Greyhawk Grognard

This Should Make a lot of OSR Folks Happy

2012-01-28T18:01:00.000-05:00

From today's Upcoming Products seminar at D&DXP:

Any plans to rerelease the other products for 1E and 2E and other editions, either in print or electronically?

We are looking at making a lot of that older material available to you, but we want to make sure we do it right for you guys and for Wizards. We'll have more news on that.

The Fifteen Minute Workday

2012-01-27T18:53:00.000-05:00

One of the things that plagues some D&D games (my own included, on occasion) is what is known as "the fifteen minute workday problem". To wit, characters in a dungeon go through two or three rooms, find themselves down some hit points and/or spells, and then return to the surface, heal up and re-memorize spells to return on the next day. Or, alternatively, they barricade themselves in a room and camp out in the dungeon itself. It's a problem that especially presents itself in lower-level games, because the spell casters have few spells and must recharge more often.

There are some tricks a game master can employ in order to discourage this behavior. Locking the player characters in the dungeon (whether literally or by simply denying them egress through having them get lost, having monsters block the exit, etc.), disrupting spell-casters' rest with random encounters, etc. But it's very easy to overdo these sorts of things, however, and can begin to smack of "the DM is just going to punish us for leaving, so we might as well keep going until we're dead" in the minds of the players.

4E attempted to address this problem at least in theory with its classification of powers as being per-encounter, per-day, etc. To my mind, however, that was a bit too "gamey", and lacked any sort of real in-game justification. But the problem is certainly not unique to 4E; it's existed since the beginning of the game.

I wonder, though, if there is some way of addressing this issue in a way that doesn't offend my grognardly sensibilities? On the one hand, part of the whole aesthetic of an old-school game is resource management. It's not just about making the right tactical choices in a combat, but making the right operational choices when selecting spells and buying equipment. In once sense, the megadungeon is its own solution to the problem; if the game master doesn't slack off when it comes to rolling for random encounters, the mere fact that the player characters may well need to fight their way out will encourage them to stay in longer. But that just shifts the site of rest to a barricaded room inside the dungeon, rather than the local inn or convenient cave near the site of the dungeon.

There is one solution to the problem, which applies perhaps more to the megadungeon environment than a smaller encounter area, but I'm sure the principle could be applied.

The monsters get tougher (or, perhaps, more wary) if the player characters keep coming in and doing hit-and-run sortees.

Not in the sense that they somehow get bonuses to hit, or more hit dice, but in the sense that they become more organized. They're more on their guard. Patrols are more frequent. Rooms and corridors are restocked with guards, ready to send out messengers to alert the leader to the renewed presence of the intruders. Once the player characters clue into the fact that the monsters will be waiting for them (perhaps even with traps, ambuscades, tougher monsters from deeper within the dungeon who are brought up as reinforcements, etc.), they may decide that two-rooms-a-day is not the best way to go. Maintaining the momentum, and thereby the element of surprise, becomes a superior (and thus preferable) strategy.

Naturally, this doesn't mean that resistance can't stiffen during the player characters' foray. Just because they haven't returned to the surface doesn't mean that the orcs will automatically stay in their rooms, conveniently grouped in 3's and 4's, perfect for slaughter and easy x.p. But that should be a more "ad hoc" thing on the part of the defenders (except for those very lawful humanoid tribes that have contingency plans already in place, complete with pole-arm-wielding troops to command narrow corridors and such), and to be expected. The idea is that pressing on should be the preferable option to retreat, except when the resources of the party really are exhausted, and R&R becomes required.

A Flurry of 5E Updates

2012-01-26T18:31:00.002-05:00

For them's as is interested, do check in on the EnWorld 5E information page (linked over on the right column of this blog as well). Now that the D&D Experience Con has gotten underway, they seem to be doing live updates as new information becomes available.

Update #1: A seminar transcript from the "Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions" seminar has been posted based on liveblogging and tweets.

Update #2: Geeksdreamgirl has a recap of not only the D&D Next seminar, but a (necessarily vague) account of having played a game in the new system.

Update #3: A transcript of the Class Design seminar. We're finally beginning to see some specifics. Doesn't sound nearly as old-school as some of the hype might have indicated. Warlocks? Wild talents? Rituals?

George Lucas Has Gotten All He's Going to Get From Me

2012-01-26T10:17:00.002-05:00

I saw Star Wars 36 times in the theater in 1977. Empire Strikes Back 24 times. Return of the Jedi 12 times. Yes, I counted. Between us, my wife and I had 4 sets of the original trilogy on VHS, and we have 2 sets on DVD (the originals and the special re-edited editions). We've seen all of the prequels in the theaters, both the first time and then the second time when they were re-released. We even saw The Clone Wars when it was released. I cannot begin to estimate how much I have spent on merchandise; posters, t-shirts, action figures, etc. etc. etc.

No more. I'm drawing the line in the sand here and now. I'm not going to pay upwards of $20 to see Phantom Menace in 3D in theaters next month. Period.

Armies of Erseta: The Tamarian Army Takes the Field

2012-01-24T17:04:00.002-05:00

Here at long last is the complete Tamarian army for my campaign, built as a starter army using the Field of Glory rules (using "Feudal French" as the basis for the army, and the whole thing can double for that when doing historical minis). It took a lot of work, and I don't consider myself a particularly good painter, but done is done, and any painted mini on the table is better than an unpainted one, so the saying goes. For all picks, as usual, click to embiggen.

The whole army is arrayed. Javelins in front, crossbows on either flank (mounted on the left flank, foot on the right), the three commanders in the center, three groups of mounted knights behind them, two groups of spearmen, and a group of light archers behind the mounted crossbowmen.

Close-up of the right flank...

...the center, featuring the commanders and standard bearers, all bearing the livery of Tamaria (the number of dots on the banners will allow them to be differentiated in a game, if needed)...

...and the left flank.

And here's what they're stored and can travel in. I bought a 5-drawer rolling cabinet from Staples, put some magnetic tape down in strips (you can see some of it off to the left in the photo above) because my FoG army has steel bases. They don't shift an iota when the thing moves, and the whole army (plus some of the demi-human auxiliaries I've also been painting) fits in a single drawer. I'll be moving my Ogre miniatures into the thing as well; just need to get the foam inserts put in for them, because they lack the metal bases and thus the magnetic strips won't work.

Minifigs WoG Picture Gallery Updated

2012-01-24T10:39:00.000-05:00

I've finally updated my Minifigs World of Greyhawk Picture Gallery (link also off to the right in the "free resources" section). I've been saving up various pictures that have come up on eBay over the last several months, but finally got around to integrating them into the gallery. Here's one wonderful example, "Iuz Enthroned"...

Neat Ad for The Hobbit

2012-01-24T09:41:00.001-05:00

I really like this one:

Coming Soon to a Disco Dungeon of Doom Near You: Hugh The Barbarian

2012-01-23T19:52:00.000-05:00

Demon Dogs! In case you missed it, Goodman Games was giving out promotional posters featuring "Hugh the Barbarian", to publicize their upcoming Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

The art will, apparently, be featured on the back of the DCC book, and is quite nifty. I got my poster today, and just wanted to share. You can find a larger version of the artwork over in the Goodman Games forums, here:

http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=13726&start=0

They're definitely pushing the '70's thing as far as (further than?) it'll go. Complete with mustache, bell bottoms, and of course the striped pants. But it's all in good fun, and a lot of neat ideas in DCC, so do check it out.

Armies of Erseta: Last of the Tamarian Knights

2012-01-23T18:52:00.000-05:00

Only the commanders to go and then the army is done, baby, done!

I stretched out with a few new colors for the knights (those two dapper chaps in the orange livery, plus some new blues and such). Once I get the commanders done, I'll have a complete starter army (either Kingdom of Tamaria for my own campaign, or Feudal French for historical minis, even if the paint job is a little ahistorical).

Fighting Schools of Chevis

2012-01-22T21:55:00.001-05:00

I don't really have any problem with having special powers, actions, moves, etc. in a game. What I object to is when they become just things that a player can buy off a list without any sort of investment, and with no real in-game justification beyond "I want my character to be able to do cool move X".

The skill system in Adventures Dark and Deep (based on that developed by Gary Gygax for Castles and Crusades, published under the OGL) allows for the development of such cool moves by a game master, and I thought the following example from my own Erseta campaign might be a good illustration of the concept. Basically, one spends experience points in order to get a level in the skill, and further study gets one additional levels in the skill.

The x.p. cost is given below, and is multiplied by the skill level being sought. If the character's highest attribute is the one given first in the "base x.p. cost" line, he can use that cost. If not, he uses the "all others" cost. Ties count, so if your fighter has a 16 STR and 16 DEX, he can buy the "My Blade is a Reed" skill for 4,000 x.p. If that same character had a 17 STR and 16 DEX, he would need to spend 6,000 x.p. per skill level.

Using the skill requires a successful roll on a d20 against the relevant attribute, with bonuses if you have more than one skill level (-2 per level). Easy peasy. In my campaign, certain skills are only available if one's character takes the time to actually seek out those who can teach them, and spends the money, time, and experience points to gain the skill. Not so easy, sometimes, because there's no guarantee that a teacher will take any jackanapes that walks through his door with a bag of gold!

The city-state of Chevis prides itself on its fighting schools. Lords, princes, and kings send their scions to such schools to be trained in the deadly fighting arts that they teach, and regular knights and warriors dream of one day amassing sufficient wealth to study there. Other cities have such schools of course, but those of Chevis are regarded as the best of the best (albeit usually not by the masters and students of other schools in other cities!), and each is noted for a particular style of fighting. Note that these skills can be learned by characters of any class, not only fighters and cavaliers. Here are three prominent fighting skills taught by some of the preeminent schools of the city. Needless to say, the competition between the fighting schools of Chevis is intense indeed; the right to be called "the best of the best" is jealously guarded.

My Blade is a Reed

Base x.p. cost: 4,000 (dexterity), 6,000 (all others)
Make skill checks against: dexterity
Specialities: n/a

This skill emphasizes the art of parrying with a sword blade, in order to draw a strong enemy in and gain advantage thereby. It can only be used if the character is wielding a sword of some sort other than a two-handed sword. At the beginning of each round, a character with this skill can declare that they are employing this style. If the DEX check is successful, anyone fighting the character with a weapon (of any type) will receive a penalty equal to twice his STR bonus "to hit". Thus, someone with a STR of 17 would actually get a -1 penalty "to hit" rather than the +1 he would normally receive. Additional skill levels will add an additional penalty of -1 per skill level to the enemy's roll. There is no penalty if the character attempting to use the skill fails his DEX check; he can still attempt to use the skill on subsequent rounds.

This style of fighting is taught by the Torontoro School of Chevis. The current Maestro of the school is Schivano Trithi (F13). He holds himself as an impeccable judge of character, and refuses entry to his school to anyone he perceives as being unworthy. Several princes of the blood from around Dornia have earned his disdain, and been refused admission. On the other hand, he has been known to take in students free of charge whom he believes "show promise". Learning each level of this skill will require 6 weeks of training per skill level, and cost 2,000 g.p. per week, unless Maestro Trithi deems otherwise.The colors of the school are red and white.

The Bulette

Base x.p. cost: 3,000 (strength), 5,000 (all others)
Make skill checks against: strength
Specialties: n/a

This skill emphasizes the channeling of physical strength in order to overcome the defenses of others. It can be used by a character wielding any sort of weapon. It can be used by a character wielding any sort of weapon. At the beginning of each round, a character with this skill can declare that they are employing this style. If the STR check is successful, any "to hit" bonus the character would ordinarily gain from his STR score is increased by 1. Further levels of this skill will increase the bonus by an additional +1. This skill will not work unless the character in question already has a "to hit" bonus due to strength.

This style of fighting is taught by the Morfino School of Chevis. The current Maestro of the school is Tormano Nosca (F15). Entry to the school requires that potential students impress Maestro Nosca in a contest of grappling. His strength score of 18/13 makes this a relatively high bar to pass. This skill requires 5 weeks to learn, costing 1,750 g.p. per week per skill level. The colors of the school are purple and black.

The Death of a Thousand Cuts

Base x.p. cost: 4,000 (dexterity), 5,500 (all others)
Make skill checks against: dexterity or strength
Specialties: n/a

This skill teaches the art of wearing down an opponent by eschewing opportunities to deal killing blows in favor of inflicting a flurry of smaller, minor wounds that end up laying one's opponent low. It can be used by a character wielding any sort of edged or pointed weapon. At the beginning of each round, a character with this skill can declare that they are employing this style. If the skill check is successful, the character gets twice as many attacks as he normally would in the round, but each is made with a damage penalty of -3. It cannot be used in conjunction with weapon specialization.

This style of fighting is taught by the Chorvosa School of Chevis. The current Maestro of the school is Giovano Hech (F13). In the last few years, the school has fallen on hard times financially, and Maestro Hech has opened up the doors of the school to any who have the tuition (he is unaware that it is Maestro Nosca of the Morfino School who has subtly manipulated Hech's investments over the last year or so). This skill requires 8 weeks to learn per skill level, costing 1,500 g.p. per week. The colors of the school are red and black.

NOTE: In the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting circa 576 CY (or later), these schools could be said to exist in any major metropolitan locale such as Rel Mord, Rel Astra, or Zelradton.

Erseta Campaign #12

2012-01-21T00:15:00.001-05:00

Several (real-world) weeks of being cooped up in Ritterheim, making glacial progress towards retrieving the magic lantern that would reactivate the portal to the ruins of the dwarven city of Glitterdark, got the players more than a little antsy. So, rather than move methodically towards finding the lantern, they decided to cash in what loot hadn't been yet traded in, paid for an identify spell to be (finally) cast upon the magic dagger they retrieved in the tower of the savant, and set forth for an overland journey.

They invested in a fair map of the barony of Rittergeist, so they had a pretty good idea of which way to travel. Most of the journey was overland on fairly good roads through settled farmland, so aside from fellow travelers, merchants, farmers, and the like, there was little of interest as they made their way to Treven, the jumping off point into the forest that leads, eventually, to Glitterdark.

They picked up the same forest trail that they had earlier, but this time were fairly prepared for the section of evil forest through which it led. At the first fork in the trail, they had turned right the last time, ending up out of the forest entirely and confronted by hostile Vanarian border guards. This time they took the left fork, which they calculated would lead them on a more direct route towards their goal.

They were first confronted by a swarm of giant wasps, and although no one was slain before the wasps were driven off, one of their number was brought to 0 hit points, paralyzed by venom, and barely escaped being injected with eggs. One thing I'm noticing is that putting in tougher opponents works very well when the rules for morale checks are used. Rather than fighting to the death, once the wasps were given a bloody nose and half of them were blinded by one of the illusionist's spells, they decided they had had enough and fled. The party was still bloodied from the encounter, though, and healing from the clerics was dealt out.

Unfortunately, as they continued along the trail, the party began to be shadowed by large black squirrels in the trees with evil red eyes. This understandably unnerved them, and they decided to press on into the night before camping, hoping to lose the squirrels. Around midnight, though, they came upon a creek with a troll on the other side. Kurbag, as he introduced himself, was collecting a toll so that he could afford to have a proper bridge built over the creek, under which he could live. Still weakened from their encounter with the wasps and not eager to fight a troll in the middle of the night, the party decided that 50 g.p. was a small price to pay to cross the stream without incident. The squirrels seemed to have lost interest in them and they camped a ways away from Kurbag's crossing.

The next day they avoided a large carcass of some animal on the path that was swarming with giant ants (they happened to choose the direction to avoid the ants that did not lead towards the ant's nest, thus neatly avoiding a potentially painful encounter). They later came across a stone arch near the path, well constructed but quite ancient, that bore a faint inscription in dwarvish: "King Drogo of Glitterdark slew the ogre champion Nurakug the Horrible on this spot, and drank ale from his skull." Lamenting that he had no ale to drink in honor of the long-ago king, the dwarven cleric paused to pull down some of the vines obscuring the arch, and the party continued on.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. They finally emerged from the region of forest with the evil aspect, and ended the session at the foot of Mt. Arak, ready to once again descend into the ruined dwarven city.

"The Wicker Tree" Finally Hits U.S. Theaters Jan. 27

2012-01-20T09:10:00.002-05:00

"The Wicker Tree", the not-a-sequel, not-a-remake of 1973's exquisite "The Wicker Man" is finally beginning its theatrical run in American theaters one week from today, on January 27. For those who haven't heard, it was directed by the same man who did the original 1973 version, Robin Hardy, and explores many of the same themes, but with a decidedly "black comedy" angle which some fans of the original find off-putting, and others love.

No idea if this is a widespread distribution or something that only folks in Manhattan and Hollywood are going to be able to take advantage of, but I'm glad to see the film finally getting out there. Apparently, commercials have already been spotted on BBC America, which to me indicates a wide distribution is in the offing, but nothing definitive yet. If it's anywhere near me, I'll definitely be seeing it.

H/T to Val, one of the players in my campaign.

On the Reissue of the 1E Core Books by WotC

2012-01-19T18:30:00.001-05:00

James Raggi says it better than I ever could.

Bastard.

Join the Bark Side

2012-01-19T13:51:00.006-05:00

Even better than the barking dogs doing "Jingle Bells"...

Worlds I've Known

2012-01-18T19:36:00.000-05:00

Thinking back, the overwhelming majority of campaigns I've either played in or DMed have been home-brew campaigns.

I love Greyhawk, of course, and have a vast GH collection and (at the risk of being immodest) knowledge, but even then, I've done homebrew way more often than Greyhawk. My current campaign, the world of Erseta, is a homebrew campaign.

On the other hand, I was quite a fan of the Forgotten Realms up until a year or two after the gray box was released; after that, it just got overwhelming (but never actually played in or ran it). We played several campaigns (and I DMed one) in high school that took place in the Wilderlands (back when Judges Guild was still putting out new stuff). We had a terrific Dark Sun campaign while I was in the Air Force (I played a half-giant). And I took a stab at Ravenloft, but mostly looted it for ideas (and monsters-- "if you try to conjure an earth elemental in a graveyard, you'll get a grave elemental") that I ported over to whatever campaign I was doing at the time. Other than that, I've never done Forgotten Realms, Mystara, or Birthright, or Dragonlance, or Kalamar, or any of the others.

I'm curious about something related to this. How many others have relied more on homebrew than published campaigns? (And if so, what rules did you use with it?) I ask because I get the sense that the homebrew campaign is a dying art, and more modern players rely heavily on pre-published settings and adventures.

You're Right, Monte, It Does Sound Crazy

2012-01-16T18:34:00.000-05:00

Monte Cook's first post-5E-announcement column is up, and it gives a broad view of what the folks at WotC are doing with the new version. It basically confirms the speculative chatter of the last week, that 5E will be modular. Fine, I get that. Options for simple, moderate, and complex combat, skills, etc. No problem.

What I can't seem to wrap my head around is this:

Second—and this sounds so crazy that you probably won't believe it right now—we're designing the game so that not every player has to choose from the same set of options. Again, imagine a game where one player has a simple character sheet that has just a few things noted on it, and the player next to him has all sorts of skills, feats, and special abilities. And yet they can still play the game together and everything remains relatively balanced. Your 1E-loving friend can play in your 3E-style game and not have to deal with all the options he or she doesn't want or need. Or vice versa. It's all up to you to decide.

What he seems to be saying is that the players can choose which of the modular parts of the rules they want to play with, and that it won't matter which ones are chosen, since they'll all be inter-operative at some level. I'm dubious.

If I'm at a table, and I've got my stripped-down character sheet with 6 stats, hit points, and how much damage my longsword does, I don't want to have to sit through a lot of "I'm using my crushing blow attack and delivering a sarcastic denouement using my witty banter skill while casting dire meteor swarm because my character is following the mage-blade paragon path." I just want to roll a d20 to hit, and I want you to do the same, because you're slowing down my combat with your crappy add-ons.

He says that all this is going to be balanced (oh, that word!), but I can't help but think that someone who spends hours fine-tuning a character with dozens of options and add-ons and fiddly bits is going to be expecting some in-game bennies for doing so. If so, then we'll see an instant arms race that renders the rules lite players completely out of the competition. If not, then aren't the rules-heavy players going to resent doing all that work for naught?

Plus, it makes me wonder how all of this is going to affect the DM. Is he going to be responsible for knowing and using each and every little fiddly bit that some player at the table decides he wants to use? Or is the same modularity principle going to apply to the game at the level of the DM? If so, am I as a DM going to be able to run a stripped-down rules lite game while some of the players at the table are playing a rules-heavy characters? Again, I'm dubious.

So yes, Monte, it does sound like you just escaped from this video. But I'm still willing to give it a thorough look-see when the playtest version is released. Maybe you've come up with a miracle of game design elegance that will be a model for generations of game designers to come. Nobody will be happier than I if that's the case.

Magic Coffins

2012-01-15T18:24:00.000-05:00

I was watching Religion and Ethics Newsweekly tonight, where they had a story on funerals in Ghana. One of the most amazing things about the funerary customs there is the idea of "fantasy coffins". These are actual coffins, intended for real use, that are, well, fantastic. They're shaped as animals, sneakers, fish, airplanes, vegetables, or just about anything you can imagine, in order to exemplify the life of the, er, occupant.

I thought this was a terrific idea (and if I wasn't going to be cryonically preserved, I would be putting in an order for a USS Enterprise-shaped coffin right now), and could possibly serve as inspiration for a game. Imagine skulking through a dank and dismal dungeon only to find a crypt with one of these babies (or, perhaps, one shaped like a dragon, or a basilisk, or whatever-- that might urge even the bravest adventurers to caution).

There could be a market for steel-lined coffins (with +1 enchantment, perhaps?) for graveyards plagued by ghouls and burrowing giant rats. One could imagine magic coffins intended to either prevent the occupant from becoming one of the undead. Perhaps one is fitted with vials of holy water triggered to douse the occupant in the event of any untoward movement. Or, on the flip side, a villainous necromancer could be in the business of supplying coffins that would actually be guaranteed to do so! There's an unexpected bonus for a bereaved family who takes the body of their loved one to the funeral parlor:

"I'm so happy you chose our half-couch, hinged-panel, Slumberon™ casket. And for no extra charge, it will bring your loved one back to a horrific state of un-life as a wight on the next new moon, guaranteed! Oh, wait, did I say that last part out loud?"

300 x.p. for 3 minutes

2012-01-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

The new revision of the Savage Worlds RPG has something neat that captured my imagination and inspired me to an idea that could be used in just about any game that runs on x.p. This will piss off those who think that awarding experience points for anything other than hauling back gold coins and slaying monsters is akin to signing one's soul over to Mr. Pip, but so be it ("x.p. for plot points", they will cry, and I will simply shrug). My idea is thus (and it's not something that I would introduce to Adventures Dark and Deep, but it's definitely something I might do in my own campaign).

In "interludes", that is, times when the characters are on an extended journey, or an extended period of rest, one or more might be given the opportunity to do a little off-the-cuff exposition on some aspect of their character. The theme would depend on the situation, and ideally, I'd have a quick table (d6, d8, or maybe d12, depending on the circumstance and how inventive I feel) that would give a broad theme.

The player is expected to provide an in-character exposition relating to the theme. If they can keep up the banter for a full three minutes, they earn 300 x.p. (At higher levels, say 10 and above, I could see myself making that 3,000.)

One sample table could be, for a period of down-time while another player character was recuperating from a nearly fatal wound and nothing much else was going on:

A romantic encounter
A run-in with the law
The PC discovers a new personal goal
A friendship with an NPC that flourished briefly and ended suddenly
A religious revelation
An old skeleton in the closet emerges
The PC is the victim of a scam artist
A brief encounter with royalty, nobility, or some other high-echelon of society

The idea is that the player, in the course of describing the encounter, would have the opportunity to add a little something to the campaign. The GM would, naturally, have complete veto power, and be able to gently guide the player as he does his narration (filling in details and names and such), but the idea is that the campaign grows organically, and giving the players the opportunity to do so in a way that's particularly specific to their character.

I bought a nifty little hourglass-timer on eBay that goes for 3 minutes. Can't wait to try it out. Fair warning to my players-- 3 minutes is an awfully long time to talk.

EDIT: Some folks seem to have gotten something of an incorrect notion about this. It would be an opportunity to earn the x.p. through a little impromptu character development. As in, "Who wants to earn 300 x.p.?" and the first person to raise their hand gets the chance. Nobody would be chosen, randomly or otherwise.

NYT "Twenty Sided Store" Article

2012-01-13T08:43:00.003-05:00

The New York Times has a great article about gaming, featuring The Twenty Sided Store in Brooklyn. Looks like a neat place; I'll have to check it out the next time we visit my wife's family.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/nyregion/at-the-twenty-sided-store-gamers-unleash-their-alter-egos.html?src=tp&smid=fb-share (You'll probably need a free registration to read the article.)

(H/T to Tavis Allison)

"I Don't Need a New Game"

2012-01-12T22:40:00.001-05:00

One sentiment I've seen on various OSR blogs and fora this week is that which forms the title of this post. "Why bother with 5E, when I've got all my 1st Edition books, or my BECMI boxes, or my Rules Compendium, or my LBB's, or Labyrinth Lord, or whatever?" I've got to say that's a feeling I simply cannot share. One might just as easily say*...

"Why bother with Diaspora, when I've got Traveler?"
"Why bother with Traveler, when I've got Ringworld?"
"Why bother with Gamma World, when I've got Metamorphosis Alpha?"
"Why bother with Marvel Super Heroes, when I've got Champions?"
"Why bother with Champions, when I've got Villains and Vigilantes?"
"Why bother with Twilight 2000, when I've got The Morrow Project?"
"Why bother with Aces and Eights, when I've got Boot Hill?"
"Why bother with Tunnels and Trolls, when I've got Chivalry and Sorcery?"
"Why bother with Savage Worlds, when I've got GURPS?"
"Why bother with Werewolf: The Apocalypse, when I've got Vampire: The Masquerade?"
"Why bother with Unicorn Games' Star Trek the RPG, when I've got FASA's Star Trek the RPG?"
"Why bother with FASA's Star Trek the RPG, when I've got Heritage Games' Star Trek RPG?"
etc. etc. etc. ...

Or, perhaps the most relevant to many readers...

"Why bother with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, when I've got my white box?"

(I should point out that this is not a solicitation of lengthy discussions of any of those off-the-cuff examples, or any others that anyone might come up with. Seriously. Don't be pedantic.)

Seriously, though, the reason to be interested in 5E isn't because it will be "better" than 0E, 1E, 2E, 3.x, or 4E. I'm fully in agreement with those who chant "newer is not the same as better", and I myself repeat it like a mantra in some discussions. But honestly, in this particular instance, it's not the point. Even if I fall in love with 5E, I won't stop playing Adventures Dark and Deep, and it won't stop me from playing Call of Cthulhu, or Vampire: The Masquerade, or Gamma World, or Diaspora, or Star Trek...

The choice of RPG is not a zero-sum game! Just because I play 5E (or whatever), does NOT mean I am not going to play something else as well!

Newer doesn't necessarily mean better. But it does mean different. And I'm always on the lookout for something new and different, because it might be something I enjoy playing in addition to, or maybe, yes, instead of, something else.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool fan of 1E. I wouldn't be pursuing my Adventures Dark and Deep project if I weren't. But that does not preclude me from playing and enjoying other RPGs as well. Even fantasy RPGs. So I make no apologies for being excited at the prospect of 5E, even if 4E was such a disappointment (to me, as a gamer).

Newer doesn't necessarily mean better, but neither does older. They're just different. And different might... just might... mean better. Or better for a while. I'm willing to settle for that.

_________
* With two exceptions, all of these are games I have played at one time or another, btw... And those two exceptions, I do own and would like to play.

Sparky Needs Surgery

2012-01-12T18:44:00.001-05:00

I try to keep appeals to my readership to a minimum, but I saw this and thought I would share. If you are able to make a donation, I encourage you to do so. Sparky is in the local animal shelter, and needs some help.

Sparky is a 6 month old wire-haired Dachshund pup who was born with a liver shunt. This is a blood vessel that's in the wrong place and keeps the liver from properly doing its many important jobs, resulting in a sick little doggie who has to be on medication and a special diet. The shunt can be surgically treated - but it's not a routine surgery - and it's costly. Please help us raise the money for Sparky's surgery. You can donate via PayPal with the Chip-in icon below, or you can send a check to BARKS, PO Box 593, Stanhope, NJ 07874. Please write 'Sparky' in the memo. Thank you!

D&D 5E Information Roundup

2012-01-11T12:42:00.001-05:00

ENWorld has a nifty page set up where they've rounded up all of the 5E information that's been put out to date. It looks like they're going to keep it updated, so I'll put a link to it over on the sidebar here, for those who want to keep up with it. Here's the link.

One good thing I noticed near the bottom of the page was that the team seems to know that a more 3.x-type license is going to help a lot more than a 4E-type license. Of course, the malebranche's in the minutae, but it's a good sign that they at least seem to be acknowledging the weaknesses of 4E.

The Elusive "Family RPG"

2012-01-10T21:43:00.001-05:00

Lately I've seen some references to RPGs in what is (to me, anyway), a new context throughout the blogosphere. That is what I call "the family RPG". Something that is "evergreen" (i.e., has steady sales at toy and mass market stores in the same way that Monopoly and Operation do), something that you would expect to find in any house with kids, and something that gets trotted out on "family game night" with more or less equal frequency as Risk, Life, and Sorry!

Among the OSR blogarati, such a thing is "rules lite" and weighs in at 36 pages; it's bought and the purchasers are never heard from again (perhaps "everbrown" is a more apt name for such a product from a marketing point of view). Among the rest of the RPG universe, it's a way to lure new people into more expensive (and thus lucrative) games; the longed-for gateway drug that will finally steal the audience away from WoW. I'm not sure such a thing is even possible, but let's explore the possibilities.

I believe there are a few criteria that a "family RPG" needs to meet:

It's got to be accessible. Weird settings that require a lot of acclimation and understanding are going to put off the average family, which should be looked at as a "quadruple casual" gamers, if that. Go with something at least vaguely familiar; a wildly popular IP is a choice, but it runs the risk of alienating folks who just don't like Harry Potter, Tolkein, or Iron Man.
It's got to be easy. Easy does not necessarily equate to "terse" or "short". A set of rules that's four pages long and packed densely with information, jargon, and acronyms is going to fail. Reading level should be no more than 5th grade.
Corollary to the first criterion: It has to be quick to start. Monopoly takes about as much time to set up as it takes to count out the money. Risk takes a little longer, but not much. Spending an hour on character creation is a non-starter.

It's got to be geared for 3-5 players. That means 3-5 classes, or races, or roles, or whatever. No more, no less. Save the rest for expansions for the hard-core players. You need to have one for mom, dad, and 1-2 kids, and deciding should be as easy as choosing between the car and the top hat. Why do you think "Hungry Hungry Hippos" is made for 4 players, and Monopoly works best with 4-5?
It's got to be forgiving. You trade two railroads for Baltic Avenue, you won't automatically lose the game, even though it might be harder. Same thing if you roll four 2's and a 1 when defending Kamchatka. The sort of "you are punished both for stupidity and for bad luck" that many old school games embrace just won't fly.
It's got to be fairly winnable. It could be a team win, or an individual win, but it cannot be a situation where one player serves as the referee/foil for the rest. In a family scenario, nobody wants to be felt "ganged up on", and that's what the DM is, basically, in traditional D&D-type games. Normally, that's counterpoised by the near-omnipotence of the DM, which in turn is balanced by the fact that people will leave the group and find a new DM if he is consistently unfair. However, plug that into a family scenario where mom had a bad day at work, or Susie stole Jimmy's last Popsicle from the freezer, and it becomes a madhouse of metagaming mayhem. What's lost is the last piece of balance; in a family game, you can't just go find another group, because you're stuck with the family you've got.
It's got to be fun. Because nobody plays a game twice if halfway through you have to ask "when does this become fun?"

The question becomes, can such a game be designed and still be recognizable as an RPG (in the way most of us think of RPGs)? I don't pretend to have an answer; if I did, I'd be pitching it to Hasbro right now. Thus the discussion; are there parts of the above that invalidate the RPG concept? Can you have an RPG in the D&D sense of the term that is easy, quick, accessible, 3-5 players, forgiving, fairly winnable, and fun? Did I miss a criterion or is one of mine off-base? Please weigh in.

Game Company Interior Design

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

One of the threads spawned from EnWorld's coverage of the 5E announcement yesterday was Bet you wish your workplace looked like WotC. Go to the link; there are a bunch of neato-torpedo pictures of the WotC offices, with their props and such scattered throughout the workspace. And they are neat to me, because I don't work for WotC.

One thing that struck me, though, was that all of the cool stuff was very... self-referential. It's almost insecure in tone. Like seeing the golden arches on every wall in the McDonald's corporate HQ.

This is not me hating on WotC (honest; I can state an opinion without being mean). Just an observation that if I was in charge of a multi-million-dollar game company, the walls would be festooned with fantasy and sci-fi movie posters, covers of old 50's pulp magazines, and old historical or fantasy maps. Stuff to inspire the folks who worked there to look into new avenues, wool-gather a moment or two, maybe get inspiration. I probably wouldn't have the logo of my flagship product repeated over and over.

Here Comes 5th Edition!

2012-01-09T10:29:00.001-05:00

As I discussed before, I've felt that certain actions on the part of Wizards of the Coast (not least of which was the re-hiring of Monte Cook) presaged a 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons coming down the pike, and lo! and behold I am once more proven correct:

Charting the Course for D&D

To those who doubted that I was right in saying that 5E was coming sooner rather than later, I will reply with a stately and dignified "neener, neener, neener". However, there are some interesting tidbits. FTFA:

"...starting in Spring 2012, we will be taking this process one step further and conducting ongoing open playtests with the gaming community to gather feedback on the new iteration of the game as we develop it. With your feedback and involvement, we can make D&D better than ever.

"We want a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game. In short, we want a game that is as simple or complex as you please, its action focused on combat, intrigue, and exploration as you desire. We want a game that is unmistakably D&D, but one that can easily become your D&D, the game that you want to run and play.

"Then at the D&D Experience convention in late January, Wizards of the Coast will conduct a special playtest of ideas currently in development."

There's also a New York Times article covering the story (free registration required to read). They add a few more things, including this critical piece that flies in the face of those who predict that tabletop gaming is dead and should move over to MMORPGs:

Still, a new edition could backfire, if the changes requested by hard-core fans can’t be reconciled or if players believe the company is merely paying lip service to their concerns. Nonetheless the company remains “absolutely committed” to the core tabletop game-play, Ms. Schuh said. “People want that face-to-face experience.”

Also, this year's D&D Experience convention later this month has an interesting slate of seminars:

Charting the Course: An Edition for all Editions (Thursday)
Join Mike Mearls, Monte Cook, and Jeremy Crawford as they discuss the origin for the idea to create an edition of Dungeons & Dragons that encompasses all previous editions. The designers discuss the challenges in creating compatibility and balance, as well as the exciting possibilities such a system creates. Seminar to be followed by a Q&A session.

Class Design: From Assassins to Wizards (Friday)
Designers Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Robert Schwalb discuss their approach to class design, including the difficulties in creating iconic versions of the classes that speak to players of all editions. Should the cleric be more martial or more healer? Does the default ranger have an animal companion? What level of complexity should the fighter have? Seminar to be followed by a Q&A session.

Future Products and Q&A (Saturday)
Mike Mearls presents upcoming D&D products for 2012, as well as a vision for the future of Dungeons & Dragons. Seminar is followed by a Q&A session. Other members of R&D on hand to answer questions as well.

Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores (Sunday)
The role of skills has fluctuated throughout the life of Dungeons & Dragons, and ability scores have been of varying importance in each edition. Find out what the design team has done to reimagine these aspects of the game, and how they arrived at a system to marry the two concepts more closely together. Seminar includes Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Robert Schwalb, and will be followed by a Q&A session.

Takeaways from all this: 5E has been "in development" for some time, now. To the point that they'll actually have something ready for public exposure three weeks from now. They're following in the footsteps of Paizo and doing an open playtest, and it looks like they're aware that tabletop gaming is still their core competency, and aren't going to go 100% digital. Good.

I will say this again: I gave 4E a fair chance, read the rules and actually played the game, and made an informed decision that it wasn't what I was looking for. I will give 5E the same benefit of the doubt, and I am honestly and actually hoping it turns out to be something a committed old-school grognard such as myself can embrace. If they ask for input from me, I will be happy to oblige. I'm not optimistic, but I am open-minded.

EDIT: There is some more in-depth information over at EnWorld here and here. (Well, as in-depth as it can be, given that they have been asked not to disclose any specifics about the system, but they're a fun read if you're interested in 5E.)

How D&D is Like Doctor Who

2012-01-08T22:25:00.000-05:00

One of the truisms about Doctor Who is that your favorite Doctor is almost always the first one you ever saw on a regular basis. So, in my case, I happen to think Tom Baker completely embodies the character, and it's no coincidence that growing up in the 1980's, his was the only version of Doctor Who I was exposed to for years on television (PBS here in the New York City area, followed eventually by Peter Davidson and Collin Baker, but not until the stamp had left its mark). I think the same thing can be said, to some extent, with D&D.

In my own case, I first dipped my toe into D&D during the White Box days, but really glommed on to it as AD&D. I played 2nd edition, but 1st was always my true love, RPG-wise. That hasn't changed.

What occasioned this observation was the latest episode of the Dreadcast podcast, "Momanatrixs Old School Woes", which describes the reaction of someone who was first exposed to D&D through 4th edition (gads... it's even hard for me to accept that there are people playing who've only picked up the game in the last 4 years) after playing a couple of sessions of 1E/OSRIC. Some of her pithy observations (do listen to the whole thing; it's only 15 minutes and a valuable insight into what is clearly a generational rift D&D-wise):

“I don’t know where I am without a map. Why is there no map?

“These guys are around here somewhere, you’re somewhere overhere, so what do you want to do? I’m like, I don’t know, how, how far or howclose? I don’t know.”

“Like, I play a druid, and I don’t really have, like, thatmany… I have barely any… like, spells that I can do in combat. They’re mostlyout-of-combat spells. … And that, I’m fine with that, for the most part, that’sokay. But, like, I have this long list of spells, and I don’t have, like, there’sno, like, cards that I have. I have no idea what they do, I have to, like, justlook through the book every time? Or am I just supposed to memorize this, like,long list of spells that I have?”

“Yeah, because I like to… what I like to do is I like to payattention to everything that’s going on, and then when my turn comes around, I’llbe, like, oh! Well, since I’m right here, and this is right here, and I havethis spell that can do this to this many people, in this area, of thisdistance, then I can plan it all out. But now in this game, it comes to myturn, and I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. And I have to ask, like, fivequestions before I can even decide what I’m going to do, and I… it makes mefeel, it makes me feel dumb.”

At the end of the podcast, they invite commentary, so I'm going to provide some. First off, I would point out that the use of miniatures and battle mats is not limited to 4th edition. It is entirely possible to do so with 1st, or 0E, or 2E, or 3.x. However, running an RPG without recourse to visual aids such as miniatures is a skill unto itself, and it is entirely possible that the DM in question was a little overly vague in his descriptions, or capricious in his adjudication of combat. Obviously I have no way of knowing, but the lack of minis and a battle mat isn't a design flaw of 1E. Heck, we're told that 4E doesn't have to be played with miniatures (good luck with that, though).

As for the spells, well, you need to look up spell descriptions in 4E, too. I don't really see the issue with having to look up the spell description in a book, but as was mentioned in the podcast itself, the descriptions of specific spells could be put onto 3x5 cards if that's easier for you (and I think such a thing was actually done for 1E way back when). But those cards aren't standard 4E issue, either; you need to look up the descriptions in a book either way. Plus, I'm not an expert on 4E spell descriptions, but I don't remember them being any more explicit in terms of effects than the descriptions in 1E.

As for druids not having so many combat-oriented spells, I might disagree. Looking at the 1E spell list for druids, I see all sorts of spells that can be used in combat. But then again, I don't define "used in combat" as "deals out lots of damage to enemies". And that begins to pry open something of the disconnect, I think.

If you listen to the podcast, it becomes clear that it's the ambiguity of older school games that flummoxes the player. She wants everything laid out, "cut and dried". The problem, of course, is that doing so doesn't just cut down on DM caprice; it also limits creativity on the part of the players. So for every time the DM can't say "it's a cloudless day, so you can't use your call lightning spell", there's going to be a time when you can't use stone shape to cause a piece of wall to fall down into the pool of acid, splashing it on the ogre shaman while your thief swings over on the flower stems that were made bigger thanks to a plant growth spell. As a confirmed old school player, I prefer ambiguity that allows for more creativity, rather than certainty that requires conformity.

Having every possibility spelled out in the rules limits creativity in the game by definition, because it takes away from the ability of the DM to either create or respond to situations that the designers of the game never anticipated. Or, taken to the opposite extreme, it forces the rules to become so bloated in their attempt to cover every possible contingency that the game becomes unplayable.

I find it very interesting that someone whose first introduction to D&D was 4E finds it so difficult to adapt to the tropes and expectations of 1E. Specifically that her objections stem from the fact that not everything is laid out with definitive rules covering it. I've said that I think 4E is much less a role-playing game than it is a skirmish miniatures game, and I predict that Angela would find a game like Malifaux or Heroclix exceedingly to her liking, much more so than a game that encourages extra-rules activities on the part of the DM and players such as 1E.

Raid on Frederikshavn Playtest #2

2012-01-07T19:42:00.001-05:00

Saturday saw us venturing forth to the FLGS to give my Ogre Miniatures scenario "Raid on Frederikshavn" another test-run. We had done one playtest of it back in November, and many good lessons were learned, resulting in a much tighter set of rules for the second run-through, mostly concerning the victory points. I'm going to be running this twice at Dreamation next month, so I wanted to make sure it was solid.

The basic thrust of the scenario is that the Combine is attacking a PanEuropean spaceport in Frederikshavn, Denmark, with a coordinated attack by GEVs and an Ogre MK-IIIB sent across the North Sea. The PanEuropean player has to hang on long enough for enough reinforcements to arrive to push back the invaders.

The biggest changes were that victory points were now given only for destroying the critical objectives; the spaceplane itself and six critical structures (adminstration buildings, fuel depots, and workshops). No points are awarded for destroying enemy units or the various town areas.

Here's the setup for the game before the units were placed. The spaceplane is near the upper edge of the board, buildings and fuel depots scattered nearby, with swamp and forest in the middle of the board. The thin brown strips are road, the large brown blocks are town areas, which favor infantry greatly (triple defense!).

The PanEuropean defender (me) placed my Fencer (an Ogre with a whole lot of missiles and weak guns, code named "Rommel") right in the middle, with a mobile howitzer, a couple of missile tanks and infantry scattered about. The Combine attackers decided to divide their forces into two groups, each running up one edge of the board. You can see them in the upper-left moving through the few strips of solid ground between the swamps and forest. Unfortunately for the attacker, the defenders scored a very lucky roll right off the bat and took out two GEVs with one shot thanks to spillover fire (those two white puffs on the right side).

Eventually the attackers moved their remaining GEVs and Ogre MK-IIIB (code named "Skorzeny") up the left flank and took out the large building. 35 victory points in the bag. One of the GEVs was lost in the process, but the attacking Ogre was completely undamaged.

Meanwhile, on the right flank, the attacking force of GEVs and a GEV-PC carrying a platoon of infantry raced up and got close to striking distance of the spaceplane itself. 10 structure points of damage and it would be a guaranteed marginal victory for the attackers. Fortunately, the defenders had committed their Fencer to staving off the threat. Between the Fencer and the mobile howitzer (which, despite the name, wasn't all that mobile in the town area, only moving one inch per turn, but it did have the advantage of double defense) the threat was largely neutralized (completely so in the next turn or two, especially thanks to some fortuitous reinforcements in that sector).

Finally, the attacking Ogre Mk-IIIB was left alone. Only the one building had been destroyed, all of its screening GEVs destroyed, and the Fencer and scads of reinforcements (mostly GEVs and Light GEVs) rushing to engage. In two turns, the Fencer and the defending tanks and GEVs took out almost all the weapons on the Mk-IIIB, and the attacker threw in the towel. End result: marginal defender victory.

On the whole I'm very pleased with the way the scenario has turned out. Although this was something of a lopsided result, things would have turned out very differently had the attacker simply switched his forces running up the sides of the board. As it was, his Ogre ended up on the side that was furthest from the primary objective and most of the victory point-rich buildings. If the Ogre had been on the right instead of the left, we could easily have seen a couple more buildings taken out for a tie or even a marginal attacker victory.

Now, on to the con! (I'll post the pdf of the scenario after the convention, for anyone who might be interested.)

Erseta Campaign #11

2012-01-07T00:22:00.002-05:00

We had a much more focused session this evening, due in large part to two new players (one the wife of one of our regulars, the other an old friend of two others, so nobody was a new newt dropped in the fishtank). This was a "caper" evening, where the players were presented with a problem that seemed pretty simple on the surface, but spent three hours planning how to pull it off.

First off was a little more intelligence gathering about "The Cleavers" and their leader Osterbeck. Since the party had learned last time that the magical lantern needed to reactivate the gate back to the ruined dwarven city of Glitterdark was in their possession, they decided to ask their shadiest contact in the city about them. Said contact, Thrivin Mossberg, a halfling fence, provided them with a little more information than they had; the Cleavers were a pretty low-rent band of thugs who mostly worked the area near the docks, but not exclusively. He didn't think too much of the Cleavers, apparently. He did, however, offhandedly ask if the group was open to another job-- several sessions ago they agreed to bring in some merchandise from the docks without it being inspected by the sheriffs for tax purposes.

At first they didn't bite, and that was fine with me (from a GM point of view). But then somehow they decided that the job might lead them closer to the Cleavers, and accepted. The job turned out to be bringing in two wagon loads of fruit into the city for a "secret society" in time for something happening on the Full Moon in 6 days. The catch? The fruit was a "surprise" and nobody could know that it was being brought in.

After being assured that the fruit was legal, and merely "a surprise", they set about their task, and this was where my fun began.

Was it really fruit? Was that just some euphemism for something else? They went to the farmhouse a couple miles out of town where the wagons were being kept and, yep, it's fruit. Bushels and bushels of some rare fruit nobody'd ever seen before. What was it for? The farmer's wife had no idea, but pointed out that the Feast of Deliverance, which commemorated the end of the Drowning Death in the town of Ritterheim, was going to be celebrated on the same day as the Full Moon. When this information was relayed to the party, you could just see the wheels turning. Why? What was this secret society going to do with rare fruit? The Cleavers were long forgotten.

Then came the planning of the caper. For three and a half solid hours, they argued and planned and plotted and schemed and came up with idea after idea. Our usual asides into movies, other games, and shiny things catching our attention were minimized as everyone focused on the problem of how to get two wagons full of fruit through a guarded gate and past the watchful eye of a tax-collecting sheriff. They'd use barrels, no, illusions, no, cover the wagons in straw, no too obvious, cover the fruit in dung, no, that would squish the fruit, maybe cover it in tarps and then cover those in dung, no the fruit would still get squished, maybe pack it in barrels and cover them in dung, no, fill them with fish, no, take out empty barrels, no, that would be suspicious, hire a third wagon and take it out to the farm to fill it up with fruit, no, that would attract attention, so go out one gate and return through another, no, there was no road connecting them outside the town... round and round they went. It was glorious.

They eventually settled on a scheme involving a facade of a third wagon, empty barrels, tarps covering the actual fruit, and the illusionist using his mirage cantrip three times to fool the sheriff into thinking the fruit was just empty barrels. While the two clerics staged a diversion at the gate involving a fascinate spell, because no plan would be complete without a clerical diversion. All the planning paid off, for they thought it through to the point where no obvious roadblocks stood in their way, got the wagons through the gate and to the home of the secret society. Which was known as The Shockers and whose headquarters was decorated with black and yellow bunting. The fruit was delivered to several men wearing masks and dressed in black and yellow motley (surely this had to be the most conspicuous "secret society" ever seen), the PCs got their pay from their halfling employer, and all was right with the world. At least until the mystery of the Shockers and their "secret fruit" is revealed...

What really excited me about this session was it was all role-playing. The players might be feeling a little frustration that there haven't been any goblins to hack through lately, but this time it was because the game just went in a different direction, not because we were distracted by other non-game-related things. And their forethought and planning paid off. The caper went off without a hitch.

The Specious Model Railroading Analogy

2012-01-05T17:05:00.000-05:00

Recently, Ryan Dancy was quoted in an article in The Escapist where he repeated the canard that the tabletop RPG industry is "becoming a dead hobby", because it's falling into the same pattern as the model railroading industry:

"Kids stopped playing with trains, and the businesses that remained dedicated to hobbyists who got more disposable income as they grew up, until the price of the hobby was out of reach of anyone except those older hobbyists. Eventually, it became a high-end hobby with very expensive products, sold to an ever-decreasing number of hobbyists. As those folks die, the hobby shrinks. That is what is happening to the tabletop RPG business."

The exact same argument (nearly word for word, interestingly), was recently featured in an anonymous guest post over at Wise Fugaros' blog:

Historically there was a time when model trains were a popular gift, the sort of thing that you give a child to occupy their time, or to play with with their friends. Then over time the trains got more complex, and the hobby got more and more focused. The kids grew up and kept their model trains, but not too many new kids came in. Now we see an interesting situation: it is hard to find a model train set for a kid to just get into, and you don’t go looking in a toy store for one, you go to a hobby shop.

Likewise, there was a time when an RPG (“Red Box” Dungeons and Dragons) was a popular gift, the sort of thing that you give a child to occupy the time, or to play with friends. Then over time the games got more varied, and the hobby got more and more focused. The kids grew up and kept their games, but not as many new kids came in. I’ll stop there to avoid belaboring the point, but the parallels are pretty clear.

The fallacies here are numerous, so I'll start with the most obvious.

The Hobby Manufacturers Association estimated that in 2010 alone the model railroading industry had sales of some $424,770,000. The tabletop RPG industry wishes it had sales anywhere near that. You can find model railroading magazines-- at least a half-dozen different titles-- at every Barnes & Noble in the country and a couple even in my local convenience store. That's hard copy, not some dubious "online magazine". If that's Dancy's idea of "a dead industry", then I say bring on the mourners. As for the claim that "it's hard to find a model train set for a kid to just get into", well, this.

But the more general notion is that tabletop RPGs don't attract enough kids. Without kids, the thinking goes, the hobby is doomed to die as the older players die off and aren't replaced with fresh youngsters clutching a red box to their breast.

That, of course, is specious because it presupposes that all growth must come from kids. While it is true that a large segment of newcomers to the hobby back in the 1980's were tweens and teens, I would argue that any attempt to recapture that golden era is doomed, and any attempt to make comparisons between the market today and how things were in 1983 is just not credible. Those times are gone, the product of a number of different factors that will never be repeated.

And you know what? I'm fine with that. Who says the hobby only has to grow through kids?

I'm perfectly fine with entrants into the hobby skewing older. Disposable income is not a vice! Just to take some anecdotal evidence, the folks I see playing D&D or Pathfinder at the local stores are in their early-mid 20's. They're not stymied by the lack of an introductory boxed set (a holy grail that some seem to think is the key to bringing back the hobby to its 1983 levels). They buy the core rulebook(s) and start playing. Whence this notion that people advancing from Pokemon when they're young to RPGs when they're older is a losing proposition? Why the need to dumb things down?

Plus, I would point out that most games today don't have the same model as Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder. Not every game is an attempt to get the customers hooked through a "gateway drug" cheap and easy boxed set so they'll feel compelled to step up to the heroin of endless $50 rulebooks. You buy Swords & Wizardry, or Labyrinth Lord, or Diaspora, or Call of Cthulhu, or Tunnels and Trolls, or any one of hundreds of games out there, and you don't really need anything more than that. There's no "starter set" required because the whole thing is self-contained, and can be played entirely as-is, with maybe an adventure module or pre-made setting for those who are inclined to use such.

That may not be good news for the RPG industry (which is built on the "call R&D and see if there's a way to make the pages physically addictive" model), but it's terrific news for the RPG hobby.

And every day dozens of new designers and publishers, often the much-maligned one-man-startups, are coming out with new games, new accessories, new ideas, and new twists on old ideas. That's where the future of the hobby lies. There will always be a few Big Players, who can afford full-time staffs and salaries, R&D budgets and television advertising, but experience has shown that innovation rarely comes from such corners. Once the lean newcomers "make it big", they begin to ossify, and are left in the dust by newer, leaner, entrants (I'm looking at you, White Wolf).

Personally, I don't really care what happens to the RPG industry (aside from the personal effects on friends of mine who are in it), because it is distinct from the RPG hobby. I am most decidedly a hobbiest, and proud of it.

The RPG industry is changing and facing challenges from new technologies. Does that mean that we should all give up and start playing MMO's? Well, Ryan Dancy might want us to, and belittle those of us who still think that getting together with friends... you know... across a table is an enjoyable thing, but I think it's hardly inevitable. But even if Wizards of the Coast went out of business tomorrow, and Dungeons and Dragons went unpublished for 20 years, the RPG hobby would still endure, and probably flourish. Or at least be as "dead" as model railroading. And I'd be okay with that.

More Medieval Erudition: The Lament of Sudden Wealth

2012-01-04T09:42:00.000-05:00

Life and customs were hard in Lombardy [at the beginning of the 13th century]. Men wore cloaks of leather without any adornments, or clothes of rough wool with no lining. With a few pence, people felt rich. Men longed to have arms and horses. If one was noble and rich, one's ambition was to own high towers from which to admire the city and the mountains and the rivers. The virgins wore tunics of pignolato [rough cotton] and petticoats of linen, and on their heads they wore no ornaments at all. A normal dowry was about ten lire and at the utmost reached one hundred, because the clothes of the woman were ever so simple. There were no fireplaces in the houses. Expenses were cut down to a minimum because in summer people drank little wine and wine-cellars were not kept. At table, knives were not used; husband and wife ate off the same plate, and there was one cup or two at most for the whole family. Candles were not used, and at night one dined by light of glowing torches. One ate cooked turnips, and ate meat only three times a week. Clothing was frugal. Today, instead, everything is sumptuous. Dress has become precious and rich with superfluity. Men and women bedeck themselves with gold, silver, and pearls. Foreign wines and wines from distant countries are drunk, luxurious dinners are eaten, and cooks are highly valued.

-- Galvano Fiamma, 13th century, as quoted in The Taste of Conquest by Michael Krondl

While Galvano Fiamma was complaining about the changes in lifestyle brought about by the conquerors returning home with wealth from the Crusades, he could just as easily be bemoaning the wealth that would be attendant to a steady stream of adventurers hauling boxes of gold and jewels from the depths of a nearby megadungeon. Gary Gygax spoke briefly of such inflation, but when I saw the above quote, I thought it said it much more eloquently than I could.

Convention Plans for 2012

2012-01-02T17:14:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, my convention plans for the upcoming year are going to be much as they were for 2011, despite my hopes to get westward this year. I'll be sticking close to home, and only attending the local conventions. Fortunately, Dreamation (February), DexCon (July), and newcomer Metatopia (October) are close enough to not need a hotel and really nice conventions with plenty of games and other stuff happening. My only wish is that the dealers room for Dreamation and DexCon would be better, with actual game companies showing up rather than just retailers. I might squeeze in Ubercon (November) as well.

Alas, no GenCon (August) in my future this year, nor Origins (June), North Texas RPG Con (June) or GaryCon (March). Finances just don't allow it this year, with everything else I've got happening.

Mysteries in a Magical Universe

2012-01-01T13:19:00.003-05:00

The Classical and Medieval worlds were rife with mysteries that were supposedly solved through complex theological, philosophical, and other means. We, in our modern scientific world, see these solutions as quaint superstitions at best; the setting of the sun is explained by a Geocentric universe, the origin of humanity is found in the myth of Adam and Eve (or, if you wish, Ask and Embla, Phaenon, etc. etc.), myths of afterlives, the existence of demons and angels, and so forth.

However, in a world permeated with magic such as those most often found in fantasy RPG campaigns, this becomes harder to sustain, as magic allows a level of certainty on these sorts of answers that is rivaled only by modern technology. Not sure what happens to souls after death? Use your astral spell to travel to the outer planes, and get a first-hand look. Is the world round or flat? A jaunt in a spelljammer ship can show you definitively. Do demons or angels exist? Well, yes, and so do gods; they take physical form and walk the earth. In many ways, "mechanistic" magic gives more certainty than technology ever could, thus robbing the world of mystery.

In such a world, mysteries come from paradox.

One mage ventures to the outer planes and reports three infinite layers of Hades, "adjacent" to which are four layers of Gehenna and six layers of Tarterus. A few years later, another attempts to recreate the journey and only finds a single plane, also called Hades, but which is home to both demodands and daemons. Who is right? Who is wrong? It's a mystery, and the Oinodaemon isn't talking. The mystery grows when the player characters, on two subsequent journeys, find both conditions, or maybe one that is completely different. Instantly, mystery is reintroduced into the campaign, through paradox.

In such a situation, the players will likely try to come up with a rational explanation. Was one an illusion? Let them attempt to come up with logical explanations, but never, as a GM, allow yourself to be boxed in by them. Even when they see what they believe is "conclusive proof" that one or another side of a paradox is "the truth", the inherent mystery of the universe is always there, lurking in the background, ready to turn their rational, machine-like understanding of the world on its head.

Allowing for paradox also allows for radically different cosmologies adopted by different cultures, none of which has to be The True Cosmology. The worshipers of the Holy Family in my own campaign believe in a Sacred Island where all the faithful go after they die, and a fragmented underworld of Hell, the Abyss, Hades, etc. for evil-doers. Does the fact that the people of the Golden Kingdoms believe that when they die their soul will go to dwell on one of the stars in the heavens, with each star being home to a particular family, invalidate (or is it itself invalidated by) that view? Can both be true? Could neither be true, despite the fact that both are based on direct observation or revelation at one time or another? Of course, all of the above.

Even in a world with magic, nothing says that the universe has to be cataloged, logical, and 100% rational. Much like with the concept of mythic time, don't let your own modern predilection for absolute certainty and logic get in the way of introducing a little mystery into your campaign now and again, even if it's a mystery that is destined never to be solved.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Here's wishing a happy and prosperous new year to all!

Armies of Erseta: Spearmen and Crossbowmen

2011-12-31T19:05:00.002-05:00

We're coming down to the home stretch in terms of the Tamarian starter army! This time up we have a battlegroup of feudal spearmen and a battlegroup of crossbowmen (foot, this time, rather than mounted). First we have a second BG of spearmen:

And here they are side by side with the first BG of spearmen that were painted to kick off the whole Field of Glory armies project in the first place. I can't wait to see the whole army arrayed!

Here's the battlegroup of crossbowmen. Since these are medium infantry, I'm mounting them 3 per base; fortunately they came from Old Glory 15s in such numbers that I could have based 4 per base if I chose; that leaves me with a few spare bases' worth.

In the home stretch-- one more BG of knights, a few commanders, and I'm done!

Administrative Note

2011-12-31T18:59:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately a post was accidentally made public last night which was supposed to be kept in "draft" mode; it was placed back into draft as soon as the error was noticed. Apologies to those who commented on it.

Call For Submissions

2011-12-29T23:07:00.002-05:00

If all goes according to plan, 2012 is going to be a busy, busy year!

First and foremost, BRW Games is looking for adventure modules to publish. Want to see your work in print? Want to earn money from it? This is your chance! Details can be found here:

http://www.brwgames.com/submissions/

Armies of Erseta: Dwarven Handgunners

2011-12-28T19:10:00.001-05:00

Just wanted to quickly dash this one off; these guys were a bit difficult to paint, with all the bags and the poses they had. (Again, I'm going with not painting the demi-humans in any of the national colors, since they serve as auxiliaries and semi-independent vassals in armies across the continent.) But painted is painted, and I'm on to more spearmen, or maybe the crossbowmen, tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I'll have the whole Tamarian basic army completed before I return to work next week!

Dave and Mike vs. Ocean Marketing

2011-12-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Oh...
Sweet...
REASON...

Pen-and-paper RPG companies have nothing on console video game companies when it comes to-- not only bad customer relations, but-- incredibly bad, nay, bad-of-Biblical Proportions public relations.

First, we see the string of emails between "Dave", an innocent customer who pre-ordered some sort of game controller that was intended to be a Christmas present, and Ocean Marketing, whence he was trying to get some idea of when the pre-paid-for controllers would arrive. He got some rude responses, and then Dave sent the emails to Mike Krahulik who, among other things, runs the website http://penny-arcade.com. Mike intervened and was treated to some choice replies by Ocean Marketing (which is apparently a one-man-show, so no convenient excuses about untrained Russian call center operatives). Read it first and then come back. Really, it's worth reading every... single... word (no worries-- I'll wait).

http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/just-wow1

For those who don't know, penny-arcade gets as many hits in an hour as my blog gets in a couple of years and Mike Krahulik runs a couple of jinormous tech conventions in Boston and someplace out west that isn't Boston that are, pretty much, Ground Zero for console game companies. Well, turns out that the doofus from Ocean Marketing found out that Mike K. was really who he said he was, and sent a smarmy "If I had known who you were, I would never have been so rude to you, so can I please have my life back?" email, which you can read here (again, read it all... I'll wait):

http://penny-arcade.com/2011/12/26/an-update1

Needless to say, Mike K. ain't biting, and sees a smarmy "I'm sorry I got caught" apology when he sees one, and saw fit to let the rest of the gaming community know about the fracas. And the best part? It's gone viral. It's the game industry's cautionary marketing/PR tale of 2011, just under the wire. Here's what is currently (as of 11:32 PM on 12/27/2011 ET) on the Ocean Marketing website (note the part I've circled in red):

Annnnd, here's just the first few things you get on Google for "Ocean Marketing". The full list is pretty much completely negative, and all about the PR disaster that they engendered through trying to bully and out-bitch Penny Arcade:

And the best part? Someone put together a completely sarcastic video about this whole thing less than 12 hours after the incident became public:

I've got no dog in this race, but I'm completely serious when I say this. If anyone-- ever-- at any time-- gets an email like those from me in response to some customer service inquiry, I want-- nay, demand-- you simply reply with "Joe, you're obviously drunk. Email me tomorrow morning and all is forgiven. Remember Ocean Marketing."

And the name of this PR and customer service genius? Paul Christoforo (who has now earned himself a dedicated Google News feed!) If I ever find out that he works for a company I am contemplating doing business with in any capacity, I will go out of my way NOT to purchase any of their wares. Ever.

How do you like all your "free publicity" now, asshole?

UPDATE: Looking for more info on this? (And there is a TON!) You can follow the ongoing saga --> here <--; criminal records, shady business dealings, steroid use... This is just priceless, and it just keeps going!

Armies of Erseta: Knights and Halflings

2011-12-27T15:59:00.001-05:00

One of the great things about the holidays is, well, that you don't have to work. And what does one do when one isn't working? Paint! (Well, that and write and write and write...)

This time I got through two battlegroups for my Field of Glory figures for my Erseta campaign. First up is a BG of halfling slingers (in FoG-speak: Superior, Unprotected, Undrilled, Light foot - Sling), which will be useable as auxiliaries in just about any army that takes the field. For these, I didn't go with any particular national color scheme, but a mix of earth tones for all of them. These figures come from the Essex 15mm fantasy line, and are a smidgen taller than they should be, but hell... that makes them easier to paint.

Next was another BG of knights, still going through the three that came with the Feudal French Starter Army I got from Old Glory 15s, which is serving as the bulk of my Tamarian army.

Next up I've got some dwarven handgunners primed, and am off to prime some crossbowmen and some cannons (yes, mine is a gunpowder campaign). Hopefully this will be a productive week painting-wise!

On Human Sacrifice

2011-12-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

Over at the BRW Games™ website, I've started a new blog called "From the Designer's Desk" that's going to focus solely on stuff that is or will be published, including Adventures Dark and Deep™, the World of Erseta Fantasy Setting™, etc. Please feel free to add it to your blogrolls, and enjoy the opening salvo, which gives an optional rule for human sacrifice...

http://www.brwgames.com/blog/

Happy Birthday!

2011-12-25T00:01:00.002-05:00

Erseta Campaign #9 - 10

2011-12-24T21:27:00.001-05:00

Not the second session we've played by a long shot, but my second post. I'm getting better about posting more regularly!

The players have been concentrating on how to get back to the lost dwarven city of Glitterdark. Having finally found the place via a lengthy overland journey, they zipped to the town of Ritterheim through a magical gate found therein only to discover the trip was one-way.

The party decided to have their gnome thief give the alley where the gate deposited them a thorough investigation. In order to avoid discovery, the two clerics engaged in a loud and spirited discussion of theological matters on the cross-street nearby, hoping to divert any attention from the tiny pilferer as he made a thorough study of the walls where the incoming gate had led. Unfortunately, there was nothing at all to be found; no keyholes, secret doors, or the like.

At the same time, investigation by the party's illusionist in the town led to the knowledge that the section of town in which they alley was found was one of the oldest in the town (Glitterdark having been sealed up against the Drowning Death plague 150 years before), and that there was a certain importer of ales, owned by a family of dwarves, on that self-same alley that had been there for several centuries. The bard also uncovered a reference to the "Short Road" that could have some bearing on the means of travel to and from Glitterdark.

Regrouped, the party then called upon the importer of ale, one Korved Ironbeard, a thoroughly dislikable dwarf who was clearly more interested in his ledgers (including one, apparently, where he keeps track of what other people are saying about him) than in recovering the glorious past of Glitterdark. Quite a long session of back-and-forth between the various members of the party and Korved took place, and eventually they gleaned that the means to activate the gate back to Glitterdark was not a key, but rather a magical lantern. Said lantern was no longer in the possession of the importer of ale, but rather was now held by someone named Osterbeck, leader of "The Cleavers". With these key pieces of knowledge gained, the session ended with a solid foundation for next time.

This session took place the Friday before Christmas, and several of the players organized a pot luck beforehand. It was blast, we got to meet one of the wives of the players we hadn't before (who played in the session afterwards, as a matter of fact), and there was much fun to be had before the game as well as during it. And as for my contribution...

Dijon Chicken

2 lbs. boneless chicken breast, cut into 1-2" pieces
2 lbs. red potatoes, cut into 1-2" pieces
mayonnaise
dijon mustard
dill
crushed garlic

Put the potatoes and chicken into a ziplock bag with 4 heaping tablespoons of mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons of mustard, a tablespoon of dill, and a tablespoon of garlic. (You will probably have to split the potatoes and chicken into two portions, depending on the size of the ziplock you're using). Thoroughly mix the ingredients in the bag until the chicken and potatoes are thoroughly coated, then pour into a 9x11 baking dish. Cook at 400 degrees for 45 minutes, stirring halfway through.Check the potatoes for doneness before removing; they should be fork-tender and the coating should be a golden brown.

Another Tim Minchin Holiday Soon-to-be-Favorite

2011-12-22T22:15:00.000-05:00

Woody Allen Jesus, of course!

For a rather infuriating/puzzling explanation of how this song was cut from ITC's "The Graham Norton Show" in Britain recently, read Mr. Minchin's blog, here. Streisand Effect FTW!

Trailer for "The Hobbit"

2011-12-21T09:24:00.001-05:00

A Joyous Winter Solstice to All

2011-12-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

New Dark Knight Rises Trailer

2011-12-20T15:00:00.000-05:00

Dwarven Heraldry

2011-12-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

Heraldry as practiced in courts and kingdoms of humankind features three basic types of tincture; metal, color, and fur. Of metals there are only two; argent (silver/white) and Or (gold/yellow). The basic rule (although there are exceptions known as "arms of enquiry") is that metals should never be placed upon metals in a coat of arms, and colors never be placed upon colors, thus almost all human arms contain either white or yellow.

"Bronze"

In dwarven heraldry, on the other hand, these rules and tinctures are quite different. Whereas human heraldry has only two metals, dwarven heraldry has platinum, electrum, silver, gold, copper, bronze, iron, and tin. "Bronze" in this case is a fine diamond-checkered pattern of copper and tin, whereas "electrum" is a similar pattern of silver and gold; they can thus be seen as analogous to the human furs, although dwarven heralds will vehemently resist such comparisons and strenuously defend their classification as metals. Metals are rendered in metallic paints (which are in some cases more expensive than the metals themselves) or in the actual metals.

"Electrum"

Dwarven heraldry lacks colors, having gemstones instead; topaz, diamond, sapphire, ruby, amethyst, and emerald. These are, however, generally rendered as yellow, white, blue, red, purple, and green, respectively. Some spectacular renderings of dwarven heraldry will contain the actual gemstones, but these are almost invariably only used for decorative or ritual purposes.

There are no general rules about mixing colors and metals, although there are rules about specific combinations of tinctures; topaz should never be placed atop gold (and vice versa), diamond and platinum should not be mixed, nor should platinum and silver.

Ordinaries, divisions, creatures, and objects are generally the same in both human and dwarven heraldry, although the terms are, naturally, translated into dwarvish. Nautical creatures and objects (anchors, fish, etc.) are never seen on dwarven heraldry, but objects like anvils, hammers, axes, and mine carts abound.

Finally, the standard shape for dwarven arms is the round shield (as opposed to other types common in human heraldry such as the escutcheon or lozenge).

Humans often have difficulty distinguishing between some of the tinctures used in dwarven heraldry; platinum and silver, for example. Dwarven heralds scoff at such complaints, however, pointing out that dwarven heraldic devices were originally designed to appeal to refined dwarven sensibilities and not the eyes of a race that "can't tell pyrite from gold."

(Thanks to Inkwell Ideas' excellent Coat of Arms Visual Designer, which was used to create most of the images above, with modifications to shield shape made in GIMP.)

Armies of Erseta: Tamarian Javelins

2011-12-19T17:27:00.000-05:00

I had a day off from work, but didn't have the whole day to paint, as I spent my morning finishing up our Christmas shopping. I did, however, manage to belt out a BG of Tamarian javelin-men (light foot) in the time it took to watch two episodes of "The Wild, Wild West" on DVD, so a shade under 2 hours. These guys actually come from the Esquerdalloc region in the southern tip of the country.

Armies of Erseta: Dwarven Axemen

2011-12-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

Well, I did say last time I'd have a "little" something different. ;-)

5 hours or so elapsed, and I have labored to produce a complete battle group of dwarven axemen. Obviously, since Field of Glory isn't a fantasy game (yet... they are talking about a fantasy supplement, but nothing has been announced, let alone released), this is a bit of a kluge, but I see these gents as heavy foot, average, drilled, armored, heavy weapon. That puts them at 10 points per base, or 60 for the whole BG (for comparison, I'm shooting for around 600 points for starter armies, and knights clock in at around 23 points per base). Since there's nothing overtly magical about them, dwarves such as this will fit nicely into the standard FoG system.

In my Erseta campaign, there are no independent demi-human realms. Rather, all are vassals of one of the various human rulers (even though they might style themselves as kings or princes, and have various levels of autonomy), and thus it is possible to find demi-human troops of various types augmenting the armies of the various kingdoms. Some rely more heavily on such troops than others, but they're relatively common on the battlefields of Dornia (Dornia being one of the several continents on the world of Erseta).

These figures are from Ral Partha, from their Advanced Dungeons and Dragons line (these particular ones are Dwarf Axemen; I've got Dwarf Regulars that I'm going to be using as medium foot at some point; I figured it made sense that the heavy troops would be wielding axes).

White Wine in the Sun

2011-12-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

D&D Edition Timeline

2011-12-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

In the comments accompanying my previous post about the prospect of 5E being on the horizon, the question of whether or not such a thing would be historically atypical came up. Well, I'm a numbers man, so here are some numbers. I'm deliberately omitting the basic/expert/etc. pathway in the interests of clarity; including them doesn't materially alter the point.

1974: 0E (White box edition)
1977: 1E (Monster Manual first published)
1989: 2E (Core Rulebooks first published)
2000: 3E (Core Rulebooks first published)
2003: 3.5E (Core Rulebooks first published)
2008: 4E (Core Rulebooks first published)

And here's what those dates end up giving us in terms of intervals:

0E - 1E: 3 years
1E - 2E: 12 years
2E - 3E: 11 years
3E - 3.5E: 3 years
3.5E - 4E: 5 years
(3E - 4E: 8 years)
4E - now: 3 years

I've got to say, I was pretty shocked by the interval between 3.5 and 4E. I thought it was a LOT longer. 3.5 was only around for 5 years before they came out with 4E? Considering its enormous shadow, that's pretty impressive. First Edition was on top of the heap for the longest period, 12 years, but 2nd edition wasn't too far behind at 11 years.

The average interval between major releases is 6 years or so. A release of 5E in 2012 wouldn't be unheard-of fast*. A 2013 release would be more reasonable, and from a marketing standpoint possibly easier to sell, given that it would tie 3.5's record. That's where I'm placing my bet. Will we see it before Christmas 2014? I think that's a lock.

__________
* Super-duper conspiracy theory: Monte Cook was working on 5E all the time, and was brought on board to polish the design after presenting it to the WotC brass nearly fully-formed, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. Seeing the writing on the wall re: the white elephant that is 4E, they jumped at the chance. Complete speculation on my part. Complete.

Thoughts on a 5th Edition of D&D

2011-12-15T14:02:00.000-05:00

Conventional wisdom says that WotC is working on 5E. I've done a little digging, and I'm officially agreeing with CW. Here's why.

When Monte Cook returned to WotC back in September, there was a bit of buzz as to why he did. He wasn't talking, and it doesn't seem like he's working on any big 4E related projects. There was even outright speculation that he was brought back specifically to work on 5E. As Mike Mearls said in announcing Cook's return:

"It's now time to focus much more on the future of the game. Monte has an unmatched design pedigree in the RPG field, and for that reason we've brought him on board to work with R&D in making D&D the greatest RPG the world has seen. Over the next few weeks, Monte will use this column to share his thoughts about the game. As we look to chart D&D's future course, this column will continue to be a place where we share our ideas and listen to yours..." (Legends and Lore, 9/20/2011)

"Future of the game," "D&D's future course." Hmmm. It's even more interesting to see what, exactly, Monte Cook's been talking about in his online column at WotC. He's invariably discussing topics relating to basic design philosophy, mechanics that have little or nothing to do with 4E mechanics, and rules organization. Very odd choices for a game whose design philosophy was decided years ago, whose mechanics are pretty solidly established, and whose rules are already published in two different forms. A few examples:

My job is primarily to explore options. It's the "research" part of "Research & Development." The goal I've been given is to make D&D the best game it can possibly be. It is and always has been the premier roleplaying game in the world, and I want to make sure it continues to be. (Legends and Lore, 9/27/2011)

Imagine... If the character's rank was equal to or higher than the rank of the secret door or other hidden thing, he could find it if he took the time, because it was easy for him. No die roll needed. He can just do it because he's very perceptive. If the rank of the hidden thing was higher, though, he could still try to succeed at a die roll. (Legends and Lore, 9/27/2011)

D&D gamebooks are like no other form of writing. Something like the Player's Handbook needs to be equal parts teaching tool, reference work, and muse. Someone is going to sit down and read that book to learn how to play. They need things explained carefully and often in detail. That same person will refer to that book over and over again while playing. Then they need everything to be straightforward and succinct to keep the game moving. They also need that book to inspire them to create fantasy characters and adventures. In this case, they need imaginative hooks, references, and ideas that send them off on their own flights of fantasy. All three of those aspects usually come in the form of entirely different books. To ask a book to serve all three at once is a real challenge. Fortunately, game designers like a challenge. (Legends and Lore, 11/1/2011)

Believe me, I know what it looks like when someone is musing in order to develop ideas for a new game. And that is what I see there.

WotC also made some pretty radical changes to their release schedule this year, taking out several products that many people saw as major tentpole releases. There have been reports of product shortages among some European distributors. Both of those could be indications that WotC is trying not to be left in a position next year of being stuck with tons of 4E product sitting in warehouses (or worse, on store shelves) when they make the grand announcement about 5E.

It's also the case that rumors of 5E's imminent announcement have been swirling around select areas of the blogosphere. Margaret Weiss stated flat-out that she's been told (2nd hand) that Monte Cook is working on 5E. Normally, third-hand reports like that wouldn't be given a lot of credence, but when added to some of the other information out there, including the writings of the supposed designer, a picture gradually begins to form.

Obviously, it's far too early to even begin to speculate on what 5E will end up looking like (not that that's stopped everyone). Monte Cook is certainly saying a lot of the right things in his column; he keeps harkening back to 1E (and even 0E) for positive examples in a lot of cases. Unless there's some radical change in direction with 5E (like making online access a requirement for play, or having a collectible card system a la Gamma World), I'll give it a try. Heck, I gave 4E an honest try and ended up dropping it because I didn't like the way it played. I'll certainly give 5E a chance.

I just wish they'd come out and make the announcement already.

Another (Sucky) Christmas Tradition

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

It's time for the annual Christmas Layoffs at Wizards of the Coast!

And this time the cheerful elves at WotC have given coal in the stockings of two guys who should be well-known to the OSR. Steve Winter and Rich Baker.

Steve Winter's been with TSR/WotC for 30 years. His credits include editing Star Frontiers, co-creating Marvel Super Heroes, editing the gold World of Greyhawk boxed set, editing the original Oriental Adventures book, and a slew of other excellent stuff. I'm sure he doesn't remember me, but I met him when I was brought out to TSR in the late 1980's for a job interview (I didn't get the job, obviously).

Rich Baker is another long-timer who was with the company when it was still TSR, and has such credits to his name as co-designer of Alternity and Birthright, developer of the 2E "Player's Option" line of books, a mess of Dark Sun and Forgotten Realms products, and a dozen novels. He also designed Axis & Allies: War at Sea and was a developer on Risk: Godstorm.

I know there's all sorts of things that go into layoff decisions, and in some scenarios seniority is actually a bad thing (because it means you're packing a high salary, which is easy to pick off compared to some newcomers who might be making half what you're making). But damn, this seems like an especially bad choice for Wizards.

I like one fellow's idea over at ENWorld; Paizo should scoop these guys up.

(Sad hat tip to Joethelawyer)

The Meaning of Christmas

2011-12-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

(Click to embiggen)

I So Love the Festive Holiday Season

2011-12-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

And the best part is, this is post #666 on the blog. Muhahahaha...

Armies of Erseta: Tamarian Archers

2011-12-12T18:47:00.003-05:00

Another day, another FoG battlegroup. This time a group of archers, once more in the purple and white livery of the kingdom of Tamaria. The archers are classified as light infantry, which is why they're only two per base. Elapsed time, 2.5 hours.

Next up, a little something different...

Book Review: The Ancient Blades Trilogy

2011-12-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

Back in late July, I received a copy of the first book in a new series of fantasy novels called the Ancient Blades Trilogy (which I reviewed here). The author was kind enough to send me the next two books in the series as well, and I just finished the last one today. The author, David Chandler, is a member of the New York Red Box campaign in NYC. It helped that at the time I was looking for a new fantasy series to start, and Chandler's trilogy fit the bill.

The books deal with a petty thief, Malden, who is befriended by a knight, Sir Croy, and the daughter of a witch, Cythera. The first book, Den of Thieves, takes place completely in the free city of Ness, which is a typical but well-rendered fantasy city a la Lankhmar or Greyhawk. There he becomes embroiled in the politics of the city and sinister goings-on that threaten to tear the place apart, both literally and figuratively.

I don't want to give away much of the plot, but the books become progressively more expansive as the trilogy moves on, introducing more characters and showing us more of the fantasy world. The next book, A Thief in the Night, takes the heroes across the kingdom of Skrae and into the bowels of a supposedly-abandoned dwarven city which holds a great secret (or three). The final book, Honor Among Thieves, is the largest in scope, as the kingdom of Skrae finds itself at war, and Malden and Croy are at the forefront of the action.

Although Malden, the central character, certainly changes in terms of his situation and station as the books progress, there isn't really a lot of changes to him as a character; he maintains his central core throughout the action that swirls around him, and the final book ends on a note that suggests we will be seeing more of him and this world in the future.

This isn't Tolkien by any stretch of the imagination, but all three books are a fun read. I found myself actively looking forward to picking up the book and continuing; the chapters are numerous and very short (3-5 pages each), which makes reading them in short bursts very easy to do. Chandler's familiarity with the tropes of fantasy novels and role-playing show through, but not in such a way that the books read like a novelization of someone's campaign.

You can find all three books of the Ancient Blades Trilogy on Amazon.com or at your local bookstore. I give them three and a half stars out of five.

Best Christmas Tree EVAR!

2011-12-11T18:20:00.001-05:00

Adventures Dark and Deep Playtest Marks One-Year Anniversary

2011-12-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Today marks the one year anniversary of the beginning of the open playtest for Adventures Dark and Deep.

For those who might not know, Adventures Dark and Deep is my attempt to see what the world's most popular role-playing game might have looked like if its inventor had been allowed to continue developing it, rather than leaving TSR in 1985. I don't have any insider knowledge; there are no secret notebooks in my possession. Rather, the game is based on his series of Dragon Magazine articles detailing his intended direction for the game, his public statements on various online forums, and other works. It contains new classes (the bard, jester, mystic, savant, and mountebank), spells, magic items, and monsters; a streamlined combat system (including new rules for initiative and surprise), and tweaks and changes throughout.

If you liked the direction that Unearthed Arcana was going in, chances are you'll like Adventures Dark and Deep. It's also completely modular; if you want to just add ADD mountebanks to your Labyrinth Lord game, it should work seamlessly.

The open playtest (inspired, by the way, by the open playtest conducted by Paizo Publishing for their own Pathfinder game) is still going strong, and all you need to do to participate is download the three core rulebooks (Players Manual, Bestiary, and Game Masters Toolkit, all in their 1.1 versions and available as free downloads at RPGNow.com), play the game with your friends, and join the ADD discussion forums to talk about your experience. The feedback received over this past year has been phenomenally helpful, and is actively being used to shape the game. Your input really does matter, and is helping make the game much better with each passing day.

The 1.2 versions of each book are in preparation and will be released soon, probably Q1 of 2012. I anticipate the open playtest to run through 2012, aiming for a release date in 2013.

Thanks to everyone who has participated and helped improve and shape Adventures Dark and Deep thusfar. I'm looking forward to getting more great feedback, and coming out with a really great game when the time comes. The one I wanted to buy in 1985, but couldn't.

Armies of Erseta: Knights of Tamaria

2011-12-10T20:24:00.001-05:00

Another six hours well spent this afternoon-- a battlegroup of the mounted chivalry of Tamaria. For these figures I went with a different painting scheme than my previous two efforts.

Rather than having them all wear the livery of Tamaria itself, the knights are decorated in their individual coats of arms, and their horses are painted to match.

Those with penants mounted on their lances have those done in the purple of Tamaria, with a few white highlights to designate unit battle standards.

I really like the effect of all the different colors, and the chrome-shiny chainmail looks great.

Again, I don't count myself as even a good miniature painter, but they'll do the job. These figures come from Old Glory 15s. As always, I highly recommend them.

The Value of Multi-Modal Gaming

2011-12-09T20:00:00.000-05:00

Just a quick thought that I'll hopefully be able to expand on later. While preparing some Field of Glory army lists for a few of the nations in my Erseta campaign, I was stuck by just how useful this information was going to be in my ADD campaign, and how I was able to give the lists some color by incorporating some of the material I had worked up for the role-playing game.

As an example of the first, I now know that the Principality of Drachenpost has special troops known as "greatswordsmen"; foot soldiers who fight with two-handed swords. That's a detail I might not have come up with if I was thinking purely in terms of role-playing.

And as an example of the second, when needing to bump up the point value of the starter army for the Barony of Rittergeist, I was able to incorporate the Knights of the Golden Heron, which I had worked up for the role-playing game, as a special force of Superior Drilled knights. It's a little thing, but really adds character and color to otherwise-drab army lists, as well as giving some inspiration for painting the figures when the time comes.

I can see this working in all sorts of ways, with some of the ideas I've got floating around in my noggin. More to come.

GO. SCREW. YOURSELF.

2011-12-08T21:00:00.001-05:00

Not you, Gentle Readers-- the title of this post is directed at one "fugaros" (who shall hereafter be known as "wise fugaros", for reasons which shall be apparent), who runs a new blog called "How Not to Run a Game Business" which you will find newly ensconced in my "Blogs I Read" list over to the left; I make a point of reading points of view with which I disagree. Keeps me young.

With his wealth of experience running a just-broke-even ~~lemonade~~ espresso stand and a failed weekly newspaper, and armed with his sophomore year textbooks in Business Administration at county college, he has taken it upon his acned shoulders to tell the rest of the gaming hobby/industry YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

And thank the heavens he has, or else the folks at Amarillo Design Bureau, one of his favorite punching bags who have been, apparently by sheerest happenstance in their ignorant bumbling, selling enormously successful and popular products for more than three decades, wouldn't know just how bad bad bad they've been. Now that they have wise fugaros to point them in the proper direction, I'm sure they will actually prosper, as opposed to... well... selling enormously successful and popular products for more than three decades.

What occasioned my notice of wise fugaros (whose blog address has the charmingly endearing URL "yourbusinesssucks.wordpress.com") was a post of his entitled "STOP. MAKING. GAMES." Thanks to Stargazer's World for his much-more-temperate-than-my reply, "NEVER.STOP.MAKING.GAMES" for pointing it out, or I would never have found ~~Mr. Marketing Expert~~ wise fugaros's blog, despite being both a gamer and one of the despised self-published-gamers who is, presumably, his intended audience.

Apparently, having a large number of options for a beginner is a Bad Thing:

There are over a hundred products in my local game store that bill themselves as core or introductory. I didn’t even check the clearance/closeout/used shelves. This is a ridiculously dangerous fact.

Dangerous indeed; the unwashed and unprofessional masses are harming the elite few whose wares are actually worthy of customers by putting so many alternatives out on store shelves that the good stuff gets drowned out in the noise. And the internet? That's even worse:

Anyone with a copy of OpenOffice and two fingers can create a game.

Really!?!?

THE HORROR! The hoi polloi, having escaped the well-defined and god-intended boundaries of the 1980's, doing an end run around Professional Editorial Review, dare to inflict their ham-fisted musings on a helpless populace that can't tell the difference between their moose-droppings and the results of Professional Designers. Much like, it seems, anyone with an Internet connection and a gmail account can start a blog about game companies. But I digress...

Wise fugaros has something to say about the OSR as well:

What’s more, we have various “movements” in the hobby causing even further factionalization. These feature hobbyists, players, people who have no goddamned right to be making a game, touting themselves as “designers” and putting out endless iterations of the rules that please them. Storygames vs. anti-storygames, D&D vs. Pathfinder vs. AD&D vs. OSR, you could probably fill a landfill with the shit these people put out.


AD&D vs. OSR? Eh??

That's right-- OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, LotFP, Adventures Dark and Deep, etc. etc. is all shit fit for the landfill. Writing games to please ourselves? How DARE we!? We have "no goddamned right to be making a game." There's a special circle of Hell reserved for such miscreants as we. We should, presumably, be writing games to please other people, and those games better be pretty. Because wise fugaros seems to place a high value on glossy paper and pretty pictures. The text itself is, well, boring. It's eye candy that makes a game, damnit; we've got to get people BUYING those euludically-perfect games. And hex maps? Surely you jest.

Because hobbiests-turned-publishers, amateur posers that they are, don't understand that the goal of doing all this isn't to have fun and share their work with fellow travelers, even (especially!) if those travelers are in a niche-of-a-niche and you end up with tiny sales that might cover your pizza bill for a month and a small measure of satisfaction. THOU FOOL! The goal is to have a successful business, and if you are a gamer, you're almost certain to be an inept boob when it comes to the Real Goal of publishing games. After all, Lorraine Williams proved that, right?

I fear nothing more than that I shall ever be a disappointment to wise fugaros. Am I not one of the Fallen? Am I not a gamer with not a whit of business sense, who has fallen into folly and have started my own game company? Worse yet still, I'm not making edgy, cool, "indy" games that are surely the future of not only the hobby by the very race of men itself, but just another "fantasy heartbreaker." More the fool I! Nobody should ever make another fantasy RPG. Ever. It's been done, to perfection (by 4E, no less), so any attempt would be a useless gesture. And the fun I'm having doing it? Scales upon my eyes which have not yet fallen to reveal the utter emptiness of my labors and the destitution of my vision.

Thank goodness I've got wise fugaros to guide me through this rough patch, when I fancy myself a designer, and fool myself into thinking that I could actually have fun doing it, and that that would be enough.

Reminder: Revenge of the Grognards at Dremation 2012

2011-12-08T18:34:00.001-05:00

Just wanted to send out a reminder to all my fellow OSR-ifiles that we're planning to storm the gates of the Dreamation 2012 convention in beautiful Morristown, NJ on February 23-26, 2012.

I'll be running Castle of the Mad Archmage, some old-school AH hex-and-counter wargame goodness, Ogre Miniatures, and hosting a discussion about the joys of older games. I will, of course, be pimping these games mercilessly at the con, and am happy to include others' games as well.

If you would like to run an old-school game at Dreamation and have it included in my advertising efforts, when you submit your event registration to the convention --> HERE <-- put "Part of the Revenge of the Grognards" in your description. Please also mention it in the comments below or send me an email and I'll be sure to hump it when the time comes.

See you there!

Kicking off a Campaign

2011-12-06T13:56:00.001-05:00

I probably just gave my regular players a heart attack with the title of this post, but I'm referring to the general ways and means of starting new campaigns. A new campaign doesn't necessarily have to be in a new campaign world; many's the time I've started a new campaign in Greyhawk, for example.

The question for the GM becomes one of information flow. Just how much knowledge should the players have about their starting locale? Especially in a sandbox style campaign, starting the players with zero or next-to-no information means they are going to be flailing about blindly, with no way to make an informed choice about where to go first. This can be frustrating to both players and the GM; the players because they feel completely helpless, and the GM because they players are more than likely not going to randomly stumble on the neat things he has carefully designed for them to encounter.

Starting the players with little or no information can be difficult to justify in-game as well. If the player characters have grown up in a particular village, why don't they know the layout? The prominent NPCs? The fact that there's a ruined tower just over the ridge to the north? The name of the king?

In the original DMG, Gary Gygax gave some excellent advice on the subject:

As background you inform them (the players) that they are from some nearby place where they were apprentices learning their respective professions, that they met by chance in an inn or tavern and resolved to journey together to seek their fortunes in the dangerous environment, and that, beyond the knowledge common to the area (speech, alignments, races, and the like), they know nothing of the world. Placing these new participants in a small setlement means that you need do only minimal work describing the place and its inhabitants. -- A&D Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 87

This setup neatly solves the problem of the player characters not knowing much detail about their starting point; since they come from a "nearby place" they could very well not know anything about the actual starting village or town.

The question still remains of just how much information should be given, and how. Do you, as the game master, prepare a handout, complete with rumors, maps, and lists of deities from which to choose? Or do you more severely limit the information available to them, dictating that "there was only one temple in the village you grew up in, and so Thor's your deity"?

I don't think that generosity with information concerning some of the broader brush-strokes of the campaign is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, I think that the players can find themselves more invested in a setting about which they have some knowledge, rather than the whole being a gray and misty cipher beyond the 10-mile-radius around their immediate starting locale. Does having the World of Greyhawk maps hanging on your wall ruin the mystique of having a campaign set in the Flanaess? If not, then how does handing a continent-scale map of your homebrew campaign do so? I don't ask this with any specific answer in mind, but invite speculation and discussion in the comments.

Personally, I find the campaign really gets going after the third or fourth session, when the players have a good sense of who's who, what a few of the plots are that are happening in the campaign (at least in their little corner of it), and so forth. I'm wondering if there's a way to jump to that point without simply handing the players a list of rumors and NPCs, which feels less than right to me somehow.

A Christmas Carol

2011-12-05T20:41:00.001-05:00

In the upper-right corner of the blog, from now through Christmas Eve, you'll find a poll inspired by one of my favorite films of all time; "A Christmas Carol". There have been scores of adaptations over the years, and I listed a few which I felt were either influential, popular, or just struck my fancy, but I made sure to leave room for "other" just in case someone just had to share some love for a version I've not included.

Please feel free to share your own thoughts about "A Christmas Carol", including favorite adaptations, actors, and even the book itself (have you ever read it? I have, and it only added to my appreciation for the movies and television adaptations; you can find the original here).

My own personal favorite is the George C. Scott version; Patrick Stewart comes in second or third (Mr. Magoo still holds a special place in my heart-- a product of my age, I suppose), but I don't find him quite as convincing an "evil Scrooge" at the beginning. Scott's transformation is simply brilliant, in my not so humble opinion.

And a bit of Christmas trivia; I always make a point of serving Smoking Bishop at Yule and Christmas, thanks entirely to this work. Try it; it's fantastic on a cold winter's evening when ghosts are about.

I'll be making several Yule and Christmas posts during the season; never forget that I am a true fan of the holiday and the season, even if you might find some conventions overturned and mayhap your own oxen gored.

Armies of Erseta: Tamaria Mounted Crossbowmen

2011-12-04T18:26:00.001-05:00

I'm on a roll! Hot on the heels of my battlegroup of feudal spearmen, painted in the livery of the Kingdom of Tamaria from my own campaign, Erseta, comes a battlegroup consisting of four stands of mounted crossbowmen, similarly attired. Fortunately, my lack of expertise in photographing miniatures sort of hides my lack of expertise in painting them, but once again, they're painted, and based (sans flocking), and now I'm ready to move on to some of Tamaria's mounted chivalry.

These are all 15mm figures from Old Glory 15s, by the way. I found the mounted crossbowmen somewhat tricky to paint; there were a lot of places where it wasn't very clear where the saddle ended and the man atop it began. But I muddled through; at least the crossbows were attached; I shudder to think what would have happened if I had had to glue them on.

Looking for a Great Deal on LotFP?

2011-12-03T23:43:00.001-05:00

James Raggi is selling pdf versions of a bunch of his stuff for just $1.35 until December 10. Looks like a great deal for those who might be on the fence regarding his products, and who want to dip their toe in and see what's what before committing to the hard copies. That includes the highly acclaimed Vornheim module and the "Grindhouse Edition" of his rules. I'd recommend taking advantage of this while it lasts. Avoid the bundles that are listed at RPGNow.com, though; they haven't been re-priced for the sale, and you're much better off getting the individual pieces.

Armies of Erseta: Tamarian Spearmen

2011-12-02T18:25:00.001-05:00

The arms of Tamaria:
purpure, a barulet argent,
with a triangle argent, voided

Well, since my home campaign is now set in my homebrew setting of Erseta rather than the World of Greyhawk, my long-languished miniatures painting project has now been rechristened the Armies of Erseta. And what better way to try to jump start things than to belt out an entire battlegroup of spearmen?

As long time readers may remember, I'm intending to use the Field of Glory rules to do some large-scale battle gaming, and to that end I purchased two starter armies from Old Glory 15s; a Feudal German army and Feudal French army. Plus a lot of extra doodads and such, and others have been kind enough to donate their unwanted 15mm figures to the "Greyhawk Grognard's Home for Unwanted 15mm Figures".

Well, I finally got off my duff and started to paint these bad boys. I don't hold myself to be a great (or even good) painter by any means, but I've got color on them, and a little detail, and they're on bases just waiting to be flocked (I figure I'll do that at the very end, as it's a messy process and better to only have to clean up once or twice rather than each time I finish a base). They're not perfect, but they're painted, and that's better than I've done lately. And more to come; I'm going to make an effort to get the whole starter army done in my copious free time (sigh). Elapsed time on this unit: 4 hours, not including priming.

What I've got here is a battlegroup of feudal spearmen from my Feudal French army, now pressed into service as spearmen from Tamaria, one of the major nations of my own campaign. They bear the colors of the national arms (which you can see at the top of the post); given the dominant religion of the region, triangles and other images dominated by the number three are as prevalent as crosses and variants thereof are in European iconography and heraldry, hence the prominence of the triangle on Tamaria's coat of arms. It is representative of Potaras the Father, Motara the Mother, and Koreyos the hermaphroditic daughter-son; the three gods of the High Church of the Holy Tripartite Family.

Poll Results: How Broad a Gamer are You?

2011-12-01T15:47:00.001-05:00

Earlier this month I set up a poll asking what different types of games readers played, either ever or within the last year. 219 people responded, and it must be remembered that web polls are not scientific measures. They are made up of what is known in the trade as self-selected respondents, and are good for stimulating discussion but little else. Certainly no firm conclusions can be drawn about RPG players in general, OSR players, or even the readers of this blog.

That said, the results are interesting in their own way:

Game type	Ever	Last Year
RPG	96%	87%
Eurogame	74%	52%
Miniatures wargame	80%	35%
Hex-and-counter wargame	68%	25%
LARP	33%	3%
Card game	91%	66%

As expected, the vast majority of respondents are RPG players; 96% ever and 87% in the last year. Card games came in second; 91% ever and 66% within the last year. Most of the other types of games named in the poll showed the same pattern; a majority have dipped their toe in the water at some point, but haven't stuck with it over time. My own personal heart-break comes from the fact that although two-thirds of respondents have played hex-and-counter wargames at some point in their life, only a quarter of them have done so recently. Alas and alack!

LARPing does seem to be bringing up the rear; only a third of respondents have ever tried it, and almost none of them have done so recently. That's somewhat surprising to me; is LARPing so different from pen-and-paper RPGs? I would have thought wargaming and miniatures were more different than RPGs, but perhaps that's a function of the audience. Many more of us old-timers came from a heavier wargaming background, so perhaps it's a cultural thing.

Thanks to all who responded, and feel free to discuss the results in the comments.

NaGaDeMon: Mission Accompished

2011-11-30T22:46:00.001-05:00

Whew!

I honestly underestimated the amount of work that would go into The Torian War when I first undertook to finish a complete game design in one month-- part of National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon). But here we are and here it is, not in a finished state for public consumption by any means, but a complete playable game; a fact which I proved tonight, just in the nick of time.

The map is printed in grayscale just for the sake of economics; at this size it would have cost a MINT to get it printed in color at the local Staples. That's one of the great things this exercise has allowed me to work through; not only the actual game mechanics (and I learned quite a few things just from this first initial run-through) but also the technical and economic aspects of the project.

I certainly gleaned a lot of information about how to change the game rules themselves; reinforcement rules need tweaking, it's way too easy to stack a hex full of nothing but knights and have an unstoppable killing force, and I'd like to put in some mechanic to make it harder for the Torian (blue) side to launch a counter-invasion. But it seems like the basic concept is sound; the attackers are in a race to snag as many towns and villages before time runs out and/or the defenders manage to tie them up. Some things work exactly as I had hoped; the peasant troops popping up all around the captured villages, for instance, forcing the invaders to maintain garrisons in order to keep their conquests.

There are also some technical snags that this playtest version of the game brought out. My method for making the counters was needlessly complicated; I was just making a lot more work for myself than was necessary. I also need some more practice at getting things in GIMP to scale the way I think they're going to; the map and counters each turned out about larger than I had intended. As it happens, that worked out fine for a playtest version; it just takes up more room, but is completely playable. But for a first effort, it's good to see where the technical kinks lie, so I can focus on making them smoother the next time around.

On the whole, though, this was an extraordinary experience. The Torian War is precisely the sort of thing that probably would have languished as a victim of my "gamer ADD" if I hadn't had the one-month deadline imposed upon me. As a project manager by profession the setting of deadlines is something whose utility I should (and do, intellectually) know, but to have it demonstrated so vividly in a gaming context was quite instructive.

Lots of lessons learned, both on a practical level for this game and for the process as a whole, and I hereby declare my own NaGaDeMon experience a success for 2011!

Hero Games Layoffs

2011-11-29T21:17:00.001-05:00

I haven't played Champions since high school, but I remember it as a fine game for the genre (in my own case, it got displaced by TSR's Marvel Super Heroes, but that wasn't through any fault of Champions). There's a bit of bad news from Hero Games, publisher of Champions and the Hero system RPG, that they are laying off two of their full-time staff and remaining with staff of one. Even though I don't count myself as an avid fan, I hate to see this sort of thing befall a stalwart of the hobby/industry, and hope that things turn around for them soon.

A Pilgrimage to Gaming Mecca

2011-11-28T21:11:00.001-05:00

I refer to a trip I undertook, braving the crossing of the mighty Hudson River, from New Jersey into the borough of Manhattan, to visit what has been the centerpoint of gaming in the greater New York City area for nigh on three decades or more; the Compleat Strategist.

When I was growing up in the 1970's and early 1980's, the Compleat Strategist was a mind-blowing experience for me. I coaxed and conned my mother into taking me on a regular basis (usually agreeing to also visit the Museum of Natural History in the same trip-- very much of a cheat, since I loved going there as well). I purchased my first real wargame there (Invasion America), and was a steady customer of both wargames and, later, RPGs, at both the main store at 11 East 33rd Street (I still have the address memorized, which is a real feat considering my normally-atrocious memory for such things) and the store in Montclair, NJ. I actually worked in the Boston store after college in the early 1990's. But it was that store, mere steps from the Empire State Building, that always held a soft spot in my heart.

I'd not made the time to visit it in more than a decade myself, and with some time off from work, I and one of my friends from the game I run (as well as one of the more fanatical and enthusiastic Ogre Miniatures players) hopped the train into Manhattan and, after encouraging him to his first true "dirty water dog", brought him to the Strategist. It helped that the temperature, even in late November, was edging towards 70 degrees.

This is less than a quarter of the actual store, tightly
packed but with treasures on every shelf.

This, my friends, is what a real game store should be like. It occupies a narrow NYC storefront, and is quite literally packed from floor to ceiling with games of every type. Not just the newest and hottest stuff; they've accumulated things over the decades that even the staff don't realize is on the shelves (although one of the staff was nearly encyclopedic in his knowledge of what was where, and they were all friendly and helpful in the extreme).

The newest stuff is between knee and slightly-above-eye level. And there is TONS of it. Games, modules, miniatures, paints, magazines, cards, supplements for a hundred games I've never even heard of. There is a wealth of older stuff near the floor and on the top shelves, as well. Stuff from the early 1990's (and some even earlier) that's still in the shrink-wrap because it's been on the shelf since it first came out. I'm talking Starfleet Battles, Advanced Squad Leader, Lost Worlds...

The OSR is more than well represented, too. Castles and Crusades had a very decent piece of shelf space, as did Labyrinth Lord and a number of other products I recognized and was greatly heartened to see. My previous FLGS couldn't even special order this stuff, but the Strategist has it on a shelf at eye level.

Plus they have wargames. Not just what passes for wargames today with either plastic or metal miniatures (although they had those too) but real, honest-to-goodness hex-and-counter wargames. And they carry the version of Strategy & Tactics magazine that actually has the game inside the magazine, unlike the version carried in Barnes & Nobel (which is still good, but sans ludi). It was like being transported back to 1977. Except for the prices of said magazine (ouch!).

I ended up picking up a solo game from a company of which I'd never heard, DVG, called Field Commander: Rommel. My friend picked up a pair of games, Discworld and Ivanhoe. They all look like fun, and I'm particularly looking forward to breaking out Rommel on those long blissful winter afternoons when the wife and daughter are off on some mission or other.

Just about the only thing they're lacking is space to play games, but in this environment, that seems natural. This is a place to browse and peruse and buy. [EDIT: Apparently there is gaming space in the back room and below. All the better!]

We had completely lost track of time, and when we emerged it turned out that we had spent two and a half hours in the store, blissfully unaware of the time, pouring through the old and new stuff on the shelves. We followed up with a long but enjoyable walk to the Strand Bookstore down in Greenwich Village (which boasts 18 miles of bookshelves, and somehow manages to discount even new books), with a brief detour to the comic store Forbidden Planet (which, I am reliably informed, also has a shop in Leeds).

All in all, this was a terrific day, and the terrific selection of the Strategist, combined with the really helpful and knowledgeable staff (even if they hadn't ever heard of "The Emperor Must be Told" by Victory Point Games... ahem...) made this an enormously pleasurable trip I'm eager to repeat.

Hoola Hoop Chick

2011-11-27T19:05:00.001-05:00

From this year's Skepticon (alas, I was unable to attend). I'm sure those pants will soon show up on the cover of a 4E module or somesuch...

NaGaDeMon Update

2011-11-25T20:36:00.001-05:00

Well the month is almost at an end, and so is my Torian War game project for National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon). The rules are done, the map is done (in Hexographer; just needs to be exported into GIMP so I can paste in some tables in one out-of-the-way corner), and now the counters are done. Here are some samples:

They'll end up being smaller than that in the final product; 3/4" on side (or 1/2"; I need to do a test-print to see what works best). But I'm on track to get the playtest version done by the end of the month. Woot!

Witch/Necromancer Bundle Reminder

2011-11-24T22:42:00.001-05:00

Just wanted to post a reminder that anyone who purchased Darker Paths 1: The Necromancer is entitled to get a copy of Darker Paths 2: The Witch at the same price as if they had purchased the $8 bundle package. If you purchased the Necromancer prior to October 29th and would like to take advantage of this offer, please send an email to admin@brwgames.com and I'll be happy to send you the special link (the discount through the link will only work for people who purchased the Necromancer prior to the Witch being made available). The last thing I want to do is punish people for being early adopters of my stuff!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T11:39:00.001-05:00

Pathfinder MMO Game Coming

2011-11-23T08:28:00.001-05:00

The good folks at Paizo have announced that they have licensed their Pathfinder game to Goblinworks to develop an MMO game. Now, I play neither MMO's nor Pathfinder, but I am a fan of the way Paizo does business, and this is obviously a Big Deal from the standpoint of the gaming industry, given Pathfinder's consistent rankings either just above or just below Dungeons and Dragons in terms of sales estimates.

The game is described on Goblinworks' website as:

a hybrid sandbox/theme park-style MMO roleplaying game where characters explore, develop, and dominate the River Kingdoms, a treacherous no-man's-land of squabbling kingdoms on the edge of wilderness.

I'm no expert on MMOs, but the sandbox/theme park hybrid does seem pretty par for the course. Given some of the other information on the Goblinworks page about the game, I wonder just how much of Pathfinder will actually make it into the game, other than the name (emphasis added):

Players explore, adventure, develop, and dominate their domains by playing fighters, rogues, wizards, or any of Pathfinder's many character types, or they can use the game's archetype system go beyond the standard options to create nearly any sort of character imaginable.

In any event, congratulations to Paizo, and it will be interesting to see how Pathfinder fans react to the news and the game itself, once it goes live.

Game of Thrones Season 2

2011-11-21T13:23:00.001-05:00

ICV2 has a 2-minute promo video for the next season of Game of Thrones. I still haven't read the books, but I loved the first season, and I'm a fan of George R.R. Martin's science fiction, so I'm really looking forward to this.

Genius Loci

2011-11-20T18:12:00.001-05:00

Here is a preview of one of the new creatures that will be featured in the next version of the Adventures Dark and Deep Bestiary. I realize that a creature called a genius loci appears in the D&D 3.x SRD, but the version below was written without that in mind, being based solely on the historical example from Roman religion. This is presented under the aegis of the OGL and is not designated Open Gaming Content*.

Genius Loci

Number	1
Morale	n/a
Hit Dice	See below
Armor Class	-2
Move	180’/min.
Magic Resistance	7
No. of Attacks	0
Damage	n/a
Defenses	See below
Attacks	See below
Weaknesses	Tied to one location
Size	S-L
Intelligence	6-21
Alignment	Neutral
Treasure type	XV
Treasure value	See below
Magical treasure	See below
X.P. Value	1,350 + 14/h.p.

General: A genius loci or “place-spirit” is a non-corporealbeing that is attached to a particular location or geographic feature and feedson the emotional attention of others. Some will never be stumbled upon byintelligent creatures, and will simply waste away and eventually starve forattention. Others will be discovered and come to be venerated as naturespirits, receiving offerings in return for minor gifts. A few rare and luckyones will merge with some living creature that is also tied to the spot(granite men, tree men, dryads, black willows, and occasionally creatures suchas nagas, banshees, or dragon turtles. The criteria for merging is that thecreature itself should not have more hit dice than the genius loci and shouldbe both alone and not inclined to leave its home.

Once a genius loci merges with a creature, they become onebeing in all respects, with the personality of the genius loci becoming moreand more dominant as time goes on, but always being recognizable as theoriginal creature; a dryad/genius loci, for instance, will still attempt tolure handsome men, and a granite man/genius loci will have a preference forgems and precious stones.

The merged being will have the outward physical form ofwhatever creature it used to be, and is able to use any of its former powers aswell as those of the genius loci. The number of hit dice will be a combination ofthe original creatures’ and the genius loci; use whichever hit die type islarger (d10 or that belonging to the other creature). It will still not desire(or be able to) leave its home; it is physically unable to go beyond aquarter-mile radius, but those which are more powerful will have agents morethan willing to work on its behalf.

The genius loci will attempt to encourage those near itslocation to venerate and even worship it, making offerings in return for theapplication of its powers. It is quite needy and grasping in its desire forsuch attention, and will develop elaborate ruses and go to great lengths toensure it has a steady supply of tribute. Genius loci pretending to be gods arecertainly not uncommon.

Many of the statistics of the genius loci depend on how longit has been able to maintain its attention-cult. Just being present in thelocation is not enough to strengthen it; indeed, a genius loci that goes for1d12 years without any sort of offerings or attention will die (if joined to anothercreature, they will both die). If the strength of the genius loci is not known,roll randomly.

Die roll (d%)	Years Venerated	Treasure value	Magical treasure
01-10	1-2	0	-
11-25	3-6	1d100	-
26-40	5-12	1d10x10	1 item (5%)
41-60	13-20	1d20x50	1 item (10%)
61-75	21-30	2d20x50	1d2 items (20%)
76-85	31-42	3d20x100	1d2 items (40%)
86-90	43-56	4d20x100	1d4 items (70%)
91-95	57-72	5d20x100	1d6 items (70%)
96-98	73-90	1d6+4x1,000	1d6 items (70%)
99-00	90+	2d6+6x1,000	1d8 items (75%)

Treasure value and magical treasure is not cumulative.If the genius loci is merged with some creature, add the x.p. value for thatcreature to the value for slaying the genius loci. Each month that goes bywhich sees the genius loci not venerated counts as an entire year lost in termsof its powers. Veneration can take many forms; outright gifts of food orprecious items, intense prayers and meditation on its name and/or form (in itspresence), ritual adultation and supplication, and so forth. It is speculatedthat if a genius loci is venerated for long enough, it will undergo an actualapotheosis, turning into a genuine deity.

Combat: The genius loci does not attack in a conventionalsense, nor is it harmed by weapons of less than +2 enchantment. All illusion/phantasm andenchantment/charm type spells are useless against it. It has hit dice and magicpowers as noted below (in all cases, the reverse of the spell effect is withinthe power of the genius loci, if applicable, and no material components,gestures, or incantations are required):

Years Venerated	Hit Dice	Magic powers	X.P. Value
1-2	1d8	suggestion	14+1/h.p.
3-6	2d8	bless	28+2/h.p.
5-12	3d8	enthrall	50+3/h.p.
13-20	4d8	augury	85+4/h.p.
21-30	5d8	remove curse	130+5/h.p.
31-42	6d8	cure disease	225+6/h.p.
43-56	7d8	divination	350+8/h.p.
57-72	8d8	cure serious wounds	550+10/h.p.
73-90	9d8	quest	900+12/h.p.
90+	10d8	heal	1,350+14/h.p.

Appearance: A genius loci is non-corporeal, and even on theethereal plane will only appear as a shimmering humanoid form. If joined withsome other creature, that skin of the creature will itself glow, and its eyeswill be solid silver lights. It can use empathyat all times for communication, and can use outright telepathy to communicate once it has been venerated for 10 years ormore.
__________
* All of the material being presented during the open playtest of ADD is very deliberately not presented as open gaming content; that designation is planned to change once the final version is published.

How Broad is Your Gaming Experience?

2011-11-19T23:33:00.001-05:00

I'm curious as to just how many different types of games folks actually play, or have played.

I'm a gamer. I pride myself that I don't discriminate in the types of games I play. I've played just about every type of game I can think of, from board games to hex-and-counter wargames to RPGs to card games to minis. Hell, I've even LARPed.

I'm curious, though, as to how many different sorts of games my readers have played, either in their lifetimes or within the last year. Please avail yourself of the poll in the upper-right corner of the blog. It will run through the end of the month, and then I'll indulge my "I used-to-be-an-election-pollster" mental muscles to try to figure out what it might mean.

Feel free to share reminisces or other salient information in the comments.

Oddity from the Monster Manual II

2011-11-18T21:19:00.001-05:00

Something struck my eye today that I have never noticed in the 29 years I've owned this book.

Starting on page 6, there is a section labeled "Special Entries" which has the following introduction:

"Certain creatures, such as devas, have special abilities or live in unusual places, etc., and these may require the notations explained below."

What follows are explanations for monster stats such as "Plane", "Intelligence as it affects spells", "Constitution", and several others, which look like they were originally intended to be listed in at least some monster listings as standard stats, but it appears as if the idea was dropped and the excision never made to the "How to Use this Book" section at the front. Only the stat on "psionic ability" seems to have been used at all. Even the entry on devas doesn't have a listing for "Plane".

I know things were a bit hectic in 1982/1983 at TSR, but this is an entire page of material that seems to have been included as an oversight. Yikes!

BRW Games: Now With Clever T-Shirt Goodness!

2011-11-17T17:10:00.001-05:00

I am pleased to announce that BRW Games now has a storefront on CafePress.com (not to be confused with the game product store over at RPGNow.com) where you can get t-shirts and various other articles of clothing. The initial offering is small, but if there's some good response, I'll be sure to add to the selection. Here's the first batch, all available in black on white or white on black.

Show your support for the game, and spread the Good Word when people ask you what it is.

Really rollin' old school. Has the Adventures Dark and Deep URL on the back.

For those who think that magic and psionics shouldn't mix. Also has the URL on the back.

Remember that anything made on this (or any other venture I advertise here, for that matter) gets put into the kitty and goes towards the games. Artwork, editing, layout, convention appearances; none of it comes cheap, and your support is very much appreciated!

Special Bonus! The first person I see wearing an Adventures Dark and Deep t-shirt will get a special secret prize. Stalk me at conventions! (Sorry, members of my regular gaming group are not eligible!)

Dreamation 2012 Pre-Reg Now Open plus Revenge of the Grognards!

2011-11-16T15:42:00.001-05:00

I'm lucky enough to have a bunch of fantastic gaming conventions actually within easy driving distance of my house (alas, not so with sci-fi cons). One of those that I try not to miss is Dreamation in Morristown, NJ. It has the feel of a fan-run sci-fi con (which, if you're not acquainted with science fiction conventions, is a good thing) and covers just about all aspects of gaming; RPGs, board games, miniatures, computer and console video games, LARPS, and card games. The hotel itself is spectacular, and the dining options in Morristown are really superb. Plus free parking! The convention itself is $60 for the weekend, which is quite reasonable for such an excellent convention. This year the convention will run February 23-26, 2012.

As usual, I'll be running a bunch of games there, and will happily once again organize an OSR mini-con-within-the-con; let The Revenge of the Grognards begin! Here's my list of games submitted:

Ogre Miniatures (2 games)
Adventures Dark and Deep - Castle of the Mad Archmage (1 game)
Afrika Korps (the old Avalon Hill hex-and-counter wargame - 1 game)
The Joy of Older Games (panel discussion)

If you would like to run an old-school game at Dreamation and have it included in my advertising efforts, when you submit your event registration to the convention --> HERE <-- put "Part of the Revenge of the Grognards" in your description. Please also mention it in the comments below or send me an email and I'll be sure to hump it when the time comes.

NaGaDeMon Update

2011-11-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Since we are now at the halfway mark of November, I thought I'd give a quick update on my progress for National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon).

Of the two games I had considered putting to paper, I decided to go with The Torian War, a simple hex-and-counter wargame intended to help ease RPGers who might not be familiar with such things into the genre. The Torian War is designed for two players; one, the Torians, is trying to fend off an invasion by the other player, the Vostlanders. The Vostlanders begin with an initial superiority in numbers and quality of troops, but the Torians will slowly and steadily increase their forces until they become very hard to beat.

Thusfar, I've completed the first draft of the rules (all 4 pages of them-- this is for beginners after all-- plus 1 page for charts and tables-- it wouldn't be a wargame without charts and tables) and the map. The only thing I need to focus on now are the counters, and then I'll be ready to playtest. I'll consider it a success if I'm able to get through one complete game as a playtest before month's end, and I think that's an eminently doable goal.

If it works out like I'm hoping, I'll eventually turn it into a print-and-play game and loose it on the world. How about you? Anyone else taking the plunge for NaGaDeMon?

On War

2011-11-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

Peace is good for business. - Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #33

War is good for business. - Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #34

Many times discussions of war in role playing games tends to focus on the mechanics of the fighting itself and how to integrate the player characters into it. But I want to touch on an aspect of war that may sometimes be overlooked in an RPG context; the war as background.

In my own Erseta campaign, there are at least five wars, or groups of wars, going on at the moment. Toria is waging a low-level war of independence against the Vostlander invaders that conquered her a generation ago. Vostland and Tamaria despise one another and have been involved in a war that's lasted for centuries, with occasional outbreaks of peace. The various lands of the Free Lords are constantly raiding, counter-raiding, invading, and generally despoiling one another, with occasional outright conquest (but that's relatively rare, as it makes the neighbors of both the conquerer and the conquered very nervous). The Roveno nomads are constantly attacking the Nordros and Sudros Border Marches, which are all that stand between them and the rich kingdom of Kelland. And the wars between the various Erian decharchies are as arcane and intricate as their politics, as each attempts to regain the lost glory of the Erian Empire.

War brings chaos, and chaos is good for gaming, because it yields opportunities for adventure. War breeds espionage; spies trading military secrets, troop strengths, plans for fortifications, and the like. PCs are easily drawn into such plots, and the course of a war can pivot on their actions, without their ever needing to command a squad of troops holding a pivotal bridge.

War also breeds a paradoxical lack of civil authority and a waxing of military authority. PCs operating in a war zone will find that the normal operations of border guards, tax collectors, etc. are greatly curtailed if they still exist at all. However, they will also find themselves at the mercy of generals who hold absolute authority, and might either press-gang a group of adventurers into their ranks, or imprison or execute them as suspected spies.

War is famous for its profiteering and looting as well. A city under siege could well pay a fortune for a simple barge-load of grain; it's just up to the PCs to figure out how to get it there. That same city, once it falls, could be an adventurer's paradise as the ruins are cleared of conquering troops and the PCs can arrive to pick the carcass clean (or, alternatively, save precious relics from the pitiless looters). Similarly, in the aftermath of a war, there could well be ruins abounding, many with rich treasures in need of liberating by the valiant PCs.

So don't avoid wars because you'll then have to figure out how to get the PCs involved. Rather, see wars as opportunities for the PCs to stay out of, directly, in order to find adventure and wealth through their indirect effects.

My Campaign Log - That Which Has Gone Before (Erseta #1 - 8)

2011-11-14T16:01:00.002-05:00

I started a new campaign to replace the old Greyhawk one about four months ago, but have completely slacked off when it came to posting campaign log entries. Mea culpa. Here is a quick recap of That Which Has Gone Before, so I can start campaign logs after our next session with (hopefully) more regularity. Sorry if this first one turns out to be a bit lengthy. For those who want to skip to the slightly more detailed account of what happened in our most recent game last Friday, it is marked below.

The campaign is set in Erseta, which is a homebrew campaign of my own design that you might just be hearing more about in the future. It's very much a late Medieval/early Renaissance Europe analogue, and I'm quite content with that; I'm not interested in doing "weird-for-the-sake-of-being-weird fantasy".

We'll all be rich! Rich as Nazis!

The players started out in the Barony of Rittergeist, having heard tales of the lost dwarven city of Glitterdark and determined to find the place and explore it and become rich.

Initially, they were sent on a mission to recover a certain book from the tower of a famous savant who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. After a few misadventures they discovered what appeared to be the savant himself in the cellar, confined within a magic circle and seemingly unaware of the passage of time. However they cleverly deduced that it was not the savant after all, but a daemon in his guise. They alerted the local High Church officials to the peril, returned the book, and continued on their southeasterly march to Glitterdark.

Upon entering an expanse of forest, they made camp and were approached by a man named Vert, who demanded from them all of their coins in return for being allowed safe passage through "his" forest. The one party member who had been on guard duty, and who had witnessed his transformation from human form to that of a green dragon, convinced the rest to comply, and most did so, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

Upon reaching the village of Tresen, however (the southeasternmost settlement in Rittergeist), they were informed by the locals-- with no small amount of mirth-- that Vert was indeed a green dragon, but one only three years of age, and eagerly accumulating his first hoard of treasure. Somewhat sheepishly, they continued on their way southeast through the forest, encountering a section that seemed preternaturally dark and foreboding. A carnivorous tree attacked them (and they inadvertently killed one of their own party members while trying to free him and hit the tree), they were beset upon by giant weasels and a giant skunk (the latter having sprayed their encampment when one of them shouted "KA-KAW!" upon seeing the creature; the attempt to frighten it succeeded). Fortunately, one of the spell-casters had the "clean" cantrip, which served to assist greatly with the aftermath of the startled skunk's attack.

Turning to a more southwardly direction, they emerged from the forest only to encounter a mounted patrol of Vanarian troops, who closely questioned them on their business in that fair kingdom. More to the point, since the party's two clerics were members of the Dornian Church, and Vanaria adheres to the Reformed Church. (There is general unanimity in religion in the campaign area in theological terms, but the High Church is split by schism into three competing and mutually hostile factions; the Erian Church, the Dornian Church, and the Reformed Church. All worship the same gods and share the same broadly lawful good alignment, and differences of doctrine stem more from history and organization than anything else. Rittergeist has an official policy of tolerance, but it is more common for one faction to be deemed the "official" one of any particular land.) Fortunately the captain of the Vanarian patrol was himself a follower of the Dornian church, even though his men were Reformed, and he allowed the party to return into the forest, and thus Rittergeist, before his men did something unpleasant to the heretics.

The party had not set out with a lot of provisions, and they were now running low on food. This turned out to be a good opportunity to try out the ADD hunting rules, and for the most part things worked out well. However, one of the hunting groups, which had itself split into single hunters, stumbled upon an aurochs in the forest. One of the hunters attacked and almost killed the creature, but was slain before he could do so. The other hunter then came upon the scene, climbed a tree, and finished off the much-weakened beast, providing pot roast for all for a month.

Now reaching the foothills of the mountains in which Glitterdark was held to be located, the party came upon a crazy-looking dwarven smith. Scattered all about the place were piles of tools, weapons, armor, and the like rusting in the grass around the smithy, with the smith, Klegg Irontooth, gibbering to himself as he worked. The party, through careful coaxing, was able to glean that Klegg had indeed been at Glitterdark when the city was sealed against the plague, and he was obviously suffering from a form of survivor's guilt. When he found that the party was heading into Glitterdark, he became more agitated, but picked up a large key from amongst the various bits and pieces on the ground and handed it to the dwarf in the party. "You'll need this," he said.

Some exploring in the mountains finally yielded the lost dwarven city, whose gatehouse had been partially covered by a rockslide. The gatehouse itself was home to a family of bears (which the party shamelessly killed) and kestrel-men who weren't acting particularly aggressive, but who kept a steady watch on the party. When the party attempted to take them on, however, one of the fighters was quickly slain and the rest backed off.

Upon entering Glitterdark proper, the party discovered a large circular room with six 10' alcoves protected by barred gates. The key handed them by Klegg Irontooth fit one of the locks, and when the gate was opened the alcove filled with a swirling mist, which disappeared when the key was removed. The gnome was sent forth to investigate and discovered that the mist was actually a magical gate of some sort, leading to an alley in a town above ground, whose exact location and name were a mystery. He reported his findings and after a little more experimentation with the gate to figure out just how it worked, the party continued on into Glitterdark.

Most of the area the party explored seemed to be overrun with goblins. Although they were able to slay quite a few themselves, others had escaped and the party, weakened and injured through a half-dozen fights, decided to retreat through the gate and figure out where exactly it led, despite the gate being only one-way, as far as they could ascertain, since there was no obvious lock for the key on the receiving end.

Last Friday's Game

It turned out that the gate led approximately sixty miles away to the town of Ritterheim, capital of Rittergeist. There, although still rather low on funds, they were able to rest and recharge in the Red Swan Inn. While getting the feel for the town, the cleric was informed of the visit of one Lord Klammerhark, who had come to woo the Baron's daughter Siglund. The Dornian church is opposed to any such marriage, because Klammerhark is a Reformed church member. If such a wedding could be short-circuited, the Church would be most happy.

They also approached one of the regulars in the Red Swan, a halfling named Thrivin Mossberg, who says he is in the business of "uniting sellers of rare merchandise with interested buyers (with no questions asked)". It turned out that the halfling was expecting a certain shipment at the docks that very night, which he would pay 100 g.p. to have brought into the city proper without the prying eyes of the guards at the gate looking through it.

Most of the party leaped to the challenge, and an absolutely hilarious episode ensued as the bard attempted to gain access to the top of the city walls by first entertaining the guards in one tower (distracting them so the gnome could get out of the city), and then convincing the guards in another tower that he wanted to go to the top of the wall so his female companion and he could have some private time ("she likes high places") in order to help the gnome get the crates back into the city. It was a hoot as he kept stretching the story, and making critical rolls for his attend and other abilities, until the guards finally demanded the pair leave, and a mad dash ensued to get the last of the crates off the wall before the guards discovered it. A wonderful example of improvisational play gently assisted by social encounter rules, rather than simply saying "make a challenge roll". I think none of us laughed so much in a gaming session in years.

So that's where the campaign stands at the moment. Still tons of unanswered questions about Glitterdark; what actually happened to the dwarves? Where do those other gates go, and where are the keys to activate them? How do you activate the gate to go into Glitterdark (if it's even possible)? And some plots and mysteries in Ritterheim are starting to take shape as well; the desire of the church to stop a potential wedding, the contents of those crates that the halfling paid to have brought into the town, and few other things taking shape.

More regular after-action reports to come!

Raid on Frederikshavn Playtest 1

2011-11-13T20:54:00.002-05:00

This weekend, not only did we play ADD on Friday, but Saturday was our wargame/boardgame day at our new FLGS. While we did play a great game of Red Dragon Inn at the end of the day, the lion's share of our time was spent playtesting a new scenario I've been working on for Ogre Miniatures; the Raid on Frederikshavn.

This was a very early test-run, and we ended up using the "Raid" scenario from the Ogre Miniatures rulebook with a few modifications. I just wanted to see how things worked, in order to be able to do some tuning with actual results to work from. I count the playtest as a rousing success from that standpoint. Lots of excellent data gathered.

The basic scenario is that the PanEuropeans have developed a new space shuttle and are preparing a test-launch from their spaceport in Frederikshavn, Denmark. The Combine has sent one MK-IIIB Ogre across the bottom of the North Sea to rendezvous with a fast attack group of GEVs (including GEVs, Light GEVs, GEV-PCs, and hovertrucks). The attacker got 60 points plus a MK-IIIB, and the defender got a Fencer, 24 squads of infantry grouped into 8 platoons, plus 24 points of other units. Each turn the defender rolls randomly to determine what sort of reinforcement will arrive-- anything from a mobile howitzer to GEVs to infantry. A variety of small buildings (3 structure points/10 victory points) and large (10 structure points/15 victory points) were there, plus the shuttle on the gantry itself (15 structure points/30 victory points). Various town areas were on the board (which measured 4'x4') itself, which could be destroyed piecemeal for victory points as well.

The game begins as the Combine forces (bottom) hit the beach. The main objective-- the PanEuropean shuttle-- is visible at the top of the picture.

The PanEuropeans selected a pair of howitzers as their defense, counting on the Fencer and infantry to hold the fort until the reinforcements arrived. The Combine had a variety of GEVs and Light GEVs, plus one GEV-PC holding a platoon of infantry.

Alas for the invaders, the Combine infantry and supporting GEVs got pasted almost immediately by missile fire from the Fencer (the white smoke plumes in the lower-right corner of the picture above). Although the Combine MK-IIIB did a number on the closest buildings and town areas, gaining some early victory points, almost the entire right flank of the Combine raiding force was taken out by the Fencer. The left flank, as shown above, penetrated deep into the spaceport facility, and made short work of that town area and building.

The Combine MK-IIIB, code named "Skorzeny" faces off against the Fencer, code named "Pinky". Pinky was able to maintain distance and pummel Skorzeny with missiles while remaining relatively unscathed; it still had one missile rack and both secondary batteries intact at the end of the game.

Pinky retreats, drawing Skorzeny into range of the howitzers and the defending infantry.

The Combine GEVs on the left flank take out buildings and town areas, wracking up victory points but unable to help Skorzeny as the MK-III takes all kinds of damage.

Badly damaged, Skorzeny still pushes forward, taking out three of Pinky's missile racks and moving towards the large rocket fuel tank, but there's a LOT of infantry to overcome. At the top, PanEuropean reinforcements are sent to slow down and destroy the Combine GEV flank.

Duel of titans. Unfortunately for the Combine, Skorzeny was badly damaged at this point and was reduced to naught but AP weapons. Pinky did an overrun and took out all of Skorzeny's treads, and that was all she wrote for the Combine Ogre. Defeated by a cybernetic tank the size of a mini-mall and painted pink, Skorzeny hung its virtual head in shame.

The Combine GEVs ultimately took out many of the PanEuropean reinforcements and inflicted enough damage to the fuel depot immediately adjacent to the shuttle to eke out a marginal victory on points. But the shuttle itself was unscathed and the PanEuropeans were about to wipe out the raiders when we called the game.

Lessons Learned

I am immensely glad we played this through, and will do so a few more times, prior to rolling it out for Dreamation in February. Some points we came up with:

Objective buildings should not be placed on top of town areas
The space shuttle itself should be giving much more significance to encourage the attacker going for it rather than going for the "cheap win" by just wrecking the joint
Victory points should not be awarded for destroying town areas, only buildings
The victory point range might need to be adjusted based on the fact that there is now an Ogre among the defending units
Possibly, destruction of the Ogre should not count towards victory points
Victory points for buildings should be set so that half (or slightly more than half) need to be destroyed to ensure a Combine victory; as it was, only a third were destroyed and a marginal victory was still achieved

All in all, I had a great time, and once the scenario gets tweaked appropriately, it'll be the talk of Dreamation.

Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan

2011-11-09T13:04:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, PBS ran an incredible series on science and history called "Cosmos". It was a seminal event, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Carl Sagan was one of the best popularizers of science in the twentieth century. He still strikes a chord; here's a snippet from Cosmos.

Jeff Dee is Doing Something AWESOME

2011-11-08T21:45:00.005-05:00

Veteran AD&D artist Jeff Dee, who did so many illustrations for various TSR publications back in the day, has something absolutely amazing going on over on Kickstarter.

Turns out that the incredibly talented Mr. Dee, whose original drawings that graced the interior of the Deities and Demigods (later renamed Legends and Lore, to the consternation of all of us who abhor Political Correctness, including Gary Gygax himself), laments that those original drawings no longer exist. TSR threw the originals into the dumpster ignominiously decades ago.

So what to do? Why, redo the drawings, of course!

Jeff is running a kickstarter campaign to raise money by redoing all of the drawings he did for the Egyptian Mythos way back then. If the campaign turns out to be a success, more will come.

Personally, I think this is a splendid thing, and really hope the idea takes off. If you want to get a quick idea of what this means in artistic terms using Elric from the Melnibonean Mythos as a sample, behold (click to embiggen, posted with express permission, and the original is here):

So hie thyself over to Kickstarter and pledge a couple of bucks. He's got several nifty rewards, and it's certainly a worthy cause!

Review over at Grognardia

2011-11-08T08:53:00.000-05:00

James over at Grognardia has kindly posted a review of Darker Paths 1: The Necromancer, in which he had some very kind things to say about Adventures Dark and Deep in general. Definitely worth reading if you haven't already seen it.

Metatopia After Action Report

2011-11-07T17:48:00.000-05:00

Metatopia is a must-attend event for aspiring game designers, and is an invaluable resource for established companies in the field.

It's sort of a "reverse convention"; companies are encouraged to bring their new designs and ideas to be both playtested and discussed in depth. For playtesting, the fine folks at Dexposure (who have honed their convention-hosting skills with both Dreamation and Dexcon) will put you together with players (or other designers!) who share certain things in common with your game.

For instance, if you're going to be playtesting a game that deals with Tarot cards, the pre-convention questionnaire will ask how interested you are in Tarot cards on a scale of 1-10, and match up relevant interests. I will certainly be availing myself of it in a big way next time the con comes around.

For players, Metatopia is a unique opportunity not only to get a sneak peak at what some of your favorite game companies are cooking up, but also to have a real chance to influence the design of the game with your feedback. This is an opportunity you don't get every day in many cases, and I know a lot of people jumped at the chance.

The panel and seminar track was for me the high point of the convention. It was like going to a game design and publishing university. Some of the leading lights and rising stars of the gaming industry were there (both RPG and board games; I was particularly delighted by the fact that they didn't focus completely on one or the other). I took dozens of pages of notes on everything from printing options to marketing to playtesting strategies to ways to communicate with a team collaborating over the web to put together a game. Kickstarter.com also had someone there to give a presentation; an acknowledgement of just how important that crowdfunding website has become in a very short period of time.

This convention was worth every penny and every minute I spent there. Plus given the spectacular location (easy walking distance to scores of excellent restaurants of just about every cuisine imaginable, a very nice hotel, and free parking), it's become an instant must-attend in my very limited schedule of convention-going.

Wisdom from Metatopia

2011-11-05T19:47:00.002-04:00

From one of the seminars on designing RPGs:

"Dungeons and Dragons is about providing continuity for the characters between battles."

Thoughts?

Off to Metatopia

2011-11-04T11:51:00.000-04:00

I probably won't be posting much this weekend, as I'm off to the Metatopia 2011 convention in Morristown, NJ. Metatopia is more focused on game designers, with players able to show up and playtest new games. There are a lot of panels on the gaming industry scheduled that I'm particularly looking forward to, for obvious reasons. If anyone is going to be there, let me know and we can try to hook up.

Lil' ol' me on a Podcast

2011-11-03T20:58:00.000-04:00

On the Roll for Initiative podcast, as a matter of fact. Me talking about Adventures Dark and Deep™.

http://rfipodcast.com/show/2011/11/03/volume-2-issue-68-adventures-dark-and-deep/

Sweet Reason, do I really sound like that?

ADD Bestiary Version 1.1 Now Available

2011-11-03T13:41:00.000-04:00

A new version of the Adventures Dark and Deep™ Bestiary is now available. Version 1.1 contains scores of new monsters, adds more than a hundred pages, and expands and makes corrections to many others based on feedback we've received during the open playtest.

Version 1.1 of the Bestiary is still a free pdf download, available exclusively through RPGNow.com, here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=95358

The Adventures Dark and Deep™ open playtest is still ongoing, and you're invited to give your feedback at http://www.adventuresdarkanddeep.com.

Enjoy!

Thoughts on Board Games for NaGaDeMon

2011-11-02T00:01:00.005-04:00

Well, my frenetic-as-usual mind is consumed with the idea of doing a NaGaDeMon game. I've got about twenty games flittering around my mind in various states of "is it soup yet?". But for the November challenge I've settled on one of two likely candidates.

First is Merchants of Dornia, which is a board game where up to five or six players compete to earn the most gold by moving trade goods from one place to another, manipulating the prices by making some goods more abundant (and thus depressing prices) or more scarce (and raising prices). Add bandits and mercenaries to protect caravans against them, and I see the game playing out in my imagination. It would eventually be Eurogame-ish, have a big board and tokens or pawns/meeples/figures/whatever, but obviously nothing fancy in the next 30 days.

Second is The Torian War, which is a hex-and-counter wargame where two sides play out the invasion of one mythical country by another. It would be deliberately asymmetrical; the invaders need to conquer enough territory and strongholds to crush the will of the defenders, and the defenders need to stall them long enough to recruit enough peasants for their own guerrilla war to drive out the invaders, with the added complication of magic (compatible with ADD-compatible magic systems). Again, this is one I can visualize in my mind's eye. It would be a wargame with simple enough mechanics to be a gateway game for RPGers to get into it as a possible way to resolve "domain" conflicts.

The question is, loyal readers, which sounds interesting to you (if any do)? A month's not a lot of time, so I can't do both. What do you think? Which deserves the attention it will take to get it over the finish line by November 30?

Darker Paths 1 and 2 Reviewed

2011-11-01T14:28:00.000-04:00

Tim Brannan on the Other Side Blog has posted reviews of both Darker Paths 1: The Necromancer and Darker Paths 2: The Witch (along with a few other Halloween-themed RPG products). Many thanks, Tim.

NaGaDeMon

2011-11-01T00:01:00.004-04:00

November is National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon)! Or so says Nathan Russel, inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

The idea is to design a complete game during the month of November. It doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be playable. RPGs, board games, wargames, card games, whatever are all acceptable. I'm in! I've had a couple of ideas for board games bouncing around in my head for a while, and this is a perfect excuse to actually turn one of them into an actual game.

I'm not going to count ADD, naturally, since it's been in development for a lot longer than one month! Look for something a bit different. Details to come.

November is Solo Tabletop Gaming Appreciation Month

2011-10-31T22:39:00.000-04:00

November marks Solo Tabletop Gaming Appreciation Month! (Yeesh, between this and NaGaDeMon, November is going to be a busy gaming month!)

So go out and play some board game or wargame solo. Snap some pictures, and submit it to the Solo Nexus site. There's really nothing wrong with playing with yourself. (Man, I am such a child sometimes.)

For myself, I'll be digging out some old SPI hex-and-counter goodness.

Top Ten Favorite Horror Films

2011-10-31T14:59:00.002-04:00

In honor of this auspicious day, here is my personal list of top ten favorite horror films:

10. Halloween (1978 version). Most of the film is just building... building... building... to that last half hour or so. You couldn't do that today and make it work. And the music is just unforgettable.
9. The Howling. This was just about the perfect werewolf movie for me, especially with the notion of how the werewolves would attempt to deal with modern society.
8. The Omen (1976 version). Creepy kid and a terrific Gregory Peck. I'm one of the few people I know who also likes Damien: Omen II and The Final Conflict.
7. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 version). This movie absolutely creeped me out when I first saw it.
6. The Mummy (1999 version). Indiana Jones meets Christopher Lee. Great fun and some gross effects.
5. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984 version). What made this movie for me was the fact that the dream sequences were so much like real dreams. When she's running up the stairs and her feet are sinking into them? Terrific visual.
4. The Haunting (1963 version). What I love about it is that even at the end you don't know what you just saw. Was it really ghosts? Was it Nell experiencing a subconscious telekinetic event? Or was it all an hallucination? It really could be any of those; I love the ambiguity.
3. Alien. I maintain that this is just as much a horror film as it is a science fiction film. The mood and tension are extremely well done, and there are plenty of "gotcha" moments to make you jump.
2. Horror of Dracula. I love all of the Hammer horror films, and chose this as a representative. It's all about atmosphere with them, and they do it right. Even the worst of the films plot-wise make up for a lot of it with their great atmosphere.

And my all-time favorite horror film...

1. The Bride of Frankenstein. Of all the old Universal monster films, this one is far and away the best. It's a terrific sequel; it expands the original material and takes it to new places. Plus the touches of humor and the wonderful characters just make this a joy to watch.

Please feel free to share some of your own favorites in the comments!