Roll 'Em

GAMING IN THE DIGITAL AGE, PART II

2011-06-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

Continuing my previous post...

We sat down to actually game, this time using a laptop instead of my beleaguered smartphone, which apparently was just not fast enough to keep up with the demands of roleplayers. Again, part of the idea was to test out my retro-clone, Sorcery & Steel, so it was important to factor in just how much time was spent in confusion, as well as how much time was spent actually roleplaying.

Truly, it wasn't the smoothest experience. Probably because of the following:
1) My ill-preparation as Dungeon Master. I need to be on the ball and ready to go at a moment's notice. I have not run a game in several years.
2) I kept having to flip through the PDF to refer to the maps. And the maps have too much black on them to print without blowing an ink cartridge -- I'm looking at you Goodman Games! Fail.
3) My 7-year-old son did not feel like he was involved enough, and so kept running off and doing his own thing. While tangentially related, that was off-putting, and distracted everyone else.
4) The pauses in the scenario while I figured out where they were in the module vs. where they were on the map.

I thought it went pretty fast, but we have someone in the group who is quick to whine, therefore I try to eliminate bitching for my own piece of mind. So, I resolved to fix these things for next time. Especially involve my son more, as an absolute newbie it is essential he enjoy himself fully, so that he becomes a gamer and enjoys gaming on its own merits. Actively give him choices, so that he has a louder voice within the group.

I would like to unveil more complexities to combat, such as the combat maneuvers. Having more things to do than just endlessly trading blows with monsters in a war of H.P. attrition should help. Being able to disarm a nasty foe, or knock him down, ad infinitum is part of what makes Sorcery & Steel great, IMHO, and should be extensively used.

What did go right is that the players seemed to understand what was required of them, and didn't raise a fuss about this or that rule. Which is a good thing. If a rule doesn't make sense, new players can jump on that immediately and it makes the game less fun.

And another thing that went right is that, barring my son toward the end, everyone had fun.

So, with that in mind, and the adventure not yet finished, we must say: To Be Continued!

Gaming in the Digital Age - Part 1

2011-06-09T17:21:00.000-07:00

This is the first of a series of posts about running roleplaying games with current technology. I'm not talking about computer programs that organize every aspect of your game, from initiative to combat to how many spells have been cast, etc. That's was old when my Apple IIe was around. I'm referring to referencing PDF rulebooks, using pencils, paper, and real dice.

The game I am running is Basic D&D, heavily house-ruled (my retro-clone). I wanted to test the efficacy of the system and how easy it was to make characters. The speed of character creation was diluted somewhat by having to explain things orally to relative newbies, including a complete newbie: my 7 year old son.

I was using my Motorola Cliq, an Android phone (cuz I haven't been able to stand Apple proprietary devices since they introduced the iPod).

In retrospect, a laptop would have been better. The PDF reader I was using was the best there was for free, but I had to wait for pages to refresh which only increased the amount of time character creation took.

Still, we got 3 characters up and running, and we need to set a time for the game. Something that meshes with everyone's schedules. That will be harder than actually sitting down and bench-testing both the digital era plus my homebrew D&D.

Part II coming soon!

Summertime!

2011-06-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

Summer is not officially here until Jun 21st, but here's a photo of my environs. It is not my photo, but only because I do not have a telephoto lens to make the background stand out. On my digital camera, Mt. Rainier washes out, and seems to be indistinguishable from the skyline. We've got beaches, forests, lakes, mountains and cities. No place on earth like it!

Mt Rainier from Commencement Bay; The City of Tacoma is in the foreground.

Goblins & Orcs & Things Oh My!

2011-06-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is about them, but goblins and orcs seem to be fastened firmly in the D&D psyche. Judging by the fact that a lot of my fellow old school bloggers seem to have re-designed goblins and orcs, and I have my own take on them as well.

Orcs in my world go by a different name, Ugruk, and they are considered to be one of the "goblinoid races." I have read that Gygax didn't really care fpr the pig-faced orcs, so I don't use them. Ugruk have brown, gray or greenish skin, glowing red eyes and are able to see in darkness. They are typically strong and hardy, possess a keen sense of smell, and are able to catch the scent of other hostile beings at a distance of 20 miles, even if they cannot tell what type of creature they are smelling. They are excellent warriors, driven by animal instincts and an aggressive nature. When two Ugruk disagree, they meet in the pit. The survivor is the one who is "right."

Some Ugruk have adapted to the cities, and live among humans. They are brown-skinned, and much more civilized than their greenskin cousins. It would not be uncommon to see a brown-skinned Ugruk as a blacksmith, bartender, or builder. There are no "half-ugruk" (or half-orcs) as humans and Ugruk are completely different breeds.

The typical Ugruk is taller and broader than a human, with short legs and long arms much like an ape. They have massive heads which come directly forward on their necks, and their heads are batlike, with protruding ears from which hair sprouts. On their faces are small snouts and a wattle of a chin that descends into a powerful chest. They have tough, thick skin which is highly resistant to pain. They can sustain grievous injuries yet still stay in the fight.

Goblins themselves are much smaller and weaker than Ugruk. The two species detest each other, and wars between them are as common as alliances. In general, when the two races do team up, the Ugruk act as leader, Goblins are treated litle better than slaves.

Goblins are very spindly and cowardly. They are quite short and nearly emaciated. Goblins, however, are very fast, and can rapidly attack from a different angle than they did a moment ago. They have an annoying ability to be elsewhere by the time you're ready to strike. They also throw small "bombs," gourds that break apart when they hit you, causing d4 damage. If the bomb doesn't hit, then it churns out choking and blinding dust (Save vs. Dragon's Breath) or be blinded for d3 rounds. A successful save means you're not happy, but still ready for action.

Goblins have also developed a penchant for ambush, as they know they would lose in a stand-up fight. They hang out in trees and bushes, or hide in holes in the ground, and try to pick off the slowpoke in the back of the party.

Both Goblins and Ugruk organize themselves into clans. These clans often have distinctive names like the Bone Gnawers or Bloody Hand. Here's a handy table to generate a clan name quickly. To use it, roll 4d10 twice, once for a first name, and once for a last name, and rearrange or mangle to suit. The parts in parentheses are alternate forms of the name, Mud(dy) could mean either Mud or Muddy. Here's the table:

4d10	Element
4	Army
5	Attack(er)
6	Axe
7	Biter
8	Bitter
9	Black
10	Blood(y)
11	Break(er)
12	Burn/Fire/Flame
13	Chain
14	Dagger/Knife
15	Danger
16	Dark
17	Deep
18	Destroy(er)
19	Die/Dead/death
20	Doom
21	Dust(y)/Dirt(y)/Grim(y)/Mud(dy)
22	Eat(er)/Gnaw(er)/Bite(r)/Drink(er)
23	Evil
24	Guard
25	Hammer
26	Hand
27	Hard
28	Hate
29	Hunt(er)
30	Pain/Hurt(er)
31	Rock
32	Sharp
33	Skull
34	Spear
35	Stone
36	Strong
37	Sword
38	Tooth/Nail/Claw
39	War/Battle
40	Wolf

So, rolling my 4d10, I come up with 22 and a 10. Putting them together, it's the Blood Drinker clan. Another set gives me a 21 and 38. The Muddy Claw clan!

Have fun with this!

Story-based Experience Points

2011-05-05T06:45:00.000-07:00

The main Experience Point (X.P.) awards discussions seem to be based around two things: Either you get X.P.for finding treasure or you do not. I tend not to give X.P. for treasure, but I also tend to award experience a little differently that what it tells you in the rules.

The TSR days (and various editions) of Dungeons & Dragons all awarded X.P. for two things: finding treasure (especially magical treasure), and slaying monsters. Now, while not bad in and of itself, this led to some players doing very bad things (like slaying townsfolk or other PCs) to get experience. The sad thing is, there were some Dungeon Masters who let them get away with it. It says normal men are worth a certain amount of X.P. in the Monster Manual, so those who went by the book just awarded the experience, threw up their hands, and wondered what went wrong.

Well, aside from the fact that those Dungeon Masters needed to put their collective feet down, and the "angry mob rule" from Original D&D never made it into the later rulebooks, it seems as if some campaigns degenerated into "kill the monster, take its stuff." As if one single part of the rules had become the whole point of the game.

Certainly many computer RPGs pretty well took that route. There were several articles and letters in Dragon Magazine (in its early days, at least) that dealt with the hack and slash aspect, and whether it had a place in D&D.

But interestingly enough, around the time of Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (2e), 1989, there was a computer game called Baldur's Gate, loosely based on the 2e ruleset. In this game you had various tasks to perform, and the rewards included XP. I had never seen that before, but it made sense to me. Torment did the same, as well as Icewind Dale, which is why those games appealed to me despite my dislike of AD&D. At that time, I was playing Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, Warhammer, RoleMaster, etc.

Time passed, and 3E was released. Even its experience system, with its Challenge Ratings, was skewed in much the same direction as its TSR predecessors. According to designer George Strayton, WotC stuck to the "kill 'em all, take their stuff" philosophy when designing 3rd Edition D&D. They did add one thing, you received experience for disarming traps, but still their X.P. system felt woefully incomplete.

Looking at Rolemaster and Palladium, the way you gain X.P. is far different than in other similar games. in RoleMaster you can gain experience for adventures, and some of the equations to calculate experience are overblown. Likewise, Palladium gives out experience for planning, and you get more if your plan worked, and less if it failed, etc. Both of these are germs of a good idea. What if, like Baldur's Gate (and the much more recent Gothic series), you got experience for doing things? Bring a nobleman back his amulet from the brothel he left it at: 50 xp in Baldur's Gate, for example. In the PC game Gothic 2, the reward could be 3 times that. Reward players for actually doing things in the adventure, instead of just mindlessly killing.

This is not as radical as it may seem at first. Tournament adventures are scored in a similar manner. Why not transplant that into an actual game?

So, I propose this system, scaled to D&D:

EXPERIENCE
You get experience from two broad categories. The first is a larger experience award, the major objective. The major objective is the whole point of the adventure. You might get 1,000 points for it.
- Exploring the Unknown
- Investigating an Evil Outpost
- Removing the effects of an evil curse
- Recovering Ruins
- Eradicating a force of raiding goblins
- Destroying an Ancient Evil
- Fulfilling a Quest
- Escaping From Enemies
- Rescuing Prisoners
- Finding a Lost Race

The minor objectives are things that you did during the adventure. They're worth anywhere from 100-500 points, though not more than 300 points should be given unless the objectives took more than one session to complete.
- Following a trail of clues to the next part of the adventure
- Searching around a town's taverns to find a guide
- Bribing a guard (or quietly rendering him unconscious) to gain entry
- Killing or overcoming a monster that is preventing the Heroes from progressing further.
- Using a Magic Portal to go someplace (or come back, or both)
- Travel to a shrine that has been lost for ages, in order to remove the curse.

These are base Experience Awards, and they increase as the Heroes rise in level. A good rule of thumb is to multiply the awards by the Heroes' level. So if the Heroes are 3rd level, they might net 600 X.P. for the last group of monsters they killed. Or, after exploring the ruins to find the foozle they might get 3,000 X.P.

Obviously, you can increase or decrease the base experience award as you see fit. A slower progression might see 500 for a major objective, or even 250! You might even flatten the rate, so even at 5th level the PCs are getting the same amount of X.P. as they did at 1st level. Part of the advantage of this system is the sheer control. You can tailor it to the exact number of adventures you want your players to go through before they level. Also, set up this way, hack and slash actions are not rewarded unless you want them to be.

Mutant Future setting: Sorcerers & Cyborgs

2011-04-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
The Time of the Ancients was a magical time, an era where metal birds carrying many flew across the skies, one hundred times a day. The continents were crisscrossed with hard roads on which wheeled horses traveled, carrying men from one end of the land to the other in a matter of days. Science had progressed to a point where nearly anything was possible -- robot servants aided the Ancients in various tasks, various inventions (such as nano-reassembly-units) had practically eradicated poverty. The world had long since run out of fossil fuels, necessitating a focus on renewable sources of energy. The Earth practically ran on solar power, but this wasn't enough for some.

Scientists, pushed ever onward by new discoveries in string theory and quantum universes, breached the barriers between dimensions. They pushed harder, spurred on by scanners that detected vast amounts of an unknown type of energy. When they ran further tests, the barriers between dimensions broke, gateways were opened to a host of monsters not native to our Earth, and magic began to change the face of the world. Coastlines were flooded, fissures in the earth swallowed cities, entire chunks of continents were ripped away to fuel more tsunamis, and when it was all over, everything had changed.

Centuries passed. People clawed their way out of the rubble of their cities, and a few were quick to seize armories and march across the land, adding to their armies. They called themselves the Combine, ruled by a mad emperor who believed the only good mutant was a dead one. His government is set up dictator-style, with secret police and a certain cabal of officials call the shots. There is no democracy, and his is the only rule. They immediately siezed all scientific installations from the time of the Ancients, and began to rebuild, with a monopoly on technology and super-science.

NOW
Monsters prowl the globe. Dragons can be seen in the skies. Demons and vampires and worse have made this place their home. Many have found they had a talent for magic or psychic powers. Still others make their way with guns, or machine parts grafted to their bodies, or simply by their wits. Most of these are not under the rule of the Combine.

The Combine doesn't want them existing, and feels that all should be under their heel. Anyone not under their rules should be crushed. The Brains search the truth, and some teach that truth to others. The Golden Death Armor pilots should work for them. Wanderers should be tamed, and brought into the fold to work for the good of the Combine. Anyone with military skill should be added to their armies. And psychics and users of magic should be dead.

This is the world that folly has made, and it will take a hard man to tame it.

Welcome to my "mod" for Mutant Future entitled "Sorcerers & Cyborgs!"

This setting was somewhat of a challenge for Mutant Future, as there is no magic, and super-science is what a typical character in Mutant Future would be lucky to encounter. So I had to work with the setting and tweak it some. It also has some of my rules hacks to make combat and characters more dynamic. If there's one criticism I have of old-school games, it's the tendency to make rather cookie-cutter character types -- one fighter looks exactly like another fighter at the same level -- which is a bit boring. And I like my combat to be less abstract -- think Conan, rather than Squad Leader.

Obviously, there are a few revisions and clarifications to be made, but this is the first draft:

RULES CHANGES

Radiation is a bit rare. Now mainly found among areas that the Combine has abandoned after something went wrong...

ABILITIES

Roll 4d6, take the best 3.

Divvy up 6 points between the abilities. Abilities range from +1 to +4. This eliminates the Ability Bonus, and just uses the Ability itself as a bonus.

ARMOR CLASS

Subtract the armor's AC from 11, and add 5, no DEX mod.

Ex: If you have AC 1, subtracting it from 11 would be 10. Adding 5 would give a new AC of 15.

If AC is increased by anything (like, say, Increased DEX, simply increase his Defense Roll.

HIT POINTS

Hit Points are rolled a bit differently:
- If you're using a standard character type, roll hp as normal.
- Magic-Users, Psychics, Brains, Chop-Docs, Docs, Fixers, Speed Tribers, and Wanderers roll 1d6 x CON

- Armsmen, Borg, Curs, Deathwing Armor, Golden Death Armor, Nature Boy, Pharmboy, Ronin, and Super Soldiers roll 1d8 x CON
If ranges from +1 to +4 are used for Abilities, then total (10 + 2x the ability) x the die type for the character type.

COMBAT

● For combat, roll a d10 for Initiative and subtract your DEX mod.

● Attacker rolls d20 plus level plus STR adj. (melee) or DEX adj (ranged)

● Defender rolls d20 plus level plus DEX adj, declares whether he's parrying (with

weapon), dodging (getting out of the way), or blocking (with shield)

● Attacker roll > Defender roll and AC = damage done

● Defender roll > Attacker roll = no damage done, attack parried, dodged, or blocked.

● Attacker roll < AC = Attack bounced off armor

ABILITY CHECKS
Used in place of Skills. Just make a check on the relevant ability.

● Use Abilities such as STR, DEX, CON, etc.

● Roll 11 or less, plus Ability Adj. (so, 13 STR has a +1 adj, meaning the STR roll would be 12-).

● Choose one of these abilities as Primary, to get a +2 (so the STR roll above would be 14-)

● Primary Ability Checks go up by +1 at levels 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, etc

● Other Ability Checks gain +1 at levels 4, 7, 10, 13, etc

● Rolling exactly the check (rolling a 14 on a 14- Check, frex) means the check critically succeeds.

THE CHARACTER TYPES:

ARMSMAN (Includes Combine Grunt, Combine Military Specialist, Combine Technical Officer, Scout)
The main difference between all these is that the GRUNT believes his government to be good, despite being oppressive and racist. More specialized Grunts include the SPECIALIST (espionage and recon), and TECHNICAL OFFICER (trained in either Communications, Electrical or Mechanical Engineering, Technician, Weapons). SCOUTS are trackers who love the thrill of combat.
- Pure Strain Human

BORG
Men and women who have replaced a large portion of their bodies with machine parts. Some of these unfortunates were too poor and too unskilled to be of service, so the Combine put them to good use in their armies.
- Basic Android

BRAIN
Suffer from an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and this thirst drives them into trackless wilderness in order to uncover the planet's mysteries, and the unknown past of humankind. The ruins of once mighty cities of the Ancients and the monstrous life forms that now stalk the Earth are their bread and butter. Brains usually have some survival skills, and know how to use two weapons. In many cases, they are more like your average Merc than a scientist. Some Brains are hunted by mobs, who believe that the secrets of the Ancients are best left buried.
-Pure Strain Human

CHOP-DOC
A chop-doc is a doctor, surgeon, or scientist who is proficient with the implantation of bionics or cybernetics. "Chop-doc" is the slang term for the most notorious and disreputable among them. They can make minor repairs to Androids and Borgs, as well.
- Pure Strain Human

CURS
Mutant dogs engineered and empowered by the Combine to kick in doors and take names, arresting not only psychics and mages but those who harbor them. They can track by psychic or mundane scent.
- Mutant Animals
- Natural Weapons (teeth, claws)
- Increased Sense (Smell)

DEATHWING ARMOR
Developed by the Combine in response to the Golden Death Armor (q.v.), the Deathwing armor is inferior in most respects. It is essentially Scout Encasing Military Armor with some superhuman capabilities. Weapon systems include a standard, military-grade Rail Gun, and a Mini-Missile Launcher capable of firing Plasma rockets as well as ordinary artillery. Perhaps the most significant difference is that the Deathwing Armor can fly or hover, giving it a signficant battlefield advantage. The wings have metal blades on them, allowing the pilot to inflict damage if forced into a hand-to-hand conflict. Deathwing Armor will only work for Pure Strain Humans.
- Pure Strain Human with Scout Encasing Military Armor (AC 2)
- Military Grade Rail Gun (1d4/1d4x10 burst)
- Mini-Missile Launcher (1d4x10/1d6x10 (PLASMA))
- One additional handgun or rifle
- Can hover stationary or fly
- Full optical systems, including laser targeting, telescopic, passive nightvision (light amplification), thermo-imaging, infrared, ultraviolet, and polarization.

DOC
A medical doctor (M.D.); a person who can fix or heal the human body. Most are, by now, versed in Xenobiology. It was usually knowledge gleaned in the field. They can heal Mutants as well as humans.
- Pure Strain Human

FIXER
Mercenary repairman who can fix just about anything.
- Pure Strain Human

GOLDEN DEATH ARMOR
The energy-resistant paint of this power armor unit has a strange side-effect -- it glitters a bright gold color. Thus the name of the armor. 10-feet high, it is not only powered armor, but an environmental suit, filtering impurities from air and water. Standard issue is the "BFG", a huge railgun mounted on the shoulder armor plate. The BFG is an entirely electric gun, that accelerates a few hundred metal projectiles along a set of magnetic rails faster than Mach Two. The net effect is mass destruction.

The pilots inside Golden Death Armor have either been issued them by the military (and then gone rogue), or been lucky enough to find one and have it fixed up. They love combat, and often fight just to experience the thrill of combat, and to hear the fantastic sonic booms that accompany the use of the BFG.
- Pure Strain Human with Heavy Encasing Military Armor (AC 1)
- BFG-2000 -- Hyper Accelerated Rail Gun (3d6x10)
- Full optical systems, including laser targeting, telescopic, passive nightvision (light amplification), thermo-imaging, infrared, ultraviolet, and polarization.

MAGIC-USERS
- Mutants
- Use Magic-User & Elf spells from Labyrinth Lord
- Most will be structured around a theme. Some samples:
WIZARD - Some like to concentrate on summoning spells, others have attack & defense spells, spells that aid in stealth, and so forth.
TECHNO-MAGE - Combine magic with technology. Use Elf and Magic-User Spells from Labyrinth Lord, but instead of spells they are items, with the same limitations on uses per day.

NATURE BOY
Nature Boys are those who have learned to live off the land. They know about all the benefits and dangers of various plants, know how to recognize and avoid dangerous animals, how to tell the weather from the clouds, how to build shelters, how to find food and water, how to navigate in the wilderness, signalling techniques, and how to build an effective fire. Generally how to survive in any wilderness. He can also pass through any wilderness area without leaving any trace. Some look like Davey Crockett, others look more primitive. To protect against the cold, most Nature Boys apply a coating of bear grease to their bodies. Keeps them warm, but smells quite bad...
- Pure Strain Human

PHARMBOY
The Pharmboy is another casualty in the quest for the super-soldier. Drugs are injected into his system by sophisticated nanodevices, which regulate his mood. These drugs enhance his combat alertness and physical capabilities. These nanodevices also monitor his physical condition, and mobilize to heal injuries 4 times faster than ordinarly healing. The Pharmboy has one code: live fast, die hard, which is oddly prophetic. The maximum lifespan for a Pharmboy is 5 years, after which the drugs they take to enhance their abilities will burn them out and kill them, as their bodies cannot take the strain.
- Mutant
- Increased STR, DEX, CON
- Acute Hyper Healing
- Body Adjustment
- Combat Empathy
- Limited Lifespan: 5 years

PSYCHICS
- Mutants
Most will be structured around a theme. Some samples:
MIND MANGLER - Force Screen (Greater), Mental Barrier, Metaconcert, Mind Reflection, Mind Thrust, Neural Telepathy, Empathy, Possession, Precognition, Psi-Blade,
MYSTIC - Ability Boost, Body Adjustment, Sense magic/psychic powers, Empathy, Psionic Flight (when in Lotus position only)
ENERGY MASTER (choose between fire, electricity, magnetic, sound, light, radiation, force)- Reflective Epidermis (for his energy type) Energy Ray, Energy Retaining Cell Structure, sense energy type, extinguish or increase energy type.

RONIN
They are the wanderers of the post-apocalyptic world, righting wrongs wherever they are found, whether it's the oppressive Combine or a supernatural monster that entered through one of the magical gateways scattered across the globe.
- Mutant
- Can create a psi-blade, a scintillating weapon of psychic energy, and may look like a staff, axe, mace, sword, or any other weapon. (Acts like Energy Ray, no range)
- One Random Mental Mutation

SPEED TRIBERS
Members of criminal gangs in cities, mostly have a hard way of life. These are not the suit-wearing Yakuza, these are the gangbangers, drug-dealers, and thieves, providing "protection" for shopkeepers on their turf. They know how to survive in the shady underbelly of the city, choked with garbage and vermin.
- Pure Strain Human

SUPER-SOLDER
Special Forces troopers skilled in the arts of combat and athletics who have tiny electrical devices wired to their brain. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making them crazy.
- Mutant
- Increased STR, DEX, CON
- Heightened reflexes, agility for bonuses to combat (+1 to hit)
- Increased senses (Vision, Smell)
- Intellectual Affinity (Martial)
- Acute Hyper Healing
- Suffers from delusions and insanity.

WANDERERS
The best of these are curious minds and happy with their lot. The worst are aimless drifters, with no sense of life, purpose, or hope. They are the ones who slipped through the cracks. They have no education to speak of, and tend to live by their wits.
- Pure Strain Human

STANDARD EQUIPMENT

A suit of body armor, including military-issue. A set of caste-appropriate clothing (surgical gowns for doctors, leather and denim for Speed Tribers, robes for wizards, sturdy travel clothes for adventurers, combat fatigues for soldiers, etc), personal effects (such as music/vid players, wallets, combs, goggles) and camping equipment. Most characters will also have 1d3 Energy weapons (pistol and rifle if more than one), and 1d6 E-Clips. You get a +1 to those previous amount rolls if you are a military type.

- A thief will have lock picking tools, pry bars, and glass cutter, as well as a set of conventional tools.

- An assassin will have a bolt-action rifle and an energy rifle with four extra E-clips.

- A hacker will have a portable, hand-held computer and a full size computer and printer.

- A Doc will have a kit full of surgical gloves, bandages, painkiller, antibiotics, scalpels, automedical kits, and a portable lab.

- An Operator would have a portable tool kit with an electric screwdriver and additional interchangeable heads, wrenches, etc, large tool kit, soldering iron, laser torch (for welding), a roll of duct tape, 1d3 rolls of electrical tape, pen flashlight, and a large flashlight.

- Brains may possess any or all of: specimen cases, specimen dishes, 1d6 test tubes, 1D4 jars, microscope slides, portable microscope, scalpel, pins, and tweezers, magnifying glass, telescope, and books on various subjects.

- A Chop-Doc would have a combination of a Doc's equipment and an Operator's equipment.

- A Speed Triber gets a wheeled motorcycle and drugs (at GM's option)

ARMOR:

ARMOR	AC	PROT
Heavy Infantry Armor Military Issue Environmental Armor	AC 2/9	25
Myrmidon Full Environmental Armor	AC 2/9	20
Guerilla Composite High-Impact Environmental Armor	AC 3/8	20
The Champion Full Fibre Environmental Body Armor	AC 3/8	15
Light Pilot/Police Armor Military Issue Environmental Armor	AC 4/7	15
Vindicator Full Padded Environmental Body Armor	AC 4/7	15
Pharmboy Assassin's Plate Armor	AC 4/7	10
Hunter Plate and Padded Armor	AC 5/6	10
Plastic Warrior Full Plastic Environmental Body Armor	AC 5/6	5

Prot = Pts of damage the armor protects you from each hit.

AC is given in descending (before the slash) and ascending (after the slash) values.

My Son's Birthday

2011-03-25T13:57:00.001-07:00

satan, a photo by steelcaress on Flickr.

It was my son's birthday Thursday the 24th, and on Saturday the 26th we're going to have his party -- at our place. So I've spent the past few days cleaning the heck out of the townhome, and should be resuming normal posting in a few days, after I recover.

Regrettably, unlike Paladin, I probably won't be doing any gaming for my son's birthday party. His cousins are usually invited, and my sister is a hardcore Christian who believes that D&D, Pokemon, Harry Potter, and other assorted things are Satanic.

It truly saddens me.

Hot Elf Chick, Slightly NSFW

2011-03-11T07:41:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd post the pic first :)

As part of James Smith's fiendish plan to attract more followers to the Old School Renaissance, he suggested we do this. Many bloggers have taken up his suggestion already, and I'm following suit.

I realize some people don't particularly care for Larry Elmore's art, but I'm not in that camp. I think, barring some of his later paperback covers, he is an incredibly talented artist, easily up there with Joe Jusko, Frank Frazetta, Luis Royo, and others.

Welcome to my blog! :)

To the point, however, you are now on a site of a rabid pre-Y2K gamer, one who prefers the older flavors of D&D to the new stuff. However, the current owner, Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, has seen fit to pull all their reasonably priced PDFs of their old games down, so it would be hard to find anything other than at Ebay collectible prices. Fortunately, the work of a few talented individuals has made this much easier, and many are free. If you have ever had a hankering to be a wizard and cast earthshaking spells, a mighty warrior cleaving your way through evil hordes, or even a freebooter exploring dark labyrinths where danger and treasure lurk, then check these out:

Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game
Made to emulate Basic and Expert D&D books by Moldvay and Cook published in the very early 80's, with more modern innovations

B/X Companion
This is an imagining of what could have been, if the Companion volume for Basic D&D had been released for the Moldvay/Cook version.

Big Brown Book
A supplement to D&D-as-wargame. Every roll is made on a d6.

Dark Dungeons
Based on a later iteration of Basic D&D, the one authored by Mentzer and organized and edited into the "Rules Cyclopedia" by Aaron Allston.

For Gold & Glory
A pretty incredible version of 2nd Edition D&D. If you played D&D before 2000 and after 1987, this was likely the version you played.

Labyrinth Lord
Another Basic D&D clone, this one hews more closely to the original rules.

Labyrinth Lord: Advanced Edition Companion
This "updates" Labyrinth Lord to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (first edition), which many prefer.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Aimed at more Lovecraftian and Clark Ashton Smith influences, but still D&D.

Microlite system
Randall has designed many free iterations of D&D, all trimmed down and made very easy to play.

Myth & Magic
This is a clone of 2nd Edition D&D, updated with more modern rules to replace what the author wanted to fix.

OSRIC
This is a clone of first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It is nearly identical to the original.

Swords & Wizardry
Mythmere games has designed a few brilliant clones of OD&D

I'm sure there are some that I missed, but this will get you started! Now, if I've reignited the fires of your youth (or if the pic did it), go forth and grab a rulebook, grab some dice, and reclaim the golden age of roleplaying!

Celebrating Gygax

2011-03-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

Today is the anniversary of Gary Gygax's death. If anyone doesn't know what a Gary Gygax is, you need to look it up. Jeff Rients on his blog mentioned some homework:

"Start with a core set of rules, the older and crappier the better. You can use an RPG but some half-baked wargame works even better. Produce a two or three page document with suggestions for improving the rules/adapting them for RPG play and an outline for a campaign. Expand this to a 50-100 page book. Use the latter document as the basis for all your campaigns for the next decade or three. Run one to six games a week, refining your work as necessary. Publishing any of it is entirely optional."

Done and done. Except for publishing any of it. I'm still in the process of writing a clone, but it's not finished as of this writing. A short blurb:

I wrote this because I want a different "feel" for D&D, one that I don't believe the mechanics support well in their current form. I want to bring the violent action and feel of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and David Gemmell to the mix. I want the otherworldly horror of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft. I want to renew a sense of wonder to the player, when you sat down and played your first game of D&D.

Choose from 10 unique races, not just another variation of elf. Some are the same as you're used to (shaken and stirred a bit), others are very different. Humans are now distinct by nationality and race.

You are not your stuff anymore. Your damage increases by class and level, not by acquiring a higher-damage weapon. This is logical and consistent with the pulps we are emulating.

No skills! Your character is unique and does have abilities all his own, and the rules allow anything to be attempted without fiddly rules. The Thief class is now more useful and fun than in earlier iterations of That Fantasy Game.

Experience points and Treasure are more logical, consistent, and reward actually doing things. Magical treasure is now something to be truly in awe of -- not because of raw power, but because of the effects.

New combat mechanics allow for any action to be taken, with instant effects -- not just “+2 to Armor Class!” Unhorse your foe! Throw your opponent into a group of enemies and bowl them over. Hurl your sword at someone and have it pierce him like a spear! Shatter weapons and shields! Simple, quick grappling rules allow you to wrestle with your enemy in style! 46 Combat Maneuvers make the Fighter class fun again!

Almost infinite variety. We have 43 character classes with different types of Spellcasters and Priest-types. Unique mechanics allow selection to be a breeze! Get a character up and running in 10 minutes! Variety like you've not seen in either kit or prestige class! Yet easier than any edition!

New spells, contained in the same Vancian spell slot system, but now with full power over your spells and how they're cast! Options for variants allow for a richer magic system! Eight different schools of magic are detailed, and clerics now have access to “Prayers,” instead of spells. It works the same, just renamed!

New monsters! Old monsters with a unique twist!

All this together with a unique fantasy setting. Make a name for yourself in the magical land of Andurantha!

Not Old School, not New School, but rather Alternative School. Backwards compatible with most editions of D&D.

Optional rules allow you to play it your way!

Getting anyone to playtest this might be interesting. Most people have fallen under the sway of WotC or Paizo, and have little patience for anything else. A weekly game? I wish!

Handling Fame and Infamy

2011-01-27T08:24:00.000-08:00

Reading a post at RPG Blog II I was originally mentioning how I handle renown through roleplaying, somehow vaguely tied to level. And as I thought about it more and more, I began to realize that having it codified might be beneficial.

Generally, the thing you will be most known for is your character class. An elusive thief, a valiant warrior, a devout priest, etc. However, there will be deeds that will stand out above others, and there also can be alignment fame (or infamy, if particularly evil or chaotic). Most basically, the character will be known, for good or ill, by what he is and what he does. Slay a band of marauding goblins -- fame. Burn down an orphanage -- infamy.

Here is a rough chart of the levels, and the amount of fame they correspond to:

1^st-4^th level	Relatively unknown. If of noble birth, it is extremely minor or hidden
5-8^th level	By this time has proven himself a hero/villain. Educated men and bards will know of his deeds, but he will not be widely recognized.
9^th (Name) level	Known by all in his state/province. Can set up some sort of headquarters and attract followers.
11^th level	In/famous throughout the country. Could possibly have a place at court.
13^th level	Known throughout the continent.
15^th level	Known the world over. His deeds will be spoken of in distant lands

Of course, your fame/glory/renown/infamy could result in other actions being taken. Being known as an amazing warrior might have others challenging you for the title. Being infamous might mean a price is on your head, and so on. The player and DM are encouraged to be creative.

Rethinking Combat

2011-01-24T13:13:00.000-08:00

Combat in D&D (pre-2000) seems me to be a bit uninvolved. Sure, there's the whole "I'm down to my last hit point" or "I used up all my spells" resource management type thing, but otherwise there's just this: roll dice to hit, roll damage. For some reason, it felt a bit wrong to me, especially when I was exposed to other systems. In GURPS, you roll to defend yourself. In Marvel Super Heroes, you roll to dodge. In Palladium, you also have a dodge, block, or parry roll. In Storyteller, you roll to try and mitigate your foe's successes. In Tunnels & Trolls, each opponent rolls. In Rolemaster, you use some of your offensive ability to add to your defense. Heck, even in Risus you roll. Games with relatively static target numbers in combat just feel erratic, and in some cases erroneous, to me now.

Imagine this: if your buddy aims a punch at you, and you see it coming, you're not likely to sit there as it comes at you. I know D&D and other games are supposed to take that into account, but I don't visualize it happening, for whatever reason. It just feels like I'm sitting there, waiting to be hit.

Check out this clip from the 7th Voyage of Sinbad:

While not technically from Appendix N, I can't imagine no one kept Ray Harryhausen in mind when designing D&D.

The sad thing is, I don't have combats in D&D that play out like that clip. It just seems like two people standing there bashing each other's heads in. Even defensive maneuvers or shields tend to simply add to AC, they don't really reflect what's really going on as combat proceeds. Now, I realize that it was developed from a naval wargame. I realize that naval ships cannot dodge, parry, etc. Be that as it may, we have grown older, and better ways have been found to do certain things in the 37 years since D&D was born. And I do not care for the complexities of D&D3 or 4 -- if you enjoy them then more power to you, but I can think of easier ways to simulate what happens in this scene...and beyond it.

To do this we have to overhaul the system slightly.

Armor Class remains, but we have to adjust depending on what system you're using. Armor Class no longer stands for your entire defensive capabilities, but now simply straight armor. No bonuses for Dexterity are added into it. In my system, 5 is the base, and armor adds to it. It's ascending. For descending AC, you'd have to subtract that from 11 to get the bonus, and add 5. A roll under this number (still called Armor Class) means you hit the armor and no damage is done.

Next we determine what the bonuses are to hit. Usually this is STR bonus + Level for Fighters, and everyone else would need to know their Base Attack Bonus. Now in the case of matrix-based combat, this is relatively easy. Find the worst AC on the matrix (for Basic this would be 9, for AD&D 10), cross-index class and level, and subtract that number from 10. That is the bonus to hit. Enterprising players will already have these numbers written down, to avoid looking anything up. This can be done for monsters as well.

So, as an example, we have Gorthon, and Ral. Gorthon is a level 7 Fighter with 17 STR, and Ral is a level 9 Thief with a 13 STR. They are coming from a matrix-based game, and both Gorthon's and Ral's chance to hit AC 9 is 5. 10 - 5 = 5, meaning they have a base attack bonus of 5. Gorthon, with his 17 STR, has a +2, and Ral has a +1 to hit. Gorthon is wearing Chain, and Ral is wearing Leather. So, to summarize:

Gorthon, Fighter: +7 to hit, AC 11 (Chain)
Ral, Thief: +5 to hit, AC 9 (Leather)

Next each combatant has 1 attack, and 1 defense. One person attacks, the other defends. The attacker declares his intent (special attacks, etc), and the defender declares his actions (parry, dodge, block with shield, or something else). To hit you simply roll a d20, and whoever rolls higher wins. If the attacker wins, roll damage. That's it. If you roll under the AC, your attack simply bounced off. Then, when the defender's initiative comes up, that's when he makes his attack, and the other guy becomes the defender.

The narrative is dependent on the actions being performed. Obviously, if the defender declares that he is dodging and his roll is higher, you don't say the attack bounced off the defender's shield. He ducked or jumped out of the way.

There are other things we saw in that clip as well:

Fighting from higher ground might grant a +1 to the attacker.

Ducking behind something could give a +1 to the defender.

Also the winner of a combat round might want to force the loser back a pace.

Too, you can have knockdown or knockback effects if you want, such as when Sinbad knocked the skeleton off the staircase with his sword, though again that could be simulated by having the loser forced back a pace, and falling off because there is no other place to step. A knockdown effect can be simulated by rolling attacker's STR vs. defender's DEX. If the defender fails, he's either pushed backwards, or is knocked to the ground, and must spend his next action standing. He may parry (or block, if he has a shield), but cannot dodge.

For disarm, you could simply have the attacker declare that instead of damage, he has knocked the weapon from his foe's hand. Obviously, that wouldn't work with tooth or claw, but with swords, axes, maces, etc it works just fine.

And did you see what the skeleton did when disarmed? It threw the shield at Sinbad and went for its sword. That could be an attack or defense, and a WIS roll might be needed to not lose your action.

The system is fairly versatile. Taking a page from Swords Against The Outer Dark, you could say that 11 minus your AC is a penalty to your dodge roll, thus representing that heavy armor can slow you down. I would probably rule that way for chain, not plate, since there are even YouTube videos showing people doing aerobics in full plate.

All this doesn't take that much longer than a normal combat, simply because there is a clear winner. It's not like the guy parrying or dodging will be successful all the time. And, I feel, it's more visceral, because as the defender you are responsible for making sure you roll higher than the other guy, rather than just waiting to see if you get hit.

Rules Hack - Mass Combat and Trade

2011-01-10T16:42:00.000-08:00

Reading Telecanter's Receding Rules was inspiring. At the end of his house rules, there was a request thread, of sorts -- "requesting elegant solutions" for various in-game situations. So...challenge accepted! I don't know if these are elegant enough, as they are sort of off the top of my head...

Simple Mass Combat Rules
First of all, each side rolls a d20. This is modified by:

Combatant has monsters in his unit	+1
Combatant has elite members in his unit	+1
Combatant has a legendary hero (ala Conan)	+3
Combatant has a magic user	+1
Combatant has double the amount of foe's army	+5
Combatant is holed up inside a fortress*	+7

* = one side only -- this would represent a siege.

Then roll. The side that gets the highest number wins.

For more granularity, you could say that each successful roll reduces the foe's army by half. So, if you had 500 foes, a hit would bring you down to 250, then 175, then 90, then 45, 25, 12, 6, 3, 1, and 0.

You might wish to divide the combatants into units, that way more soldiers get wiped out in a single attack. So, for example, if the above combatant had 500 men, 500 divided into 10 units of 50 men each, you could simply have the units engage in combat. Start with 10, first hit brings it down to 5, then 3, then 2, and 1, and finally the battle is won in five rolls instead of ten rolls as shown above.

Simple Trade Rules
First you figure out if you're trading by land or by sea. Trading by land is shorter, but you get less of a return on your investment because pack horses cannot carry much. Trading by sea is longer and riskier, but you get more of a return on your investment because ships can carry all sorts of things, and you can trade for exotic goods from all over.

Then, you take some of your gold, and put it into an investment in trade goods.

Trading by sea means you roll 1d6 to find out your profit margin. If you roll a 1-5, that is the amount you invested multiplies by. So, if you invested 100 gold, rolling a 4 means you make 400 gold. A "6" means the ship was lost at sea, along with the profits. The roll is also for how many game months the ships were at sea.

Trading by land, you'd roll a 1d3 for profits. Multiply what you invested by that number. It also takes that many game months for your pack horses to make the journey.

I'm still working on Simple Political and Social Intrigue rules. Those rules are more difficult since intrigue is quite complex.

Old School -- Busting the Myths

2010-12-31T09:03:00.000-08:00

As I've been following various old school blogs, I've read various things that I agree with and don't agree with. In talking with other gamers, quite a few had a negative opinion of the OSR, either from things they've read, or their supposed experiences. I present to you the most common of the negative comments I've heard or read -- most are simply largely untrue. The myths and my take on them:

Old School Myth #1: Rules as Written (RAW)
I've heard this time and again. I've actually experienced it too, when I have to roll a character using the 3d6 method, no assigning of abilities, getting killed just because one dice roll goes wrong (in the GM's hands), etc. Most of these things annoy me, and more often than not is just an example of rigid thinking that doesn't do anyone any good.

But I think that RAW is just a play style. Everyone has rules they like, from random chargen to abstract combat, and that's going to happen. If they didn't like some aspect of the rules, why play? But I don't think it's particularly Old School.

D&D3E has a large number of skills and abilities that you can give your character. In fact, I sort admire it because of that. Properly implemented, this can give you a solid idea of where you came from or who you are. Take Howard's Conan; we know he's from a land of ice and snow, can climb really well because of his upbringing, and also can fight well -- a region where the faint of heart would soon be dead. This could be represented by skill bonuses and bonuses to fight, packaged in a background feat. But, I digress...

D&D3E has a great amount of rules. Rules to see whether you can bluff or intimidate, rules to see whether you can spot something, etc, rules that allow you to do something out of the ordinary in combat. There's nothing wrong with this, per se, but I kinda felt constrained gamemastering. Because I would rather there be a way to solve it without skill rolls, and the designers were intent on simply rolling for everything, it seems. What if I wanted someone to do something to notice something important (like move a cushion, or examine a wall)? What if I would rather they creatively take out their foe, rather than invoking "Improved Crushing Blow" or some such? I felt lost as a player, too.

The rules in Old School games for the most part are frameworks. Each GM seasons his own game to taste. While all GMs, Old School and Modern, do this to some extent, there's some more "on the fly" rulings that must be made. No rules system can encompass everything, and a large part of the OSR loves to tinker with it, at least a bit. If for nothing more than to make sure the next time someone does that, there's not a different set of rules that might hinder the player more or make it too easy.

Old School Myth #2: Starting out as the Little Guy
Another myth is the beginning character as a schmoe. Too often D&D is used as an example, but I can say definitively that every game does not do this. Almost no one can deny that Champions is old (c. 1981), incidentally the same year Tom Moldvay authored his version of Basic D&D. The characters in old-school Champions were hardly average, being superheroes. That also was the theme of Villains & Vigilantes (also '81). 70s-era Traveller was also a game where you were well-trained before you began adventuring. In the Atlantean Trilogy and Palladium Fantasy your character was well-stocked with skills and class abilities, and you were no slouch in Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, The Fantasy Trip, or even RuneQuest. In Gamma World you had powers that set you above the rabble, and in Top Secret you were a secret agent ala James Bond. Need I say more?

For my own part, I consider the "little guy" syndome to be reminiscent of Tolkien, where unassuming hobbits were the saviors of the world. I like the idea of being able to have characters who aren't invincible, but formidable in their own right. John Carter, Conan, Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser, etc.

Old School Myth #3: Characters are akin to Checker Pieces
A comment at Playing D&D With Porn Stars mentions that "The (very) old school treats characters like checker pieces - I don't cry in my beer when I lose a checker piece..." I'm not entirely sure that's the truth. I think it is a bit related to #1. All the rules in the world aren't going to instill a personality in your character, or make a campaign playable.

I've been in those kinds of games -- more power to you if you like that, I'm not particularly amenable to that style. I'd rather have a backstory for my character and have it be a bit more dramatically appropriate when I pass on, thank you very much. It's probably the reason I don't care too much for wargames or FPS games, either. I want to care about what I'm doing.

Now, if you're still trying to wrap your head around all this, or simply do not know what old-school gaming is, pick up Matt Finch's excellent Quick Primer for Old School Gaming. It's free, and chock-full of great advice.

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-24T02:08:00.000-08:00

That's the way I'd travel if I were Santa, except I'd probably have Mrs. Claus in a sidecar :)

So Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Blessed Yule, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Ramadan, etc. And whatever your traditions, may you game well!

Rules Hack - Ability Checks

2010-12-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

At some time during the course of the game, a random roll will be required that's right outside the scope of the rulebook. What if someone tries to haggle with the innkeeper? What if a Hero is trying to climb to the roof without benefit of a Thiefly Ability (those are handled differently in my game as well, but one thing at a time). This would be handled using Ability Checks. Ability Checks are simply d20 rolls against an Ability, such as Strength, Wisdom, Constitution, etc.

Note: Apparently this is not new. Swords & Wizardry has this, Castles & Crusades has it, 2nd Edition D&D had it (although in a sort of slapdash manner), and Tunnels & Trolls had it longer than any of those. This, however, is my (hopefully) unique take on it.

As noted above, Ability Checks are used for many actions. What makes them different in our rules hack is that they are also used for skills and saving throws.

I can hear the cries of "heresy!" and "3rd Edition!" now, but hear me out.

It simply makes sense to have Ability Checks used as Saving Throws. It frees you from the tyranny of having to justify a Save vs. Dragon's Breath to avoid a lasso entangling you. Now, instead of that, you can simply ask for a DEX Check. And you can give certain character Classes and Races bonuses to specific situations (acting as Skills and Saving Throws) instead of making up a new procedure, or having to print yet another table. A Dwarf and a Wizard might get bonuses to save vs. magical effects. A Thief would get a bonus to any roll he made while attempting to steal something. Very simple, very effective, doesn't require a hundred splatbooks.

Mechanics
Very simply, an Ability Check starts at 8 or less on a d20. The Ability Score Adjustment adds to this (so a +4 would mean a 12 or less on a d20 for success). Not only that, but as you rise in level, the Ability Checks increase.

Primary Checks
After the initial calculations, then you pick what you want to be your most rapidly advancing Ability Check. For example, a Warrior might choose Strength. This is called the Primary Check. That Check will improve by +1 every two levels, plus add 2 to it in the beginning. The rest will advance every 3 levels. Checks follow this Table as you rise in level:

Level	Primary Check	Other Checks
1	+2	+0
2	+3	+0
3	+3	+1
4	+4	+1
5	+4	+1
6	+5	+2
7	+5	+2
8	+6	+2
9	+6	+3
10	+7	+3
11	+7	+3
12	+8	+4
13	+8	+4
14	+9	+4
15	+9	+5
16	+10	+5
17	+10	+5
18	+11	+6
19	+11	+6
20	+12	+6

The various Classes and Races will give you bonuses on some specific applications of Ability Checks. Some are codified in the text, others are unwritten. Still others are determined on the fly. Anytime everyone in the group agrees that a Hero should get a bonus on an Ability Check, he gets it.

Note: Since I run with Ability Score adjustments only (It's not STR 12, it's STR +1), you may have to adjust the base number higher, say an 11 or less to start, instead of an 8.

Common Situations and Ability Checks
I'm just listing a few, though close to 40 examples appear in my game.

Fear (WIS) - Some creatures instill blind, unreasoning fear into a person, scaring him stiff (cannot move). Roll to resist.

Leap (DEX) - Horizontal jump.

Save vs. Paralysis (STR) - Some monsters and spells can paralyze or hold victims, immobilizing them through magical means.

Save vs. Breath Weapon (DEX or CON) - It's just a bad idea to sit there and let some creature, like a dragon, breathe on you. DEX is for dodging and diving for cover. CON is when something like poison gas is being resisted.

Opposed Ability Checks
These are used when two people are rolling against an Ability, and they are competing against each other. For example, you would use an Opposed Ability Check when two people are racing to the top of a cliff wall, or when one person is trying to grab another.

Opposed Ability Checks are simple. Both people roll d20, and the highest roll wins. That means that if one person had a Check of 18, and rolled a 4, and the other person had a Check of 13, and rolled an 8, the person who rolled the 8 wins. Obviously, anyone who rolls over the Check fails.

Critical Success
If you roll precisely your Check, you get a Critical Success, and something special happens above and beyond the effect you were looking for. So, if you had a Check of 13, and you rolled a 13, you got a Critical. Critical Successes on Opposed Ability Checks mean that the person who gets the Critical wins, regardless of how high the other person rolled.

And it's important to note that the Checks don't have an ever increasing difficulty, it's simply make that roll, or not. There's no adding or subtracting any modifiers except in special circumstances.

Just an idea. It's what I'm using in my game, at any rate.

A Way to Handle "Speak With Dead"

2010-12-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

I've got a way to handle the Speak With Dead spell narratively. Now, in the Expert Set (Mentzer Edition) it says this:

Speak with the Dead

Range: 10’
Duration: 1 round per level of the cleric
Effect: Cleric may ask 3 questions

By means of this spell, a cleric may ask 3 questions of a deceased spirit if the body is within range. A cleric of up to 7th level may only contact spirits recently dead (up to 4 days). Clerics of level 8-14 have slightly more power (up to 4 months dead), level 15-20 even more (up to 4 years dead). No time limits apply to clerics of 21st level or greater. The spirit will always reply in a tongue known to the cleric, but can only offer knowledge of things up to the time of its death. If the spirit’s alignment is the same as the cleric’s, clear and brief answers will be given; however, if the alignments differ, the spirit may reply in riddles.

This brings up some interesting questions about the afterlife. Most real-world religions teach that the body is simply a shell, and that the soul is what animates it. Once the body is dead, the soul departs it. In Egyptian mythology, however, preserving the body after death meant that the dearly departed would enjoy eternal life. So why would a pseudo-medieval society believe that the body had anything to do with the soul after death?

Perhaps in our game we can say that the soul departs within a number of rounds, making it impossible to resurrect. Now, after the soul goes to its final reward, there is a sort of "remnant" of a soul in the body, that makes it possible to contact the person in death. Obviously the person will only know what they knew in life. Again, because the soul remnant is tied to the body, you must be close to the body to do so. In time, the remnant fades, and is harder and harder to commune with. You may only pick up an obscure word or two, and that's it. Eventually, this too is gone. However, there is still some soul energy left in the body even after that. This energy is what allows necromancers to summon an army of undead, using the soul energy left in the body to power them. The more powerful ones may simply be recently dead, and are using a full power remnant as an energy source.

Obviously, YMMV.

Calendar of Andurantha

2010-12-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

My last post was mostly systemless, so I thought I'd continue this in earnest. I have a world I've been working on for awhile, and this world I'm trying to make as detailed as possible, while having as little to do with Tolkien as I can. Tolkien is a bit old hat these days, and while a large amount of the populace is discovering Middle Earth through Peter Jackson's movies, the influence on D&D is too pronounced, and I'd rather steer away from that. My ideas move more towards the Sword & Sorcery genre, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, et al. So, without further adieu, I give you the calendar of Andurantha.

A Note of Explanation: The Men of the Dawn were the first humans in the world. They developed a highly-accomplished society, before betrayal brought about their downfall. Their magic is ancient and some of the most potent known to any race.

On Andurantha, they talk of time passing in 28-day cycles called "Moons." Each moon represents a particular time of the year.

Wolf Moon -- Jan
Hunger Moon -- Feb
Sap Moon -- March
Spawning Moon -- March
Bear Moon -- April/May
Flower Moon -- Jun
Rose Moon -- Jul
Thunder Moon -- Aug
Red Moon -- Sep
Harvest Moon -- Oct
Hunter's Moon -- Nov
Frost Moon -- Dec
Long Nights Moon -- Dec

Wolf Moon - Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howl hungrily outside.

Hunger Moon - Since the heaviest snow usually falls during this month, harsh weather conditions make hunting very difficult.

Sap Moon - As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. It is considered to be the last Moon of Winter.

Spawning Moon - The herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. This is the time that the shad swim upstream to spawn.

Bear Moon - This is named for the time when bears begin to appear again most frequently. Most bears begin hibernation during the Hunter's Moon and rouse themselves about now. They're usually not holed up for the entire time, but are rarely seen before this Moon. They gain a lot of fat and tuck themselves into a cave or hollow tree. Cubs suckle from mothers in winter as the mom slumbers.

Flower Moon - In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon.

Rose Moon - The start of strawberry picking season. Strawberries are part of the rose family.

Thunder Moon - Normally the month when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur. Thunderstorms are most frequent during this time.

Red Moon - Sturgeon are most readily caught during this month. As Sha'kal rises, it appears reddish through a sultry haze.

Harvest Moon - The Moon of the autumn equinox. At the peak of harvest, farmers can work late into the night by the light of the twin moons. Corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and wild rice are now ready for gathering.

Hunter's Moon - With the leaves falling and the deer fattened, it is time to hunt. Since the fields have been reaped, hunters can easily see foxes and the animals which have come out to glean.

Frost Moon - This is the time to set beaver traps before the swamps freeze, to ensure a supply of warm winter furs. The beavers are now actively preparing for winter. This is when the frosts set in.

Long Nights Moon - During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. The midwinter night is indeed long; the Brothers are above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full moons have a high trajectory across the sky because they are opposite a low Sun.

Each time a new moon comes around, the bells in the cities toll to formally announce it.

Months last 28 days, based on the lunar cycle, also based on a woman's cycle, because women are the Bringers of Life.

There are 13 months (moons) a year.

Last day of the year (365th day) is called the Night of the Black Moon, when no moons are visible, the Dark Powers are at their prime, and monsters walk free.

Seasons are based on the time of year, on agriculture. Since farming and ranching feed the populace, this is natural.

SEASONS:
Planting...Sap Moon to the Flower Moon
Planting is when the seeds are sown in the fields.

Growth...Rose Moon to Red Moon
Is when the crops are at full growth.

Reaping...Harvest Moon to Hunter's Moon
Is when the crops are gathered in the fields.

Preserving...Frost Moon to Hunger Moon
Is when grain is stored in preparation for the long months ahead.

THE TWIN MOONS
Sha'kal and Kerrg, the twin moons. Sha'kal and Kerrg were brothers. Sha'kal was good, while Kerrg was evil. They fought constantly for which one would be ascendant, and during the days of the Long Nights Moon, Kerrg captured the sun, and blanketed the world, known as Isryn, with snow. Sha'kal eventually won out, and Kerrg was put in his place, further removed from Isryn. Sha'kal is white, with yellow and black spots some say are the wounds that Kerrg inflicted while they fought. Kerrg is smaller (as an orange is smaller compared to a watermelon) and it is red, like the color of blood, striated with black. Sometimes Kerrg is called "the Blood Moon." The moons collectively are called "the Brothers."

The names come from the Dawn Times, when the Men of the Dawn were simply scattered tribes.

FEAST DAYS
Major festivals and feast-days do not fall on a day of the week. Imagine it as: Monday, Tuesday, Midsummer day, Wednesday, Thursday… This gives the festivals an extra emphasis, making them stand apart from the rest of the week. Festivals and feast-days are not normal days, they are important events in the religions and beliefs of Andurantha, and they are far more than an excuse for a day off. Anyone who expects to find people conducting normal business on a festival-day is going to be disappointed.

World-building with Blogger Word Verification

2010-12-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

Over on his blog, Swords Against the Outer Dark, Shane has posed an interesting challenge: take a handful of Blogger word verification captchas and do writeups for each of them in such a way so they could be used in your game. Well, now that things have somewhat settled down here, I'm going to give it a shot.

The method I used was just to take some words that jumped out at me, and started thinking what they could be. There were some on the list that just didn't work for me (mation) and others that were simply obscene (arshl comes to mind). So...here goes...

Trised (try-sehd) - The city-state of Trised is one made up of concentric rings, each ring is a ward of the city. Walls between each ward keep them separated, though there is some bleedover at the walls themselves, as populations from one ward spill over into another. The center ring is the castle ward, where the military governor Schor keeps residence.

Challys (chall-iss) - Challys is a powerful sorcerer who lives on the edge of civilization, near Trised. His tower stands forbidding and alone. No one has actually seen Challys in many seasons, leading some to think he may be dead -- or worse, mutated by his forays into forbidden magicks. Travellers passing near the tower have heard strange noises and seen flashes of light inside the tower's windows.

Volut (vohl-oot...rhymes with 'droll foot') - Volut is a star appearing in the constellation Dotholh, and can be seen low in the southern sky in the northern hemisphere during Reaping and early Preserving seasons. (Seasons are based on agriculture: Planting, Growth, Reaping, and Preserving). Named for the warrior-poet from Al-Azyan, known for his poems of love and valor, as well as his military prowess.

Dotholh (doh-thole) - Means "the lion" and is one of the 12 constellations visible in the night sky over Andurantha. The Lion is stalked by the Hunter, and the Lion is hunting the Stag ("The Forest King").

Schor (shor) - General Schor is military governor of Trised. His normally strict, regimented decisions have been erratic of late. This comes shortly after he led an expedition inside the Vault of Orak'vi, leading some to darkly speculate what he may have encountered down there.

Word list:
trised
challys
coures
flammun
mation
anedgen
unplaha
gible
cansesse
volut
exedd
vipip
arshl
cativerm
orakvi
glyancen
plagi
doriumbe
dotholh
kince
schor
uines
denes
cocancie
phalimpa
reptio
dinne
interst
petsych
woodoco

Rules Hack - Tactical Combat

2010-12-07T09:28:00.000-08:00

I've been playing Age of Decadence recently -- the combat demo -- and realizing how fluid the combat system is while still being highly tactical. Combats don't take long at all, and the winner is determined in the same way as in traditional pen n' paper RPGs: a die roll modified by stats and skills.

Age of Decadence itself promises to be a fantastic game, somewhere on the order of Fallout meets Baldur's Gate, and the combat system alone is well done.

There's something to be said about the tactical environment. While I don't care for 3E's or 4E's version of that, I can think of ways that combat can be made more interesting than just a bonus here or a wearing down of your foe's hit points.

I began thinking about how to easily port the same system into D&D, and realized that I'd have to radically change the initiative model. Action points in this game can allow multiple attacks.

Spot Rules:
1) Use DEX to figure out "Action Points," which would be determined by the Ability Score bonus.

Everyone has at least 1 Action Point.

AD&D/D&D3:
14-15      2 APs
16-17      3 APs
18         4 APs

Basic D&D:
For basic, you simply add 1 to the Ability Score bonus.
13-15      2 APs
16-17      3 APs
18    4 APs

Action points are modified by the following:
Using a light weapon      -1
Using a medium weapon -2
Using a heavy weapon    -3

Generally lighter weapons do less damage. Medium weapons do a moderate amount of damage. A heavy weapon usually requires two hands, and does the most damage.

Wearing armor can slow you down as well:
Wearing no armor 0
Wearing light armor -1 (leather)
Wearing medium armor -2 (chain)
Wearing heavy armor -3 (plate)

You will never go below 1 AP.

It costs 1 AP to attack someone. Therefore, someone who has an 18 DEX, uses a light weapon and wears no armor can attack 3 times in a single round.

2) You may want to double or triple hit point values, to avoid insta-kills in this system.

3) You have four things to take into account, hitting, critical hits, dodging, and blocking with a shield.

A critical hit is that telling blow that allows something special, like knocking you down or interrupting your attack.
Dodging is getting out of the way of a blow.
Blocking is putting up your shield in hopes of deflecting a blow.

A D&D character in this system would rank these four things in order of priority, higher numbers mean you want to focus on that action more. Dodging and Blocking are special in that they're mutually exclusive. A shield will do nothing unless you are blocking, but if your dodge is a higher priority you will dodge instead. You can dodge and hit in the same round, as a defense costs 0 action points. So, a typical character might look like this:
4   Hit
3   Dodge
2   Critical
1   Block

This means he wants to hit most of all, but he also wants to dodge a lot. Criticals are less important to him, and he won't be using a shield.

So, to translate these numbers:
To hit: +4 to hit
Dodge: +3 to AC
Critical: 18-20 (20 - Critical Priority)

Note that "Hit" is only to hit, not damage.

As a defense is separated from the Action Point system, you might wish to allow Dodge and Block to be performed on a successful Ability Check, rather than having them add to AC.

4) Next we focus on weapons. Each weapon has something that it does on a critical hit:
Daggers - x1.5 damage (bypassing armor).
Swords - +1 to Critical Strike, x2 damage on critical.
Axes - split shields, if no shield x2 damage.
Hammers - knock your opponent to the ground.
Spears - interrupt attempts to close in.
Bows - +2 to Critical Strike, x1.5 damage on critical.
Crossbows - knock your opponent down.
Thrown Weapons - x1.5 damage (bypassing armor).

5) One square of movement is going to cost 1 AP. So if you have 4 APs and you move 4 Squares, that's it for that round. You must wait til next round to attack. You may still defend, however, as that takes 0 APs.

Will this flow as well as traditional D&D combat? I dunno. I can't imagine that it would take that much longer to complete. I wonder if it's workable...

Down in the Dungeon

2010-11-26T00:19:00.000-08:00

Over at Grognardia, James Maliszewski authored a post about an art book from 1981 called "Down in the Dungeon." I have zero memories of it, but I love what has been said about it. I feel almost as if I know it, can almost feel the pages beneath my fingers, and smell that musty smell that old books found in used bookstores so often possess.

Well, I googled it, trying to figure out if there were a way to purchase it through Amazon, perhaps, or eBay. And I found an interesting item online:

The Monster Brains blog has posted 34 images from the book. They're interesting renderings, if a bit dated. The art in Down in the Dungeon is, on the whole, about as good as the cover of the first edition AD&D Monster Manual.

For those of you who have seen the book, enjoy the trip down memory lane. For those of you who own the book, well, this post does you little good, and I apologize. For those of you who have never seen the book, hearken back to a time when gaming was still young, and fertile imaginations ran wild. Enjoy!

The Gamorrean Guards -- Inspired by Orcs?

2010-11-25T23:50:00.000-08:00

When I was younger, I was particularly struck by an image in a storybook I owned about Return of the Jedi. Despite the disappointing movie overall, there was a pic of a Gamorrean Guard. The Guard himself reminded me of nothing more than a classic 1e orc!

Now, Gygax himself has gone on record as saying that he didn't like the pig-faced orcs, but nonetheless it's an iconic image -- one that I didn't like 2e and 3e changing, thank you very much.

For anyone who doubts what I'm saying, here's a pic of the Gamorrean Guard:

And here's a pic from the first edition AD&D Monster Manual:

Note that for Star Wars, the G. Guard seems to be rather low tech, something you would find in a more medieval/Hyborian Age culture. What do you think?

Happy Turkey Day everyone!

2010-11-25T23:30:00.000-08:00

The Turkey Dance, errr...what?

Race As Class

2010-11-14T01:57:00.000-08:00

Because I love the occasional hot-button topic, I'll be weighing in on the "race as class" debate. For those of you unfamiliar with the debate, there are two schools of thought in the D&D community:

One favors the idea of "race as class," that is, if you're a non-human such as a dwarf or an elf, your character type is automatically accounted for and the ability to fight or cast spells is a racial ability. There is no selection of Elven thief, as you are automatically either a mage or a warrior.

Another favors selection of race and class. That is, you can take a Dwarven Cleric, you're not automatically a warrior-type simply because you chose to play a Dwarf. This would be the more familiar type to modern day players.

We will now contrast how the various editions handle races and classes:

OD&D
The LBBs (little brown books) seem to indicate that if you were one of the non-human races, then you were already in a "class:"

There are three (3) main classes of characters:
Fighting-Men
Magic-Users
Clerics

Fighting Men includes the characters of elves and dwarves and even hobbits. Magic-Users includes only men and elves. Clerics are limited to men only. All non-human players are restricted in some aspects and gifted in others. This will be dealt with in the paragraphs pertaining to each non-human type.

It is interesting to note that OD&D never defines the term "class." The LBBs also do not use the term "race." The only idea of race that creeps in is that the non-human player's choice plays differently depending on whether you select Elf or Dwarf, and the Dwarf has a level limitation.

D&D (Holmes Blue Book)
In Eric Holmes' edition of Dungeons & Dragons (blue book, cover by David C. Sutherland III), the trend of using race as class appears to continue. I say *appears* because the one reference to race on page 7 reads: "the four basic classes and races (human, elven, dwarven, halflingish)..." But the classes and races are all lumped together in the experience tables, and page 6 says "any human character can be a fighting man and all halflings and dwarves are members of the fighter class, unless they opt to be thieves."

The terms "class" and "race" are not defined. There is a third way Holmes refers to characters, and that is "character type" (page 7), indicating class and race, which perhaps is the term that should have been used in later editions.

AD&D1e
AD&D hardcover Player's Handbook, first edition, is the first clear delineation between class and race. There you can be one of quite a few races, and you first select your race, then you select your class. There's also quite a bit of fiddly bits that make little sense, like level limits for non-humans. But this has been torn apart in many, many magazine articles, so we won't tackle this here. The interesting thing about the classes is that they now had "minimum ability scores" that you had to roll to be certain classes (like the Paladin). If you didn't roll it, you had no chance to be that class.

Basic/Expert D&D (Moldvay) & BECMI (Mentzer)
The simple race as class structure can be seen here, hearkening back to the LBBs and Holmes. The trend continued in Mentzer's BECMI. In contrast to AD&D, Moldvay had a "prime requisite," which meant the highest ability score you had was used to help determine class selection.

AD&D2e
AD&D2e was, for the most part, a cleaned up revised version of AD&D1e, and the final nail in the coffin for any royalties Gygax might have received. Race and Class are separate entities, and for the most part resemble their 1e counterparts. The main difference was in the fantastic settings created for 2e, introduced "Kits" which could be special classes designed for a specific race (like Elven BladeSinger or Dwarven Chanter).

D&D 3.X
The 3.X naming convention is strange, since its simplified ability bonus tables remind one of B/X or BECMI, but Race and Class are distinct and separate, like AD&D.   Eventually 3.X would ape 2e by doing "racial kits" (like the Dwarven BattleRager).    Dropping the "Advanced" moniker sent a clear message that this was the only Dungeons & Dragons we would see from WotC, and that B/X and BECMI were effectively unsupported.

D&D 4.X
Does the same thing as 3.X, races and classes are discrete groups, and one must select a race and a class.

My take:
I never had a problem with "race as class" because I'm aware of one of the dictionary definitions. From Dictionary.com:
27. to place or arrange in a class; classify: to class justice with wisdom.
28. to take or have a place in a particular class: those who class as believers.
The word comes from the Latin "classis," which meant class, fleet, division, army, etc. So we can infer that the D&D "class" is merely a grouping, and the only thing in the dictionary that implies profession is class as social standing or caste, hardly an ironclad case. So the snarkiness that I have observed (and been the target of) could have been avoided simply by cracking a dictionary.

Do I prefer race as class? For some things it works well. It gels nicely with the simplified structure of B/X. In the "clone" I'm working on, I have them separate as of this writing, though I'm thinking of leaning toward the race as class model and giving them different "builds" for race-specific classes. Time will tell...

Why I Hate Energy Drain

2010-11-09T20:42:00.000-08:00

Over at B/X Blackrazor there is post about how the author loves Energy Drain. Energy Drain is one of the little banes of my existence as both GM and Player. I don't agree with the rules for it at all.

It's simply not conceptual. Why should I lose my skills because my life force is gone? Simple fact: Energy Drain is stealing your life force. It is not retrograde amnesia affecting procedural memory.

It's also a pain in the patootie. If you reduce someone's level, it could affect attack rolls, saving throws, thieving skills, class abilities, and spells. That's a lot of bookkeeping!

I finally figured an easy way to do Energy Drain (even easier than losing a level) and have it be true to what I feel Energy Drain actually is.

Make it a stackable -1 modifier to every roll.

Even easier than losing levels, and more effective. Someone drained 3 times would be at Energy Drain -3. You may only be drained a number of times equal to your level. If the penalty from Drain is equal to or greater than your Level, you are dead. Energy Drain can only be "cured" by a Restoration spell or potion. Since those spells are not only high level in my world but it is necessary to find them in ruins, tombs, etc, it would take awhile to get that life force back.

Players whose characters were drained would write it on their character sheets, along with the penalty (e.g., "Energy Drain -2"). In the case of percentiles (frex for thief skills), it would be -5%.

Another option is to have the victim of an Energy Drain make a CON Check (8 or less + CON Modifier) 24 hours after being drained. A successful Check means a -1 penalty is gone. Other penalties still remain, so if you were drained to -3, and you healed one, you'd still have a -2 to deal with. Only one Check can be made each day (or if you want to be cruel, each week).

Obviously, YMMV. I'm messing with a rule that's been in place for nearly 30 years. But still, the rule has bothered me for about that long...

Abstract vs. Heroic Combat

2010-11-09T20:23:00.000-08:00

Something that D&D has done in violation of the fiction that inspired it is retain a combat system that doesn't give you much of a "feel" for combat. Technically, you can try anything, but the RAW (rules as written) DMs were more than likely going to either (A) not let you or (B) give you a high chance of failure.

Older editions seemed to lean towards a more abstract combat system. That's great, but I don't want to read that Conan quickly dispatched his foes, I want to read about *how* he did it.

Recent editions have put a premium on tactical combat. Move this much, gain this modifier, etc, has become a standard part of modern iterations of D&D. But, to me, this still doesn't fit the source material.

What I'm talking about is Pulp Combat. Pulp combat isn't about kewl powerz. Pulp combat isn't necessarily saving someone's bacon, though it's certainly possible. Pulp combat, in this context, has to do with emulation of some of the fantastic things we see heroes doing in fiction. Think Robert E. Howard, Alexandre Dumas, or David Gemmell (for a more modern take) and you pretty much have what I want.

So, how to make combat more pulpy? Well, I started in my retro-clone by adding maneuvers that you can do in combat. I designed them with two assumptions in mind: 1) pluses and minuses suck. 2) I want results *now*.

Now, I'm sure we're out of grade school and can add +1 or subtract 2 or whatever. But I got tired of that schtick in 2nd Edition, and I sure didn't like it in 3rd. So I made it go away. Too, I wanted results that would let the combat march on normally. I don't want a 45+ minute combat. (Awfully demanding, aren't I?) So here's an example maneuver I designed:

KNOCK FOE OFF-BALANCE - This is a powerful blow designed to move weapons and shield out of the way. STR vs STR. If successful the attacker can attempt to follow up with a quick attack before the defender can get his shield/blade back into position.

STR vs. STR is a from a rule I devised called "Ability Checks." The check is 8-, and the Ability Score Modifier adds to it. So if you have a +4 Modifier your Check would be 12- on a d20. In cases where an opposed Check is needed, the higher roll wins (as long as it falls within the range of the Check). If the person above rolled a 13, for example, his Check would fail.

So, quickly put, the attacker and defender roll their STR Checks. If the attacker wins, the attacker can try to quickly attack and take advantage of this, and the defender cannot parry or block. If the defender wins, the attack was wasted.

It's quick and easy. Here's another:

THROWING YOUR FOE -- You have to win a turn of combat to do this (i.e., do damage, bind arms, etc). You lift your foe over your head, and throw him into one or more foes to stop them. They must make DEX Checks to see if they're knocked down.

No zillion arcane modifiers, just the ability to quickly knock down more than one foe at once.

Or how about this one?

INTERRUPT ATTACK -- DEX Check vs foe's attack roll. If DEX Check succeeds, then foe's attack is disrupted and no damage is done. DEX Check failure means the attack hits.

These are just maneuvers that I see all the time in fiction, in comics, in films, and for some reason haven't made them into many, if any, game systems. Some might think that if you include maneuvers, you infringe upon creativity. I don't believe that -- a list of combat maneuvers with accompany text on how to model them can be a springboard for all sorts of maneuvers. You can simply roll to hit, but why when you can do cool things like throw sand in your foe's face, fast-talk your foe into making a mistake, bash through your opponent's parry or perform a Leaping Attack (think James Cameron's Avatar).

Again, if you don't like all that, you can simply describe your action and roll to hit. But I don't ever want to hear you say "I roll to hit."

Memories: The Atlantean Trilogy

2010-10-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

In a recent post I helped explore the meme of 15 games in 15 minutes. Now, as the mists of time part, one game rises to the fore. One game that I used to be enthralled with:

The Atlantean Trilogy.

I first discovered this in 1985 through a friend who was visiting from California at the time. He had a copy of the Arcanum, the first edition, the cover in living greyscale. I looked through it, and was enrapt with the game-related art inside. While not technically fantastic, it was interesting enough, and as I skimmed it, I saw rules that were like D&D, yet were not D&D. Gone were the nebulous Armor Class rules and attack matrices and saving throws. Ability saves were used to resist spells. Given that the hobby was still quite young at the time, it was still shackled to some of the more cumbersome engines, tables for things that would have better used a target number, variable percentages for skills, etc. My friend told me that he thought that it was D&D, and therefore his campaigns were set there, and used those rules.

The Arcanum

It had the standard D&D abilities, but swapped WIS for WILL and added Perception. You didn't just have the choice of Thief, Fighter, Magic-User, or Cleric anymore. You had Witch Hunters, Astrologers, Alchemists, Witch Doctors and more. You didn't have the bog-standard choices for races -- you now had Druas (Dark Elves, before anyone else ever did), Aesir (giants), Zephyr (like ordinary people with huge eagle wings), and Andaman (half-human, half beast). You didn't have the standard array of spells anymore. Things like Fire Sign and Lesser Invocation of Mars gave the spells a much needed revision. They separated the spells into nine schools of magic, such as Black Magic, Astrology, High Magic, et al. All of this gave the game a definite flavor, a "feel" to it.

Skills were given to you based on race, class, level, and what climate you were raised in. The skill list not only included Martial Arts, several different sub-types of Acrobatics, but also Knife Throwing, which gave you the ability to "call" your shot to any location, including throat, heart, etc. This would cause the roll to be halved, but a hit to any vital area caused 2x damage and the target would need to save vs. CON or be incapacitated by the wound. If I had to quibble with the skills, it would be that some of was percentile, and others were based on attack rolls in combat. One of my house rules was that each skill was tied to an ability and got a bonus if the ability was "exceptional."

Combat itself was almost rewritten from the ground up, and was a whopping four pages long. Combat ability was defined by three different ratings: Highly Trained, Skilled, and Untrained. Each determined to hit bonuses and hit points per level, and each of the classes had one of these ratings. A straight 11+ on a d20 was a hit, and was modified by DEX, magic, and the bonus from class and combat rating. Each opponent rolled a d20 -- the attacker and the defender. Highest die roll + mods won. The standard offensive tactics were in there -- melee, missile, hand-to-hand, dirty tricks, and called shot. Defenses included parry, evasion, dodge, or counter (which you wait for your foe to strike first, then you strike him back while he's off-balance from his attack). Damage was a bit more (such as 2d8 for a two-handed sword), given that hit points were higher (CON + set number from Combat rating). AC was gone, so Armor actually subtracted 1-6 points from your damage, based on whether it was leather, ring, chain, plate, ad infinitum. Also, chain, plate mail, and plate armor gave you -1, -2, and -3 on DEX saves respectively.

Alignment was handled a bit differently, too. It had only four Alignments: Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, Chaotic, and Neutral. Lawful Good characters were committed to honor, truth, justice and mercy. Lawful Evil characters despised honor, lied, had no sense of mercy or justice. Devils were LE. Neutrals uphold and maintain their own beliefs. Chaotics analyzed a situation and then acted. The best of these are loners. The worst lack all conscience (demons).

The spell system was markedly different from the Vancian system. At first level, all spellcasters get every first level spell from their school of magic. Any higher level spells must be found, and they offer ways to do that, from private collections to libraries, to learned mages, and adventuring in ruins and tombs. It is worth noting spellcasters may only cast two spells per day, plus 1 per level. In combat, it is also impossible to cast anything other than a first level spell, due to the stress and frenzy of battle. They also had extensive rules for the properties of various plants and metals, alchemical rules, signs and symbols, and spell research.

I went home the next morning and dug up one of my dragon magazines that had that book in it. I sent in a check to Bard Games. They told me that it really cost a buck more, but they'd send it to me anyway. I soon found the Bestiary and the Lexicon published in one book (I don't recall where -- the now-defuct Crown Books?), and thus began my love affair with the Atlantean Trilogy.

Of course I houseruled it, I found the AD&D-inspired ability tables lacking (i.e., bonuses all over the place) and so tacked on the BECM ability bonuses, instead. 13-15: +1; 16-17: +2; 18: +3. Easy to remember, easy to apply and easily consistent.

The Bestiary

This was an interesting book. The colorful cover by PD Breeding draws the eye, almost reminding one of Don Maitz's work. The interior illustrations were rendered by comic artist Bill Sinciewicz. Though I despised his run on The New Mutants (they hadn't had a good artist since Bob McLeod), the illos in the Bestiary were perfection. His crazy, somewhat manic-messy style fit the tone of the book. They had an interesting way of handling the monsters. Each monster was given a class and a level. From there you could figure out the to hit bonuses. They also had no orcs, they were lumped under the label "goblin," which would handle everything from the standard D&D goblins to the big nasty orcs. The other thing is that they had mythical or quasi-mythical names for the monsters. A mummy was a "sahu," a lich was a "yatu," and they had special undead monster types for those who have been slain by ghouls and vampires to rise from the dead once more.

For those who wish to see a sample of the gonzo art, here's a peek:

The Lexicon

The Lexicon was the atlas of the antediluvean world. This product was obviously a labor of love, and parts of it resembled nothing so much as Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age (even going so far as to use some of the names, themselves taken from ancient history), but everything was ripped from myth and folklore and ancient cultures. A giant mixing pot of Greek, Roman, Inca/Aztec/Mayan, Native American culture, and Medieval Europe. The entire earth is described. In a nutshell, the world suffered a massive Cataclysm, and Atlantis is a shadow of its former self. Mu and Lemuria and similar mythic continents all share space in the Lexicon. All in all, it's a fascinating read.

This is one of those games I kinda wish had reached ascendancy, but it is a very different game than it started out as. The first time some of this material saw print was in the "Compleat" series by Bard Games. The Compleat Alchemist, The Compleat Beastmaster, etc. Then, Bard Games put out these three books. And later, Talislanta was born and would change publishers again and again. If the Atlantean Trilogy is at the dawn of the world, Talislanta takes place at twilight, well after the Atlantean Cataclysms and the ice ages that followed. A decade later, Death's Edge Games picked up and republished the Arcanum, the Lexicon, and the Bestiary, added some new material and changed the art. A decade after that, Morrigan Press decides to update and revise the material, calling it Atlantis: The Second Age. They changed the game to a series of suggested templates, spells that are created from different "elements" that combine to create specific effects, and a different system more based on the one found in Talislanta. I'm not sure what Morrigan Press set out to achieve, but it has a very different flavor than the original Atlantean Trilogy. I'm no less intrigued, but I miss the old game.

Something interesting about Blogger

2010-10-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

I've noticed something interesting about Blogger. Every time I try to post something, it tends to end up a little wonky. Typos aside, the formatting tends to get all munged up. And I don't think I ask too much -- large font, Verdana, single spaced.

I've since remedied the situation by composing in Notepad, and then copy/pasting into the "Compose" field, and adding links and formatting as necessary.

Yay! Another Meme!

2010-10-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

Perpetuating the meme I found over at Save or Die!, here's my 15 games in 15 minutes:

1. D&D - the boxed B/X and BECM, starting with Moldvay and moving to Mentzer.
2. Gamma World 1st Edition
3. Palladium Games, particularly TMNT, Fantasy, and Heroes Unlimited
4. Feng Shui
5. WoD (old), particularly Vampire and Mage, for better or for ill.
6. Warhammer FRP (1E)
7. Risus
8. Atlantean Trilogy
9. Gothic II (since I'm an avid video gamer)
10. Drakensang (another CRPG, itself based on a P&P rpg)
11. Risen (another CRPG)
12. The Fantasy Trip (first Melee, then Wizard, and then Labyrinth)
13. Baldur's Gate & Torment (more CRPGs, this time based on D&D)
14. GURPS (3e)
15. The HERO System (particularly Champions 1st-3rd editions)

This list could be a lot longer, but 15 was the rule. I've also been influenced by Ars Magica, Fading Suns, Theatrix, Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, etc. The sad thing is that some weren't necessarily all good -- the World of Darkness in particularly seemed almost a parody of itself over time (look at me...I'm so dark). And some (like Risus or Feng Shui) I wish I could play more.

Some of them are computer games, as I've long held that some video games have content in them that need to be ported over to the pen n' paper genre. Of course, this can be way over the top. I have little love for MMOs or RTS games. Those games are the way they are for a specific reason, and while I am familiar with them, I don't think they necessarily need to influence much in the way of gameplay. Flavor? Yes. Gameplay? Unlikely.

Others have pointed how 4E is like an MMO. While I won't get into that here, it makes me wonder if that's why I don't care for 4E? I've tried MMOs and mostly what they seem to be is quite pretty Roguelikes. This isn't to say Roguelikes aren't fun, but I don't have fun with 'em for very long anymore.

It's interesting to see what you can glean about others from looking at their lists.

Gary Gygax and House Rules

2010-10-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

I just read a disturbing editorial in The Dragon #16 (what would eventually become Dragon Magazine). Gary Gygax, starting on page 15 in the July '78 issue, blasts Amateur Press magazines and house rules that people have made for D&D. A few choice selections:

"D&D encourages inventiveness and originality within the framework of its rules. Those who insist on altering the framework should design their own game."

"Why can’t magic-users employ swords...On the surface this seems a small concession, but in actuality it would spoil the game!"

"Each character role has been designed with care in order to provide varied and unique approaches to solving the problems which confront the players...This same reasoning precludes many of the proposed character classes which enthusiasts wish to add to D&D. Usually such classes are either an unnecessary variation on an existing class, are to obtuse to be interesting, or are endowed with sufficient prowess to assure that they would rule the campaign..."

"The “critical hit” or “double damage” on a “to hit” die roll of 20 is particularly offensive to the precepts of D&D as well."

"Any fighting man worth the name made it a point to practice daily with all forms of arms....The truth of the matter with respect to weapon expertise is, I believe, another attempt to move players closer to the “instant death” ability.

"...[Amateur Press Associations] are generally beneath contempt, for they typify the lowest form of vanity press. There one finds pages and pages of banal chatter and inept writing from persons incapable of creating anything which is publishable elsewhere. Therefore, they pay money to tout their sophomoric ideas, criticise those who are able to write and design, and generally make themselves obnoxious...they are unprofessional, unethical and seemingly ignorant of the laws concerning libel...When I first got into this business, I felt that the APA-zines might be good for the hobby...Now I know the error of my thinking. They serve no useful purpose."

"Additions to and augmentations of certain parts of the D&D rules are fine. Variants which change the rules so as to imbalance the game or change it are most certainly not. These sorts of tinkering fall into the realm of creation of a new game, not development of the existing system."

"Spell points add nothing to D&D except more complication, more record keeping, more wasted time, and a precept which is totally foreign to the rest of the game."

"Many seek to trade on D&D’s popularity by offering “new” or “variant” systems which fit only with D&D, even though the game is not actually named. Buy them if you have money to throw away, but at peril of your campaign; do not use material which alters the basic precepts of the game."

He uses "framework" and "precepts" as if they are unalterable, or sacrosanct. But what are the precepts of D&D? Roll a d20 and interpret the results the way the rules tell you? Randomly generated ability scores? Experience, level, and class systems? Spell memorization? Some combination of the above, or none of these?

I can understand why a designer might think his design choices are best, but to publicly lambast someone else's design choices is purely unprofess-ional. I may not like AD&D nor the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th editions. I can tell you at length why I do not like them, but I'm not going say that their design choices are bad. I can tell you without a doubt that they are not for me.

What's funny is that, as time progressed, D&D changed:

Everyone used the "natural 20" rule, and it made it into 2E as an optional rule, and into 3E as an official "critical threat" roll.
Weapon expertise found its way into all editions as "Weapon Mastery" (in BECM), "Weapon Proficiencies" in 1 and 2E, and through various Feats in 3E.
Character classes were added, first in the form of "Kits" in 2E, then 180+ "base classes," and over 700 Prestige Classes in 3E (this is according to the Wizards official site).
Bulletin Board Services sprang up, host to a number of house-rules, and then this ballooned to blogs and retro-clones, each touting his or her own "variant system which fit only with D&D."
Spell Points made it into the Wheel of Time game published by WotC.

I've played with mages who used spell points and found it refreshing and new. It brought a flavor to the game that somehow the spell slot system lacked. I know the way Vance describes it is fantastic, but in D&D it was cut, dried, clinical, and limiting. I've since found variants to make it less limiting and more flavorful, but still use basically the same system.

It's pretty interesting to see Gygax violently defend a game that later on, even under his watch, changed immensely. True, even before 2E, he was ousted and even hunted by TSR's legal team. But it's also strange to see such venom being spewed at people who simply were trying to add rules to a game they loved. It is even more interesting if you consider he had a hand in Castles & Crusades decades later, itself a variant of D&D.

Regardless of the "angry young man" showcased here, we owe Mr. Gygax a debt we cannot repay, and I'm glad that he was able to continue to ignite our imaginations and inflame our passions about the hobby up until the end.

Plot Elements in D&D

2010-09-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Recently on the gaming blogs there have been discussions of sandbox vs. railroading, and how a story isn't an adventure. I maintain that there are elements of a story that can make a classic adventure. You just have to remember that prompting is good, railroading is bad.

In this post, we will examine the standard plot elements found in fiction, and discuss how to apply them to a D&D adventure (or any fantasy game, I'll just be using D&D in my examples for the sake of brevity). This might be especially important for the novice DM.

For my example of each, I'll use Star Wars: A New Hope in the bullet points. The italicized text will explain how to use this plot element in a D&D module.

Exposition

This shows off the setting, characters, and other things that are needed to understand the story. It also sets the tone.

- Darth Vader is a bad dude -- snapping the neck of a soldier on the blockade runner

- Luke Skywalker feels trapped on Tatooine

- Ben Kenobi is a Jedi Knight hiding from the Empire

- Lasers make noise in space in the Star Wars universe

- The tech level is ray guns and spaceships.

This would be simple enough to set up in D&D adventure. The trappings of the characters and the place they're in would be sufficient.

Foreshadowing

This gives you some kind of hint or clue that will figure more prominently later on as the story progresses.

- It didn't make the final cut, but there was an encounter with Luke's friend Biggs Darklighter, who was heading off to join the Rebellion, and tells Luke how bad things have gotten.

- During the encounter between Han and Greedo in the cantina, both of them mentioned Jabba the Hutt, who is a major character in the third film, Return of the Jedi.

The way Foreshadowing usually turns up in a D&D adventure is with a dream or vision. In some cases rumors are gathered. They could happen on the scene in the middle of a battle with raiders or orcs or monsters. Or, in some cases, the dark citadel on the hill is enough to foreshadow evil and danger.

Trigger

This is a person, place, thing, or event that starts the conflict.

- The Trigger would be Darth Vader and the Death Star. More the Death Star, though Vader was a compelling enough villain.

TSR wanted a villain in every module, at least during the days of 2nd Edition. This is proven by one fact and one anecdote. Fact: In the Dungeon Master's Design Kit, you need to to know who your villain is. Anecodote: A friend of mine submitted an adventure to Dungeon Magazine in the 90s, and it was rejected because it had no villain. Even though it was an excellent adventure, there was no villain, so it couldn't exist in the D&D canon (grumble).

You don't need a villain for the trigger. Events, such as war, famine, disease can be triggers. A place, for example a Wizard's Tower can be a trigger. Or how about an evil ring, which turns its wielder invisible? (grin)

Conflict

A struggle of some kind. For our purposes, the conflict is usually expressed as X vs. X. Man vs. Nature, Woman vs. Machine, Man vs. Nature, Outcast vs. Society, Man vs. Self, Man vs. Demon, Man v.s the Gods. I purposely restructured this classic element to help further define the conflict.

- The conflict in Star Wars is the Rebels against the Death Star, the Rebels against the Evil Empire.

The conflict in a D&D adventure is the main point of the adventure. Goblin raiders, bandits, warlords, battling against the unknown, rescuing a kidnapped princess, vengeance, sacrifice, errors in judgment, H.P. Lovecraft-inspired monsters threatening to return, etc.

Rising Action

A sequence of events based on the Conflict, starting with the Trigger and ending with the Climax.

- Princess Leia Organa is captured, believed to be carrying stolen plans for the Death Star.

- An escape pod is ejected from the Blockade Runner that contains two droids, one of whom is carrying the stolen plans.

- Luke finds the message from Leia in R2, and asks an old hermit, Ben Kenobi, about it.

- Stormtroopers trace the droids to Luke's Aunt & Uncle, and kill Owen & Beru.

- Luke agrees to accompany Ben Kenobi.

- The group, now including Han Solo and Chewbacca take off from Tatooine and discover the Death Star. - They are drawn in, but the ship remains captured while they look for Princess Leia.

- Ben Kenobi turns off the tractor beam, but is drawn into a fight with Vader. Ben loses the fight and is killed.

Rising Action would be the sections in a D&D module where things really get moving. The raiders beset a caravan and the PCs draw arms and stop them, the disease claims more lives, a kingdom falls, a warlord marches on the town, assassins come after the PCs, etc.

It is vital to remember that in a story, the events take place in the most dramatic order. It is necessary in a story for this order of events to be maintained. Not so in a D&D adventure. The players should have multiple exits from every encounter, so that they don't have to be "herded" from one scene to the next. Of course, each scene should also contain clues that help move the action forward. If they find out that their friend was murdered in such and such a district, they could question neighbors present now, possible witnesses down by the docks (for example), enter the local bars to find out if anyone saw anything or knows anything, talk to their friend's former housekeeper, interrogate their friend's former bodyguard, or question the guard commander who didn't seem too interested in solving the crime.

Not only should you provide multiple exits, you should also perhaps alter the scenario so that it better fits the PC's actions. What if the scenario called for them to visit a specific graveyard, and yet they end up visiting another? Maybe you can subtly alter events so that they can do whatever they were supposed to do in that graveyard. Maybe the scene doesn't call for them visiting a graveyard at all, and they get a wild idea about searching for clues there? Maybe you can arrange for them to find a clue there (logically placed, of course), or even invent a clue out of whole cloth to put the adventure back on track. Never push the players, always subtly guide them. If the scenario is a chariot driven by the player's actions, if they think it was all their idea in the first place, you've succeeded.

Crisis

The turning point of the conflict, when enemies meet and the intensity level is cranked up. This occurs before or simultaneously with the climax.

- The Death Star travels close enough to Yavin to blow it up.

- The plans are taken to the rebel base at Yavin, analyzed, and a plan is formed to fire blasters into an exposed exhaust port.

- The X-Wing fighters take off and fend off TIE fighters while heading into the trenches to find the exhaust port.

At this point in the D&D module, it's the endgame. It's when everything comes to a head and sets up the climax. The heroes enter the bandit fortress, they have dispatched all the minions and the "boss" shows up, they have the cure or the components to dispel the curse and must now race to a particular location to use them, etc.

Climax

The end result of the crisis, and the high point of the adventure. This is where the intensity level rises to 11. It's when the outcome can usually be predicted.

- Luke hears Ben's voice in his head, and uses his Jedi training to hit the exhaust port square.

- Death Star blows up

The D&D climax is the battle with the boss monster, or the rescue of the princess, vengeance on the big baddie for the murder of their friend, whatever high octane point you want to make. Everything is fine once the climax is passed. It almost always takes place close to the end of the adventure.

Falling Action and Resolution (Denouement)

These are the events immediately after the climax. Sometimes combined with the resolution for the end of the story. This is where the hero goes home, couples marry, a ruler is restored, etc. "And they lived happily ever after" is a classic example of Denouement.

- They are decorated as heroes.

In a D&D adventure, this is where the heroes celebrate their victory and mourn their losses.

This is simply a skeleton that a GM can follow when constructing his adventures. There shouldn't any issues with story vs. sandbox. Because, just letting the players run all over willy-nilly can get really old after a time, because the game can degenerate into "let's see how much use we can get out of random encounter tables this session." Plot is important, but it's also important to let the heroes react to the plot however they wish (as long as the intent is not to wreck the plotline, campaign, or the GM's good graces).

Review - Hazen: The Dark Whispers PC Game

2010-09-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Hazen: The Dark Whispers (PC Game)

Minimum Requirements:
CPU:    Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz/AMD Athlon SSE2
RAM:    1 GB RAM (1.5 GB for Vista)
VGA:    128 MB with Pixel Shader 2.0
Direct X version 9.0
OS:      Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2
HDD:    3 GB
Sound: DirectX compatible sound card

Recommended:
CPU:    Intel Core 2 Duo/AMD Athlon X2 family
RAM:    2 GB RAM (3 GB for Vista)
VGA:    NVIDIA 8800/ATI 3850 (512 MB)
OS:      Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2
HDD:    4 GB

Hazen is a Diablo clone with some noticable differences.

First off, it saves it exactly where you left off. This is important and addressed to all game designers who will be designing games from this day forward: Stop putting us fucking back at the beginning when we save! It was a quantum leap forward when you could boot up a game and not be back at the inn (like in the Wizardry games of the early 1980s). With Diablo II, Dungeon Siege II, and other games, the designers decided that if you saved it, it would throw you back in town. What's more, the monsters would respawn, so you'd have to fight your way back through again, possibly at reduced effectiveness with broken items and lost hit points or attributes, etc. Apparently the game designers' dump stat was Wisdom. In Hazen, if you're in the middle of a bridge fighting skeletons, if you save it, you'll be right where you expected to be, in the middle of a bridge fighting skeletons. Wow! What a concept!

The skills are not restricted to character classes. As interesting as these classes are in the Diablo series, Hazen pretty much lets you learn any skill, the only restrictions being level. While I don't care too much for the level limit theory, I like more open-ended skill systems. The skills sound kinda cool too, with evocative names like Deathbringer and Evoke Guardian.

The manual leaves A LOT to be desired. It's fucking thin. It's got a spot to show off the interface (including a topic heading by that name), but its blank. Fortunately, the interface is fairly straightforward, but I would have liked some explanation of hotkeys, at least, and maybe a map to go along with the descriptions of the areas I'm supposed to go to. The in-game automap seems fairly sparse and next to useless.

The fighting is fairly simple. Just click on enemies until you or they are dead. Right-click on items, and left click on items in the game world. Quest areas often have a floating question mark over them, and so do quest givers. The journal lets you know when to head back to town, but you have to read it to find this info.

The graphics aren't exactly light years ahead of their time. They're fun, with the particle effects, ripples in the water, and reflections you'd expect to see, but some landscape items are cartoonish -- which is okay. The graphics and sound pretty much let you know what's going on.

Here I come, charging against the Death Cows of the Wild Frontier! Whee!

If there was one thing I could wish for it would be something more like Divine Divinity. If you're going to make a Diablo clone, maybe have a huge well-thought out storyline behind it.

I think that's something that we as Game Masters and Players can take away from this, as well. That window dressing is all fine and good, but what engages us most is a compelling story. A story isn't just something that breaks up endless hordes of monsters to fight, it engages us, challenges us, and inspires us. At least it does me. Fantastically well-played characters, successful adventures, layers of plot peeled back, and like an onion, there's always more to peel. At the end of a day of gaming, what makes you feel good?

I Write Like H.P. Lovecraft

2010-09-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

Odd, I always thought of myself as more like Hunter S. Thompson, but there you have it. When I was younger, that would have sent me into an ecstatic state for months.

You can find the analyzer over at I Write Like

Review : Blind Guardian -- At the Edge of Time

2010-09-04T02:07:00.000-07:00

Blind Guardian - At the Edge of Time (2010)

   1. Sacred Worlds - 9:17
   2. Tanelorn (Into the Void) - 5:58
   3. Road of No Release - 6:30
   4. Ride into Obsession - 4:46
   5. Curse My Name - 5:52
   6. Valkyries - 6:38
   7. Control the Divine - 5:26
   8. War of the Thrones - 4:55
   9. A Voice in the Dark - 5:41
10. Wheel of Time - 8:55

The last few years have been barren ones for Blind Guardian fans. In 2006, they released A Twist in the Myth; while there were a few standout tracks, it was quite a departure in sound, particularly in tracks like Fly and Otherland. It felt overproduced to me, and lacking in energy and inspiration. Its predecessor, A Night at the Opera, was a much finer album, in my opinion.

Now it's 2010, four years since A Twist in the Myth. I've been waiting for this album for ages, listening to the 30-second samples on Blind-Guardian.com, monitoring YouTube for videos and finding not one, but two of 'em in HD! It's hard to contain my elation. Once I finally unwrap the thing, I give it a spin.

I have to admit, I didn't expect much after ATITM, but I was blown away. The opener is Sacred Worlds, written by Blind Guardian for the video game Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, and it starts out with a symphonic score. The score builds in energy and urgency, with occasional flashes of epic. But it isn't until 1:26 that we finally enter the song with an energetic and insistent guitar. The song proceeds with Hansi Kürsch in fine form, with a particular epic part at 6:26: "My eyes are the eyes of a dead man/I feel the unholy stream/The source of my power/T-Energy/I'm in control!" The song outros with a symphonic score increasing in calmness eventually fading to silence once more.

The next track is Tanelorn (Into the Void), which is the second song they've done concerning Michael Moorcock's Eternal City from The Elric Saga and other works. This song takes BG back to their speed metal roots, as it hits you hard and never relents, with the classic Blind Guardian epic chorus we've come to expect since Nightfall on Middle Earth.

After Tanelorn is Road of No Release, based on The Innkeeper's Song, by Peter S. Beagle. It starts with a piano riff, and then a military march, and then Hansi's clean vocals begin. Each verse is told from a different perspective, the different characters in the story. It drags a bit, but there are times where I love it.

The fourth track is Ride Into Obsession, with lightning fast riffs and Hansi's amazing voice carrying it. This song is based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

Track 5 is Curse My Name, which fits in nicely with their other medieval-styled ballads, such as The Bard's Song, A Past and Future Secret and Skalds and Shadows. With songs like these they re-establish themselves as traveling bards. Another fantastic track, with a serious and dark chorus: "Let them call me a tyrant so cruel/Let them Curse My Name but remember the truth!" Curse My Name is based on a political tract by John Milton. In the book, he claims that kings who fail to carry out their duties should be killed.

Next comes Valkyries. It starts slow, then builds to a metal crescendo, and from there we have the familiar layered vocals and Blind Guardian chorus. It has a definite catchy melody. It has its basis in Norse Mythology and references the Valkyries, warrior maidens on winged horses who appear after a battle. They carry those who fought with honor and valor to a great Feasting Hall in the Afterlife, Valhalla.

After Valkyries comes Control the Divine, about Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost and his motives and feelings. It starts with an epic riff and continues with a pounding rhythm reminiscent of thundering destriers. "How can we take it away from someone who has no right/No right to Control the Divine?"

The eighth track is War of the Thrones, inspired by the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. It has a strange dichotomy to it, where the verses are melancholy and slow, and the refrain is more upbeat. It refers to the war between the different noble houses over the throne and the vast Wall of Ice at the northern border that separates the men of Westeros from savages and horrors. Unfortunately it gets a tad repetitive, and doesn't quite match the rest of the album. It is not one of my favorites.

Track 9 is A Voice in the Dark, and it returns to the melodic thrash they perfected on Imaginations from the Other Side. Technically perfect, energetic and epic, it compels you to contract a bad case of "Slayer Neck." I got chills and elation the first time I heard the song. This is also themed around A Song of Ice and Fire, and tells story of how Bran, one of the characters, lay with a broken back after being pushed from a high tower he was climbing, and in his coma was tormented by visions and prophecies.

The final track, The Wheel of Time, starts out with almost a middle-eastern groove, before the crescendo into the main part of the song. It, too, drags a bit, despite the frenetic orchestral interludes. The song takes a bit to pick up the pace. The subject matter itself is from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and is about males and saidar, the magical power that drives them mad.

I have listened to this album practically nonstop since its U.S. release, banging my head in ecstasy as the band kicks ass again and again. This is a very strong album, a much finer effort than A Twist in the Myth, and most tracks are very reminiscent of earlier releases such as Imaginations from the Other Side and A Night at the Opera. I love the energy and feel to this album, even if the subject matter is entirely derived from other people's works. It holds together well, and renews my hope in a band that I thought had lost its magic. Well done, Blind Guardian! May you continue to rock well into your golden years. You are indeed worthy of Valhalla, all of you!

Drakensang vs. Dragon Age

2010-09-04T01:02:00.000-07:00

After my laptop died, I didn't hold much hope for computer gaming, but my wife kindly let me install some games, so I can while away some time here and there, having some good high-tech fun.

I installed Drakensang, in a wistful fit, revisiting the world and making different choices. During combat, I had a few epiphanies that made me realize that another game I own, Dragon Age: Origins, was completely inspired by other things, and that it was so transparent it hadn't hit me until now.

Everyone who owns Dragon Age: Origins who is a fan of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series knows that the computer game is highly derivative of that series, especially if you play a Human Noble. The betrayal of the King by one house that has designs on the throne, the eradication of other houses loyal to the King, an organization dedicated to fighting back the forces of darkness, etc. Almost slavishly derivative. I didn't have a chance to replay before my laptop died, but I finished one game, so I got a chance to experience everything first hand.

What hit me playing Drakensang is that combat in Dragon Age is identical, and yet Drakensang was out for several months before Dragon Age went gold. Here are the similarities:

1) The auto-pause option to issue orders. Not unusual in and of itself, but taken with everything else it tends to look bad for EA...

2) Once you issue your orders and unpause the game and your orders are carried out in realtime.

3) Everyone has a few special abilities that can be brought to bear on the foe. These options can be trained and new options are bought in a skill tree fashion, where once you have one combat ability new ones are automatically unlocked.

4) Characters can fall unconscious during combat if they take enough damage, and if everyone falls unconscious the game is over.

5) When the characters who fell unconscious get back up, they have wounds that must be healed manually, usually by some manner of "Treat Wounds" skill or similar. Unhealed wounds cause penalties to everything, particularly fighting.

Both games have all 5 things there in common. So, not only did one of Dragon Age's stories come straight out of fiction, its game play came straight from another video game!

True, there are some things about Dragon Age, the interactions among the characters, that were truly humorous and in many cases genuinely moving, and in a few cases outright disturbing. I have to give it kudos there. Few other games I've seen captivated me like Dragon Age. Other games that gave me similar "must play" compulsions were Redguard, Arena, and Morrowind.

But this new revelation has challenged my belief in the creativity of the designers. Was it intentional? I dunno, I've come up with original mechanics and settings only to see them surface in published works weeks, months, or even years after the fact. But, on the other hand, I'm not under a deadline, and I game for the love of it, not money or any other discernible reason.

I'm not saying that there is a clear case of plagiarism, but I'm merely musing about it. It's a question I will probably never have an answer to.

My version of D&D (but why?)

2010-08-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

The purpose of my authoring this game was to write a fantasy game that gets back to the "feel" of Dungeons & Dragons. The Original Edition, while playable in its own right, had too little of what I wanted, so I wasn't too interested in playing something that limited my options. The Supplements added complications I wasn't keen on dealing with either.

I got more of a charge out of the Basic rulebook as authored by Moldvay. Erol Otus, David Sutherland, David Trampier, Jeff Easley, Bill Willingham, Jeff Dee, together with Elmore's early work really defined what I thought D&D looked like. Despite the art, I felt AD&D was rather a chaotic mess that the PHB and DMG did nothing to clear up, system-wise (though I loved adapting everything else under the AD&D banner).

AD&D 2nd edition and 3rd edition really did nothing for me. Whatever happened to the days when players were supposed to be clever instead of just relying on dice and character sheets? So gone are the the 3300 Feats, 187 Base Classes, and the 762 Prestige Classes from D&D3E. Overkill doesn't even begin to describe it.

When I was young, players described what they were doing. The best of them were precise (“I check the 3rd block from the right, five blocks up, to trigger the secret door”) or cool (“Ragnar leaps into battle, his axe drinking blood from foes left and right”). There were no rules for this, per se, just people's imaginations – and they were rewarded for it. Nowadays, the style of play appears to be min-maxing to squeeze every last “plus” out of the rules. Half a dozen bonuses from this and that and the other to give you this number which affects that number. Why use your imagination when you can just read what's on your character sheet and roll some dice? The author of this game prefers the first option, and wrote this game to help address it. Characters shouldn't take longer than 10 or 15 minutes to whip up, and should have a fair amount of leeway in what they're allowed to do.

What I'm trying to do here is to re-create the early feel of D&D, trying hard to give it the same “gee whiz” factor it had back in the day. The editions by Moldvay and Holmes; the Judges Guild add-ons, the Arduin Grimoire booklets, and Role Aids supplements; all of these have tons of flavor. I would love to give back to D&D what I got out of it, and more. My hope is, as you read this, is that I succeed.

Choose from unique races, such as the Pa'arr (Tigermen), S'srath (Lizardmen), Pachyars (Elephant men), the Aerosi (winged humans), and Skrettle (mouse men). Yes we have Elves, but we have other races as well!

No skills! Your character is unique and does have abilities all his own, and the rules allow anything to be attempted easily!

Experience points reward actually doing things during the adventure. Treasure allows for a wide variety to be collected, but in a plausible manner. Hint: collecting spider venom sacs to sell in town is more realistic than collecting coins or gems from its lair.

New combat mechanics allow for any action to be taken, with instant effects rather than “+2 to Armor Class!”

Almost infinite variety. We have nearly 40 character classes with 15+ types of Spellcasters and Priest-types. Unique mechanics allow selection to be a breeze! Get a character up and running in 10 minutes!

New and different spells, contained in the same Vancian spell slot system, but now with full power over your spells and how they're cast! Options for variants allow for a richer magic system! You have 8 different schools of magic to choose from. A 9th, "Prayer," works the same way as the others, we just refer to it differently.

Rules on gadgets, potion creation, golems, homunculi, and more. Easy, logical, and consistent rules.

All this together with a unique fantasy setting informed by the works of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, and more! Make a name for yourself in the magical land of Andurantha!

Not Old School, not New School, but rather Alternative School. Backwards compatible with most editions of D&D.

Clerics, Druids, and Bards -- a Historical Perspective

2010-07-25T02:38:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Way back in early June, before I saw the post on Grognardia, I had worked this up. Unfortunately it remained unfinished, my last crack at it being the 12th of June. It remains a source of embarrassment that I was too busy at the time to finish it. New job and all that brings.

The Cleric is a misunderstood term used in D&D and quite a few other games as well. About the only thing 2nd Edition did right was to come up with a better name than "Cleric." And then 3rd and 4th editions came along and brought that retarded term right back to life. "Druid" and "Bard" are also terms I have issues with, but Cleric is chief among them.

Let me elucidate:

The term "Cleric" is not a generic religious term. On the contrary, it is a highly restrictive term. A Cleric is a Roman Catholic term, from the Greek klerikos (an acquisition). Being a Cleric meant you had to have your head shaved, leaving ring of hair around a bald scalp. If you didn't do this, you would not be considered a member of the clergy. So, if you don't consider your character to be a literate dude with a robe and a funny haircut, you're not really playing a "Cleric."

"Cleric" eventually became "Clerk," which is why bookkeepers and such are called that today.

"Priest" would be a better term, as that is a generic term that can be applied to any religious leader of ceremonies. Though it, too, has its issues, it tends to have broader applications.

"Templar" and "Hospitaller" might even be accurate, considering that they were martial orders. True, I know those are both specific Christian Orders, but bear with me. Templar referred to the Temple of Solomon, but in the game it doesn't have to, it could be a temple of any religion you like. The Knights Hospitaller were also referred to as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order and as the Knights of Malta. Either of those, especially shed of Saints and the Hospitaller reference could be used. Instead of Knights of Malta you could be known as the "Holy Knights of Dawnmoor" or something more fantasy-related.

Druids are next on my list. There's nothing wrong with the term, per se, but you'd want a bit of historical perspective, change the class description to something more in line with the established historical records, such as accounts by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus. According to Julius Caesar, they were involved in "divine worship, the due performance of sacrifices, private or public, and the interpretation of ritual questions." Fairly well like any other priest. However, druids were much more than that. They kept the peace between nations, and served as judges, counselors and advisors to kings. Their truck with deities seems to be different from what we would consider normal today. It is almost as if they consulted the gods and considered them wiser peers, than the absolute division between god and man that exists in more traditional Western religions. In Greek and Roman writings there is evidence for druid sanctuaries, mistletoe and plant rituals, sacrifices and reverence of the four elements. The main difference between Druid and Priest (Cleric) is that the Druid was intertwined in many different aspects of Celtic life, whereas the Priest was set apart from (and indeed above) the citizenry.

The Bard was, according to Caesar, related to the Druids, merely not mentioned by name. In one text published in 1918 (which I cannot put my hands on and therefore have forgotten the title), they were detailed as being educated along with the ovates and druids all together, and that Druid was a career path as well as Bard. Authors such as Festus, Lucan, and Ammianus Marcellinus indicate that "Bard" was a respected title, and they were the official poets among the Gaulish and Briton Celts. Summoned by royal commission, it was their job to celebrate the victories of their people and to sing songs of praise to their gods. They were important to the people, and the sense of national pride together with religious belief gave Bards a powerful influence over the hearts and minds of those they sang to. They were also steeped in the traditions of clan and country, the historians of their people, since no written records existed, only oral tradition. They were also skilled satirists, some of their satires having the same effect as a curse.

Hopefully this information can be used by a GM or player to really lend some background to these somewhat misused terms. I'd love to see a game come out that does justice to these classes and places them in their proper roles.

A Million Rules, a Million Pages

2010-06-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

I announced in my last post that I was disenchanted with most RPGs and was hard at work writing a new one.

I think in some ways what I'm disenchanted with is the tendency to cram a million rules into 300 pages, and the set in stone mentality of many rules systems. I think I know why the bulk of these rules are written, though. Aside from a bottom line, the authors usually assume that at least some of their core audience have never picked up a game before. Never played anything more challenging than Chutes & Ladders.

Which, to be fair, may well be the case.

Now, if you were the tyro, and you'd never seen a role-playing game before, which would you prefer? Something that you can pick up and understand immediately, or something that you have to study in order to play the game efficiently?

All things being equal, I'd rather someone hand me a 30-page intro and by the end I'd have a character and a basic idea of how to play. Here's a look at how this has changed over the years:

OD&D (Gygax, Arneson): 18 pages
D&D (Holmes): 17 pages
Basic D&D (Moldvay): 13 pages of character creation
Basic D&D (Mentzer): 52 pages (to be fair, this was the best intro to the game I've ever seen)
AD&D Player's Handbook (1st Ed): 40 pages

In 3.0, this inflated to monstrous proportions. By page 114, they had not even gotten to Movement yet.

For fun, let's take a look at some licensed properties of TSR, both for AD&D 2E:
Adventures in Lankhmar: 35 pages (and very well-done)
Diablo II: This is a weird one, so it's hard to codify. Each character received a sort of a character folio, with all the numbers filled in. There were instructions on the sheets as well, everything from an XP chart to take 'em to 5th level, and explanations of how to make a Hit Roll or a Saving Throw. The actual rulebook itself was 32 pages long.

The licensed ones were not only fairly short, they were also the most fun to read. Diablo II started it out as its own game system, with some additions not found in AD&D before (like their powers, which cost mana). Diablo II later became entwined in 3.0, and spiralled out of control, but the basic boxed set is fun.

By contrast, reading The 3E Player's Handbook was a great cure for insomnia. Watching paint dry was not only more interesting, but seemed to be more useful. I dunno, I guess the pretty pictures inside failed to suck me in.

This is what I don't understand. If you assume your core audience has never gamed before, why cram your product full of rules that they must learn? Why not provide a good framework, explain how to create a character well, and create systems that are intuitive so that there is less to explain? I'm looking at you, WotC!

This post, however, is very much YMMV. There are some people who love 3.x, and more power to them. For my own buck, I'd rather find something else. I just wish I could take a large number of followers with me...

Some Observations

2010-06-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a new game, something influenced by a different animal than the standard retro-clone. While I've played and DMed in all of the modern iterations of D&D, I felt that 3.0 was a mess, 3.5 was wargame-crazed, and that D&D 4.0 was not D&D. YMMV, just my thoughts on the subject. I decided to drop all that for more rules-lite games.

The problem here is that most groups aren't all that hot to try a new game. They think that they have to know all the rules and that "it's not D&D." It seems some even have that aversion to D&D-compatible stuff like the Sword & Sorcery line from White Wolf or the "Dungeon Crawl Classics." So, things like Risus or PDQ or Wushu get the boot because of some xenophobic reaction that seems ingrained in many people engaged in our hobby.

I always was (and still am) confused by this. When I unwrapped Torg, Chivalry & Sorcery, or Villain & Vigilantes, I didn't turn up my nose at these. On the contrary, I said "that's interesting, how does it work?" It turns out C&S was a bit hard to suss out, but it seemed like tons of fun.

Why, as a group, are gamers so insular? You'd think creative types would be chomping at the bit for something new. A change, a solution to problems like the grappling rules in 3.0? Why not drop the familiar for awhile to try something new? I wonder if there's a link there to T.V., too? Most new, original, fresh shows I watch are doomed to fail: Jericho, Birds of Prey, Life, Daybreak, Flash Forward, etc.

Pulp Cthulhu and my hopes for it

2010-05-12T20:27:00.000-07:00

One of the pieces of vaporware I have been waiting for is Pulp Cthulhu, from Chaosium. I have been waiting a long time, it seems, as there is a post about "still hoping for" it in 2007 ! I love Chaosium, and while I think their Cthulhu line has grown far too large, at least they don't have the annoying "let's add rules every supplement" disease that seems to be so rampant these days. I keep checking back periodically, and the product page tells me it's "delayed due to health issues."

What I'm specifically excited about is Traits, a new innovation in Cthulhu products. Quoting from the Chaosium blog post: Traits

provide game mechanic advantages or disadvantages, but they also drive the role-play. Traits are at their best when 'played' beyond their game effects. A Haunted character will suffer from night terrors, and when she has Weird Knowledge added to the mix, her fearsome dreams are all the more horrific...The Traits are both a part of the rules offering bonuses and alterations, but mainly they are elements that expand the personalities of the investigators. That is why they have pulp-style names such as 'Weird Knowledge' and 'Just Won't Die.' These titles focus more on the roleplaying aspects than the 'numbers.'

What I'm hoping they'll do is provide something similar to this:

Haste
Spell Level: Magic-user, 3rd Level
Range: 240 ft
Duration: 30 minutes

In an area of radius of 60 ft around the point where the spell is targeted, as many as 24 creatures become able to move and attack at double normal speed.

Taken from the Swords & Wizardry core rules

And not this:

HASTE
Transmutation
Level: Brd 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Targets: One creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)

The transmuted creatures move and act more quickly than normal. This extra speed has several effects.

When making a full attack action, a hasted creature may make one extra attack with any weapon he is holding. The attack is made using the creature’s full base attack bonus, plus any modifiers appropriate to the situation. (This effect is not cumulative with similar effects, such as that provided by a weapon of speed, nor does it actually grant an extra action, so you can’t use it to cast a second spell or otherwise take an extra action in the round.)

A hasted creature gains a +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves. Any condition that makes you lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class (if any) also makes you lose dodge bonuses.

All of the hasted creature’s modes of movement (including land movement, burrow, climb, fly, and swim) increase by 30 feet, to a maximum of twice the subject’s normal speed using that form of movement. This increase counts as an enhancement bonus, and it affects the creature’s jumping distance as normal for increased speed.

Multiple haste effects don’t stack. Haste dispels and counters slow.

Material Component: A shaving of licorice root.

Taken from the d20 SRD

I'm also pumped about this line: "Tune the level of pulp to suit play, or simply add pulp to an existing [Call of Cthulhu] campaign." That's perfect, because not everyone thinks of the same thing when you say "Pulp." Some like it noir, and gritty. Others might prefer a four-color comic book campaign, or something in between, like Doc Savage. It will be interesting to see what kind of options they come up with.

And to the author: I hope you get better soon! I feel for you, having dealt firsthand with chronic illness, but I would dearly love to see that sourcebook in my hot little fists sooner than later!

RIP Frank Frazetta (1928-2010) - Pieces of My Childhood

2010-05-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

A master artist, Frank Frazetta, has passed away. As another piece of my childhood wanders into the twilight, I have to reflect back on the joy and excitement his work has given me. From the film "Fire and Ice" to those amazing paintings on the covers of Conan novels and others, the world owes Frank Frazetta some kind of honor. From the well-muscled heroes to the impossibly curvy women who graced his paintings, this was truly a master of the genre.

He will be missed.

Pieces of My Childhood -- John Eric Holmes (1930-2010)

2010-05-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

I received a sad bit of news this weekend. Dr. John Eric Holmes, author of the popular "blue book" basic set of Dungeons & Dragons (pre-Moldvay, pre-Mentzner), died from a stroke March 20 of this year. While my induction into the game was the monster AD&D 1e hardbacks that Gary Gygax put together, my group and I adopted the Holmes and Moldvay versions after we discovered them shortly thereafter.

Pieces of my childhood are fading away -- Gygax, Arneson, Moldvay, Heinlein, Asimov, Findley, Parkinson...too many brave souls have left their mark on me before they left this world.

RIP, all of you.

A further, more comprehensive obit may be found here:
http://www.erbzine.com/gw/1004.html

Confessions of a Genre Fiend

2010-04-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

ME: "Hi, I'm Eric."

ALL: "Hi, Eric!"

ME: "And I am a genre fiend"

The term "genre fiend" to my knowledge first appeared in an old-school Champions supplement called Strike Force, published in 1988 (yes, I consider some of that stuff old-school...it's 22 years old now). It was a complete campaign sourcebook, and nothing like it has been published since. It was written by Aaron Allston, who already had a storied history in the gaming community, having served as editor of the Space Gamer and Fantasy Gamer magazines, a few Car Wars supplements to his credit, as well as a couple things for Hero Games. He later would go on to author the Rules Cyclopedia for TSR. In Strike Force he details what different players may want from their games, and how to appease them. One of these player types was a "genre fiend."

A genre fiend, from what I remember, is a player who is a rabid fan of a certain type of fiction, and would like to see the tropes of the appropriate genre brought into the game. That is, if you're a genre fiend in a Champions game, you would want to see some Marvel/DC influence, and maybe some Ultraverse/Dark Horse too. If you are a genre fiend playing D&D, you might want to see more heroic fiction or swords & sorcery influence. In short, you'd want to see in your games what you loved to read about.

**WARNING: This is an extremely pared-down version of my gaming history, as it pertains to genre-fiend mania. I have played probably every game under the sun, from those Storyteller games to lesser-known systems like Justifiers and Fading Suns, Feng Shui to Rolemaster and MERP, even Riddle of Steel, Talislanta, and Earthdawn. I don't include those for the sake of brevity.

Well, as time wore on, I began to perhaps sink more and more into the genre fiend mold, and fewer systems were to my liking. I'd like to see a build of Champions that didn't take forever to make a character or have hours-long combats. That's against the freakin' genre! My issues with D&D begin with the ridiculous manifold uses of the term "level" and end with the impossibility of emulating the fantasy genre. D&D does one thing really well, and that's D&D. Anything else is window dressing. I had finally realized that system does matter.

On the advice of others, I began looking at other systems that sounded like fun. I looked at Savage Worlds. No offense meant to Shane Hensley, but it seems to use the dice step mechanic from Sovereign Stone which had been out for a full 4 years before Savage Worlds debuted, and seems to resemble GURPS as to how it handles other things, like skills. There are parts of the system that look intriguing, but I'd played GURPS before and it wasn't to my liking, so I'm not sure if I'd want to play Savage Worlds. Maybe if I hit a demo game at con, I might get sucked in.

I began to take note of systems like Risus or PDQ, and noting how elegant their "freeform with guidelines" systems were. I began to dream how easy it was simply to declare a genre, give some guidelines on creating characters in that genre, and be up and running with a minimum of muss or fuss. My dreams were realized when a nephew of mine (nothing but videogame experience) and my wife and a couple friends were able to make characters for my Risus fantasy game and we ran quite successfully for a few sessions. And it was my world, with my take on things. It wasn't played for laughs.

One of the problems I have with a lot of games is they take their cues from D&D. All of 'em, whether it's Traveller or GURPS or Warhammer or any of that, there are certain tropes in these systems that are universal. The main one that I have an issue with is that damage is based on the weapon itself, not on the person using it. Some people just accept that and move on, but it flies in the face of not just fiction, but reality.

A trained sniper is going to do a lot more damage and be a lot more precise in his shot than someone who doesn't know jack. Yet, in a lot of these systems, if the dice fall just right, the newbie sniper hits and does max damage. Which is fairly stupid. Likewise, a guy trained with knives is going to cut you up, and probably kill you in one shot if he cares to. Yet in D&D (depending on edition) he gets a miserable d4 or d6 max, depending on the edition.

Three films, for your review:

House of Flying Knives - You think those guys were doing miserably low amounts of damage with their throwing knives? I wouldn't want to go against any one of them, even with a gun.

King Arthur - Eschewing the preposterous premise, the action scenes were solid. And Bors, big, bald, brawny guy that he is, wades into a battle with light armor and kills Picts with twin daggers. Again, not possible in a game, unless rules were made to offset this. And mook rules don't quite give that visceral satisfaction of mopping up the floor with dozens of well-trained guys.

Lord of the Rings - despite the ridiculous rewrite of the original story, the action shots were pretty good. There is a scene, Two Towers, I believe, where Legolas, in light armor, slides down a bannister and starts killings orcs with...wait for it...twin daggers. In a game where armor type is king and your stuff matters, he'd be dead, with little appreciable damage done to the enemy.

In case you're not a film buff, here's an example from the book I'm reading now, The Legend of Deathwalker:

The man's sword snaked from its leather scabbard and he ran forward. Talisman's right hand came up and back, the knife-blade slashing through the air to hammer home into the man's right eye, sinking in to the ivory hilt. The warrior ran on for two more paces, then pitched to his left, striking the ground face first. As the second warrior leapt forward, Zhusai's knife thudded into the side of his neck. Blood bubbled into his windpipe. Choking, he let go of his sword and tore the knife clear, staring down at the slender blade in shock and disbelief. Sinking to his knees he tried to speak, but blood burst from his mouth in a crimson spray. Talisman's foot flipped the sabre into the air and he caught it expertly.

Again, not possible with meager weapon damage. And more exciting than I've seen in most games, but I digress.

I'm not advocating we raise weapon damages, or merely give some justice to the lowly dagger. I support something I found in Daniel Boggs' excellent Dragons at Dawn, a game based on Arneson's game pre-D&D. In Dragons, Arneson introduces a stat called Hit Dice, and, instead of being Hit Points as Gygax re-termed them, they are instead the number of dice you roll for damage when you hit.

Obviously, Fighters are going to roll more of those dice than Magic-Users and Thieves. Which makes sense. It keeps things balanced, and can even out the damage disparity starting at 5th level, where you can do 1d8 + whatever with your sword and your magic-user buddy can do 5d6 -- at range!

To avoid confusion, we'd probably have to call it something else. How about the Battle Factor? You could even work up a table for the Fighter, like this:

Level    Exp    Battle Factor
1            0       1+2
2         2,000      2
3         4,000      3
4         8,000      4
5       16,000      5
6       32,000      6
7   64,000      7       Bonus attacks
8      120,000     8
9      240,000     9       Lord (Lady)
10    360,000    9+2*
11    480,000    9+4
12    600,000    9+6
13    720,000    9+8
14    840,000    9+10

That way, at 7th level, while a 7th level Magic-User is doing 7d6 damage with a Fireball, the Fighter of similar level is doing 7d6 damage with his twin daggers. :) Of course, in the meantime, if the Magic-User is forced to use his sword*, he does, say, 4d6-1 damage with it. In this way, balance is maintained, and not artificially. Plus it mirrors both heroic fiction and real life. The best of all possible worlds, eh?

* = Of course, the weapons appear reversed here, but that's just aesthetics. If a warrior chooses to use daggers, that's his choice. With the damage now being based on the character class, anyone can choose any weapon they want. Gandalf used a War Sword in Lord of the Rings and it didn't break the Trilogy...

XP 1: The Spider-God’s Bride Review

2010-04-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

XP1: The Spider-God’s Bride and Other Tales of Sword and Sorcery

http://xoth.net/publishing

200 pages

PDF

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and in the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars -- Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."
-- The Nemedian Chronicles

Very recently I purchased my PDF of XP1: The Spider-God’s Bride and Other Tales of Sword and Sorcery. I had read a review on Grognardia as well as having read their free preview pdf, and I was practically drooling. So, I've had my nose in it for a bit, and this is what I've found.

A caveat: The product is for d20. I intensely dislike the d20 glut, as well as the too-many-rules syndrome that has taken over D&D. Basic D&D was okay, Advanced took things and UNstreamlined them, then 2E came out and layered more and more confusion on things, then came 3E and 4E and while their ideas were okay, the execution was extremely poor (min-maxing characters to compete is not my idea of fun). There are a few d20 products that are worth the money, and I felt at the time of my purchase that this was one of them.

One of the little mysteries of my life was where D&D took a left turn from its source material. In the Red Rulebook the author, Tom Moldvay, mentions Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft in the Inspirational Source Material section. Yet, these influences seem strangely absent from the games that I've played, and the system as presented. You don't see names like Haon-Dor, Azédarc, Vulthoom, Dylath Leen, or Hyboria in the campaigns I'm familar with. And the various flavors of D&D don't seem to lend themselves readily to the wild heroics and the brutal combats. All the pluses, feats, and battlemats don't do it for me. The magic system is sorely lacking, all the danger and mystery taken out of it with spell slots and predetermined ranges and such. The low magic setting seems in short supply, and those supplements that were out didn't seem to do much for the Swords & Sorcery genre. Weird fiction just seemed to be the redheaded stepchild, fun to read but no one seemed to want to game it. Case in point: this product is 2 years old, and I just recently found out about it.

Enter The Spider God's Bride. The author set out deliberately to emulate a weird fiction setting in this book, as opposed to the Tolkien-inspired settings that usually make it to publication. This product describes the setting clinically, but is still very readable. The art that accompanies the text is not too bad. Where it stands out is in the section on religion, unsettling you with some statues that look as if they were ripped from prehistory. It is sprinkled with snippets of tales by Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, and others.

The document starts out with an overview of the book, and then explains the key differences between the Sword & Sorcery genre, as opposed to the standard settings usually found in D&D (for the most part, "high fantasy"). He lists the main elements here briefly, the bloody combats, the absence of nonhuman races, sorcery is evil and mysterious, monsters are scary, etc. He also lays out sets of rules following the those sections to set the game more in line with the genre.

The next section covers characters. The Nomad (wanderers of the desert) is one of the two core classes, and an appropriate take on the sorcerer -- the immortal, corrupt, power-mad type usually found in S&S. After this we come to the races of man, everything from giant-kings, to pygmies, to cannibals. The races section details various Racial Traits (in rules form) and cultural information. i don't know if this was due to the author's style or my enthusiasm, but I found them to be an interesting read. Despite my interest in archaeology and social anthropology, I find the cultural sections in most settings serious yawn-fests.

After that the author details the Feats specific to this campaign. They range from the mundane (like a specific weapon proficiency) to the bizarre (cannibalism to gain a buff), to the truly twisted (such as human sacrifice to gain bonuses to various things). I don't find human sacrifice, as he presents it, to be particularly heinous, though I'm not sure I like the idea of my players doing it...

An eighth of the way through, we come to the chapter on Sorcery. Here he shakes up some of the elements of D&D magic, and presents his own take. In the author's words: "The sword and sorcery feel can be achieved in a campaign by restricting or changing a few key elements of the core rules which interfere with the low-magic paradigm, without totally abandoning the fantasy that players expect and enjoy." Entirely logical, and gives us more options that fit, while taking away the ones that don't. One thing this product introduces is Taint, which is caused by casting spells that summon evil beings or do harm to others. Acquiring taint means the mage is afflicted with a variety of insanities, from mild paranoia to cannibalistic urges. New spells are also discussed; spells that break limbs and drain life force, animate bones and create enchanted heads to learn secrets.

A section on Religion discusses the various gods, cults, and demons that may be found in the World of Xoth. Worshipping a particular god will give the priest a package of spells, "cult secrets" that the can use. The campaign assumes that gods are just extradimensional entities in some cases or lies by the priests in other ones. Which is fitting -- in Howard's Hyborea divine intervention was nonexistent except for "The Frost Giant's Daughter."

Since characters are wont to shop, there follows a chapter on Equipment. This details weapons, armor, what-have-you that are appropriate to the setting.

148 pages are devoted to 10 adventures in the World of Xoth. This, IMHO, is where the product really becomes useful. I've owned various incarnations of weird fantasy supplements in the past, and what has made them fall down is the lack of supplementary material. I had usually contracted a case of "this-is-cool-what-now" syndrome. To review too much about the adventures might spoil the plot twists, but I'll list the adventure titles, and if you're a fan of this genre the titles should seem fresh but familiar: "The Necromancer’s Knife;" "The Spider-God’s Bride;" "The Jewel of Khadim Bey;" "The Eidolon of the Ape;" "The Crypt-Thing of Khorsul;" "The Vault of Yigthrahotep;" "The Swords of Zimballah;" "The Slaves of the Moon;" "The Daughters of Rahma;" and "The Call from the Abyss." Fantastic, evocative names, that draw me in and make me want to know more. From the cover blurb: "Sunken Temples and Serpent-Haunted Vaults: Enter the City of Stone and slay the high priest of Jul-Juggah! Plunder the ancient gold of Namthu! Seek the fabled jewel of Khadim Bey, but beware the nameless horrors of the Al-Khazi desert! Fight the dread adepts of the ape-god, or succumb to the pleasures of the Moon-Juice of Yaatana! Or perhaps you will perish by the curses of Ur-Kharra, the long-dead sorcerer-king of Elder Kuth?" That should give you quite enough to whet your appetite.

At last we come to Part 3, the Appendices. The Appendices have to do with New Monsters, References and Bibliography, Miscellanea, and the OGL. The new monsters are appropriately horrific, everything from undead to "things that should not be." The References and Bibliography even includes games, most of which I own. The Miscellanea section is a random table of genre elements, which you can use to springboard your own adventures.

The Final Word
I find this to be a very solid piece of work. I say this in part because it is long overdue, but it also presents a fantasy milieu very much to my liking. Old, but new. The adventures are fantastic and well done. If any of you remember your first time playing D&D, when you didn't know what was coming, and you felt the tingle of danger, the excitement of the unknown; when you saw Erol Otus' art and realized this was something truly different, the feeling I got reading this was similar.

One quibble I have is the maps. It helps to have a map to flip to while you're reading, and all of these, including the World Map, must be downloaded from their website.

The only other quibble, and this is truly nitpicking, is that the author didn't revise d20 enough for my tastes, but that was not the point of the book. He did enough to give it a swords & sorcery flavor without changing the rules overmuch. He kept it D&D, which should have players & DMs breathing a sigh of relief.

This is a top-notch product, and I would recommend it to anyone who has read the tales that inspired it, and has wished, albeit briefly, that they could play a character in those worlds.

Crunch 4/5 (While this product has a bit more crunch than I like, I realize it's the nature of the beast and it's not overwhelming) Flavor 5/5 (A fantastic and weird setting, complete with many adventures to complement) Ease of Play 4/5 (Since I don't find d20 flows all that nicely, I'd have to downgrade it. Otherwise everything is well-presented and I didn't have to read a sentence twice to understand it) Overall: 4/5 (This is great! It makes for interesting reading at the very least, and a very playable product as it was intended. My money was well-spent, I think)

Crunch 4/5 (While this product has a bit more crunch than I like, I realize it's the nature of the beast and it's not overwhelming)
Flavor 5/5 (A fantastic and weird setting, complete with many adventures to complement)
Ease of Play 4/5 (Since I don't find d20 flows all that nicely, I'd have to downgrade it. Otherwise everything is well-presented and I didn't have to read a sentence twice to understand it)

Overall: 4/5 (This is great! It makes for interesting reading at the very least, and a very playable product as it was intended. My money was well-spent, I think)

Dragons at Dawn Review

2010-04-12T00:46:00.000-07:00

Dragons at Dawn
Southerwood Publishing
©2010 Daniel H. Boggs (Standard Copyright License)
62 pages

This product can be found as a downloadable pdf at
http://sites.fastspring.com/apriorcrs/product/dragonsatdawn
or as a softcover at
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/dragons-at-dawn/8609478

I just downloaded Dragons at Dawn, the new release from Southerwood Publishing. This product is meant to simulate, as closely as possible, the original rules that Dave Arneson ran his games with in the days before D&D. For those who don't know, Arneson was co-designer of original D&D, and TSR had agreed to pay him royalties on all D&D products. When Advanced D&D was released he was not compensated as TSR felt it was far different from what was originally published. He finally got credit as a co-creator, and nearly two decades later was paid off by Wizards of the Coast to relinquish any rights he had to D&D. His huge contribution to the hobby has been largely ignored until recently.

As a general overview, Dragons at Dawn is a pdf 62 pages in length, and set in some font that I can't readily identify. The art ranges from pretty good to okay; I didn't find any particular piece all that evocative. Quotes from Dave Arneson are scattered throughout, justifying various rules.

I despise the general layout. There's no actual "Chapter 1: Introduction" type of headings; just a list of the contents of the book in the beginning. Each topic is divided by a header in blue, each section has a slightly darker blue header. The section header is the same font and size and could be anywhere on the page, which makes it bloody hard to tell a section from a topic within the section. I would hope, if it goes through a revision, that they would make the section breaks more obvious. Perhaps a better way to do it would be to just end the section wherever it ends, then the next page would start a new section. Just a suggestion.

The first chapter is the introduction, wherein they detail the reasoning behind writing and publishing this. I always love designer notes, the "why's" behind the rules, and these are no exception. Their love of the hobby shows here, as does their reverence for one of the godfathers of gaming. Bear in mind that the author quotes a friend who called this product "Classic fantasy roleplaying in the style of Dave Arneson rather than Dave Arneson's classic rules for fantasy roleplaying," so, if you're looking for the original rules, this is as close as you'll likely get, but not precisely.

Second comes terminology. The author did a great job of laying out the terms and abbreviations you'll need to know, wisely avoiding the problems many early rpgs had.

Third is character creation. There is nearly nothing new here. 4 standard races, a handful of classes, a +1 here and a % chance there. When we get to the Ability Scores section, here we have the old standards plus a few different ones. They are Appearance, Brains, Constitution, Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom. One difference is the range; they're rolled on 2d6-2, reroll 0s. Another difference is the application, as Dexterity is used in the "to hit" calculation. Some things I would not expect in an old-school game are here too: Personality (a 1-3 word description of your character's traits) and Education (free-form-name-it-yourself skills). There are Alignments to be found here, too, divided into Chaotic, Selfish, and Lawful individuals. Lawful people are good, chaotics believe the end justifies the means, and Selfish individuals are total bastards, just out for themselves. Each class progresses through levels based on how much experience they have acquired. If you gain a level it might increase your Hit Point Value, which is static and only increases once every few levels. When it increases, it merely doubles or quadruples, except for Priests and Mages, who have a different, more gradual progression. No rolling is involved. Each classes also has Hit Dice, which in Dragons at Dawn is used to calculate Attack and Defense Values, as well as dice of damage. Obviously, the Warrior has the highest values for HPV and Hit Dice, making it extremely unlikely for a Warrior and a Mage of equal level to do the same damage using the same weapon.

The next section is titled "Equipment," but strangely only covers Armor and Armor Class. Yes, this system uses Armor Class, and it ranges from 1 to 8. Armor Class is the target number rolled under on 2d6 to see if you penetrate armor. Negative armor class was intended for Spirits and such, that can't be hit by nonmagical means. Armor Class scales upward, too, so a 5 AC is better than a 3 AC.

After the Armor section comes information on how to set up a campaign. In true wargame fashion, it assigns 2.5 points per monster Hit Die and informs you of how many points a particular room should have, 5 for a dungeon intended for first level characters, and increasing by 10 each level after that. The points for the whole place is multiplied by the number of rooms. So a first level dungeon with 10 rooms would have 50 points. The game also suggests the use of various cards to introduce more random elements -- Rumor Cards (self-explanatory), Fortune Cards (which can include fortunes, one-shot benefits, or advice), and Chance Cards (random events which occur during the campaign year).

Moving further through the book we come to Combat, which bears very little resemblance to D&D or much else I've seen. It reminded me a bit of Powers & Perils or Arduin. The outcome is decided mostly by Hit Dice and Armor. Combat is divided into Rounds (individual actions) and Turns (equalling 10 Rounds). You roll for Morale (the will to fight), determine who goes first, and calculate Attack and Defense Values (using the differences between Dex, Size and Level of each combatant) and add it to the Hit Dice of the combatant with the highest Hit Dice in that round. Compare Attack vs. Defense Value on the Combat Matrix, make a 2d6 roll, and determine if you hit. If a hit is scored, roll the Armor save and if the roll is higher, apply your Hit Dice in damage. The section goes on to describe healing and disease, etc.

Magic, the next section, is definitely different than the pseudo-Vancian magic that has never left D&D. The very first paragraph reads: "Wizards can channel raw magic energy to make Wizard Light, Lightning Bolts and Fireballs. This
magic may be thrown at will but requires the Wizard to make a Saving Throw versus Constitution for the spell to successfully trigger. Failure of the Saving Throw means failure of the magic and causes the Wizard to collapse with exhaustion..." The rest of the section describes the spells and explains they use material components. After a quote by Arneson about wanting to use spell points, it describes a system of magic using Spell Points. I know many people who think Spell Points are broken, but Spell Points allow a freedom that hundreds of pages of rules could not.

Dragons at Dawn next details Magic Items. The magical items are again different than what many roleplayers are used to. For starters, each item has an alignment, and merely touching an item of a different alignment will cause harm to the perpetrator, from a damaging jolt, to indefinite paralysis and even instant death. The pdf then describes some magic items that were used in Dave Arneson's original campaign. Reading further you will find that magic weapons are "unique and special creations" and they have the ego and alignment similar to the intelligent swords in D&D.

The book also includes a very short monster section describing various monsters. This is fairly standard stuff, including Barlogs (presumably renamed to avoid legal action), Dragons, and Trolls. Orcs seem strangely absent, though a quote by Arneson at the start of the section clearly mentions orcs. A strange omission, given the quote. The point of the quote was not about orcs in particular, but still...

After the Monster section, Experience is explained. Experience is earned for spending gold in accordance with your character; Priests donate to their religion, Wizards create new spells, etc. Leveling up is not automatic, you have to be trying to do so, and the GM has to agree you've met the requirements of your class. You may only advance one level at a time, and any excess XP simply disappears. You start over from 0.

The next section, Keeping Track, discusses hirelings, party order, sleeping order, wilderness travel, etc.

Appendix I details costs and weights for various items an adventurer may want to purchase. Weapons have no other stats other than price and weight. Appendix II contains spell descriptions. The Spells are pretty standard, having different ranges and areas of effect, Fireballs are able to hurt your party, etc.

The Final Word:

(Note: This is my opinion, not yours. YMMV)

I think this is a fantastic rpg, and I would probably play it over D&D if given a choice. A few reasons:

Open-ended skills allow a customization usually unseen in old-school gaming. And the more popular modern games lack this as well (I'm aware that Risus and PDQ have systems entirely based on this).
The Combat Matrix pits combat skill against combat skill, making battles seem more vibrant.
The Magic and spell point system are superior to Vancian systems, and are at least a nice start, and seem compatible with D&D at least on the surface. The flavor seems more true to what I'm familiar with.
The Hit Dice mechanic has a great philosophy behind it -- it's the hero (not his stuff) that makes him great. It helps make a more cinematic game, one that doesn't saddle a character with lousy damage because of weapon choice. Weapons can be selected with aesthetics in mind rather than "because this does more damage."
There is not a rule for everything. This hails back to the days when you had to be clever, not a rules lawyer.

One question remains unanswered: How much of this is truly Arneson and how much of this is Mr. Boggs' work? A couple readings of this book sort of leave me feeling that some of this is what Mr. Boggs thought Mr. Arneson would have wanted. And that's okay. Rather than celebrate this as the hidden vault of Blackmoor from the 60s and 70s, celebrate it as a worthy addition to the old-school gaming category. It is at the very least an interesting look at what D&D could or even should have been.

Crunch 4/5 (It's got enough rules to be functional, but not too many)
Flavor 3/5 (While not a setting in and of itself, it does have a definite tone to it)
Ease of Play 4/5 (Should be fairly easy to explain to someone who is interested)

Overall: 4/5 (This is a neat game! Part of me wishes this had been published in '74 instead)

Separation of Church & State

2010-03-26T20:02:00.000-07:00

This is an ongoing issue so I thought I'd set the record straight here and now. Christian conservatives won't believe me, and hardcore Xtians such as David Barton have manufactured (read: lied about) quotes from Jefferson and other founders claiming that there was no separation. I think he's been doing meth with Ted Haggard.

Let's start by examining whether or not America is a Christian nation.

The Treaty of Tripoli, signed in 1796, states that "As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen..." It is an official document. They would not have put it in there unless they meant it as true.

From our presidents' mouths:

George Washington: He never mentions Jesus Christ in his letters, and is quoted as saying to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia in 1789 that everyone "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience. A friend of Washington's, Dr. Abercrombie, once remarked that "Washington was a Deist."

John Adams: Adams wrote, in A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, "It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven...it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."

Thomas Jefferson: Many of his writings and letters denounce the miracles and such of Jesus and Christianity in general. In a letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, he wrote "You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know." In another letter, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." -- 1802 letter to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut. Contrary to Barton's claims, the letter contains no "one-directional wall."

James Madison: Definitely not a Christian. "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny... a just government...needs them not." -- Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1795)

The argument against a America being a Christian nation comes right from our founding fathers.

Thomas Jefferson, who helped draft the Constitution and its principles, comes down firmly on the side of separation of church and state. The letter from which the phrase comes was carefully crafted, and was shown to two others before finally being sent as an official clarification of his policies.

Another founding father, Thomas Paine, wrote a diatribe against Christianity, Age of Reason.

Many of our founding fathers were Freemasons, which included Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Paine. This would explain the Masonic symbolism and design that endures to this day. From the Architect of the Capitol: "The Capitol's first cornerstone was laid on September 18, 1793, by President Washington in a Masonic ceremony. The ceremony was preceded by a parade and followed by celebration and feasting." Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC), himself a Freemason, took part in a Masonic ceremony recently to commemorate the laying of the cornerstone.

The cornerstone of the Washington Monument was similarly celebrated at the laying ceremony, with a Grandmaster Mason officiating.

In a streetmap of downtown D.C. you can see the primary Masonic symbols: the Square, the Compass, the Rule and the Star.

The Great Seal of the United States includes some important symbols of Freemasonry: the All-Seeing Eye, the Great Pyramid, the Six-Pointed Star, the Eagle, the phrases "Annuit Coeptis" and "Novus Ordo Seclorum," and the motto "E Pluribus Unum."

Freemasonry is not Christianity, and many conservative Christians take issue with it. They must have a beef against the United States, as well.

I hope I have demonstrated some important facts:

1) The United States was founded and influenced by Freemasonry

2) The United States was not founded or influenced by Christianity

3) The United States was intended to have a clear separation of church and state.

The United States was founded by people fleeing religious persecution, and by people who believed the Monarchy of England was corrupt. To this end, our founding fathers set down the principles of what they believed would establish a government fair to all it citizens. In recent times this has been betrayed, as bought and paid-for politicos and religious nutbags continue to sully the good name of America.

Perhaps something drastic will happen, and we will all band together under New Deal policies and start to take care of each other, instead of the "me-first" monster that we live under today.

RISEN

2010-02-14T15:17:00.000-08:00

Risen is the title of an amazing very Gothic-like game by the originators of the Gothic series: Piranha Bytes.

A note of explanation: Piranha Bytes developed the critically-acclaimed but barely-noticed Gothic, the critically-acclaimed Gothic II, which developed a cult following, and the disastrous Gothic III, which was rushed out the door with too many bugs because of deadlines set by their publisher JoWood. this resulted in their being fired from Gothic development while JoWood retained the Gothic IP.

I've been a fan since Gothic II, and have gone back and played through Gothic I.

Risen is Piranha Bytes' version of a Gothic game, only this time with British and Scottish actors providing the English voices. Also notable is the combat, which they may have finally gotten right. Combat in Gothic I was fairly difficult, Gothic II combat was outright impossible, Gothic III's combat was just button-mashing, until the fan patches were applied.

Risen combat skill consists of 10 levels. Each level allows you to perform a special maneuver, from counter parries to interrupt a foe's attack to a charge attack to break through your foe's defenses. You can knock a blade out of the way, throwing your opponent off-balance to deliver another couple well-timed strikes, and you can block with your blade or shield (much easier with a shield). You can also "charge" your attacks, taking more time to make your attack but doing more damage if you connect.

This is the kind of combat I like to see in games, where the player (and not the character as much) is king. Can you connect and duck behind your shield before you hit? Can you knock your foe off-balance and deliver a quick strike while he recovers? Will your foe parry and be able to dispatch you when you are vulnerable? Can you keep up with a foe who dances out of the way and strikes to a side unprotected?

Fantastic stuff, and contains elements I haven't even seen in the much-vaunted Riddle of Steel. I know I'm going to try putting it into a pen n' paper...

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the heck out of this game. If you like challenging combat, engaging quests and freedom to explore, this is your game. If you enjoy lackadaisical combat, hand-holding, and a smaller sandbox to play in, then this won't be your cup of tea at all.

Help out a fellow gamer in need

2010-02-03T08:29:00.000-08:00

Over at retroroleplaying.com, Randall has a donation-system going to help alleviate his medical bills from his wife's cancer treatments. Not only does my heart go out to him and his wife, I'm sending along a link:

http://www.retroroleplaying.com/content/retroroleplaying-cancer-fund-special-downloads

Donate, and he'll send a password to some goodies. I donated, because I don't have insurance either, and I feel for him.

Instead of spending trillions to bail out the banking industry and send our troops abroad, we should be taking care of our own here at home.

The Culture of Pluses

2010-01-27T11:26:00.001-08:00

I'm an avowed follower of D&D blogs, particularly old-school ones, and there were a couple things on the Gamerdome blog (link disabled) that struck me.

One was a post on the Sphinx in 4e, and how it was metagamey rather than relying on cleverness, and how you could turn it to a more narrative device like the original source material. Another was a post about how D&D has turned into a "culture of pluses," squeezing every last bonus out of the books to make your characters more efficient. As Propogandroid says in the Sphinx post: "What happened to the days when players were supposed to be clever instead of just relying on dice and character sheets to do everything for them?"

Which has been my problem from the start. The page after page of rule after rule in 3E makes the unified d20 mechanic something of a joke. It's like it was written for 10-year-olds who had never run a game before, by making a rule on page 456, paragraph 3, subsection 7 that farting while moving gives a +.001" to movement. What was even worse was the 3300+ Feats that cropped up, plus the insane amount of Prestige Classes, making it, well, not so prestigious to be in one. Somehow, real roleplaying and storytelling got tossed to the side of the road to hitch a ride on another game.

The Gamerdome's author has done away with the unified mechanic to cut down on the culture of pluses. I propose something a little different. Whether it is more or less radical than Propangandroid's solution remains to be seen.

In Daniel Bayn's excellent Wushu, the players describe what's supposed to happen, then they roll to advance the scene to its end. They have a certain number of successes needed within a certain time limit to end the scene well. From the core rules: "everything happens exactly as the players describe it, when they describe it...The player is within rights to describe never "failing", or to never describe "succeeding", but regardless their character can still advance a scene towards it’s end."

In our re-tooling of the D20 mechanic, you describe your action as well as whether you achieve your goal or not. The bonus you get to your action is based on how well you describe your action. The player's description can be (and often is) more than one sentence. Each cool thing that happens could give you +1:

"The character eases her blade from her scabbard (+1), sunlight glinting from it as it clears the sheathe (+2). She drops easily into attack stance (+3) and prepares to skewer the sweating soldier (+4)."

Then you roll a d20 and add your +4 to it, or however much you gained from describing your action. You could even put a hard limit on it, like level +3 or something.

Handling failure could be more than simply "you missed." It could be something where the character's foot slips while dropping into attack stance, it could also be a gradual thing like damage being reduced, for example, "You missed by 2 so that's -2 to damage."

In my opinion, way better than Feats and Prestige Classes. You use your imagination while fighting, rather than calculating AoO. I've got a way to handle Feats and Prestige Classes,too, but more on that later.

Unfortunately, since I've written this it appears that Gamerdome has been hit with a Trojan, and it's not safe to go there. My avast antivirus gives me all kinds of grief when I try. I wouldn't suggest going there for a bit.

Obama, the scapegoat

2010-01-25T16:27:00.000-08:00

The Obama bashing has begun. One year after Barack Obama took the oath of office, the conservatives now are blaming Obama for the problems of his predecessor, claiming that he can no longer pass it off onto Bush. Obama has been made the villain for the mistakes of the Bush administration. But let's put this to the test:

They turned a budget surplus into a deficit.
They took us to war on false pretenses, manufacturing a link to terrorism that even the common man should have been able to see through. I did.
They spent money they didn't have to fight this war, instead of spending it for the general welfare of the people.
They screwed over the troops, many of whom had to buy body armor.
They destroyed Afghanistan and then sent troops to die there.
They ignored and denigrated the Constitution.
They presided over the weakest economy in decades.
They had the worst unemployment rate in decades.
The stock market was more screwed up than it had been in decades.

This is just a partial list of the many issues. A list of 99 problems is to be had here: http://www.campusprogress.org/opinions/2582/99-problems-with-the-bush-administration. To be fair, Obama has had his problems with his administration, too.

He didn't shut down Gitmo
He defended the warrentless wiretapping program
He didn't get us out of Iraq
He didn't get us out of Afghanistan
He didn't get us any decent healthcare, and instead of cutting out the insurance companies he cut deals with them.
In refusing to pull the same crap as Republicans, he makes himself look weak. Of course, an attempt at a show of power (like a suggestion to shut down Fox News) gets him attacked by conservative blowhards.

But, truly, what the conservatives are attacking him for is ridiculous. When you screw up the economy this bad it's time to take some responsibility for it instead of blaming someone else. And yes, I'm talking to you Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush. All of you helped to fuck up America. Time to take the rap for it and shut the fuck up.

Because I won't.

And I know better than the rest of those morons, and have facts to back it up, not useless conjecture and mindless rhetoric.

Limbaugh & Robertson at odds with Haitian Suffering

2010-01-18T20:49:00.000-08:00

Pat Robertson blames Haitians for their earthquake, by saying they had "made a deal with the devil" to free their country from France. WTF? Mr. *koff koff!* er...Reverend Robertson, we know you spewed all sorts of senile and evil rhetoric during 9/11 and you were silenced. But again? When will someone yank you off the air, so you can expire in peace and no one need listen to you anymore? You bastard.

Rush Limbaugh also has taken issue with Haitians, blaming communism for their ills and somehow linking President Obama with racist leanings and policital opportunism there.

Why is it that conservatives seem to be the most assinine loudmouths of this or any other century? Why do they seem to be at the center of the most heinous stupidity ever committed in this country? I think they should require an IQ test in current events and history to broadcast. Then, if you fail, you're off the air, or are never allowed in the first place. I'm willing to place bets that Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Coulter, and other conservative commentators would fail such a test. I'm not saying anyone else would do much better, but at least the airwaves would be quieter.

Spell Points in D&D

2009-12-30T15:41:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share one of the ideas I've had percolating in my mind. It has always occurred to me that spell points aren't broken, as many people say. I just think most D&Ders haven't seen a good one. This one is based entirely on existing 3.5 spells/level. This system is 99% compatible with the spells out of the 3.x rules. The only thing that might be weird is the "falls unconscious from the strain." If you don't like it, don't use it!

Spell Points

If you cast a 1^st level spell it costs 1 pt. If you cast a 2^nd level spell it costs 2 pts, a 7^th level spell will cost 7 pts, etc. Mages will know all first level spells.

Restrictions:

You can never cast more spells of a given level per day than your main ability modifier +2. That means if you have a 16 Int, you can cast 5 spells per level per day, unless you make a Spellcraft roll. See below. This means five 1^st level spells, five 2^nd level spells, ad infinitum.
You may cast five 0^th level spells per day, until 2^nd level onwards when you are able to cast six.
You may not cast spells of more than ½ your character level (rounded down), except at 1^st level. That is, when you are a 7^th level mage, you may cast no more than 3^rd level spells. At 1^st thru 3^rd levels, you may cast no higher than 1^st level spells, unless you make a Spellcraft check. See below.
You may make a Spellcraft check to cast higher level spells. The following table shows the DC:

Level of Spell DC

1 level higher	20
2 levels higher	25
3 levels higher	30
4 levels higher	35
5 levels higher	40

If you fail your Spellcraft DC, not only does the spell not activate, but you also lose the spell points for the spell. So, if you failed to cast a 7^th level spell, you would lose 7 spell points. If you roll a 1, you fall unconscious from the strain.

You may attempt to cast more spells per day of a given level. You would have to make a Spellcraft roll for each spell. E.g., you are limited to 6 per day, and you want to cast a 7^th one. The DC for this would be 20 for the first one, 25 for the second one, and so on.

If you fail your Spellcraft DC, not only does the spell not activate, but you also lose the spell points for the spell. So, if you failed to cast that extra 3^rd level spell, you would lose 3 spell points. If you roll a 1, you fall unconscious from the strain.

OPTIONAL: Instead of a Spellcraft check, GMs can opt to have the mage spend twice the spell points for the spell. That means if they want to cast an extra 3^rd level spell, they'd need to expend 6 spell points. If they can only cast 4^th level spells and they want to cast a 6^th level spell, then they'd need to spend 12 spell points.
Once the spell points are all spent, the mage falls unconscious from the strain.

The following table shows how many spell points a spellcaster would have at each level.

Level Spell Pts

1^st	3
2^nd	4
3^rd	5
4^th	9
5^th	10
6^th	18
7^th	19
8^th	20
9^th	22
10^th	26
11^th	28
12^th	32
13^th	34
14^th	38
15^th	40
16^th	44
17^th	46
18^th	50
19^th	52
20^th	54

Most expensive d20 ever

2009-12-28T22:05:00.000-08:00

Was there ever a better validation of our hobby than this? Now, when people make fun of you, you can say "It's been around since before any of the popular sports of today. Try 1800 years! Why, collectors are paying nearly $18,000 for the dice used in our hobby..." Well, on second thought you shouldn't say that. But I still think it's one of the coolest things ever. I think if I were to pay that much for a 20-sider, it had better give me the best rolls of my life!