as N hm T7 and then a couple of paragraphs of description, this is easily converted into any game system you would like Original, Basic, 1e, 2e, 3e, etc... play this gameworld with any of these, do it yourself, make up your own rules. Here is a world to play in, period.

While I love almost everything about the 2nd edition realms, there is one piece in particular that I took offense against:

I hated the "time of troubles". While it wasn't half as bad as the "coming of the Shade" and all the massive world altering changes that occurred with that, I didn't appreciate TSR at the time telling me that I "had" to take the realms in a certain direction. I liked Bhaal and Bane and didn't want to let them leave my campaign. They were far better evil gods for my clerics than Cyric. The wild magic zones and dead magic zones I could take or leave, they really didn't add much for my game etc... However, this is easily changed. I just continued to begin my realms adventures between 1344 and 1358DR. I typically stole all the plot hooks from the "News of the Realms" section and changed the specifics to meet the situation that I was in and started a game. The actions of the PC's would begin to craft a story that would take the realms in any direction that I saw fit.

I had realms games where the time of trouble happened and those that didn't. I played games where Amn and Calisham had massive wars that embroiled the rest of Faerun in small scale battles for trade and land. The thing I loved about the running games in FR was that all my players had a common understand of the dieties, the races, and the major organizations. I could get right to playing the games without explaining all about my new game world of the day. The forgotten realms were always flexible enough for me to play the games that I wanted to play in them, but at the same time familiar enough to my players to have a common understanding of the game world.

If you have never checked out the second edition version of the realms, I would recommend you do.

Fighting back the Gamer ADD

2011-08-25T01:02:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my players this week and they really asked me to fight back the Gamer ADD. They had a real blast playing in Mystara and running through Castle Amber and they would like to keep these characters for a while yet. One of the players is lamenting that he has never had a PC make it to over 10th level and would like to try making it there with his wizard character in this game.

I told them that I have a group of adventures that I've been buying up that should get them up to at least 10th level and maybe beyond.

I'm thinking to run them through a heavily modified Master of the Desert Nomads (which could have a massive detour to the moon if the players play things right), followed by the Temple of Death adventure. That alone should get them up to about 8-10th level.

Then I'd like to use one of these three products that I got off Ebay:

Isle of Dread (maybe I could beef it up a bit for high level PC's, add some kind of twist?)

Empire of Dawn boxed set (I'd like to take my PC's to Alphatia and have some cool mid-air battles among the ramparts of flying castles).

Hollow World Boxed set ( I got this whole boxed set for free, the guy threw it in with another product that I purchased, I think it is pretty neat, and the altered game physics with the magic and stuff could throw off my players in a fun way).

Does anybody that reads this blog have any other ideas for really good 8-12th level adventures?

After some greater than 10th level play, I want to reboot our campaign and have the guys start brand new PC's at low levels. I'd like to run in forgotten realms. However, I would also really like to run Rolemaster - my series on running Forgotten Realms and Rolemaster together probably all ready showed what I'm thinking about. However, my players are really loving the stripped down aspect of Basic DnD and I'm not sure if they are ready for anything close to Rolemaster. They are asking me to "quit it" with the changing game systems each week stuff. It is hard, most of the time I feel like this guy...

Rolemaster Customization of FR Deities&Clerics

2011-08-20T01:51:00.000-07:00

I went through the major deities that usually crop up as PC clerics and NPC clerics in my games and customized them such that each one would have spell lists to choose from that represented the deities well:

Lathander: Clerics and Paladins gain Light's Way as a Base list, Summons is considered closed for them.

Mystra: revered by Magicians and Sorcerers (who gain their channeling power from her). True clerics of Mystra are mysterious and rare, and their powers are currently unknown.

Oghma: Priests of oghma gain Past Visions and Lores as Base Lists. They lose Summons and Repulsions. They focus on Linguistics, Runes, Mathematics, and star gazing as secondary skills.

Shar: She loses lights way, weather way ,calm spirits, life mastery, repulsions, but gains Curses, Darkness (from Evil Magician list), and Dark Channels as Base Lists. Seduction and subduing are important skills for clerics of Shar.

Silvanus/Chauntea - their clerics are Animists and Rangers.

Talos: Clerics gain weather ways (Lightning Bolt I from Light Law is added to the Weather Ways at the 9th level slot, and Lightning Bolt II is added at 17th level, the GM could give Talos clerics access to higher level Lightning bolts at even higher levels). They also gain Dark Channels, but lose life master, and repulsions.

Tempus: gain the typical cleric list, but gains the Mind over Matter (+25 to Adrenal Moves) during combat. I thought about giving them an option to be berserkers but I never liked that in 2eAD&D so I didn't add that. I might let clerics of Tempus have a little lower weapon skill acquisition costs to reflect the militant nature of the order.

Clerics of Tyr and Torm are as found in Character Law and Spell Law.
Clerics of Helm and Ilmater are also unadjusted. - all of these clerics have summoning but can only summon good aligned creatures (no demons).

Clerics of Mielikki are rangers - rangers will have quite a few deities to choose from.

Clerics and Animists of Selune are unadjusted on their spell lists, however all of them are affected by Lycanthropy from the Creatures and Treasures book. They also focus on star gazing/ moon cycle knowledge as secondary skills.

Priests of Tymora are unadjusted in regards to their spell lists but all have the Lucky advantage (they may adjust any roll affecting them per day by +10/-10). Tymora also frowns on her clerics summoning demons - so her clerics should veer away from that ave.

"Clerics" of Mask are usually PC thieves who select the Channeling focus and gain their channeling spells from Mask. There are also reports of some "chosen" of Mask that are actually clerics with good thieving skills - they are extremely rare and their exact skills are unknown.

Clerics of Llira/Milil loose the summoning spell list, and gain Controlling Songs; additionally they focus on dance, singing, seduction, drama, and other crafts and musical skills.

Clerics of Umberlee gain Water Law(magician list), but lose the repulsion, and calm spirits lists. They tend to have good ability in swimming, navigation, rowing, sailing, diving, etc...

This is my list so far... I have kept most of the "evil" lists a secret for two reasons. No use letting my PC's know exactly what I have in store for them.

Another thing I'm going to have to deal with is the rolemaster rules for clerics/paladins and metal armor...

Men of Forgotten Realms Rolemaster Style

2011-08-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

Since my last post on combining Forgotten Realms with Rolemaster I purchased the Rolemaster Companion I - it has various races of men and like 6 varieties of half-elves which I found excessive, but it also had a paladin class that seems pretty good.

From this I decided to go with:

Men of the Savage North: The lands around and above Icewind Dale have a group of men who fit along with the same line of "proud, well built, tall, and blonde peoples of the north" from pg 45-46 of the RC1. For PC's who would like to use an even more barbaric stock of man, such as the Uthgardt barbarian tribes, I would have them use the Bear Tribes from pg45-46 of RC1. Obviously, PC's could use the same two categories of men for the eastern northern areas such as The Ride.

Men of the Heartlands: I'm going to split up the men from the heartlands of forgotten realms into two flavors - Common Men and Mixed Men. The common man would represent 80-90% of the humans living in Faerun. Those men living in close enough proximity to the deep elvish woods (examples: the dalelands around Cormanthor, and men living around the Wood of Sharp Teeth or the eastern portion of the High Forest where their stock has been blended with elves since the time of the lost civilizations of Askavar and Eaerlann). I think the common man & mixed men could work from Silvermoon to Calisham and from Thay to Cormyr - men are men. Mixed men are not quite half elves, but have a bit of the fay or magical blood in them which gives my players an option or two to choose from.

Horse Warriors: any character from the horde could pick "Common Man" or "Dark Tribes" from pg 45-46. Dark tribes are supposed to represent nomadic horse people, similar to the culture of the Hordelands.

I think this is enough variation in men for me. I for one don't really need game mechanical adjustment for every little village in the realms. I'm planning that 80-90% of the men played in my game will be either the Common Man, or Mixed Man. Maybe there will be one horse warrior or barbarian among them.

Page 45 of the RC1 also has a great deal about customizing clerical orders for Rolemaster. I plan to start working on that next, and will try to cover at least most of the greater gods and work on important lesser dieties.

B/X Wizard and Elf Spell Lists

2011-08-13T01:01:00.000-07:00

As JB from BX BlackRazor has pointed out before:

Magic-users and elves are limited to the number of spells they may know, and their books will contain spells equal to the number and level of spells the caster can use in a single day (thus, the books of a 4th level elf will contain two first and two second level spells).

I have not been playing this way in my B/X games so far. I've been playing that characters can learn spells from spellbooks and scrolls that they find and scribe them into their spell books. I haven't really put a limit on the spells that a wizard/elf can have in their books. Each day they have to memorize spells from their spellbooks. This is pretty close to the way I played 1e and 2e AD&D. I hardly ever worried about how many spells a PC would learn.

However, I've been thinking of loosely following the rule from the expert book listed above. But I would like to alter it in an interesting way:

Wizards/Elves would only be able to "learn" the number of spells equal to the number that they can use in a single day.

However, they can keep spell books with any number of spells in them and they can learn spells from the spellbook of an enemy, but if they already have learned the maximum number of spells of that level they must trade one spell for one spell (essentially learning the new spell causes them to "forget" a spell that was already in their head). It takes them ~1 week of uninterrupted study to change a learned spell slot. Wizards could change spells on the road but only if they don't engage in combat, take damage, or face harsh weather conditions, etc... anything that could take a large portion of their concentration off imprinting the spell into their mind.

Wizards/Elves would not need to consult their books to memorize their spells each day, instead they can cast any of their learned spells up to the # of spells per level that they may cast per day. This would remove the need for wizards and elves to bring spellbooks along for the adventuring trip (unless they think they might want to change a learned slot on the road). If a 2nd level magic user has the ability to learn and cast 2 spells per day and has Magic Missile and Sleep learned he could cast one of those each in a day or cast two sleep spells in a row.

Using this method would improve magic user and elf versatility, trading it for an increased limitation on the amount of spells they can have access to at any given time. Also, having access to another wizards spell books would allow you to "learn" more spells and transcribe them into your books - so there would still be a good reason to have wizard mentors and guilds. I'm not 100% convinced I'd like to adopt it, but I may give it a trial run this fall if I can get together a skype game with the Castle Amber crew. I talked to them about continuing more of a campaign following up on the Castle Amber adventure with a couple of others that I have.

I think I'm going to run them through the Master of the Desert Nomads followed by the Temple of Death adventure. I think those two adventures should easily take 4-5 decent sessions each and would likely bring all of the party members up to 9-10th level if they can defeat the modules.

Marsh/Cook Expert Monster HD Analysis

2011-08-11T01:30:00.000-07:00

Following up on my post about determining the distribution of monster HD in the moldvay basic text, I did the same thing for the Cook/Marsh Expert book. I found the analysis quite interesting. I remember thinking that there were very few 3HD monsters in the basic book - I had screwed that up with the expert book. There are very few ODD HD creatures in the expert book. Either Cook or Marsh (or both) had a thing with even numbers. They liked to make entries of monsters with 4, 8, 12HD creatures.

Here is the data:

It is also interesting to me that while the Moldvay progression seems very planned the Cook/Marsh distribution seems very haphazard. They both had roughly the same number of posts, I counted 102 in Moldvay and 101 in Cook/Marsh but I could be off by 1-2 in each case.

Moldvay Basic Monster HD Analysis

2011-08-09T01:06:00.000-07:00

The other night I became obsessed with what the distribution of monster HD was in the Moldvay Basic book. I was thinking that there were way more 3HD creatures than 2HD which seemed strange to me. So I got out a pencil and wrote a list. I got 102 total entries (there was only one that I didn't mark down "NPC Party" because the HD was variable. In cases where the HD was 2+2 I marked it down as a 2HD creature. In cases where a range was included such as 4-6, I would mark it down as a 5HD entry.

Here are the results:

It is a nice distribution with the highest number of 1HD monsters and trailing downward up to 11HD creatures. I'd like to repeat this analysis for the Cook/Marsh expert book and then compare and contrast the two books.

It looks like quite a bit of thought went into the design of how many monsters to include and what ratio of each (approximately) was desired.

Forgotten Rolls

2011-08-05T01:08:00.000-07:00

Gamer ADD strikes again. I've been reading my Rolemaster Classic books again and leafing through Waterdeep and the North and my Ruins of Undermountain boxed set. It then hit me that I could combine the two and satisfy two cravings at the same time.

Adapting rolemaster for AD&D isn't that hard, but I'm going to have to take care of a couple minor details...

1. No Gnomes in Rolemaster - do I add gnomes to Rolemaster or delete Gnomes from Faerun? I will probably add the gnomes. Maybe I can find something online.

2. "High Men" - do I delete them from Rolemaster or do I come up with a way of making two (or more) flavors of men work in Faerun? I could imagine separating a few different "sub-races" of men - Northern Barbarians, Calishites, and men of the Western Coast.

3. "Eastern" martial arts professions in Rolemaster, they don't groove with the more medieval/Ren vibe of Forgotten Realms. These could easily be switched to NPC professions only.

4. I'd like to add the paladin profession somehow, I've heard that this profession was covered in one of the rolemaster supplements or maybe I can find a fan version online somewhere. This class is important to a lot of the faiths on faerun so I want to make sure I get it in there.

5. I wouldn't allow my players to take on Orc, Trolls, and other humanoids as PC races. Just doesn't fit with my vision of the realms. I don't even like half-orcs and half-ogres as PC's in the realms - it just doesn't fit for me. When I think about the realms I think about Ed Greenwood's Spellfire, without a doubt. It just occurred to me that I need to review that book here, it was one of my original influences in how to play D&D.

6. I think playing in and around Waterdeep would allow for a lot of Roleplaying and less ROLL playing, which should keep the PC's alive for a decent amount of time. Directly adapting the kick down the door, kill the monster, and take all the loot approach of D&D would definitely fail miserably using rolemaster when all the PC's are knocked out, with broken bones, and slashed jugulars. I have both the City System boxed set with the glorious map that fills an entire room and also the FR1 Waterdeep and the North book that I will probably use more in play.

The Elves of Alfheim

2011-08-03T01:44:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been spending a few bucks on Ebay. I've been picking up the Mystaran Gaz series, slowly acquiring quite a few of them.

My favorite so far is the Elves of Alfheim. I love the cover shown above, I love the whole bit about the trees of life, the elven philosophy, the magic that grew a forest and created magically spawning monsters, the druidic style spell list for elves that take the treekeeper path, elvish swords, and pretty much everything about the book. It even has some nice adventure ideas for groups ranging from levels 1 up to the companion and masters level PC.

Finishing Castle Amber (with Alt Ending)

2011-08-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

Well, last week was my military buddies last day in town. We all got together for a bit of pasta and a D&D session with one singular goal in mind: finish the Castle Amber module. You can see my other play recaps one, two, three, four, five, and my alternate ending idea for the CAS inspired black sand desert and the alternate crypt.

I warned them up front that this could end in a TPK and secretly I knew that when they faced down the mummies in the tomb of Steven that was the most likely spot for TPK.

Things started out all right enough for them, they combined a ring of telekinesis, a flight spell and invisibility to make short work of the necromatic colossus with a well pitched bag of undead killing dust to the face. They defeated the beast of perigon and obtained the Ring of Eibon again employing a combination of an elf, flying outside of a castle window firing lightning bolt into the castle and then running about on the roof top, while their dwarf who is an animal with 46 HP at 5th level (now upgraded to 56! HP at 6th level) just stood toe-to-toe with the beast and took like 40 damage over 3 rounds without dying, until the beast of Averoigne bit his leg off at the knee. They waited a couple of weeks and fit the dwarf with a peg leg and continued on.

They performed the ritual combining the four items together to create an extra-dimensional rift that sent them to the demi-planar home of Steven Amber. They even did ok evading a death knight and sacrificing a mule to the crazy amputee gardners of the poison flower ruin/garden in the middle of the desert.

It was however a bit of a surprise when an albino orc took aim with a Winchester rifle and blew a large chuck of plate mail armor from the shoulder of the main leader of the party - the elf. The party responded with a barrage of magic missiles, hold person spells, and suddenly they had suppressed 20 out of 30 of the albino orcs in two or maybe three rounds at the most....

But all things turned around quickly when they opened the door to the Tomb using the gold crown they had found in the Amber Lion/Golem at the silver gate in the castle (I read to them about the tapestry of a gold crown and pheonix on a field of sable, and they came up with the idea that the doors could be opened by touching them with the crown. Initially I was planning for the doors to be unlocked but I thought it was a cool idea to touch the doors with the crown so I made it work and had the doors swing open with a loud rush of air at the first touch by the crown).

That was when everything fell apart - nine mummies attacked. Everyone in the party failed their saves and were paralyzed for a round giving the mummies a free attack. Then the mummies gained the initiative for the second round. Two out of seven of the party members were below zero by round two. By round 4 the number grew to 3 and the mummies hadn't yet taken damage. I realized I probably had a TPK on my hands but I was prepared for it. However, when three mummies rolled 1's in a roll on the party's cleric, keeping him alive, things began to turn around for the group. The clerics had both already tried turning to no avail, however, the cleric was able to run backward out of the tomb, with the mummies returning to their feet and giving chase, this allowed the party magic user to barrage them with magic missiles (he was sixth level casting 3d6+3 damage per spell!). This combined with some lucky strikes by the cleric, and things started turning around.

B/X Mummies are sick.

I was planning to have magaen creatures jump out of the side rooms but that would have ended the night without a doubt. So instead I made up some fun stuff for the players to find in there. One room had the implements of mummification, in another room was a large espresso machine and potion mixer with a sign that said (drink at your own risk), in the third room they found several automaton creatures that served steven, they interacted with them and figured out how to get to Stephen's casket and remove the curse.

As a side-note, also have to say that the most resilient character of the party was the dwarf, the combination of a low AC of 1, 46 HP, awesome saving throws, and wielding a +2 mace with another +1 to attack and damage due to strength meant that he just started dropping mummies every couple of rounds.

All the characters ended up with a little bit of mummy rot but that was cured by Steven Amber using his ring of wishes. He also healed them all up, regenerated the dwarf's leg, and gave them all a 10,000gp gem/jewelry, and a random magical item each. I rolled up some cool stuff for them and we quit the night. This is an awesome adventure but a bit of a monty haul relative to what I normally run my players through.

We decided that we might bring these characters back for another game - Master of the Desert Nomads and the Temple of Death. I think the PC's are of an appropriate power level for those two adventures. I already have an idea on how to pull them into the first adventure, but that is a tale for another evening...

Doing it Wrong

2011-07-20T01:42:00.000-07:00

"You can't do it wrong" or "As long as you are having fun, you are playing it the right way"

These statements have been showing up a lot on the blogs I've been reading lately. It is a way of approaching the RPG in a hippy laid back way that I really like, however, I don't totally agree with these statements. I think you can "do it wrong" as a DM and as a player.

Before I get all preachy and contrarian, let me explain where I am coming from. I'm speaking from the experience of having whole games come to a death spiral over one bad ruling from the DM. Even the best DM's make mistakes - maybe it is how you handle a wish, or a fight between two players, maybe you become biased, or maybe you are actually too fair and you let them crash and burn without you intervening in real life and coaching them.

For example, the DM could really screw over the PC's on a single wish spell and end a long running campaign. Did the DM make the right move? Should he have worked with the PC's to aim smaller in their intentions with the wish spell to lessen the chances of backlash? Maybe the DM feels that he "taught the players a lesson" but then maybe he just lost his group and it will now break up because the players feel defeated.

I played in another DM's game where he just constantly gave us too much treasure. Every game we had turned into a Monty Haul style campaign. We never felt challenged and we never really liked playing in that game. He kept telling me he was only giving out the treasure that he had rolled up on the tables in the back of the DMG. So he was technically following the rules. Where he was screwing up was that he wasn't offering up the appropriate challenge to the players. All of his monsters just came out in the open, and attacked the party without any guile or use of tactics. So a party was able to walk all over monsters of much higher level than they should have been able to if he had made his goblins use bows and arrows and fire down at the party from a vantage point. If he used more random encounters in his dungeons the party would have been weaker from facing lots of monsters with very little treasure, before they encountered beasts in their treasure laden lairs.

Anyway, I think you can "do it wrong" and sometimes the ruling that seems like it would make for the most "fun" right now is not what leads to the most fun in the long run. Experienced DM's learn this over years doing it wrong and making mistakes... maybe the OSR should talk a little bit about what they have learned over their combined years of DM'ing about doing it wrong that would help novice DM's not have to make all the same mistakes.

The Werewolves of Sylaire

2011-07-18T01:51:00.000-07:00

I threw down on the tabletop once more - X2 Castle Amber. The PC's have left the Castle, and have collected two of the objects needed to find Steven's extradimensional tomb in the twisted desert of Yondo. This latest adventure jumped off track of finding more objects, since the PC's decided to track down the lair of the magic using Werewolf lord and try to gain access to his spellbook. I dropped a couple of hints that they were going off the reservation, but they really wanted to, somewhat motivated by the fact that we were missing one of our gamers so they didn't want to finish the adventure without him.

Instead they tracked down and fought 13 werewolves! The amazing thing was that they killed almost 6 of the werewolves without taking any damage. They ended up on a rocky cliff and were able to use web spells to take the advantage away from the wolves and hedge them into a certain area. Lightning bolts, hold person, and light spells slammed into the ranks of werewolves. In the end the PC's killed all the werewolves except for the leader who ran off to live to fight another day.

They found a spell book that was 1/2 intact and then they met with the enchantress who helped them get back to Averoigne...

Next up for my PC's... finding the last two artifacts and landing at the shore of the malachite lake. Hopefully I can get the gaming group together one last time before my buddy moves to Georgia. Otherwise this story may never get told (unless we use skype).

Custom B/X DM's Screen

2011-07-15T01:32:00.000-07:00

I made this custom DM's screen for B/X DnD for my castle amber game in december, I have used it now for 4 sessions and I really like it, it drastically reduces the amount of looking up I do in the books.

Starting off with a picture from the DM's side, I took 4x 8"x11" pages and taped them to the inside of the Castles and Crusades GM's screen. I never DM castles and crusades in person so I don't ever anticipate using that DM's screen for what it was intended and using it for BX allows me to use a screen with amazing art by Peter Bradley!

Now from left to right, what the heck did I paste on the inside of the board. I started with the saving throw sheets. Monsters typically state that they save as a "fighter 3" or a "magic user 10" so this page worked when I was rolling saves for monsters or when I was rolling a secret save for a PC.

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After that, I added the death and dismemberment table. This was only used about 4 times total - but it was fun showing it to the PC's once in a while to freak them out.

After that page was the variable weapon chart, the armor chart, and the ranged weapon ranges with modifiers table. This was nice to have in front of me. DM's who use the d6 damage for everything rule, would probably be able to replace this with the ranged weapon table and maybe the EXP for monsters table or the random treasure tables? I didn't have either of these at my finger tips but it wasn't necessary since I was running a pre-generated and populated module. I'm thinking about changing this page up and adding those tables since in the future if I do get a campaign up and running I will be running more "on the fly" encounters. I really didn't need the armor table and I could make the other tables smaller to make space.

The final page was the most used, it had the attack tables for PC's and Monsters - nuff said.

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And finally, here is a crappy phone photo of the awesome artwork by Bradley.

I was pretty darn happy with this DM's screen overall. I'd love to see something like this professionally done up, but my scotch taped version will work for me until that day ;)

BX Rules Questions: Spell Durations, Blindness, etc..

2011-07-11T01:42:00.000-07:00

In my last game with my players (X2, Castle Amber, read my play reports, I had some good times) I had to make a record number of rulings. As a continuation of my last post of the topic, here are a couple more questions that came up during my game:

Question 4: Spell Durations - wow, I was pretty shocked by how high someone can levitate! This item is more of a statement than a question - I'm pretty sure I'm running this "by the book".

Levitate (check page B17), lasts for 6 turns + 1 turn/level. It states that a player can levitate 20'/round. I'm pretty sure that there are 60 rounds in a turn (1 round = 10 seconds, 6 rounds/minute, 10 minutes/turn, so 1 turn = 60 rounds!) so that means a spell caster can levitate 1200 feet per turn!!! So a 6th level spell caster can levitate a minimum of 7200 feet in the air (allowing enough time to descend slowly).

You could in fact go even higher if you calculated how high you could go, then allow free-fall at terminal velocity followed by using the levitate spell at the last few seconds to slow you down before striking the earth. I didn't do the math, but a 6th level caster could likely levitate 10,000 feet in the air.

In the castle Amber adventure, the PC's used this ability to find the ruins of Sylaire. The mage of the party used this spell to levitate about 1000 feet up, which I thought it was a good idea and allowed it, but in the back of my mind I was remarking that maybe I had something wrong with the rules because WOW! After the game was over, I went back and checked, and I think I was doing everything according to the rules as written.

Question 5: According to the basic rules blind characters cannot attack. If you don't believe me check out the description for the Light Spell on page B16. I overturned that rule as a DM and said I would allow players/monsters who have been blinded to attack at a -6 to -10 penalty depending on the circumstances. I didn't like saying "Blind Creatures cannot attack at all" - I think they should be able to hear their foe and make a horribly awkward attack. What do you think? Maybe we should ask this guy?

BX Rules Questions - Web Spells and Werewolves

2011-07-08T02:21:00.000-07:00

I got to say, I've been running a PBEM Greyhawk game but 1 day playing the game on the tabletop really has me charged up! I think I might run my PBEM game to a close or hand DM duties over to one of my players. I want to focus more on getting a regular tabletop group together...

Well, back to the reason for the this post.

Question1:

The web spell B18: range 10', duration of 48 turns, covers 10'x10'x10', and describes how you can break out of the web using fire, giant strength, etc... However, it doesn't explain what would happen if a spell caster decides to try and cast the spell directly on a group of enemies fighting the party. Do the opponents get a saving throw to get out of the effect of the spell?

House Ruling: I gave anybody in the area of the spell a saving throw vs. spells, modified by DX, to jump/run/slash their way out of the web area before it fully "sets". What would you do as a DM? did I get it wrong?

Question2:

Werewolves - what are the rules on shapeshifting, how does the moon affect shapeshifting, what does the animal form look like?

House Ruling: I ruled that werewolves can shapeshift whenever they want between man and animal form, the animal form looks like a very large wolf with elongated arms that look more like claws/fingers than forepaws. I ruled that shapeshifting took 1 round to complete going in either direction. Also, during the night of a full moon werewolves shift into animal form for the entire night and will run rampant killing everything in sight and feasting on the flesh of their victims. Did I get this wrong? How would you change this for your campaign?

Question3:

Can charm person and hold person affect a werewolf? In both of their descriptions they say that they affect bugbears, lizard men, etc.. which are pretty different than humans... Also, a werewolf is pretty much a human inflicted by a disease.

House Ruling: I decided that given the description that I had for werewolves (they can think in beast form, but the curse affects their alignment turning them chaotic and evil - basically into beasts in either form).... I would allow these spells to affect werewolves in either beast or man form. I could see good reasoning to only allow the spells to work against them in man form, but I gave the advantage to my players at least this time... What do you think?

Castle Amber_Alternate Ending_Part 2

2011-07-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

So you made it through Castle Amber, found all the artifacts in Averoigne needed to find the Tomb of Stephen, fought your way through the horrid deserts of Yondo. You are at the door of Stephens tomb starting at the black shield of sable, a phenix Or!

You open the door and head inside, only to find 12 sarcophogi which open up releasing 9 Mummies. Roll 9 savings throws vs. paralysis.... *insert the mad evil laughter of a DM as he watches his players one by one failing their saving throws*

Then I will have the mummies stride up and attack the party - gaining automatic initiative!

The party will face down 9 horrific foes, and then I have 4 rooms flanking the central hall that will begin to open up every 3 rounds releasing a small group of Magen guardians for Stephen's tomb! If this doesn't end in a TPK, the PC's will have proven their muster, and can enter Stephen's tomb and release him. He will use wishes to bring back any dead PC's and then whip them all back to Mystara and the adventure ends.... for now.

Castle Amber - Alternate Ending - Part 1

2011-07-04T06:34:00.001-07:00

I've spent a little time working out that alternate ending to X2. I really didn't like the ending that Moldvay put in there. It felt really rushed. It is a string of 7-8 rooms in a row with powerful creatures to kill, open door see Blue dragon (kill it), open next door find some sharks (kill them), etc... with little excitement, exploration, or thinking for the PC's.

So I'm going to add on a little more CAS flavored action to the adventure. Instead of plopping the PC's directly in front of the tomb of Stephen, I'm plopping them upon the shores of the green malachite salt lake from the "Abominations of Yondo" Story. They will be standing in a desert of ash colored sand with a swollen red sun hanging in the sky. Looking directly ahead across the massive lake they will see a lone building of white stone on the far shore of the lake, with a back drop of hemispherical astroid mountains.

They will have the choice of adventuring to the right side of the map (where they will encounter the inhabitants of the Crumbling Gardens of the Amputee's. I made this up in the spirit of ClarkAshton! Or they can explore to the left side of the map where there is a large forest of Evil Cacti. Either way the PC's choose the trip will be about 20 miles. I would start the PC's at about midday so that they will have to camp near either the Garden or the Forest of Cacti depending on the direction they choose.

The Amputees live in a beautiful garden of flowers and vegetables that stands on the crumbling ruins of a once beautiful palace! They "feed" the plants their own blood, and body parts to enhance their growth. These plants have also adapted to live on the green lake water. Many of the plants should be of the carnivorous variety, the DM should invent all sorts of interesting plants to attack the players with if they explore this area. This ancient palace was once full of treasure so feel free to drop the PC's a couple of interesting items or create a dungeon below the ruin if you think that would be fun.

On the other hand, the Forests of Evil Cacti is full of horrifying Ochre Jelly's, shades, and spectral riders! Come up with any number of horrifying images for the PC's, pop the top off your mind and go for it!!!! If the PC's attempt swimming or flying over the lake there are many evil Cthulthu-like squid creatures there so they better fly high over the lake!!! That would be the most direct method of getting there if they can just fly over the lake but it is several miles across so they better have a long duration spell power...

When the PC's finally reach the Tomb of Stephen, there will be a group of albino mutated beast men [treat as orcs]. I would say there should be 20-50 of them depending on the strength of the party. They are equipped with a combination of crude weapons (but maybe a few have firearms plucked from the dead fingers of victims pulled from more modern worlds) and will attack as a mob. If the PC's kill 50% of them, they will disperse and flee into the desert toward the mountains.

If the PC's defeat the albino beast men, they can move to Part 2 of the Alternate Ending (inside the tomb).

***This is a work of fan fiction for my own Dungeons and Dragons campaign. All use of Clark Ashton Smith's creations are to add flavor to this module which is being posted up here for free with no intent to publish any description or material from any of Smith's work beyond casual references made to "the abominations of Yondo", the "evil cacti", "the green lake", and "the inquisitors of Ong".****

pss... I would strongly suggest reading CAS Abominations of Yondo before running this alternate ending to X2.

Castle Amber... continued.

2011-07-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

Around Christmas 2010 and the first of this year I ran a group of friends through the first 1/2 of Castle Amber. We had a great time and it took them two play session and ~12 hours of playing time to get through the keep and into Averoigne. My buddy called me earlier this week, told me he was back from Europe, and would like to throw down more of the adventure. I told him I was free Saturday morning and early afternoon, and would love to continue the adventure.

Well this morning at 6:08am, three drunk friends of mine pounded on my front door. Apparently, they had gone out for a few after dinner drinks last night, which turned into MANY after dinner drinks. They had partied the night away, and decided it would be better to stay up all night, forego sleep, and show up on my door as early as they thought they could get away with it without me just kicking them out.

I grabbed some coffee, the Basic and Expert rulebooks, my dice (enough for 4 players), the Castle Amber adventure module, my improvised BX DM screen, and we started roleplaying at 6:30am this morning.

It is now 5 hours later... and I am remarking about how much Castle Amber is a MEGA MODULE! Don't be fooled, this is not an adventure module, it is a tiny campaign. When we had last left off, the players had just entered Averoigne from Castle Amber. We reviewed the salient points and then we started. First off they found an Inn, met some locales, talked it up and found out that Ximes was ~180 miles south of where they were. They started the ~9 day journey to Ximes, ran into various encounters, and met an adventuring Bard on the road, and finally entered Ximes. The Bard had related to them that he once had learned a Song about a Castle Amber that had disappeared one night long ago after many of the inhabitants had been accused of witchcraft and conversing with the devil! The Bard told them that he thought that maybe Castle Amber had disappeared over 1000 years ago (the bard was exaggerating *insert evil GM chuckle*.)

They decided to start reading a Holy Bible that they had found in Castle Amber, they intially couldn't read it and the mage of the party had collected it thinking that it might be a powerful spellbook. Once transported into Averoigne I ruled that the magic had allowed them to communicate in French as if it were Thayatian common from Mystara. The clerics of the party scoured the book closely and determined important point - there was one supremely powerful god above all others, and he had ruled that magic use was outlawed. They kept all their spellpower undercover from that point on.

They went to the Church in Ximes, and found Azedarc preaching a long sermon in a Catholic church. They put together the pieces and determined that there must be something fishy going on. One of the elves used an invisibility spell to sneak into the back of the church until he ran into Azedarc's assassin. The assassin figured out what was going on and decided to deal with the PC's. The PC's met him at a tavern and there they traded him a scroll with three powerful spells for a potion of time travel. Little did they know that the time travel potion was actually poison mixed with a time travel potion.

They had massive quantities of gold, so they bought a massive wagon and a large wooden boat and traveled north to try and find Sylaire. They found the ruins of Sylaire by levitating amazingly high (I've got to check if I'm playing B/X spell durations correctly) and then finding the ruins from their arial vantage. They passed through the magical gate, and I ruled that they fell asleep.

They awoke to two of their company bound in ropes, and most of their weapons in the hands of a massive group of Neanderthals!!! This was a lot of fun, they had to think quickly on their feet (which isn't easy when you have had zero sleep, but I had never said I wasn't an evil DM!) and figure out how to get their people back. They fought the primitive men for several rounds when the sky began to darken. The Neanderthals saw the sky change and decided to run away.

Sephora of Sylaire stepped forward and apologized for the actions of the primitives. She explained that she was cursed (I was adding things here and there if you haven't guessed, mainly because I hadn't had time to read the module through and was just improvising on my feet). Anyway, I told the group that she was stuck in time at a point where lycanthropic chaos threatened to overwhelm these primitive men inflicting them all with the disease and changing the course of history forever. She needed their help in defeating a time traveling werewolf magic user and then she would give them the sword of Sylaire and return back to the dimension of Averoigne. I had also ruled earlier that in Averoigne clerics turning ability and spells were as a cleric of 3 levels lower due to distance from their deity whereas in Sylaire I allowed the clerics full use of their abilities since the plane was not ruled by our GOD. I explained that Sephora was powerful but she didn't want to risk herself in combat against the wolves since she was the last guardian of these primitive people (blah, blah, blah, lol).

Well, the guys agreed to face down this werewolf magic user. So I look down into the module and find very little description of how to handle the encounter. There is no map, no stats on how many other werewolves he might have created, or any information about his lair. I improvised a map of the area, showed approximately where the werewolf might be. The players ran afoul of several traps in the forest, and a small army of club weilding skeletons (I saw that the were wolf guy had the animate dead spell, and I figured that given enough time he would have raised a small army of undead to guard his lair). Finally, I figured that using wolf spies, he would have gained information about the PC's coming toward him. He took 5 of his most trusted werewolves, 15 normal wolves, and himself as a war party to head out and face the PC's exactly at dusk.

The PC's heard the wolves coming before they saw them - there were 7 PC's in the party total. 5 of the PC's made a circle with the mage in the center and waited. The thief and one of the elves went invisible and ran out into the forest to scout.

The wolves ran through the area occupied by the scouts, and then began running circles around the circle of PC's. The PC's cast everything they could think of for protection and then got ready to fight. The wolves attacked, web spells were cast, hold person, light spells on the eyes of werewolves, the magic using werewolf tried polymorphing the party mage unsuccessfully. Things got dicey for a couple of rounds, but the PC's were eventually able to win, killing off almost all of the wolves, all of the werewolves, and slaying the werewolf magic user with a single lightning bolt (he failed his saving throw)!

The party's fighter lost an arm (I'm using the table of death and dismemberment, which I have on my improvised B/X DM's screen), but everyone lived through the encounter. The PC's gained the sword of Sylaire, but they are planning to go back into the forest to find the lair of the werewolves, rout them all out, and try and find the spellbook of the magic using werewolf! There is absolutely no information about the lair in the Castle Amber module, but I'm thinking since the PC's are planning to wait 3d6 weeks for the fighter (Thorn) to heal up such that he is ready for battle (as well as he can with one arm) - I think one of the werewolves will have become the leader of the group, infected a mass of other primitives, such that now they will have a small contingent of werewolf neanderthals guarding the lair. I think the lair will be a structure made of timber built off the entrance of a natural cave. There will be plenty of traps, and wooden structures built to funnel the PC's down choke points and force them to do battle with the lycanthropes on their terms. A huge encounter from roughly 1 sentence of the module. This adventure can really turn into a campaign. I'm also thinking about what other protections and guards would a 10th level wizard have provided to keep his spellbook from harm (even from the other werewolves) while he headed out to go fight the PC's party.

I've been really generous with EXP for this game, so I gave them all 1500exp each (which brought one of the elves within 1700exp from leveling to LVL5. When this adventure finishes, it will end in a TPK or character retirement anyway, so I'm just playing things fast and loose.

I'm having a lot of fun with B/X D&D - I had to do a lot of house rulings for one adventure, maybe a record. I'll try to write down the things that came up and maybe post them up here for discussion (if anybody is still reading my blog).

My military buddy is going to be around for the next couple of weeks so we decided we will try to get together at least one more time before he heads back to wherever. I'm skeptical that they can finish the adventure in 4-6 hours if they get sidetracked trying to find the lair of the werewolf, so I will probably try to reason with them. However, if they decide to go that route, I already have a mental layout for the werewolf lair and what they might find on the way. Good times.

I came up with a mental plan for an alternate ending to the Castle Amber adventure involving the abominations of Yondo, and mummy guards, and half-men worshipers of the abominations, for the tomb of Stephen, so I'm going to have to spend at least an hour writing down some notes and sketching up some maps to flesh that part out in case the PC's make it to the end of the adventure...

If they do, I'll make sure to blog out a play report from how it went!

Penhaligon Keep on the Borderlands

2011-06-26T16:42:00.001-07:00

I combined the "Keep" with my concept for the Penhaligon village. In the keep I removed the tavern, provisioner, etc... which I believed would be sufficiently taken care of by the surrounding walled village. All of the keyed items correspond to the descriptions in the module by Gary Gygax.

The Manor house and Guest houses will only be detailed if I think I have need of them. These areas will not normally be visited by the PC's unless they are of sufficient level and notoriety to be tipping wine glasses with Lady Penhaligon.

Next up... details of my Ettercap adventure.

Map of Penhaligon

2011-06-19T05:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I took a bit of time off from blog posting. I've been having a good time with my Castles and Crusades Greyhawk game that I GM. The players are getting a lot closer to the final campaign enemy and have defeated some Forest Giants recently and all gained levels! In addition, I've been posting on the wonderful PBEM CoC game that is now being helmed by O4E.

But in the few hours I have to dedicate to this hobby, I've become obsessed with a Mystara campaign that I'm planning to incorporate many of the early B and X modules that I have in my possession.

I'm planning to start the game in Specularum with B6, move north to Penhaligon where I'm planning to first run an encounter with Ettercap's and Spiders based out of the Dymark, and then run a heavily modified version of B2. I anticipate that the PC's will be at a high enough level to be enticed to head south on a small ship to search for treasure on the Isle of Dread (X1) and then I plan to move things into X4 and X5 running both of the David Cook modules involving the Master. I will then move the PC's into Alphatia and Thyatis and run a few adventures off the cuff. I have never GM'd any of these adventures and I don't think my PC's have ever read them so this will be a lot of fun.

Oh yeah, I wanted a map of Penhaligon but couldn't find one. The map resolution in the picture came out pretty ok, it gets bigger if you click on it. I plan to key important buildings on the map and produce a detailed map of the Castle of the Three Suns, which will be an adapted "Keep" from B2. All this is for my campaign notes, but I will try to post as much as possible in case somebody else would like to run a game of B2 set in a home brew Penhaligon.

I downsized the population from ~4000 referenced in the GAZ1 to a smaller 1000-2000 size. The village is 1/2 outside of the wall and 1/2 in the wall. There will be a lot of empty buildings in the city that serve as siege housing during raids by humanoid creatures from the Wufwoldes. I read the Penhaligon Trilogy and I'd like to bring a little of that flavor to my game so I'm making a few other changes to my Known World to bring out some of the flavor. I hope to blog about some of these changes soon!

Three Companions - Odd Parts, Final Thoughts

2011-04-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I actually finished this series of posts - this might be as rare as our little friend above :) It may be the first non game play related group of posts that I finished. There were parts of each book that mostly didn't overlap with the others. I thought I might cover these to give context about each book.

Barrataria games Companion Expansion had an expanded equipment list and a little section on overland movement rates with different animals and the effect encumbrance might have on rate. It had some good descriptions in its equipment section and also had 4 fast packs... I liked the fast packs used in Moldvay's B4 - The Lost City. The fast backpack just gets through the phase of character creation where certain players will hog the book and try to buy everything in the item list. Lately, my games have been loose enough and short enough (2-4 sessions long, no long campaigns) that it wasn't worth letting people pick out their equipment. Last time we made up characters, I told them, just pick out a backpack from B4 so I will definitely be pointing my players in this direction for more variety in Ye Old Fast Pack. Barrataria had riding dogs for halflings and gnomes this gives short folk more choices than the standard pony.

JB's B/X companion had some cool sections on Dungeon Mastering as a fine art and rules for dominion. This was also something covered by Mentzer. JB's dominion rules were fast and loose, while Frank was all about the random table. I think by combining these dominion rules together with the mass combat rules, players could take part in a "game within the game" if they so choose.

Mentzer also had a pretty neat section on extraplanar adventuring. He only touches on the ethereal and elemental planes in these books. I'm assuming he saves other planes for the Masters and Immortal rules. He also touches on the concept of vortexes and wormholes which are points where the elemental planes bump up against other planes. They create little pockets ripe for adventuring that are limited in scope rather than trying to tackle an infinitely large plane. I could see using these wormholes to spark interest in the planes from my players. It could also be a spot to place an interesting NPC or villain that the PC's will have to interact with on unsure territory. You can bend the normal game physics in these spots so it is important that the PC's are experienced and have an idea of what the norm is for your adventuring world before trying to change their expectations a pocket dimension.

Overall I was happy with the companion series books. I definitely will be slow to adopt material from these books into a B/X game and will test things out one at a time. Having come from a hard core background of 2nd edition AD&D I can tell you that when the splat books (Book of Elves, Book of Gnomes, Book of Fighters, Book of Thieves, etc...) all came out, my players wanted to integrate them all into my game immediately. Initially I let them, but over time I started pulling back on this tactic. I found that by adding tons and tons of very specific rules into the game atmosphere suddenly there was less and less room for flexible GM tinkering. Suddenly all the players were turning into Rules Lawyers... I would hear stuff like, my elven PC doesn't have to sleep because the Book of Elves says he doesn't. Then I would have to play the GM fiat card and say, "Well in MY GAME WORLD elves sleep!" This kind of back and forth just disrupts game play, so I eventually had to tell my players that all the optional rules were banned from the table. Players were limited to options from the Players Handbook unless I told them they could bring in one specific component from an optional rules book.

I feel that the options presented in these companion books should be treated the same. They can add tons of extra flavor to your game, but don't add too many flavors at the same time. I like steak, and peanut butter, lobster, and ice-cream, but if you add them all together (and you aren't an Iron Chef DM) you may just get an inedible mess...

Three Companions - Treasures and Magic Items

2011-04-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

I have a certain reservation about the default experience system of B/X DnD. I don't like to give out massive boatloads of treasure in order to fuel the PC's in thire rise through the level charts. In playing my short little run through B/X DnD so far I corrected this in two ways. First off - I like to give out achievement based EXP. This throws sand in the face of certain OSR folks who have alternate theories on this issue. However, once the PC's have decided on a goal, I tend to give them an EXP award if they complete the goal. This isn't some DM driven story award carrot created to push the PC's into running down the linear path of the DM's pregen adventure. Instead, I will give EXP to players who create goals for themselves and then complete those goals. They make my job as a DM easier by "making decisions" and "engaging in teamwork to accomplish a goal" - things I like to see in my games because these things lead to fun. Another simple thing that I did to decrease the importance of treasure in PC experience gains was to multiply monster experience awards by 3x. I tend to maximize my monsters effectiveness in hampering the PC's as much as possible, so if the PC's actually defeat the monsters, I like to give them a good deal more exp for that creature than what is in the default rules for B/X. These two little changes make gold based EXP less important to leveling a PC.

Which is good because I am a stingy DM. I make my PC's work for their gold! My PC's in my PBEM castles and crusades Greyhawk campaign are near broke right now at 4th level. Some of them are complaining, but most of them are having a good time with the game and enjoy the challenge. Another interesting side effect of being a stingy DM, is you can let your PC's play to higher and higher levels without worrying about them entering into a run away power spiral. If you keep monty-haul treasure dumping on the PC's, at a certain point they have so much treasure and so many magical items, that there is really little left in the game world to go after. They are also so powerful that you have to come up with crazy stupid monsters to challenge them.

So anyway, with that lead up out of the way, let's talk about what I was planning on focusing on for this post! Treasure and magic items in the three companions!

I will start again with the Barrataria Games Companion Expansion books. There are a wide variety of magic potions and scrolls, which I tend to give out fairly frequently because I love magic items that have limited use. This allows your players to use them effectively but then eventually run out of their magic and be forced to go out adventuring for more. One particular scroll that I found interesting was the scroll of interrogation - it is pretty neat, and I don't remember seeing it before. There are some pretty neat wands, rods, and staves for wizards. And then there are some really cool oddball magic items such as Marvelous Pigments that allow an artist to draw out non magical inanimate items and then it becomes real! That is a pretty darn useful magic item! They didn't have much in the way of treasures described beyond the magic items - no art objects, or land titles, or strange artifacts, etc... Overall, I was pretty happy with their use of magic items. I have the Forgotten Realms adventures book which has the most amazing set of tables and descriptions for art objects and jewelry. If you have never seen this before it is worth checking out.

JB's B/X companion, started out with a treasure table built on the starting points from the B/X style game, and then added new magic items. He has a very brief section about gems and jewelry and then moves on to the magic items section. First off, I really did get some evil DM chuckles from JB's cursed items. I normally don't use many cursed items, but he has some real interesting cursed items in this book which make me think about changing that policy!!! One of my favorite items was the Tome of Utter Destruction, beyond its cool name, it sucks the reader into another dimension - and the GM gets to decide the fate of the character. Yeah, you can suck the PC into the Army of Darkness universe so they can go all BOOMSTICK on the population there. I also enjoyed the Dancing Hut which reminds us all of the walking huts from Baba Yaga and the witch in the Fafrd and Grey Mouser series.

Now we move to the Mentzer companion set which starts on page 43 of his DM's guide. Frank probably has the best non-magical treasure sections, having gem value tables with example gem names like amethst, carbuncle, and tristals and starstones! For his jewelry table he describes a variety of types of jewelry that the PC's could find such as leaf shapes, bracelets, crowns, scepters, etc... on page 48 he describes each of these types and what they would look like. I think that is nice for the beginner DM. Then we get into the magical items section. Most of these items seem to be from the AD&D manuals, but I can't cross-reference since my copies were destroyed years ago in a real life fire. I'll pull out examples of neat magical items that seem new to me or sound like they would be fun to use in the game. I like potions of Dreamspeech - this seems very Howardian - I can see the dark eyed wizard using this potion to interrogate the sleeping Queen of Aquilonia. Scrolls of shelter and spell catching are really neat! I like the idea of a wizard using scroll paper as a sheild against a spell and then behold, the spell is transcribed in glowing runes on the parchment with no detrimental effects to the defending wizard!!! Eggs of wonder are really cool and could be used to interesting effect. Also, Frank had two really cool sections on missile types, such as screaming missiles and speaking missiles - the final section is on special weapons and it has some table on how to make special magical weapons using tables similar to those found in the AD&D handbooks.

Anyway, there are a wide variety of magical items in these books for you to use. However, if you are a new DM to the game, remember my cautioning statement at the beginning of this post and be a little stingy. Make them work to gain and keep all the magic items they find. Also, I think you should always try to make the magical items be a personal and add little quirks to them to make them unique. For example, maybe a magical sword is non-magical on one particular night of the year. Or perhaps a +1 sword is +3 on the night of the full moon? Do some wacky things like that to keep your PC's interested otherwise, you will hear little sighs around the table when they figure out that it is "just another +2 sword" and NOT the SWORD OF OMENS.

Three Companions - Monsters

2011-04-10T04:26:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, monsters.... the guys that your players attack with D20's and then they drop loot and stuff for your players to collect! Nothing more to say on this one.

This topic is going to be hard for me to cover in only one post, but I really want to complete this series covering the Three Companions that I started in ~January. I have a fruitful past in this blog of starting things and then dropping them quickly. If you don't believe me click the tabs at the bottom of this post that read Pub Crawl (discontinued in the middle), Streets of Madness (also discontinued in the middle), Forgotten Realms (dropped quickly and replaced by my most recent obsession of "The Known World"). I have a limited amount of time to spend on "this blogging thing" and sometimes I like to bite off more than I can chew. The monsters section of the three companions that I am reviewing is such an elephant. There are way too many things to talk about if I wanted to cover them and compare them completely. It would probably take 2-3 massive posts, but I am really serious about slamming this out today and having some fun with it.... so I think what I might do is give a 1000 foot overview of these sections for each book and then perhaps pick out 1 or maybe 2 monsters from each book that I find the most appealing to me.

Almost every morning this week when I'm sitting at my computer before the sun comes up sipping coffee like a zombie, just waiting for the coffee to give me enough energy to shave, or shower, or iron some clothes.... I've been reading about monsters. Ah the life of a gamer with a job. I think I've come up with some conclusions about the different companion books and how I will use them in my campaigns.

So lets start out with our wide angle lens and try focusing on the Barrataria Companion Expansion. The monsters here do not cater to the 14th level and beyond adventurer. Instead we have a suite of monsters that remind me of the AD&D game rulebooks along with a few original ones. I find this monster section the weakest of the three books I'm reviewing since I already have prior versions of almost all the creatures. However, the companion expansion book has a different purpose relative to what I was looking for in a "Companion Book". It reminds me more of the LL AEC which intends to add more layers of complexity to the B/X style game. This is actually opposite in the direction that I wanted to go with my B/X games. I find that the simplicity of the B/X system is one of the glorious things that makes it work so well.

Probably my favorite monster from this book was the Wax Golem. It was a cool, low powered golem that I could see using to create a very creepy House of Wax Golems horror inspired adventure. It got me thinking down really cool threads of how I could mutate these guys and make a bunch of adventures from this one monster. These guys got me excited to play some D&D which is a really good thing.

Next in line is the B/X companion, by JB of B/X Black Razor. I love the monsters section of his book. I think it is probably my favorite of the three books. First off, there are many creatures of what I would call the "near-original" creations. They are monsters that are familiar tropes of fantasy but statted up for B/X style play. JB also give all the creatures his own twist which I really like. I seem to be babbling here at the mouth so let me give you a couple of examples: The Goblin Lord is a handsome, tall, magic using goblin that can boss around hordes of regular goblins and is a throwback to the days when goblins and elves sprang from the same common ancestor. I can see many really cool applications for this guy.

JB also added Maenads and Frog People, and greater mummies. Who can go wrong with adding Greater Mummies? Another good example is the Death Lord - this guy is very similar in nature to Lord Soth of the dragon lance series, but the death lord also reminds me of the Spawn comic book. Again, JB adds his own twist to these guys and gives them some really neat powers that make them a good choice for the villian of a high level adventure series.

And then we end with Mentzer's D&D Companion set books. It starts with the Beholder statted up for B/X style play - heck yeah, the Beholder :) We then have rules for making super powered dragons capable of withstanding high level adventurers. High level ghosts, gargantuan creatures with 24-51 hit dice, and other unique creatures such as the Drolem. This is a really cool creature with a horribly unfortunate name. It is a mechanical dragon golem construct - how cool is that, right? It has 20HD, has massive damage output, is immune to all sorts of magical attacks, and has the name Drolem. Well, I guess this harkens back to the early fun days of the game when a certain amount of humor was regularly injected and we all didn't take this game so seriously. Dragon, golem, dragon-golem, and finally Drolem, I totally see how you get from A to B. I almost want to make my PC's fight one of these guys controlled of course by an evil wizard who will yell out," You will all die at the hands of my DROLEM!!! (insert nefarious cackle)".

Overall, I really like Franks monster section, and he also had a lot of elemental plane creatures for PC's to interact with, some of which are really neat and creative. I especially liked the Horde creatures from the earth plane with their "hive mind" and strange alien purposes.

Anyway, these three books give me a lot of ammunition for the DM cannon. I think I will start covering the magical items and treasure sections of all three books next. Until then young DM's, go forth and scour rulebooks for new monsters, if you don't like the monsters you find there, then tweak them. Send out your civilization ending beasties statted up on the back of spiral bound notebooks, find inspiration on saturday morning cartoons, read through mythology, there is a wealth of monsters in our history that are just waiting get some D&D stats. You can figure out if they have type Q or T treasure tables or whether they play chess later. However young DM's, just remember to give them a better name than "Drolem" or....

this guy will come and wreck havoc on your city!

Still Alive - Mass Combat

2011-04-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

I'm still alive.

I haven't been blogging for a while, but I am having a great time with both my PbP Castles and Crusades Greyhawk game and also the continuation of the adventures of the Majestic Four in a PBEM Call of Cthulhu game started by Daddy Grognard and now continued by Pete. I've also become obsessed with the Known World and I'm starting to collect gaming materials related to it. I'm developing some ideas for a campaign based in Mystara/Known World, which I probably won't start until this summer or fall.

The first text from Barrataria Games doesn't have a section on mass combat. This book was more of a Companion Expansion and is not fully focused on higher level play. It is all about adding lots of options to a current B/X, LL, S&W game.

The B/X Companion by JB at Running Beagle games has a very simple multiplier system that essentially treats units like large monsters. It is pretty slick, super quick to operate based on my casual overview, and will need lots of GM creativity in handling special cases. I would like to try it out to see how it plays I think people who care about the little details of things will feel like something is lacking, but in general this system would be really nice for a GM who is going to introduce a little mass combat here and there but not focus on it.

In comparison, the Mentzer Companion has a mass combat system called "The War Machine". This seems very war gaming - I feel like you would want to grab the mini's and the battlemat and some snacks and prepare for a long afternoon. There is an elaborate system by which you give each unit some stats - basic force rating, troop class, and battle rating, and then there is a combat system with lots of tables and modifiers. I think this could be really fun to use for an afternoon, but it is going to take a long while. You would have to have the right type of gamerz at your table who would be into playing a "game within a game" and focus on this. I think you could create a high level mini-campaign with three to four adventures based on alternating the PC roleplaying and the war machine focus. If played correctly and with the right gaming group this could be an epic finale to a long campaign. Or a way to involve your PC's in the "War that changed everything", leading to interesting role play opportunities in the aftermath.

Anyway, I like both systems for what they are good for - use JB's B/X companion rules for small units of troops for a quick resolution and "move on the with the game", but, if you want to make Mass Combat the focus of a gaming night, then get out the battle mats and throw down with the war machine.

Knockspell #5

2011-03-01T03:13:00.000-08:00

Matt Finch graciously sent me my contributor copy of KS#5 last night. I briefly flipped through it and there are some really cool pieces in there. I had already ordered a paperback copy from Lulu and I will probably wait for that to read through it in detail.

From my first impression, there is some really cool stuff in there, a couple of adventures, a cool article on using scrabble pieces for random monster generation and other things, and my little article on Pools and Vats.

Anyway, in the future I may post up a couple of short adventure hooks and additional spells that can augment the material found in the article.

Three Companions - Class and Race

2011-02-11T09:34:00.001-08:00

Each of the three companion books has new classes and/or races - here is a quick breakdown at the high level:

JB's B/X Companion - this book stays the closest to the Moldvay rules system and doesn't add much. He only added the Bard class. This is a class only for humans, and seems to be pretty similar to the 3rd edition take on the class. They can create spell effects through their music which can enchant, charm, etc... their listeners. These powers get stronger as they advance. Bards can only reach 8th level. A really cool idea that JB added was giving high level thieves some new abilities. I really liked this option. High level deminhumans can continue to gain experience and fighting power, although they can't gain new HP (this may have been templated from the Mentzer book).

Mentzer Companion - Mentzer keeps the core classes from his re-writing of the Moldvay rules, but adds some options for Name level characters. 9th level Neutral clerics can choose to become Druids, gaining new powers and an altered spell list, but losing some of their clerical abilities. Fighters of name level and higher can choose to become Paladins, Knights, or Avengers. Each of these choices gives the fighter some new abilities and some cool roleplaying aspects, but otherwise the fighter is mostly still a fighter. Mentzer also allows deminhumans to gain EXP beyond their max level and some fighting powers. He also added some really cool ideas on how to give the deminhumans some traditional magical items that are related to demihuman culture. I really liked this concept.

Barratarria Companion Expansion - being an "expansion" this book had a wealth of new character classes and races. I can't cover these all in detail so I will call out some highlights. They had a BARD class that can level up to LVL 36 and looked a lot like the ADD 1st/2nd edition BARD. They also had a druid class that was similar to the ADD version. They had some druidic wildwood elves - but I wasn't a major fan of this idea. I think I would have preferred they give Elves some additional "elven" spells that are nature related. I've seen Elf nature spell lists for several campaign worlds (making them different than the typical spells used by Human mages which helps to make Elves different). Gnomes again are pretty similar to dwarves & halflings with some added spell lists, I think I would rework the Gnome class if I decided to add it to my game. They also added Scouts (which are pretty much rangers) and the Half-Elf/Half-Orc class which are pretty much Scouts. They also had a separate illusionist class. All of these options are pretty close to their AD&D counterparts. This expansion gives you almost all the options of AD&D but set at the power level and rules compatibility of B/X DnD. This is very similar to the approach of the Labyrinth Lord AEC. They also had a cool Half-Ogre class - I thought about changing this class and making it into the Cyclops of the "Krull" class. I don't know why - but I'm kind of obsessed with Rel the Cyclops.

Overall -

I don't see me adding most of these Barrataria classes to my regular B/X gaming. I think I would go with the more conservative route of Mentzer - allowing some cool options at high level and no new 1st level classes. I might be tempted to add a single class from the Companion Expansion or Labyrinth Lord AEC if one of my players was really excited about playing it. I'd like to add a Gnome race, but alter it a bit from the Companion Expansion version. I'll think about that and maybe post one up online.

Three Companions

2011-01-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

I now have three companions... err well, it is kinda like four books, but who's counting anyway...

I'm really busy lately, lots of work, lots of travel, wedding plans, honeymoon plans, pretty much every day since Jan 1st has been a sprint... as a result of my insanity this will be a very brief post...

My last several blog posts have described how much fun I had playing through the X2 Castle Amber adventure. As a side effect I've really fallen in love with the B/X version of our favorite game. I'm working on continuing a Skype game using B/X rules and making it a "short" campaign.

Reading over what has been published for "basic DnD" over the years I got really interested in the "companion" editions that have been published and what they could do to augment the game. I started by purchasing the B/X companion by JB over at BX Blackrazor. Then I purchased the Companion Expansion by the Barrataria guys. Finally, I decided to purchase the Frank Mentzer Companion books off Amazon. I don't think there are any other companion editions out there now... he, he, he...

I've been reading them and I like different things about each. I'm planing to discuss this more soon... in a series of posts describing how I can combine them to create the perfect melody of companion goodness!!!! Stay tuned - it will in fact be as awesome as these three guys down here:

Castle Amber Recap - Part 3

2011-01-15T06:38:00.001-08:00

Our second day of playing the Castle Amber adventure took place on Dec 31st of 2010. I allowed the PC's to make up a few extra characters to join the party, here is a summary of the additions:

Randy Gnarlypath (now deceased) 4th level Neutral Halfling, favored his shortsword in combat, built short but stout and fiesty with his 16 STR, 13DEX, and 14 CON!

Barden Oakfist, 5th Lawful Cleric of Halav, Barden carried the trusty Sword and Hammer of Halav into combat.

Thorn, 4th level Neutral fighter, big and mean, Thorn picked up an enchanted Black Mace +2 and used it with his 18 STR to beat down his enemies in the dungeons under Castle Amber.

Most of the PC's leveled up to 4-5th level by the time they passed through the silver gate into Amber. During this part of our adventure, the PC's passed into the Chapel of the Chateau and ran into the magical statues, tried to work out horrible "misunderstanding" between Charles Amber and his sister Madeline Amber (who Charles had buried alive!!!). Harkindurn the party dwarf was inflicted with malaria from the statues, but this was later reversed by the powerful chaotic demon worshipping cleric Simon D'Amberville in a successful attempt to allay the party's fears against him.

The party was unable to relieve the tension between Charles and his sister. Charles went invisible and slipped away warning Simon of the party's nearness. Madeline, took off through the keep with her trusty war-shield and sword searching for revenge against her brother. The party, unsure of what to do searched around finding a chest full of treasure and some secret doors finally leading to Simon D'Amberville.

Simon first got the party to trust him with some sugar tongued words, the gift of a ring of protection +1, and a remove curse spell. However, he memorized some other spells to deal with the party when they decided to spend the night in his sanctum. He cast a silence spell on a rock and tossed it into the midst of the party as they slept. He then cast several curses on various party members, quested several of them to find the tomb of St.Stephen, cast finger of death - killing the party Halfling Randy, used hold person on two of them who had been the "watch", and then was about to start slitting throats when I finally rolled a random roll for one of them to wake up. Simon decided to err on caution and slipped away quickly through another secret door, while the party woke up to find one of them dead, most of them either cursed or held, and a silence spell in effect. It took them a while and dispel magic, but they were able to remove most of the effects except for the curses and the quest spells. The party then decided to use the trap door to the dungeon (which Simon had explained to them while he was getting on their good side).

During their explorations of the dungeon they first found the alchemy room, where they were "gassed" by some strange purple lotus powder that caused them to have trippy LSD type dreams that became real if they failed their saving throws!!! This actually didn't kill anyone, but the party dwarf almost ended up with wings (which we all laughed about at the table, just imagining a surly dwarf in chain mail with a massive axe and sporting cute whittle pixie wings ;) Also, the party mage gained a level in an instant by failing his saving throw - wow, Tom Moldvay put some serious character altering effects in this adventure.

In the dungeons the party battle hell hounds, stayed the heck away from a hypnotic small child standing in the middle of a pentagram and begging the party to release her (she was a death demon using an illusionary form), the party mage gained 2 points of wisdom passing over the letter square area to nab another key.

The party also fell afoul of the brain collector in area 48b. This was probably the most challenging of all the things they fought, wherein it forces three of the company to roll against the table of death and dismemberment - hitting less than zero HP.

They first took a look at this tentacled monstrosity perched upon crab legs having almost humanlike hands at the bottom, and watched it ingest the brain of a recent victim. The brain slid smoothly under the rubber carapace of the slimy yellow dome that vaguely resembled a head up and then the fish like swiveling eyes of the beast turned toward our heroes! The party slammed the door shut and let the party clerics cast preparative spells to "buff" up our heroes. However, this also allowed the creature to go invisible, and cast a phantasmal force version of itself. The party burst back into the room and did like 60 damage to the illusionary creature, wasting a lightning bolt, all their magic missile spells, lots of arrows, for a couple of bogus combat rounds, which allowed the brain collector to cast haste on itself and then charge the party!!!

They then had a desperate battle where the party fighter ended up with a broken arm, and two others ended up unconscious. However, they were finally victorious and went back up to the unicorn and the maiden where they spent the night. They returned to the dungeon in the morning, battled an amber golem and then unlocked the silver gate to transport them into Averoigne. We stopped the adventure at this point.

Everybody had a good time, and since 1-2 of my players were heading back to Italy on a plane in a couple of days, we decided to try and make plans to finish up the adventure someday on Skype. Everybody had an excellent time, this was everybody at the gaming tables first time playing an edition of DnD pre-2nd edition, except for me. Most of these guys only play 3rd edition, and they were really surprised at how much fun they had. One of them told me he had expected to become really bored with the game considering he wouldn't have a tool-kit of feats to fall back on. However, he remarked at the end of our game that combat really went quick and not having feats gave him the ability to think outside of the box and just try "crazy" maneuvers. I just used on the spot random die rolls to adjudicate things that aren't covered within the rules.

Anyway, this is a really great adventure, and a massive one which is almost like a mini-campaign. We spent about 6-8 hours playing and the PC's have accomplished almost 1/2 of the adventure so far. Hopefully, we will organize a skype game and finish this one up because I have a lot more in store for them if we do (insert evil GM chuckle here)...

Castle Amber Recap - Part2

2011-01-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

Day 1 Encounters:

In the first 3 hours of real time the players were able to make it through the West Wing and 1/2 way through the center Indoor Forest area.

One particular interesting encounter in the West wing was the Aranea room.

The PC's were still preoccupied by a encounter with a huge green slime that was guarding a treasure. They had not figured out a way to destroy this massive slime (and never would) so they decided to try out the doors nearby.

They opened the door to the next room down from the slimes and found it completely filled with spider webs. In the back of the room they could see a glittering array of spider eyes looking at them longingly. They slammed the door shut and moved on.

Or so they thought - the aranea used a phansmal force to make them think they had shut the door when instead they had just shut an illusionary door. Two of the aranea then proceeded to follow them and charm Higgins (I rolled him as the victim randomly). Once Higgins was charmed he tried to set the mage of the party on fire with his torch. The party started to try to dealing with Higgins and then a big spider falls down top of the party cleric. The other two spiders are hiding in the original room bidding their time.

The party begins to fight the 1st spider when the second spider casts magic missile on the party. Two PC's are hit and then they see the spider pop its head back inside the door (looking like it is "phasing" through the door. They decide that these spiders must be partially ethereal so they run over to the illusionary door (still believing that it is real) and try to open it. Meanwhile the spider just pops its head out of the illusion and bites the dwarf who is trying to open the door. Luckily the dwarf has amazing poison saves or they would have had a dead dwarf.

The third spider turns invisible and slinks away from the fight, not liking where it is going. The PC's kill the first spider that dropped down on them and then begin to fire lots of arrows upon the second spider. They figure out that the door is illusionary and they jump through it. Finally, they beat down Higgins with subdual damage and then finish off the second spider. They collect their treasure and then head back to safer territory to rest and recoup spells (the mage used lots of his spells up finishing off the spiders).

Unfortunately, the third spider follows them. It comes upon Higgins and the dwarf while they are on watch and bites Higgins. He fails his saving throw and dies a few rounds later. Meanwhile, the spider casts ventriloquism and begins to taunt the party and attack them from their flanks. Eventually, they get everybody awake and finish off the spider. Higgins was the first victim that the Castle Amber adventure claimed. I think if I had been rolling random encounters this adventure would take at least double the time and would have claimed many more lives in the process.

Other encounters that stick out in my mind were the ghostly dinner (where none of the PC's ate anything except for the dwarf who ate and drank EVERYTHING!). He lucked out on saving throws and ended up gaining 2 extra permanent HP, lost a point of INT, gained a point of WIS, and gained the power of ESP 1/week for life.

Another encounter that was quite a bit of fun was the amoeba in the center of the fountain in the Indoor Forest. The PC's see this treasure and know that there will be something stopping them from getting it, but they decide to send the thief in to get the chest. He takes his shoes off, cuffs his pants up, and starts to walk across the surface of the amoeba after pushing around with a 10 foot pole.

The amoeba engulfs the thief inside of itself and begins digesting him (causing 2d6 damage each round). One of the clerics decides to grab the 10 foot pole and try "fishing" the thief out of the slimy amoeba. I decide that it could work and we use a couple of random rolls to determine success. It ends up taking 2 rounds but the cleric fishes out the thief. Meanwhile the amoeba eats the dwarf - so the cleric wipes some sweat off his brow and begins fishing for dwarf. Using random rolls kept the action fast and furious.

This is one of the strengths of B/X DnD, you can get combat over fast, so you can get to more combat (and that is a line from the Risus roleplaying system but it totally applies here). We had nine PC's 5 of them spell casters, and several that had magic, and I was able to run combats of 12 turns with 10+ opponents in less than 20-30 minutes.

Anyway, getting back on topic, the amoeba had 15HD and took a lightning bolt, 2 magic missiles and the combined hacking of ~3 other characters before finally they hacked off enough slime that the creature died a wriggling death.

After fighting the amoeba they explored the chapel and then proceeded down into the dungeon where they unlocked the silver gate and moved into Averoigne!!! But that is another story, for another day, in Part 3!

Castle Amber Recap - Part 1

2011-01-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

On our first day of this adventure we had three players and roughly 5 hours to play. In 1.5 hours the characters each made two characters whose levels had to add up to 8 ( 2x4th level or 1-3rd and 1-5th etc...). We also rolled to see if they had any magical items entering into the adventure. The party ended up with two scrolls and a few potions.

Here are the gallant PC's:

Gyric Greymane (5th Level, Neutral Mage, wears grey robes, likes to cast lightning bolt and levitation)

Lokidus (3rd Level, Neutral Elf, fights with daggers, was invisible for most of the adventure)

Dakon Darkblade (3rd Level Lawful Cleric of the Church of Karamiekos "in good standing", had a crappy constitution score and only 12 hit points, made up for it by wearing plate mail :)

Neil Mankenzie (4th level Neutral Thief, had a sweet constitution score of 17 and 19 HP!!! we rolled up that he once fought Dwelifane to a draw in the city of Specularum, they became friends after that)

Dwelifane Nonendyl (4th level Lawful elf, this character rolled really good stats having a 13 strength, 14 Con, and 18! dex. In battle he favored the two handed sword and the long bow)

Harkidurm Battlerock (4th level Neutral Dwarf, typical Dwarf 5 int, 7 wis, 4 chr, but... 16 str and con!, he rolled really good HP having 37 HP at 4th level he had some stats change up by the adventure and also gained the innate ability to use ESP, although with his low INT and WIS he is not sure how to use this, also he gained a permanent +4 bonues to poison saves giving him a save of 2...)

NPC:

"Higgin's" 1st Level Lawful Caravan Guard (Fighter)

I added Higgin's because I thought it would be nice for the PC's to have a torch-bearer - I named him Higgin's as an homage to Roll For Initiative. He met his fate at the hands of spell casting spiders.

The Adventure!

The PC's found themselves on horseback riding as hard as they could to escape a dragon that befell their party at the foothills of the Cruth Mountains as they braved a passage through the mountains leaving the Grand Dutchy of Karameikos and heading toward Glantri.

They ran from this dragon for hours until they were sure it was no longer chasing them. After some greetings and roleplaying the group made camp on a hill in the night. They awoke to find themselves in Castle Amber.

On our first day they explored the West Wing engaging in a boxing match with a magen and having tea with an insane Ogre that thought it was an elderly woman. They killed two wraiths with a lightning bolt and found over 10,000 gp of treasure in around 3.5 4 hours of play. There were a couple of really cool encounters I'm going to elaborate on in future posts. For the next adventure I told them that they could reach make one more character since I was worried about having a TPK in a single encounter.

Overall - everybody playing was happy with the B/X system. None of these guys have ever played anything before 2nd edition AD&D, and have played a bulk of their gaming in 3rd edition. They really liked the loose and quick method of play and one of them wanted to borrow the books and read up about basic DnD. He remarked, "wow, this version of the game is great for getting together, making characters, and starting the action all in the same day! I had walked into this figuring most of the day would be character creation and we ended up with over three hours of game play!.

Castle Amber

2010-12-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

Well, we postponed the Castle Amber adventure until Dec 26th - the day after Christmas! I do have a couple of days off the week after Christmas so maybe I can pull together an adventure log of at least the highlights if it goes well. One of my buddies who is playing in this game has only played once in the last year (which is also the last time I played the game at the table...)

My preparations are complete - I have character sheets, ready-to-go backpacks filled with adventuring gear to save time, a list of immortals worshiped in Mystara, a print out of the character and monster t0-hit tables, a print out of the death and dismemberment table...

GAME ON!

X2 - Alternate Tomb of Stephen

2010-12-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

After reading several Clark Ashton Smith stories I've come up with my alternate idea for the Tomb of Stephen. After the PC's acquire the 4 items and perform the ritual to transport them to the tomb, I'm going to have them transported to Yondo. They will end up on a strange endless plain with a sickly smelling lake before them. On the other side of the lake will be a strange hemispherical mountain that was created by an asteroid or moon crashing down upon the plain. At the base of this spherical mountain is a large marble building with columns all around it.

They will have to work their way around the lake, encountering various "abominations" among them a group of sickly white ape men who are performing horrible sacrificial rituals to elder uncaring deities. This world that the PC's have found themselves is a pocket dimensional dumping ground. It was created by Stephen for his tomb and over the many years that passed by it has become populated by creatures from many dimensions and worlds, sucking them in as the pocket dimension moved through the inter-dimensional vortex and overlapped temporarily with other realms and planes.

If the PC's can get past these strange white ape men and into the tomb I will have antechamber attended by skeletal knights in rusty chain. In the inner sanctum are mummy guardian kings, bound by magic to the tomb of Stephen. The PC's must battle their way through the mummy guardians to the coffin and following the instructions on the inside of the coffin, burn the tapestry. This will revive Stephen and the rest of the adventure will conclude as written in X2.

I think I will be running this adventure on the weekend of the 18-19th and since X2 is a pretty large adventure I'm not sure we will make it to the Tomb of Stephen or to Averoigne. I'll probably keep this much detail for now and then just wing it based on this premise if the PC's make it that far.

X2 Castle Amber

2010-11-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

I picked this module up probably 6 months ago. I'd like to try running for a group before starting a campaign using B/X rules to see how my players like it (all these guys have been playing 2nd, 3rd edition, and even a little 3.5 and 4th edition in the mix). So B/X DnD with its race as class, no feats, etc... might be a little bit of a surprise for them. However, I think Castle Amber will be a great adventure to show off the attributes of the B/X system.

There is one thing that bugs me about the adventure that I am thinking about changing. It is part 8 - Steven's tomb. This part of the adventure becomes a linear set of rooms with guardian creatures in them. It is repetitious open door, oh look, monster! The rest of the adventure is really well crafted and this final tomb section just seems lazy or constrained by page count. I'll have to figure something out to spice this section out and make it just as interesting as the rest of the adventure. I'll post up what I come up with if I can figure out a way to link files - I'm not very trained in HTML-fu.

Also, I'm really interested in fleshing out Averoigne - I'm a big fan of C.A.S. stories and I think I will probably re-read them in order to get more of the tone and feel that I'm looking to convey. Anyway, hopefully this works out - I'm pumped!

Aloof Gods and Vancian Clerics

2010-11-11T05:53:00.000-08:00

My first high level character that survived past level 10 was a cleric. I realized early on that clerics were a very powerful class. They have the ability to manage their HP better than any other class. They can wear any armor, fight with decent weapons, turn undead, and cast spells! In fact, it is my personal belief that in most editions of the game the cleric is way overpowered relative to the other classes.

One thing that a lot of other GM's have done over the years is give their PC clerics the ability to cast spells without praying for them ahead of time. One excuse for this is that clerics should not have to pray for their spells - instead the diety will grant the magic as the player needs the spells. Another excuse is that if clerics are forces to prepare their spell list ahead of the game they will be forced to choose all healing spells and therefore robbing them of using "the fun spells" during the game. I say bull crap.

I think this viewpoint is tainted by the influence of Christianity on the game. I am a Christian gamer and believe in God. However, I think the typical views of Christianity - that we have a personal god who interacts and listens to us - has begun to seep into the DnD game. In the DnD world I like to think of the gods as being more aloof than our Christian god. This poly-theistic world forces the gods to look down at men as pawns in a battle as they vie with the other deities for the souls and prayers of humanity. They play by certain rules.

In order to perform miracles, clerics must recite ancient prayers and rituals instilled with power over the ages of mankind merely by belief and repitition. These prayers and rituals bind the magics of the fantastical realm and allow clerics to cast this "spell" or "miracle" at any later time by finishing the prayer. The gods are bound by these rules that have been created by the beliefs of humankind. It is this same belief that supports their very existence.

A god can choose not to answer a ritual or prayer, but if his cleric fails to perform the ritual the god cannot just "give the magic" to his cleric. If you want to have "channeling clerics" than why don't you just adapt the rules of Rolemaster or some other channeling based clerical magic system to the DnD game or perhaps a spell point system? In addition, the DnD gods are not personal, they aren't right by your side as you are adventuring. Instead, I see the DnD gods as aloof, proud, and terrible! They watch your cleric and make sure his deeds, actions, and maybe sacrifices please him/her - if they do, then that cleric's prayers will be answered. As a cleric advances in levels he unlocks the secrets of more powerful prayers and rituals - calling on more fearsome miracles.

Anyway, even if you don't buy my fantasy world metaphysical argument about why clerics should use vancian type magic - I think vancian clerical magic in DnD just works better than spell point, channelling, or just letting clerics use their spell slots according to the chart on any spell of that level. I also think it improves player creativity and skill to have to choose out their spells ahead of time and also brings a measure of balance to what I think is already an overpowered class.

Related to this post, I've been thinking quite a bit about greatly altering the cosmology/planar system of Forgotten Realms (which used the standard multiverse system of AD&D). My next post will likely cover that.

BX-FR Alignment Dilemma

2010-11-02T03:16:00.000-07:00

I think I have finally decided what to do for the alignment system in my new game. Initially I had been leaning toward using the AD&D alignment system since all my books have the dieties and NPC's and magic item alignments in terms of the 9 pt alignment system from 1st ed AD&D.

However, I have never been a fan of the interaction of know alignment, and detect evil type spells and abilities with alignment systems that contain "good" and "evil". I really like the concept of Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic as three buckets for grouping the world generally into "teams". You have the forces of order (generally thought of as the good guys) the neutral rogues who are mostly unaligned and are looking out for themselves, and finally the forces of chaos. However, even a character with a chaotic alignment isn't necessarily "evil".

I read a really good post from Robertson games blog here which describes their use of the three point alignment system. I don't really agree 100% with the concept of making chaotic characters be evil and then turned over to the DM as NPC's - instead I'm planning on playing it more like the Moldvay core rule (essentially with a lot of room for interpretation). However, I think I will be borrowing the Robertson games post's idea of having a Lawful tongue, a neutral alignment language, and finally - the Black Tongue which I really like both in name and in spirit.

I've also been tossing around the idea of a "taint" system but not played out the same way as the Unearthed Arcana version. If I can pull something together around that I think it could be a good roleplay aid.

B/X Modified Weapon Table

2010-10-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

Damage Weapon Type Cost(gp)Wt(cns)
1d4 Torch 2sp, 10 cn
1d4 Daggers, dirks, knives 3gp, 10 cn
1d4 Sling (30 stones) 2gp, 30 cn
1d4 Club 3gp, 50 cn
1d4 Javelin 1gp, 10 cn
1d6 Staff * 2gp, 40 cn
1d6 Bow + 20 Arrow X9, 30-40 cn
1d6 Hand Axe 4gp, 30 cn
1d6 Light Lance 5gp, 50 cn
1d6 Mace 5gp, 30 cn
1d6 Crossbow (30 quarrel) 40gp, 50 cn
1d6 Short Sword 7gp, 30 cn
1d6 Spear 2gp, 30 cn
1d6 War Hammer 5gp, 30 cn
1d8 Sword 10gp, 60 cn
2d4 Axe * 7gp, 50 cn
1d10 Pole Arm* 7gp, 150 cn
1d10 Two Handed Sword 15gp, 150 cn

I've decided I'm using the optional Variable Damage System for my B/X game. I think this variable weapon damage system is a better abstraction of reality since if I had to choose between a dagger and a sword to go into a gladiator ring, I'm going with the sword all the way. The dagger can kill a normal man with a single strike but has lesser probability of doing so vs. the two handed sword - this seems reasonable to me.

I created this table for my players to use for weapon selection. I changed a few things from the core BX rules (increased the damage for a staff to 1d6 and made an Axe do 2d4 instead of a 1d8). I think with this system every weapon has some kind of advantage.

For example the spear is a 1d6 piercing weapon that could be flipped over to be a 1d6 staff (if fighting skeletons). You could also use it to try and detect pit traps. A war hammer could be used to pound stakes into the group for pinning doors! Etc..

Anyway, the completion of this table gets me another step closer to running my B/X forgotten realms game. Now I'm having a mental argument with myself about whether to us the Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic alignment system from the core rules or to use the AD&D system of LE, LN, LE, etc... I've got a couple of reasons to go either way. More on that soon.

The Zen of NOT spell casting

2010-10-27T03:01:00.000-07:00

I was listening to the Roll for Initiative podcast #33 about magic users. I think they missed one significant point. They were discussing what spells you should choose and what you can do as a magic user other than spell casting to aid a party (identify strange monsters - up to the DM, do historical research, and throw stones).

However, one thing that wasn't said was - PACE YOURSELF. At low levels magic users only have a few spells. It is pretty tempting to use all of them in each encounter, but this is something that all DM's will learn to punish you for early in their DM careers. You will run out of spells and then NEVER find a place to rest. You have to try and calculate your party's chance of success without your action and then decide when to cast certain spells. This gets easier with practice. Each spell is different, some like Charm Person may be better if cast early; timing is everything.

Another thing that I always did as a magic user, starting around 2nd level, was mix it up in combat. If the party is facing down low level humanoids - jump in with a dagger or staff and put the wizardly smack down. Especially if your hit point rolls were decent. Any damage that you take saves the fighters and clerics from taking it, but you should know when to run away (basically after you are hit once). My technique was to use a sling for a while but then jump in there with the staff or dagger toward the end of a fight as the PC's are already starting to win. You might get hit once but maybe you will get to knock out an enemy without magic!

Finally, know and explore the battlefield. While the rest of your party is hip deep in goblins, take a look around - are there more sneaking up from behind? Also, look for ways to use dungeon dressings to your advantage. You can throw torches and oil, flip over tables and hide behind them, push chairs in front of doors, block alternate portals to the room you are in, look out the windows of the castle, etc... Anything to give your party an edge later on.

Anyway, the guys at RFI talked about a variety of other techniques so check out their 1st edition podcast, it is pretty damn cool if you have a long drive to work like me.

The Lost Boys

2010-10-19T15:58:00.001-07:00

I'm continuing my cheese horror October fest with one of my all time favorites. This movie is frigging awesome - I'm blogging this while watching so it might get a little rough. Corey Feldman, Cory Haim, the Frog Brothers!!!! Keiffer Frigging Sutherland!!! The movie opens with montage of freaky people to People are Strange by The Doors. A little family moves to the murder capital of the world "If all the corpses that are buried around here was to stand up all at once, we'd have one hell of a population problem". By the way there are lots of refences to Pan.. check it out, The Lost Boys.. the boys who never grow old, fly around... yep... makes sense with the vampire theme except you add lots of killing!

It has this cool theme music "Cry Little Sister" and a great soundtrack; and the old taxidermist, pot-smoking, root beer drinking grandpa who uses Windex for aftershave and says, "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach... al the damn vampires". That is when he isn't visiting the widow Johnson!!!

IT IS 1987 and you too can fight vampires with Edgar and Alan Frog using a vampire slaying manual found in comic books "Where the hell are you from, Krypton? Pheonix actually..." Don't get lured into becoming one of them though...and also, just try counting the number of times that they say Michael.. it numbers in the hundreds I'm sure... "Drink some of this Michael, be one of us... Micheal, Michael, Michael" Queue up Cry Little Sister!!!!

The movie has a great mix of comedy and horror and I recommend it to anyone! I won't bore you with the plot, this movie is all about style, one liners, "death by stereo", bikes, babes, spiked mullets, blood and gore and vampires.

“Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire."

The Massive Waterdeep Map

2010-10-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

I got my new copy of City System today in the mail. I had to run down into the man-cave and put together the massive ~5.5 by ~11 ft map of Waterdeep that comes in the box. My girlfriend looked at me dubiously while I did this... I think she thinks that is probably the nerdiest thing she has ever seen. A massive 10 part map of an imaginary city - I love being a gamer!!!

Serpent People

2010-10-16T04:57:00.000-07:00

Here is my work up of the Serpent People, they are a little like Yaunti that they are replacing, but less serpent-like for the most part. I also want them to have a global presence in my Forgotten Realms similar to goblins. I envision these serpent people living in the lower depths of the underdark and only coming up to the surface in specific locations. In my Waterdeep /Undermountain game they are going to have control of Skullport engaged in trade with the thieves and dark forces of Waterdeep, and will be found throughout all of the Undermountain megadungeon in small bands. Also, if the PC's journey by sea to the jungles of Chult, I will have these creatures leading tribes of cannibalistic humans through dinosaur infested jungles!

Anyway, this work up is for BX DnD but you could use/modify it for S&W or LL very easily.

Serpent People

Armor Class: Variable

Hit Dice: 2-4*

Move: 120'

Attacks: 1 by weapon

Damage: 1d6 or by weapon

No. Appearing: 1-12

Save As: Fighter 2-4

Morale: 9

Treasure Type: U

Serpent people are the result of the interbreeding of men with serpents during the dawn of mankind. Forced underground by men and elves thousands of years ago they were brought to near extinction. In the dark they prayed to their serpentine god Shurresh (an aspect of Set) and plotted. In recent years they have come to the surface again taking political control of the city of Hlondeth and exerting an above ground presence in the dinosaur infested jungles of Chult. They are also trying to establish control in the dalelands and in the north surging upward from their vast underdark cities.

Most serpent people appear as humanoids with fine scales as skin, and a snake like cast over their faces. They appear dark brown with a greenish purple tint and their eyes are of rust, yellow, or copper. War bands of serpent people typically wear fine chain armor and wield short curved blades and bows. They have infravision to 90 feet in the dark.

Some bands of serpent people will have either a cleric of Shurresh (1-10th level) or a magic user (1-10th level). Additionally, all serpent people have a 50% chance of having mental abilities. Examples of abilities include a charm like ability to fool humans into believing them to be human (save vs. spell to avoid), or domination/summoning abilities over snakes, or ESP. Serpent people are friendly with other serpent/lizard/draconian monsters such as nagas and kobolds, the second they regard as a servant class.

It is rumored that the serpent people have spies all across Faerun. Men whisper aside fires at night that the serpent people steal babies, that female serpent women lure men down dark holes with enchanting songs, and that they torture and breed captive men in their dark cities producing more abominations. There are also rumors that in these cities there are many other twisted forms of snake/men abonminations. Some that area nearly all snakes or men with snakes for arms, etc... there is no proof if these rumors are true.

Removing the Emo Dark Elf

2010-10-16T03:51:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on my Forgotten Realms campaign. Here are the recent developments:

1. I've ordered up a copy of City System and The Ruins of Undermountain. Sadly my original copies were destroyed in a fire years ago. These books will be the basis of the game.

2. Drow - after thinking about it - I don't think there is anyway for me to resurrect these monsters for use in my game. All my prospective players have read too many novels about a certain drow ranger for me to ever think about including another drow elf in any DnD game. They just feel tired to me - the players know all their powers and weaknesses etc... My plan is to replace them with Serpent People - who will be a dominant race in the underdark in my campaign - filling the role that the dark elves have in the past and hopefully changing the character of my campaign toward the direction I'd like to go.

3. I'm working up two adventures to kick the game off that will probably use spells/items from my Vats and Pools article that I wrote up several months ago. I'm pretty excited to see how that material playtests.

Next up - a post about the serpent people I'm working on for my game.

Returning to the Realms

2010-10-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

I've finally made up my mind on what campaign to run for my next game - Forgotten Realms.

Since I want to try and tempt a couple of players who haven't gamed in some time, I'm planning on enticing them with the combination of Waterdeep + Undermountain.

I used to run Waterdeep as my primary campaign for probably 5 years. The two guys I'm planning to recruit both had characters of 10th-12th level in that game and whenever we speak of DnD in general both of them always bring up the good times they had in Undermountain.

The game I was running in Undermountain came to have a near legendary status - in any other game setting my players would say stuff like, "This is nothing, we survived the torture chambers of the illithids in Undermountain." Whenever we played in this dungeon the player I'm looking to recruit would faithfully put in the Hellraiser soundtrack, which he had decided was thematically appropriate for the dungeon.

But, the kicker here is that I'm going to run this game using B/X rules and I'm going to make a few changes to the realms setting to make it easier to run. So I'm working on a few changes to the game to accommodate the change from AD&D to B/X. Here are a couple of them:

1. I'm organizing the deities into Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic groups - instead of the LG, CG, N, etc.. that was shown in the core books. I'm also selecting a few special deities that will commonly have "Adventuring Clerics". Here is my list so far:

Lawful - Tyr, Torm, Lathandar, Ilmater, Helm

Neutral - Tymora, Selune, Tempus

Chaos - Bane, Bhaal, Myrkul, Talos

2. Gnomes - the B/X rules as written don't have gnomes as a player race - they are described in NPC/monster format (B35). I think I'm going to stick with that for now. If somebody really wants to be a gnome, I'm going to slightly modify the Dwarf class to make it work.

3. No Time of Troubles, and absolutely no plaguestorm crap. I'm going to start the game out DR1356, using my copy of the 1987 Sourcebook + Cyclopedia of the Realms and add to that Waterdeep City System and Undermountain. I will probably use little snippets from the Volo's Guides during stops to villages and inn's and I'll also be using the treasure tables from Forgotten Realm's Adventures supplement. Other than these books - no other sources will be considered valid. Anything read in a FR novel, or sourcebook will be considered valid, and large sections of even the books that I listed will be changed to freshen things up a bit while retaining the original Realms flavor my PC's will be looking for. I will let the events of the game, and my strange whims take the realms in a different direction from the Canon chronology from the last 20 years or so. Mainly, since I'm really displeased of the direction that was taken.

4. I'm strongly considering eradicating a few races. The drow are at the top of my list. I think the drow have become very stale creatures too chained by the novels that are out there. There are a few other demihuman races that have become somewhat redundant/boring.

5. Changing the planes. I find the idea of the "plane of fire" "demi plane of shadow" "Hades" "The Abyss" very tired and I'm thinking of trying something different. More to follow soon on this one.

Anyway, there are probably some additional changes and modifications on the way to help merging the Realms with B/X. I'll be posting more on this soon.

PBEM Update

2010-10-09T04:23:00.000-07:00

My Greyhawk PBEM Castles and Crusades game is still alive, but barely...

The game is approximately 18 months old, which is ancient for PBEM, and most of my players are around 3rd level. I was taking them into The Dark Chateau module by Rob Kuntz. The action started out great with the players adopting the usual paranoia associated with entering a "funhouse" style wizards haunt.

They met up with some goblins/orcs who were hanging near a couple of external sheds. The PC's were surprised and after taking on heavy arrow fire they pulled back into the woods and then proceeded to fight fire with fire. The elven ranger of the group has a +6 bonus to hit with his arrows (no magic involved) so he mostly sniped the orcs and goblins from afar while the wizard of the party laid the smack down with magic missiles. The fight was over quickly.

The players did a sweep of the outside of the Chateau, finding their encounter with some strange giant frogs to be intimidating. They decided not to mess with these frogs who glided about in the pool gazing at them with alien stares of disinterest. They entered the Chateau and swept through the first floor fighting some giant rats and claiming a magical Cleaver. However, at this point they hit a slow spot. The players are having real life conflicts/disasters and a general paralysis of decision has affected the group. Presented with a variety of traps and tricks, they are hitting a wall.

So over the last 5-6 weeks things have stalled completely. There were only 3 posts in the last week. I started to lose interest in the game and contemplated several times about giving up on it. However, the fact that we have had almost a year and a half of really good times in this game is stopping me. So I decided instead to throw a curve ball at the players.

I decided since they have killed several groups of goblins & orcs around the area during their 3 day (game time) stay near the Chateau, that the goblins and orcs have decided to get some reinforcements and attack in force. The goblins bribed a couple of hill giants and also rallied several loosely affiliated bands together to make a war party over 100 goblins&orcs strong.

The party had left the ranger of the group outside the Chateau (since the player of this character is in the military and would be unavailable for the next 6 months or so) - so I decided to have him run by the Chateau and warn the party. Here is the post:

Esmeralda begins to prepare her trap for the centipedes, pushing smelly rat meat
into a large sack with a grimace. The rest of the party flexes, prepares, and
tenses for battle. Just then a cry is heard from the outside of the Chateau.

"An army of goblins are coming, and they brought a giant!!!!" Comes a cry from
Lo'Stranner.

Turning quickly, Leinen leaps quickly to the window and catches a glimpse of
Lo'Stranner running past the Chateau from the north side and heading toward the
south. He leaps into the underbrush of the forest just as a group of barbed
arrows slam down into the soft earth of the Chateau's lawns.

This army must be at his heels.. which means you only have moments to decide how
to react!!!

Well, I have dropped the gauntlet. I'm going to force some action out of my players or force a TPK and move on to a new game. The evil GM in me prefers this to a slow wasting death of the game. I definitely feel at least partly responsible for the way things are turning and I'm hoping I can breath some life back into this game or just dump it. I can't keep it going the way that it has fallen apart.

Either outcome, I have definitely realized that PBEM games of this sort do not handle dungeon based adventures well - unless you have a group of very interactive posters. Wilderness encounters are much better since things are much more fluid and the players have an easier time figuring things out.

Tremors

2010-10-09T03:32:00.001-07:00

Aaaahhhhh, Tremors.... this movie is pure gold and not just because of Kevin Bacon ;)

My horror-octoberfest netflix driven stream of b-movies continues. I've watched a few other unmentionables, but then I went back to the source and found this movie. I've probably watched this movie 10 times but I never get sick of it. I really like a mix of humor and horror together and this movie delivers. Just watching Reba Mac firing two revolvers like crazy at a huge plastic worm brings a smile to my face.

Here's to the graboids! Whether from space, or engineered by scientists for the fun of it. We salute you sirs!

B/X

2010-10-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

I've got to thank JB for this one - his crazy B/X halfling posts got me really interested and I really wanted to read the rules that he was discussing.

Anyway, I nabbed an Ebay copy of Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert. Reading them over for the last couple of days I realized Moldvay Basic DnD was the first DnD that I ever played - now I remember not having the experience tables for higher level and making it up! I was 11 or so at the time and we quickly switched over to 2nd edition ADD - and so the fact that I started on Moldvay basic had been lost to time until just now.

After reading these books over I'm strongly considering on using them in my my new campaign that I am working up. Since I have ZERO players for this theoretical game - I can still change things... such as the entire rules system without any relearning or grumbling :)

Formative Images

2010-09-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

James at Grognardia's question got me thinking back to what imgages capture the spirit of DnD for me. Mostly I think of the 2nd edition booksthat came out just as I was getting into the game. And firstand foremost of the artists that rocked those books was Larry Elmore.

Here are a few of my favorite images from Larry:

This first image from the 2nd Edition Players handbook probably sums up DnD the best for me. The party, the dead dragon, the treasure, and the the little details like the scratches on the fighters legs, and an arrow in the dragon from the elf! This image is pure AWESOME.

The death of Sturm... Reminds me of the deaths of some of my favorite characters. Some of them died stupidly, but others died valiantly.

Larry always drew awesome dragons... this one always made me want to make a character that was powerful enough to somehow get a dragon to ride. It happened once, and only once, and if I remember correctly right after I got the dragon the DM at the time decided I needed to retire that character.

Night of the Creeps

2010-09-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

aliens, slugs, zombies with exploding heads, naked chicks, zombies killed with lawn mowers, space ships, fraternity house antics, slugs jumping into peoples mouths, random side plot about a psychotic axe murderer, flame throwers, stupid plastic looking alien people, horrible acting...

Seriously, what is there about this movie that is not to love? or maybe I housed a little too much theraflu and zicam.

White Box House Rule: Encumbrance

2010-08-08T03:48:00.000-07:00

This morning I had a moment of enlightenment about encumbrance. This was due to me remembering a line from Matt Finch's Old School Gaming Primer.

Rulings Not Rules.

I was looking for a way to handle encumbrance with a really simple system that didn't create some confusion. There are a couple of systems out there using slots (like video games do), or encumbrance value systems giving every item a value and then adding them all up. However, each system requires complete tracking of all the items that somebody is carrying.

Instead I'm going to try this alternate system:

1. During character creation - the character can pick out items and purchase them and put them on his sheet without recording weight or anything.

2. The GM will make a ruling on the encumbrance level of the player when it becomes important in the game. I'll probably take the character's strength score into account while figuring this. Overall, when players are hanging out in the tavern all of this won't matter, but if you are hiking 15 miles a day through rough terrain with >90lbs on your back it may start to cause fatigue. And if you try to do acrobatic combat maneuvers or leaping a

cross chasms I'll use my action resolution system and adjust the difficulty due to the level of encumbrance.

3. I'll keep some stock photo's of zero encumbrance characters, light encumbrance characters, medium encumbrance characters, and heavy. When the players are choosing items, I'm going to ask them to think about the backgrounds they are choosing and see if the items they are picking match up with pictures of that kind of character. For example, an acrobatic fighter probably should only carry a few critical small items in pouches along his belt or on his legs. This would allow him to leap chasms, run along tree limbs, etc... A dungeon explorer might call up the mental picture of a dude with a heavy backpack full of spikes, picks, hammers, torches, a 10-foot pole, he knows that he isn't agile, and he takes last initiative in round 1 while he take time to drop his pack before entering combat etc....

4. From time to time I'll check players character sheet and discuss what they are carrying and see if their default encumbrance has changed.

White Box House Rule: Backgrounds

2010-08-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

For my upcoming white box S&W game I'll be using character backgrounds as an option. I like this concept since characters will still fit on a 3x5 character sheet but be given a good deal more flexibility and "crunch" for players who like a few extra choices.

Before I get into the backgrounds I need to explain how I am planning on dealing with most actions requiring a die roll. For most situational encounters I'm planning to use a d6 action resolution system where the GM sets the challenge level. Higher will be better and the player must achieve result greater than or equal to the challenge level with modifiers added in.

Challenge Levels:

1-3: Routine

4: Moderate

5: Challenging

6: Difficult

7: Heroic

8-10: Legendary

Modifiers:

+1 for relevantly high stat

-1 for relevantly low stat

+1 for use of Background pump

+2 for use of Background Double Pump

A couple of points about this system:

1 - don't make characters roll for routine checks if you think it would be routine for the PC's to succeed unless there is a special way that the PC's could succeed. You could have them roll against a higher difficulty level - if they fail they succeed at the task because it was routine for them, however, if they succeed at the higher level difficulty they can get extra information or some extra bonus because of that.

2 - You shouldn't need to use a lot of extra modifiers - just move the challenge level up and down to reflect the circumstances. It may be routine for a character with the RANGER background to track ogre tracks, but it may be hard for him to follow them if they move into a stream, or along rocky cliffs where there are no imprints, or if it is raining really hard and the earth is sloshy. Just adjust the difficulty modifier.

3 - Use the character's background in determining the difficulty level (more about backgrounds and their powers later). A character with the soldier background may have a routine or moderate difficulty level against knowing the crest of an opposing army, but he probably has a legendary challenge level to decode the necronomicon.

Typical challenge levels for dungeon feats - I would set most secret doors, traps, hear noises, climb walls, etc... at a 4-5 difficulty (moderate to challenging) - you can then modify it up or down depending on roleplaying of the characters.

Backgrounds:

I'm planning to allow the characters to take backgrounds at the start of their character. Humans will get two slots and non-humans only 1 slot, this is to reflect the versatility of the human race and also offset some of the racial bonuses that non-humans get.

A character background should be a single word, a short statement, or at most a sentence. The player can work with the GM to detail what a background is "good for" - these backgrounds can be a lot like Risus cliches or typical subclasses

Example Fighter backgrounds that are sub-classes: Soldier, Thief, Ranger, Knight, Paladin, Buccaneer, Swashbuckler, etc.. Example cleric sub-classes: paladin, druid, mystic

Alternatively you could use a short phrase or sentence like: Bastard Son of the King, Backgammon enthusiast, Seeking Revenge against the Serpent Cult, Born in the Saddle, etc...

After you get the language for a background, and work out what they could typically be used for, you assign one or more available slots to the bckground.

Each "slot" in a background can typically be used once per play session or adventure (the DM decides the "refresh rate"). To use a slot, you must explain to the DM how you think your background applies in a situation and then you can affect the following:

1. Re-roll any one roll.

2. Ask the GM to re-roll any one roll (if it was a hit, it must be before damage is rolled, but you could also ask the GM to re-roll a damage roll).

3. Gain a +20% to any non-damage die roll (+1 on a d6, +4 on a d20, or as close as it can be approximated).

Players can use these twice in the same die roll (to get a +2 on a d6 action resolution roll, or a +8 on a d20 attack roll) but they will be "burning" more of their power quicker in the adventure...

I think as the characters advance I'll give them one more slot (to use in a new background or add to an old background "strengthening" it) maybe every 5-6 levels? So if they had 2 slots in "Knight" they could either take a third slot in Knight or add on another background at 5th or 6th level. New backgrounds must be explained in some way and "mesh"with the overall character concept.

Also, I think there will be a lot of subtle use of these backgrounds in determining the relative challenge levels for my action resolution system. Sneaking past the palace guards would perhaps be of moderate difficulty for the character with the thief background wearing soft leather armor, but would be heroic or legendary for the paladin in full plate.

I'm pretty excited about using this system, I think it will be fast and fun.

Del Toro and Cameron Make Mountains?

2010-07-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

Did you hear that Guillermo Del Toro and James Cameron are going to work together to make HP Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness?

You must be kidding!!! No mister, I'm serious, dead serious...

Hell Yeah!!!!....

I would think this is a complete joke if I hadn't read it on like 4 movie related news pages...

And I thought I was excited about the Whisperer in Darkness! movie being released by the HP Lovecraft

I'm not sure if there is a zeitgiest of all things Lovecraftian or if it is because I have been focusing on his work and blogs and podcasts so I am just finding out more about things that were going on all along. Anyway, the rest of 2010 the future are looking quite polyphemus...

White Box

2010-07-31T04:32:00.000-07:00

While things have been pretty busy in my two PBEM games (Castles and Crusades Greyhawk as GM, and Call of Cthulhu as a player) - my next goal is to get a pen and paper game going of Swords and Wizardry.

I have a copy of the White box edition in print, so I think I am going to start with that and then tack on appropriate house rules. Here is the list I have so far:

Definitely implementing -

1. Death and Dismemberment Table

2. Aspects/Cliche's - this is going to coincide with a d6 method of task resolution. I'm going to expand a little on a combination of ideas from David Bowman's Delver's Article from Fight On #4, and Matyas Hartyandi's inclusion to the GitRDone article of Fight On #6, and ideas from FATE and Risus.

Strongly Considering -

1. Altered Races (saying goodbye to the Tolkien Themes)

2. Modified Movement and Encumbrance

I haven't decided on the game world yet - I know it will be a Sandbox style game where the players can add background if they wish.

The Fall of the House of Usher and...

2010-07-24T04:46:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I've been listening to audiobooks from www.audible.com for maybe 6 months now. Almost all of the audiobooks have been pretty great so far.... except this one. The main problem with this audio-story is that it had been "Produced"!

The production involved playing awful music and sound effects in the background that overwhelmed the timid voice of the narrator. Some of the sound effects were copied and/or repeated incessantly - a strange ghostlike scream was replayed several times with almost no rhyme or reason. thunder and lightning sounds were added to the story. the sounds of high winds drowned out the voice of the narrator. I actually couldn't hear or concentrate on the story.

It was frigging awful!

The story is pretty good, I had read it as a teen but I couldn't remember exactly how it went, and I wish I had stuck to a visual format on this one. Hey, at least it was cheap.

I tried to erase this last audiobook out of my mind by immediately starting in on a new one: "Tales of the Occult". As the title explains this is a collection of short stories dealing with the Occult. This book is read by a clear narrator, with a strong voice, british accent, and with absolutely no background sounds. Ahhhh, so refreshing!

The first tale that I am listening to is The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen. I wasn't sure what to expect from this collection of tales but this story is so good that even if all the others are horrible I will still be satisfied with my purchase. I think I will be blogging more about this story when I finish it.

Lovecraftian Podcraft Goodness

2010-07-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

This will be the summer of the weird tale...

Since I started playing in DaddyGrognard's CoC game I've added a couple of extra Lovecraftian focused podcasts to my morning commute (normally I've been listening to RPG circus in addition to various other books in digital format on my 45 min morning commute) During the ride home at night I like to rock out to a little metal.

Here are my newest werid podcraft additions:

Lovecraftian Obsession Podcast (I've been listening to this one since the Shane Magus turned me onto it) - interviews with famous Lovecraftian scholars, authors, and game designers. Some discussion of Lovecraft history and philosophy, debate about certain stories.

The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast - These guys (who were involved in the creation of that cool silent film "The Call of Cthulhu") tackle each of HP Lovecrafts stories in the order that they were published. Good narration by Andrew Leman on many of these stories. They do some good discussion about the stories and drop some cool facts about his life, friends, inspirations, and other errata. Cool website www.hppodcraft.com - check it out!

Yog Radio YSDC - this one is new to me - they seems like Lovecraft reporters on the front lines... I've only listened to one of these podcasts so I can't comment much on this one.

I'm also about to listen to "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe this upcoming week. Maybe I will discuss the story on this blog. I used to be really into Poe as a teen - I memorized a couple of his poems by heart during those years and I can still recite parts of

them to this day. Anyway, happy listening if you check out these audio format podcasts!

In Search of Gold

2010-07-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

Eldorado

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-

This knight so bold-

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow-

"Shadow," said he,

"Where can it be-

This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,"

The shade replied-

"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Edgar Allan Poe

You can read about the analysis of this poem here. I've been thinking about Lovecraft, Poe, and other weird fiction writers. Eldorado was one of my favorite Poe poems. I like that it has an efficiency in words that is many times lacking in Poe's poetry.

I might be reaching but this poem of Poe's kinda reminds me of DnD a little. This knight is searching for the a fantastical city of gold (sounds a little like mythic underground cities in some of our games). The gold metaphor could also be spiritual enlightenment, or wisdom which is a little bit like gold = exp... Also it has knights and shades and adventuring....

Forgotten Realms

2010-06-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

A lot of old school players really get down on forgotten realms. During the heyday of my gaming this was my favorite world to game in. One of my favorite things about the game also runs completely counter to the Sandbox approach of gaming - it is the Aurora's Whole Realms catalogs and the Volo's Guides.

I used these products ravenously. I found that I almost never used published adventures during the times that I was running forgotten realms. Either (1.) these published adventures involved characters that were in TSR books that were coming out at the time or (2) in order for me to involve my players I had to pull some nasty tricks out of my hat. The only published adventures I used were Undermountain (a delicious megadungeon that I added 10+ levels to), Myth Drannor ( a boxed set of an ruined city megadungeon with broad strokes but almost no detail, and the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar (probably my favorite Forgotten Realms adventure module - I think I will write a blog post all about this module sometime).

However, I used these accessories like crazy:

1. Aurora's Whole Realms

2. Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast.

3. Volo's Guide to the North

4. Volo's guide to the Dalelands.

These books had wonderful items for my players to purchase, wonderful foods for them to have their characters eat, and lots of different inns and taverns to play around in. I didn't have to waste any time coming up with a tavern for the players to sleep at in each town they visited - Ed Greenwood did it all. I didn't have to worry about the price of a red and grey dress for one of my female players (she could pick one out on page 81 of Aurora's).

Anyway, I love settings where the author fills in crazy amounts of non-dungeon related detail. I can use that and then focus my energies on filling dungeons or creating the intrigues of the kings court or creating city adventures for a group of scaly rogues... in other words - the fun stuff.

Generation of Swine

2010-06-25T12:26:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting here reading Generation of Swine by Hunter S. Thompson and what is tripping me out is how original this guys brain pattern is. Most people copy the thoughts and style of others in everything they create. Not Hunter.

Here he is riffing about Reagan:

"Reagan's children must be proud of him. With AIDS and acid rain, there is not much left in the way of life and love and possibilities for these shortchanged children of the '80's. In addition to a huge and terminally crippling national debt, and a shocking realization that your country has slipped to the status of a second-rate power, and that five American dollars will barely buy a cup of coffee in Tokyo, these poor buggers are being flogged every day of their lives with the knowledge that sex is death and rain kills fish and any politician they see on TV is a liar and a fool." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I'm not sure what he would say if he was living in the foul year of our lord 2010... trickle down economics... lol... As I read this book I simultaneously want to laugh and vomit - now that is art. I wish I could have had brunch with him in vegas.

Anyway, the article I wrote about watery magic of vats and pools is definitely getting published - more to come on that soon. I think I am going to work on supplemental material for that article and put it up on this blog - extra spells, maybe some extra random tables.

The LL lord game that I was in flopped... our GM went turn coat on us and started a Mutant Future PBEM game. Who knows, maybe he will come back later. I wasn't feeling Mutant Future, although it received lots of good words on the nets, so in summary I'm back to a single game and I'm the DM. If anyone knows of any old school PBEM games where I could be a player - please let me know. I have some ideas for games that I could run as DM, but I would much rather be a player.

Weird Watery Magic of Pools and Vats

2010-06-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting much on this blog. Recently, I've been pretty much obsessed by the use of magical vats of liquid in my games. I created this Lovecraftian sort of monster in my Castles and Crusades game. It was an outsider "demon" creature from space that crashlanded in the Bright Lands of Greyhawk. I combined this concept with Moldvay's "The Lost City" and I'm working in this whole backstory about how the creature has spent the last 500 years feasting on the intellect of humans. My thought is that this creature is made totally of protoplasm and it can fashion itself a body and change the hardness of its goo to that of chitin plate if it desires. It's intelligence was so alien to human kind that initially it could not communicate telepathically with humans. After 500 years of feasting on human psyches it has now adapted to be able to communicate. Anyway, I ruled that during its crash landing on earth it lost a particular artifact which allowed it to live easily in any environment. It has been stuck deep underground living in certain pools that sustained its abominable lifeforce until it could regain the artifact. The PC's were chasing this Half Orc Assassin which had obtained the artifact, but they failed to stop the half orc from returning the artifact. This demon being which was revered as a god by these underground people has now been unleashed on Oerth. I'll be bringing the PC's into confrontation with the beast again once they have gained a few more levels and could survive the encounter. Anyway as a side effect of this adventure I became obsessed with pools and vats. I started brainstorming a huge number of ideas for how these magical vessels of liquid could be used to awesome effect in DnD style games. I have written a ~4-5 page article so far and I still have lots of ideas. I'm thinking of throwing it in front of some folks that publish hobby gaming fanzines. In addition, I will probably publish most or all of the ideas up on this blog and try and get some feedback for how the article is progressing. Here is my introduction to the article - I haven't done any re-writing yet, this is still a first draft:

Introduction:

Human kind has long had both a fascination and fear of water. Man needs this precious liquid each day to live and yet he can drown in a mere teaspoon of the substance. Vessels of water hold a powerful symbolism of motherhood and the womb, juxtaposing the origin of life itself with an environment that man can no longer enter without fear of death by drowning. Foul potions brewing in the cauldrons of witches and the embryonic vats birthing an artificial monster of a man are just two examples of how this powerful symbol has been employed in literature. This article aims to flesh out a variety of ideas on how you can use vats and pools in your fantasy RPG game. These entities should be used infrequently and each use should invoke either a pure magical wonder or a sense of horrific alien fear. The statistics used in this article are written for Swords and Wizardry, however they could be adapted with ease to any retro clone or original edition of DnD.

Detect Evil Sucks

2010-06-12T04:46:00.001-07:00

I'm really sick of detect evil and detect alignment spells. I think these spells are roleplay crushers which yank pc's out of the act of roleplaying and into a tactical method of gaming even when confronting humans. I like to add mysteries and conspiracies to my games, but I have to go to great lengths to think about how to avoid a single detect evil spell from ruining the conspiracy that I am creating.

Instead of using roleplaying to try and solve mysteries many times my PC's will go right for detecting evil on everything - figure out what is bad and kill it. Also, with paladins in the party my group enters a dark room or something, and the paladin will try and use a detect evil spell to determine if there are enemies in the room. I'd rather the PC's resort to using their heads and try strange little tricks to decipher where the enemies are instead of getting to the door, casting a detect evil spell and saying - oh sure, there's some bad stuff in there, lets go heal up quick before we go through this door.

For my next DnD campaign - whatever actual system I decide to run, I'm going to use the simple Law, Neutral, and Chaos system of alignment and I'm not going to allow any detection of moral compass. To replace these slots for clerics I will give them more augury spells and maybe detect undead or detect extraplanar entity spells. This seems justified in that undead and extraplanar entities are not from this world and may radiate negative energy or leave some planar strands or marks that priests could identify by calling on certain magics.

I think this will also increase the power of telepathy spells, clarivoyance, clairaudience, etc... because in order to "divine" an NPC's intentions they will have to do more than cast detect alignment and then make a snap decision about who the NPC is. Using auguries might let the GM drop interesting hints to help the PC's without cutting to the chase and revealing the entire mystery or conspiracy that he is trying to weave. I think humans are more complex in their motivations than a simple good and evil bucketing allows for.

Birth and Death

2010-05-18T03:42:00.000-07:00

I've got exciting news! I just joined a new PBEM labyrinth lord sword and sorcery game. I'm playing a red haired barbarian (Skarite) cleric of Wotan, Brannach.

Here is an overview of Brannach:

Name: Brannach

Class: Skarite Cleric

Level: 3

AC: 5 (Std Lthr + Shield)

Hit Points: 21

Appearance/Description: Brannach has a long mane of red hair that lies back on his shoulders. Upon his chest he bears studded leather armor gilded upon his forearms with bronze bracers. His zealous religion can be a bit off-putting to some.

Exp: 5001

Nxt: 6251

S: 14 +1 to attack and damage

D: 10

C: 13 +1 hp

I :13 +1 additional lang. Able to read and write.

W: 15 +2 to all magical saves, +5% to EXP

C: 7 +1 Reaction Adj, Max 3 retainers, Ret. Morale 6

Weapons: Light Mace +1 to attack (1d6+1), Sling (1d4)

Items:

2 pair of clothes (2gp, 2lb)

Studded Leather (30gp, AC6, 20lb)

Light Mace (5gp, 1d6, 3lb)

Shield (10gp, AC-1, 10lb)

Sling + 10 bullets (2gp, 5lb)

BackPack (2gp, 2lb)

Bronze Bracers (1gp, 1lb)

HolySymbol (silver) (25gp, 1lb)

1 Wineskins of water (1gp, 8lbs)

4 vials (4gp, 1lb)

50ft Hemp Rope (1gp, 10lb)

6 trail rations (3gp, 6lb)

On mule: Saddle and saddlebags (5gp), 3 more wineskins (3gp), feed for mule 5 days (1gp), bedroll (1gp)

Animals: Mule (30gp)

Wealth: 16gp

Saves: BA:16 Poi&Death:11 PP:14 Wand:12 Spell:15

Cleric Abilities: Turn Undead, Spells, Diety is Wotan (Odin)

Languages: Common, Sharan

History: I can work it out later... perhaps something to discuss with the party over a roaring bonfire?

I'm pretty excited about getting involved in an old school flavored DnD game as a player (not GM)!!! But, I've decided I'm pausing my Mythic solo game Streets of Madness for now to gain some internet time to devote toward posting in my Greyhawk Castles and Crusades game (as GM) and posting as a player in this LL game.

Ronnie James Dio

2010-05-17T14:33:00.001-07:00

In case you didn't know: Ronnie James Dio, died of stomach cancer on the morning of 5-16-10...

I heard of his death this morning. I always knew of Dio's song Holy Diver, but a couple of years ago I really got into RJD's music. His epic lyrics and belting vocals made him a big influence for me in the last couple of years. For me early heavy metal bands like the kind that Ronnie James Dio was apart of (Black Sabbath, Dio, Elf, Rainbow) really drove home the imagery and pageantry of metal fantasy. They defined the leap toward the fantastic land of the gods and devils that drove me to play this game. I'm not going to say that my life is going to be different now that Dio is gone. I didn't know him, I just really liked his music.

For me the importance of his death for me is that each time someone like Dio or Frazzeta falls off our little planet I feel like a little of the original artistic spark and magic that drew me into this game goes with them. It won't go all at once, it will be like a long tide, leaving behind it nothing but dust.

Rock on Dio... you will be missed!

They say that lifes a carousel

Spinning fast, youve got to ride it well

The world is full of kings and queens

Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams

Its heaven and hell, oh well

And they'll tell you black is really white

The moon is just the sun at night

And when you walk in golden halls

You get to keep the gold that falls

Its heaven and hell, oh no!

Heaven and Hell - Ronnie James Dio and Black Sabbath

Streets of Madness: Scene Four - Part 2

2010-05-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Chaos Factor: 4

Characters: Jimi, Eddie, Mrs. Rosse,

Threads: Find out who killed the dead guy. Investigate the Salvage Company. Explore the ship.

Heading down the stairs I catch sight of some blood. The lower levels aren’t well lit and there is a pretty foul smell catching my nose immediately. I head into a tight hallway and see a smear of blood heading into a doorway at the other end of the hall. There are three doors on each side of the hallway and another doorway with a stairway sign marking that it descends further into the boat. I decide to check out the blood.

Q: Does anything jump out at Jimi? [50:50, strong YES]

Q: Is it human? [unlikely, yes]

Suddenly out of nowhere a man leaps at me from one of the doorways of the boat and slams the gun from my hands. In the ugly gleam of single light bulb in the hall way I catch a glimpse of crazy eyes peering at me from behind wire-rimmed glasses, a white blood splattered lab coat, and grasping hands. I fall back against the far wall and try to twist around to defend myself. Should have expected that, I guess I’m getting slow.

NPC:

Edward Palantine. *Crazed* Ship Doctor [3]

Edward was the ships doctor - a reasonable man of intellect whose rational mind snapped like peanut brittle at whatever he has seen down here in this ship. He has been infected by an almost supernatural fear, paranoia, and madness.

Risus Combat - grappling - Jimi, ex special ops cliche [5] vs. Edward [5] ~~ a tie!

We fall back and I twist around to get a better grip on the man. I am a better fighter, but this man fights with insane strength. I’ve got a backup pistol in my ankle holster, but this guy is crazy so I’m not going to draw that unless it is life or death. He is drooling on me and babbling insane phrases. I can’t quite make out what he is saying. I try like hell to give him a good punch and shut him up.

Risus Combat - grappling - Jimi, ex special ops cliche 3d [14] vs. Edward 3d [11]

Risus Combat - grappling - Jimi, ex special ops cliche 3d [16] vs. Edward 2d [6]

Risus Combat - grappling - Jimi, ex special ops cliche 3d [11] vs. Edward 1d [5]

My fist finally connects with his face and I knock him backward. I leap atop of him and although his fists and arms swing up feebly I’m able to land another blow that reels him nearly senseless. I realize I’ve got him at that point and I scream in his face, “Calm down, damn it!!!” He won’t so I give him one more good punch. His eyes roll back and close.

I pull my head up and look around. I quickly grab my gun and wipe the sweat off my face. That was bullshit crazy. This guy looks like a doctor or something, he only needs a stethoscope to complete the look.

Q: Did that fight draw anyone (anything) else? [50:50, No].

Cuffing the “doctor” to the nearest door-handle I head down the hallway, my gun held before me close to my face. I turn into the doorway that had the blood smear and nearly wretch on the floor. A sickening smell like rotten pork drifts out of the room. There are body parts everywhere. Some of them have been cataloged and small strips of paper attached with a description, maybe in latin? There are strange gashes in some of them that might be from fingernails or claws? I immediately remember the lion, the marks look more like claw marks not fingernails... man.. this is screwed up...

I shake my head at this scene and get back onto the case. There has got to be an explanation for all of this. Maybe it lies below. I head to the stair case and begin to descend down. I enter a massive hold piled high with boxes. There must be several staircases and hatches that can open up for loading. At the bottom of the stair is something that makes my heart stop a beat. There are some cases explosives, the kind used for underwater demolition, and they are wired up with a timer. The timer has [1d6, 2] 2 minutes and 6 seconds on it. I watch the next ten seconds ticking down on the timer before I realize that this is real.

Q: Does the horrible thing reveal itself? [50:50, No - only missed by a couple]

As I turn and begin to run up the stairs I hear something from down in the hold. It is like a shriek but it is hard to tell if human lips could have uttered it. I’m not sure if I have time to get the doctor off the ship, but I give it a try. I run over, and fumble with the key. I am counting the seconds in my mind as I heave him up onto my shoulder. Another heart beat, another second. I count ten more as I run up the stairs.

I’m running out on the deck. I think about it for a moment and decide to toss the good doctor off the boat into the sea. His body hits the water nearly lifeless but then begins to stir a bit after he hit the water. I am climbing down the ladder as fast as I can. I undo the ropes on the small craft that got me here and then start up the engine. I grab the doctor and pull him in and then turning the craft I push the throttle full ahead.

I only get a few seconds from the larger ship when the deep concussive blast happens. It rocks the smaller craft so bad I think I’m going to capsize! The side of the larger ship ripples and swells like a balloon for a moment and then the ship seems to heave and shake in the water.

In the next few minutes while I am speeding away from the larger ship and cuffing the doctor again the larger ship begins to tilt backward and begin to sink. My mind thinks back to the ship, to those bodies, dissected, cataloged, placed along the counters and the pans and the shelves. How many souls died on that boat and why. I look at the doctor and his dull mad eyes glare back at me.

“When we get back to shore... you and I are going to have a talk. And you are gonna give me some answers by god. You are going to answer for what I just saw back there! Big time!”

Well I'm thinking I will increase the chaos factor back up to 5.

Streets of Madness - Scene 4

2010-05-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness. Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

Scene Four - Part 1:

Chaos Factor: 4

Characters: Jimi, Eddie, Mrs. Rosse,

Threads: Find out who killed the dead guy. Investigate the Salvage Company.

I start this scene out deciding that since Jimi’s attempts to find out who caused this murder have failed, perhaps another murder will occur related to the first. However, I roll on the scene modifier [1d10] and get a 2. This is an interrupt scene. I roll on the random event table. I get [Return] and [Travel] - since the only thing that I know that has been traveling is this Salvage vessel I decide that Jimi was able to sneak aboard the small craft that returned to the salvage company office and is now returning with three men back to the salvage vessel by himself with no backup... a most daring and stupid maneuver. Must be his dreams from last night really screwed him up and got him up in a strange mood.

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing on this boat. The waves keep slamming into the bottom of it and I can hear them really good from my spot underneath a fold down bed in the sleeper section. Common sense should have put me back at my office, not following some half backed lead out into the ocean. I have no idea on how I’m going to get back to shore let alone not get caught in the next few minutes.

However, the minutes drag on and I’m not caught.

Q: Is there a rival organization at odds with the salvage company. [likely, yes]

I can hear the men talking about their find and how if they bring it into the city they’ll have to fight to keep it long enough to sell it. This sets my mind racing. What exactly is it these guys have found. They have a strange sound in their throats when they talk about it.

I don’t have much more time to think about it because soon the boat thumps gently up against another vessel. The men begin moving equipment around like mad from above and I fear they plan to come down into the cabin to gather further equipment.

Q: Do they come down into the sleeper cabin for more equipment? [50:50, yes]

Q: Do they search under the bed? [50:50, no - by one point!!!]

My fears are realized when one of the men comes down into the cabin looking for something. I hear him banging drawers back and forth in the cabin filtering through the contents of the hold until finally calls from above draw him upward. As they were calling he had dropped down on one hand to look under the bed directly at me, but then the calls from above got louder and he jumped up and went back on deck. I give it a few minutes and then slip out of my hiding spot. With my gun in hand I peek up out of the hold to find a much larger vessel looming above the tiny boat that has delivered me here. Getting a bit braver I look around for a way to get up on the larger ship without being seen. If I go up the ladder they used I’ll be spotted for sure.

Q: Is there a way for Jimi to get up on the ship some alternate way? [Unlikely, No]

Damn, it! There aren’t any other ropes or small craft hanging down. I’ll have to wait. I head back to my little hiding spot and wait a while. After about an hour I hear some gunfire from aboard the larger craft. That is enough to get me moving. I head up to the rope ladder and climb the ladder with a gun in hand, moving with two legs and one arm. Peering over the edge of the boat at the top I see no one on the main deck. Directly in front of me is another ladder that probably leads upward to the main engine control perch. To the left of me is a small walkway leading to a door that likely leads to the ships hold.

Random: [rolled a d3 to choose, 1= main deck, 2= engine room, 3= hold, I rolled a 2.]

Heading up the stairs directly in front of me I creep forward in a half crouch and then push open the door with my hand and then peek in quickly. It is empty. Stepping into the room I look out onto the ship and beyond. The ship is completely empty of movement on the front and rear decks. The rear deck is clustered with shipping containers so there could be somebody hiding beyond any of those. The ship is pretty long, couple hundred feet at least. I see a craft departing from the vessel from the other side of the boat. It makes a wide arc and then begins to pull toward shore.

Q: Did something horrible happen to make these men flee. [Likely, Yes]

Q: Did they rig the boat to explode? [50:50, Yes]

Seeing nothing more of interest and wondering inside just what the hell is going on I decide to head down into the hold. It is pretty strange that these men just took off from the ship leaving it unmanned in the ocean with no one at the helm...

ps...That Moby Dick line made me think of things dreaming under the sea... things with tentacles... see you guys again soon with Scene 4 Part 2.

Scene Three - Part B - A Room with a View:

2010-05-01T04:03:00.000-07:00

The Setup:

Chaos Factor: 5

Characters: Jimi, Eddie, Mrs. Rosse

Threads: Find out who killed the dead guy. Investigate the Salvage Company.

[In the last scene Jimi scoped out some guys at a salvage company from a room in a hotel just a couple of blocks away. He took some pictures and then called for some company when it was too dark to see.]

The Story:

The room is pretty dark and quiet, not many souls in this shabby hotel down by the waters edge. A sliver of blue light from the streets stabs its way through the room and offers the only challenge to the overwhelming black. "B" stands up and for a moment the slim outline of her body and hair is framed by the light.

Walking into the bathroom and snapping a light on with an audible click she calls into me, “ Pretty shameful you calling me up. This could land you in some serious...”

“Nah, I think I’m good. I don’t remember paying.”

“I didn’t ask you to, silly man.”

“If you had, I’d have thought twice.”

“I’m sure you would have.”

We always play this way. Ever since I picked her up out of that mud, blood covered, left for dead. Years later she took to the streets as a walker picking up the johns. I think that night I found her left something in her, same something I got in me. She’s got a good heart though, and I look out for her.

She comes in and her bronze skin and black hair mark her Korean heritage. She’s put on a dress, although it is flaring out in the back, she’ll probably want me to zip it up. I pull on the bottle and think about things. The leftovers of my investigation are lying on that table; a camera, wrappers from the subs I ate, and a whole lot of nothing.

She comes over and gives my head a small slap with a silky hand, “There you go thinking again Jimi. You gotta relax, that tension’s gonna eat you up someday.”.

“I was thinking about you baby”

“Liar”

And she’s right. Women always know when a man isn’t thinking about them. Lucky she ain’t the jealous type. She’s into that witchy voodoo crap, maybe I should tell her about the lions. I thought that was some weird stuff.

“You know I found a man who had been left all torn up in the lion’s cage at the zoo. What do you think about that. You think it might be one of the gangs?”

She looks at me from over her shoulder while I’m pulling the zipper slowly up, her black hair washes over her arm parted at the tip of her forehead.

“That doesn’t sound like the gangs to me.”

She has a weird look in her eye. Maybe she knows something, but whatever it is, she isn’t going to let it spill. That means she’s either too afraid or she thinks her idea is too silly to say it. I’m not going to push the issue. She is getting her things while I take another pull from the bottle. Finally, she stands in the door way, light again framing her thin body and she looks at me like she is looking at a dead man.

“Jimi, whatever you are getting yourself into. Look out. Lions and kings, Jimi, lions and kings, dark stuff.”

“You take it easy B, don’t you worry over me.”

After she leaves, I lock the door and tuck my pistol under the pillow - you can’t be too sure. Falling into a dark sleep I dream of a house near a stop sign. I’m going inside. The hallway is dark, I put my hand on the door handle to the room and I’m scared of what’s inside. I smell burning cheese and I hear giggles from out in the back, I think it is a playground. I open the door. There is a black horse in the room. He is looking at me, motionless except for his breathing. He breathes in, and then snorts it out, breathes in and then snorts it out. He is looking at me, his eyes are dark. I’m walking up to him. I feel a tapping on my shoulder but I ignore it. The horse is breathing and looking at me. Someone keeps tapping me on the shoulder. I reach out to touch the horse on the nose. My hand gets closer and closer. The tapping keeps up, I turn and look, it is the horse head on the body of "B". I can tell by the dress. She moves her horse head close and whispers into my ear...

I decide again to lower the chaos factor to four since it seemed to be in the control of the Jimi.

Scene Three Part A: Along the Waterfront...

2010-04-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Scene Three - Part A: On the Dock

Chaos Factor: 5

Characters: Jimi, Eddie, Mrs. Rosse

Threads: Find out who killed the dead guy. Investigate the Salvage Company.

Wow this scene is long overdue!!! I roll 1d10 for scene setup [5] so this is an altered scene. I was planning to have Jimi interview the Salvage company folks and I’m not sure how I would like to alter the dock scene I was planning so I will try a couple of probing questions to get things rolling...

Q: Does anybody start off shooting at Jimi? [50:50, No]

Q: Is the place deserted? [50:50, Yes]

Rolling up to the dock where this salvage company is located I think about what I found in that file. There were definitely some discrepancies but nothing that jumped off the page and screamed out to me. There is a clue in here somewhere, I just haven’t figured it out yet. My alcohol riddled brain is probably starting to fail me already. Hope not, I’ve got a long time before retirement.

“Well, lets see if anybody’s home,” I say as I get out of the car.

Coming up to the door I note that there is a closed sign in the window. I peek through the windows and don’t find much, some desks, some filing cabinets, lame calendars, pinup girls, pictures of men holding fish and treasures hauled up from the deep, guys drunk at bars wearing wigs and the like. Pretty typical. I don’t have a warrant to start kicking in the doors so I’ll try the other way, for now. I note the security camera that is trained on me as I turn around.

I walk back to my car and decide to take off. I head out a couple blocks an find a nice Italian joint, a couple of subs later and a box full of coffee and I’m swinging back around to the neighborhood near the docks. I find a shitty hotel near the sea and purchase a room, I ask for a room that overlooks the sea. I take my camera with the telescoping lens, the subs, a notepad and a couple of magazines.

Yep, they were expecting me and pulled a dodge. A couple of hours later they show up in a white Ford truck with a cab on the back. Two of them. Then a couple more hours later a small boat comes into the dock, their ship must be somewhere off shore near the coast. I watch them buzz around and take shots of them. I’m far away but with some touch ups the boys in the lab will be able to make an ID if they had a criminal record.

It goes that way until dark. Then thinking about the fact that I have the room for the rest of the night I decide to call for some company. I know just the girl. I tell her to bring a bottle.

Dark Acolytes of Elder Gods

2010-04-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

I threw these little acolyte guys against my PBEM group - stats are based on Castles and Crusades but could easily be morphed into LL or S&W:

No Encountered: 2d6

Size: Medium

HD: 2+ (d8)

Move: 30ft

AC: 10

Attacks: by weapon

Special: (see below)

Saves: M

Int: Average to High

Alignment: LE

Type: Human

Treasure: 2

Exp: variable

Description: Acolytes serve the wishes of elder beings from the outer reaches of space and time. They frequently develop religious ceremonies, sacrifices, accouterments, and relics/objects that they feel connect them to their chosen "gods" but the beings that they worship think of them as lesser servants or sometimes as crunchy little snacks :) The acolytes are granted no spells from their worship of these gods, but over time the cult will develop methods of emulating true religions.

For example when encountered if there are over 4 acolytes present at least one of them will be have 3HD and will be carrying some kind of special object, examples include:

1. Lotus Dust(they will blow a pinch of this powder in the face of intended victims, enemies, and sacrifices) it will cause intense hallucinations for 2d6 turns during which time the victim cannot easily concentrate and receives a -4 penalty to all attacks and saving throws.

2. Healing Salve (they use this to simulate divine healing) it is a blend of herbs, fungi, oils and essences of strange plants and from the dark places of the earth. An application of this salve will cure 1d6 hp overnight.

3. Harmonizer - this device can create stunning audible noises when a master employs it by creating a very loud humming noise into one end of the device. If the correct pitch is hit, the device will amplify and harmonize the sound until all creatures with hearing with 60 ft of the device are beset by crippling headaches and stunned unless they pass a saving throw vs. paralyzation.

Other neat ideas are: greek fire, smoke bombs for evasion, strange mirrors with foul effects, etc...

Also, if the group of acolytes exceeds 8 members there will typically be 4HD+ acolyte who will also have access to at least one of the relics described and also will have 1d2 arcane spells. Typically these spells are not the standard spells from the players handbook but are devious black magics of the GM's imaginings. There is only a 50% chance that they will be carrying a spell book if encountered outside of their "church".

Example Spell:

Exquisite Horror - Level 1 Wizard Spell:

CT: 1, R: 100ft, D: 1 hour/level, SV: Intelligence Negates, SR: yes, Comp: V,S,M

Exquisite horror will imbue its victim with unshakable fear and horror. If approached the victim will try to run and hide from any moving creature they notice and if cornered will faint or freeze up with paralyzing fear or attack every being in sight. Victims already suffering from the effects of Lotus Dust will not be allowed a saving throw against this spell.

Recent History and Strange Observations

2010-04-13T03:18:00.000-07:00

If anybody is still checking in on this blog... thanks. I've been massively overwhelmed in the last several weeks which has impacted my previous schedule of ~12 posts per month. Alos, my PBEM Greyhawk game is really taking off. My players have descended another level, finally acquired a bit of treasure from their adventuring :) and found an albino cleric. This albino cleric cannot communicate well with them for lack of overlapping languages but through miming and pictography they have decided they are on the same team for now and are now following this cleric down into the depths of this dungeon.

This albino cleric worships a god Ishu, which is the symbol of a three fold woman (bearing some resemblance to Istus) and they seem to be at odds with another group of clerics who have now captured the half orc assassin. There seems to be a battle of sorts occurring somewhere underground and the PC's found their albino cleric nearly fatally wounded lying on a bed in the dungeon. After quite a bit of debate about whether to heal the man they finally did and he awarded them with some treasure (by showing them how to use some golden masks to make their way past mechanical wasp guardians armed with death poison to pilfer some gold and gems).

But during this encounter I noted something quite odd about PC's. They will sometimes obsess over really strange things that you would have never guessed about. Take this description as evidence:

As Geodine and Esmeralda approach the wounded man he looks up apprehensively toward your strange ensemble. Geodine examines the man from a closer and closer distance noting that his stomach wound will be fatal without magic aid. As Esmeralda comes close to the man and takes first his club and then tries to grab at his Emblem he knocks her hand away and yells out something sharp and quick in his strange tongue.

As the torches draw near and he whips his arms about you note that his skin is pale, he must be one of these albino people you have heard about. Looking closer, his eyes seems to have dark brown pigment, so he is not a true albino - perhaps his skin has not seen the sun... ever. His dress is very simple, dark thick padded armor pants, thick boots, and he is shirtless except for his bandages. His hair is a long mass of brownish yellow and held back with a yellow tie. He has a bit of wispy beard upon his face but it doesn't grow thick.

Nau Gui addresses the man in two languages but he doesn't seem to recognize any of it. Instead he speaks once more in a non-sensical tongue, "Curthag unkthatack arosthack!"

A little later I posted this:

In the chests there are some thin metal masks (maybe steel) covered in gold
paint (you can see where it was scraped off in some spots. Also in the chests
there are more pants, shirts, bandages, a jar of what looks to be a salve of
some sort, and a light cudgel.

The rest of the room is bare except for a deck of cards on one of the small
tables. There are two doors in the back of the room one on the wall to the left
and one on the far wall. Esmeralda hears a slight buzzing noise on the other
side of the door to the far wall.

While some of the pc's focused on the dying man or the strange buzzing noise, and the chests full of strange thin metal masks... other PC's decided it was wiser to spend the next week of PBEM time examining the deck of cards that was mentioned in passing. They got into a minor in game argument over who would keep the deck calling each other grabby among other things. PC's will focus on strange things and forget about your obvious clues, I don't understand it, but it is true :)

Streets of Madness: Scene 2

2010-03-27T05:17:00.001-07:00

Scene 2: The Interview

Chaos Factor: 6

Characters: Jimi, Eddie

Threads: Find out who killed the dead guy.

The Set up: My idea to start scene two is to have Jimi go and interview the wife of the dead guy. I rolled an 8 for the modifier die so there is no modification of this concept.

The Play:

“Mrs.Rosse like to ask you a couple of questions about yesterday, it was two days ago right..”

The lady across the room from me on the couch looks at me with glazed eyes and nods a slow confirmation to my question. I’m not sure how productive this is going to be, however, we matched her husbands DNA to strands of hair from her apartment so our department had to give her the news yesterday that her husband wasn’t just missing. He was dead.

“Did he go to work?”

“I don’t know, he left for work.”

She looks at me accusingly like I’m forcing her. Maybe I should play this slow.

“Look, we could go through these questions in a couple of days if you’d like. I just like to try to get them out of the way while the events are fresher in your mind if you can handle it.”

“It’s ok Mr. Harrigan. I.... I just miss him...” She sobs a bit with her eyes on the floor.

“What did your husband do for a living?” I know the answer to this but I wanted to give her a softball question to get her started.

“He is, was, a stock broker.”

“Was he depressed?”

“No, I don’t think so,” She runs her hands along the length of her jeans, “he had his bad times like anybody. I wouldn’t say he was depressed? Do you think he did this to himself?”

“I’m not ruling out anything yet Mrs. Rosse, would you mind if I used your bathroom?”

I head back to the bathroom and pretend to take a leak. I turn on the water in the sink and look around. Maybe there is something here.

Q: Does Jimi find anything in the bathroom? [unlikely, No]

Q: Does this lady know anything or not? [50:50, Yes]

Coming back into the room from my search in the bathroom I decide to end this interview quickly.

“Look Mrs. Rosse, we can tap dance around this all day but I’m going to lay it to you straight. I think your husband was murdered, I don’t think committed suicide by climbing into a lion’s cage. I think there is a decent chance that you know something. If you want to see whoever did this brought to justice tell me what you know.”

She looks at me with fierce eyes for a moment and I think she might charge me from across her glass coffee table. Instead she gets up and walks with zombie steps back into her house. I follow.

From the bottom of a desk she pulls out a plastic file binder and places it on the top of the desk.

“Mr. Harrigan, my husband was a gambler. He would bet on anything and after some time that moved into his business practices. He came across a large sum of money during the stock boom and pulled a lot of it out before the crash. We were going to get a better house, but instead he invested a great deal of it into a little known salvage company. I don’t know what they are up to, but over the last six months he has spent more and more time with that file. The other night he spent quite a while pouring over the contents of that folder before heading out. That was the last time I saw him.”

End Scene. I lower the Chaos Factor by one since this interview worked out for Mr. Jimi.

Streets of Madness: Scene 1

2010-03-25T17:33:00.000-07:00

This is my first amateur attempt at running a Mythic GME game. I'm running it solo for now, but later I'm thinking of adding my buddy. Unless Jimi gets torn to shreds by some kind of lovecraftian horror or poisoned by a serial killer or shot by a junkie, etc... Check out Risus Monkey to see a real master run this kind of game.

Scene 1: The Murder...

Chaos Factor: 5

Characters: Jimi

Threads: None

The Set Up:

I had already decided that it this game had to start start with a murder. I decide to roll on the random event chart to get an idea for focus.

Random: [NPC Action, Malice and Animals]

I then ask a question:

Q: Was someone murdered by zoo animals? [50/50, Yes.]

The Play:

The constant ringing of the phone pulled me out of sleep. I pick up the phone. It’s the L.t. There’s been a death at the zoo and something doesn’t smell right about it. I tell him I’ll come down quick and hang up. A few minutes later I’m leaving my crummy apartment and head down to the street using the elevator.

Q: Is it raining? (50/50, exceptional yes, of course...)

As I leave the apartment, I pull my coat tight about myself to ward of the buckets buckets of rain crashing down. I head to my rust heap of a car and get inside; it starts like a charm. I take a moment to listen to the rain on the windshield, but it will take more than a spring shower to wash away the filth of this city.

It isn’t far to the zoo, just a bit uptown from the apartment. The whole place is lit up in blue and red lights from the police cars. I pull way into the back to avoid the journalists and then I see a couple of boys in blue standing with Eddie trying to put up a tarp or something to hold back the rain. Eddie is in forensics and he can’t be happy that he hasn’t had a chance to pull anything out of those black cases at his feet. Decent enough guy I guess; just don’t get him started on baseball.

Q: Was it a man who was killed? [50/50, Yes]

Walking up to them they start telling me all about it. Somebody fell or was pushed into the lion cage and was ripped apart by the beasts. I think about that for a second or two. There is a fence and then a wall and then a moat - this somehow got through all of that to end up dead in there. They broke the lock on the fence but how did they get across that moat. I walk in there and take a look. The body is hanging over some rocks like a rag doll, blood streaming down the rocks. Just then I notice I’m standing in the cage with the lions. They are in the back of the cage lying up in the back, away from the rain, their cold eyes glaring down at their fresh kill.

Q: Was there any symbols of the occult? [Likely, No]

Q: Are there any other clues? [Very likely, No]

The fate machine has decided there are ZERO clues about this murder to be found.

Hours later Eddie and his buddies haven’t turned anything up. I can’t believe that this is anything but a murder. You just don’t walk into a lion’s cage for no reason. I head on out of there to get some sleep. Eddie will be at it for the rest of the night but there is no reason for me to stay. I head back to the apartment to get some sleep there will be time enough talk about this one in the morning.

End Scene. I decide to raise the chaos factor since pretty much nothing went the way of our protagonist...

The New Solo (maybe Duo) Game

2010-03-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

I figured out what I'm doing for my solo (maybe duo) game. It will be using Mythic&Risus and will be a horror/mystery genre, I'm thinking of calling it: Streets of Madness.

Here is my character:

James “Jimi” Harrigan

Story:

A lean hard man with the characteristic black overcoat covering a wrinkled suit. Jimi was in Operation Desert Storm where he served his country and saw some things that would make you shiver. He has also seen a couple of things in this city that would spin your head but he tells no one so they don’t think he is crazy. Once Jim gets into a case and starts following a lead he becomes an obsessed bloodhound following the clues where ever they lead. You better hope they don’t lead to you...

Cliches:

“Nose to the Grind” Detective (4), Ex-Special Forces (3), Alcoholic Weekend Warrior (2), Stared into the Dark (1)

Items/Equipment/Etc...

Beat up car (with one police light that he can throw up on top in times of need and a police radio), wrinkled suit, 9mm pistol with side holster and three clips, cell phone, notepad, pencil, swiss army knife, metal flask with the hard stuff, Big Red chewing gum

In the back of his car he also has:

12 guage shotgun in the trunk, crowbar, spare tire, rope, duct tape, coffee cups, portable filing case with files

Cliche Explanations:

“Nose to the Grind” Detective: following leads, interrogation, dodging the landlord, dodging bullets, putting crooks in jail, hitting the bottle, shooting pistols, picking locks, using the internet, connections in the force, police authority, reading people

Ex-special forces: being tough as nails, running, shooting, hiding, being unfazed under gunfire, having nightmares and not talking about them

Alcoholic Weekend Warrior: knowing every bar in town, being able to handle a bottle, knowing the regulars in most of the downtown places, waking up in an alley

Stared into the Dark: thinking that there might be strange things out there that regular people don’t know about, having a little bit of knowledge about the occult

The influences for the game to name a few: Sin City, Lovecraft, Seven, Dark City, The Big Sleep, Trail of Cthulhu, The Wire, The Salton Sea, the Black Dahlia, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, X-Files, etc...

This is my first modern game in a while and I'm expecting it will be full-on cliched and fun! I'm pretty excited about it. Now I just have to figure out if my buddy is going to join in... figure out where I'll locate it and get going.

Rolemaster (Take 3) and Amethyst

2010-03-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Having read over the rolemaster core books I set right out to make a character. I started small - a common human ranger. I rolled some stats, then potential attributes, then modified for race, chose some languages then started flipping through the skill list and figuring out things like development points and power points, etc...

Well, lets just say that I may have been accustomed to a simpler way of making characters over the last couple of years (during which the only systems that I have used are Fudge, Risus, and 2nd Edition DnD). I'm not sure I have the time or patience right now to make Rolemaster characters unless I got a group together who would get me inspired to do so. Or maybe if I can figure out that Fudge conversion for Rolemaster that I think is a really juicy idea....

Anyway, I shelved Rolemaster for the short term and I am following the sacred teachings of Risus Monkey by trying to get a Mythic game started up. For now I may start up solo and then add my buddy in later if that makes sense. I'll probably post something up about the game I am planning in the next couple of days. I read through that book over the last couple of days and it immediately "clicked".

Also, Chris Dias of Dias Ex Machina contacted me about his game Amethyst which is being sold by Goodman Games. I checked out these links here, the pictures here, the free adventure Biohazard ( a zombie apocalypse style game), and finally this youtube clip. I wrote this blog post a while back about adding guns to ODD, well this game adds guns, and computers, and cars, and pretty much everything about our modern world to the conventional D&D game. Chris popped the top off his head and completely imagined a really excellent world where all the stuff that exists in our DnD games "came out to play"...

I think this picture that I popped into this post pretty much sums up the game (to Chris Dias or artist Nick Greenwood - if you want me to take this down I will immediately). They talk about it quite a bit in that cool YouTube series where they not only discuss the gameworld but how it evolved with the art from Nick Greewood (who did like 99.9% of the art for the game apparently). I've said before that having Peter Bradley do like 90% of the art for the Castles and Crusades game set up a consistent look and brand for that game. I think the same will hold true for amethyst.

Anyway, I can't say much more since I haven't picked up a copy of the game (I probably won't anytime soon since it is written for 4th edition DnD which I have no plans to play). The combination of technology, magic, fantasy, politics, and interesting imagery makes me want to slap my practical side silly and BUY THIS GAME (which is saying that I have like 50 different campaign worlds that I downloaded as part of the Haiti bundle and like 50 more campaign worlds that I have thought up in my sick head and don't in any way need another game world).

I'm not a fan of the 3rd edition, 3.5 edition, and 4th edition DnD rules - however, just because you don't like the rules doesn't mean there is a lot of gold in a game world/concept regardless of the rules. I could see me running a game in the amethyst game world using any of the familiar rulesets that I have become accustomed to over the years. Or if my DM buddy would get his $#!& together and want to start up our tabletop game (which was supposed to use 4th edition rules- since this DM likes 4th edition and convinced all us "old-timers" to try it but then never started the game all winter long after we made characters in November)

Maybe, just maybe I could convince him to run this game-world instead of the standard fantasy world he had been thinking of running a campaign in.

Who knows, I may go rogue and pick up a copy after all. If I watch that YouTube video about the art one more time I'll probably fail my saving throw and cave in to a moment of consumer weakness :)

Updated Game Map and Related Information

2010-03-15T03:45:00.000-07:00

My PBEM campaign is now forging ahead at lightning speed for a PbP game. As a result of that I haven't been posting much on the blog. My new player joined the crew and together they have investigated more of the dungeon. They finally encountered a Hextasaur (albiet a half hit die "baby" one) and they put a beat down on it in two rounds thanks to the bastard sword of the groups barbarian. It did nearly kill one of the druid's animal companions.

Here is an updated game map:

Although functionally they have really only explored like 3 additional rooms in two months our group is posting like crazy and having lots of fun.

Rolemaster

2010-03-11T09:29:00.001-08:00

Now that I have partially digested the three core books of the Rolemaster Classic edition that I have purchased I've come away with a couple of thoughts:

1. I'd really like to play this game in the traditional table-top form... I'm still working on getting a gaming group together, maybe I can convince them to try Rolemaster.

2. Arms Law is awesome and you could use it to add some critical hits to almost any game.

3. I think you could use a Fudge based system for attributes and skills to simplify character creation. Fudge and Rolemaster are both very modular so I think the fit could work out. I love the ease and detail of Fudge/Fate style character creation but I'm not a huge fan of the granularity of fudge dice and the way combat plays out in that game. I'm going to be thinking about how the two could be combined over the next couple of weeks.

Unrelated to rolemaster I picked up the Mythic Game Master Emulator and I might try to use that to run either a solo game or a game with a good buddy of mine who is separated by some distance and I think has the right kind of mojo for playing this Mythic game style. I ran into the Mythic system by reading over some of the stuff here. Maybe I will even post some of the game content up on my website in a similar fashion to the monkey if it ends up working out for us.

My new player

2010-03-07T08:50:00.001-08:00

I added another player to my PBEM Greyhawk game. He is playing a female Rhenne thief named Esmeralda. My players have explored a little more of the dungeon now - and so I inserted the new character into the dungeon with the following backstory:

There are some strange albino people living in this underground complex. You came to the dungeon with a group of adventurers who were exploring the desert for sunken treasures lost to time. When you came to this lost city, your group was beset by a group of six legged lizard creatures and slain. While they were fighting you found a secret door at the base of the idol and ran into the dungeon.

Talk about out of the fire and into the flames. As you entered the dungeon you were immediately immersed into a horrible fight between two groups of albino men whose language you couldn't understand. In the midst of the this battle was strange half orc who was carrying something like a quarterstaff wrapped in leather on his back. Both groups seemed to be trying to capture this half-orc alive, while also trying to kill each other.

You never got to see how it all turned out, because somebody with a club smashed you over the head. When you woke up you were without your backpack, trapped in a room in the dungeon in the pitch black with nobody about. Luckily, your money pouch was still at your belt and you still had your trusty thieves picks and your dirk. Otherwise you are lacking equipment and trapped in this dungeon probably waiting to starve to death.

Just then you hear a strange scuffling noise outside of the door...

He, he, he - I love just tossing new characters right into the middle of the game! It is one of the things that gives me the GM jollies!