As some may know this year my primary AD&D 1e campaign turns 40 years old. After years of cajoling by players and family about 4 months ago I started making my own OSR/Clone rules book to incorporate all the various rules and rules sets we have been using.
I have a full-time contract position AND run my own small business with 3 employees AND have 5 kids, so it is moving along faster than anyone could expect! But people are asking questions and after the excellent idea of 'blog about it!' here I am.
Showing posts with label OSR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OSR. Show all posts
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Review: Death Frost Doom
My relationship with modules and ABOP (adventures by other people) is complex; In the '70's and '80's i ran many "official" modules set in Greyhawk for one of my groups. The other group was all-new, all-original Seaward. Most of the modules were gifts, as was Greyhawk.
Now every year I take a 'classic' module and run it at Halloween. I have play tested a few (notably A Baker's Denizen which I modified to fit), and I will steal a map or a monster here and there. I like to occasionally use a map by someone else, totally restocked, to avoid becoming too predictable.
But I do not like just using ABOP; they are usually very, very heavily modified unless it is a Halloween adventure. And while I really enjoy a few contemporary adventures, I usually don't get much more than elements for my own games from the work of other people.
That's me, not you. I am idiosyncratic and quirky, so are my campaigns. My Hudson City based campaign for Champions is so modified I am, in the end, just using the map.
But I do review things. And I am rather frankly merciless in my reviews. After the 8th person in 4 months asked me to review Death Frost Doom I said,
How I am Reviewing
I am drinking G&T's while I do a 'read through and review' where I give first impressions, so it might end up a drunk blog, too.
Then I will sum up.
No edits!
Spoilers to Follow
Now every year I take a 'classic' module and run it at Halloween. I have play tested a few (notably A Baker's Denizen which I modified to fit), and I will steal a map or a monster here and there. I like to occasionally use a map by someone else, totally restocked, to avoid becoming too predictable.
But I do not like just using ABOP; they are usually very, very heavily modified unless it is a Halloween adventure. And while I really enjoy a few contemporary adventures, I usually don't get much more than elements for my own games from the work of other people.
That's me, not you. I am idiosyncratic and quirky, so are my campaigns. My Hudson City based campaign for Champions is so modified I am, in the end, just using the map.
But I do review things. And I am rather frankly merciless in my reviews. After the 8th person in 4 months asked me to review Death Frost Doom I said,
"I ain't buying it."When they gave me their copy, I was on the hook. I am told this is the original version.
How I am Reviewing
I am drinking G&T's while I do a 'read through and review' where I give first impressions, so it might end up a drunk blog, too.
Then I will sum up.
No edits!
Spoilers to Follow
Friday, March 10, 2017
RPGs, Deceit, the OSR, Publishing, FUD, and you! - A Rant
Warning - rant follows.
My blog's tagline mentions something I don't do enough of - talk about the industry of RPGs. There are reasons for that, the biggest being I am a hobbyist publisher. Not a 'small press'; not an 'indie'. A hobbyist. I strive to generate high-quality work, yes, but I will never, and do not wish to ever, generate a wage off of my RPG publishing.
But there are people I talk to and interact with on G+ who either do make a wage off of gaming and related activities or wish to. Semi-series to serious authors, artists, etc., too. I enjoy reading of their interactions with and participation in what I will call 'more serious RPG publishing' for lack of a better term in much the same way I enjoy reading about baseball trades; it impacts my hobby, so I am interested.
My blog's tagline mentions something I don't do enough of - talk about the industry of RPGs. There are reasons for that, the biggest being I am a hobbyist publisher. Not a 'small press'; not an 'indie'. A hobbyist. I strive to generate high-quality work, yes, but I will never, and do not wish to ever, generate a wage off of my RPG publishing.
But there are people I talk to and interact with on G+ who either do make a wage off of gaming and related activities or wish to. Semi-series to serious authors, artists, etc., too. I enjoy reading of their interactions with and participation in what I will call 'more serious RPG publishing' for lack of a better term in much the same way I enjoy reading about baseball trades; it impacts my hobby, so I am interested.
Monday, March 6, 2017
How We "Fix" 3e - a Short Post
From years and years of not having access to anything else, I have a few cubic meters of AD&D 3e books. Working for Fast Forward as a freelancer added to that, as did freelance copyediting for, oh, half of the d20 explosion guys. They are all neatly stored in my (finished) basement. About once a year my wife has to convince me not to sell them.
Son #1 pulled a few out last week.
For the last three days he and I have been discussing them and there was a lot of,
"Why do people say 3e wizards are overpowered?"
"Huh. Why do people think this feat works a way it doesn't?"
etc.
So over the last two days he's decided to run a short 3e campaign in a unique setting. But it led us to talk about What's Wrong with 3e and how to fix it.
Our takeaways:
1) The GM must keep tight control over what prestige classes exist. The creep and bloat of splatbooks can make a campaign collapse.
2) The GM must carefully control the magic items in the campaign. This ranges from 'no, you can't buy potions from a street vendor' up to using items that grow. While this may sound too obvious, the implied/assumed setting of 3e appears to be awash in magic items!
3) The GM must throttle access to spells for wizards and sorcerers and make sure cleric spell selections make sense in the context of the domains, deity, and alignment of divine spellcasters.
4) The GM must control access to feats, especially advanced ones.
5) Challenge ratings must be based on the level of play not the level of PCs.
This is from an old 3e campaign of mine- 6) Consider making the Barbarian and the Druid NPC classes
7) Play the rules as written.
We'll be trying this out over the next few weeks. We think with GM oversight and cooperative players we can have a 3e game with a real 2e feel and play!
Son #1 pulled a few out last week.
For the last three days he and I have been discussing them and there was a lot of,
"Why do people say 3e wizards are overpowered?"
"Huh. Why do people think this feat works a way it doesn't?"
etc.
So over the last two days he's decided to run a short 3e campaign in a unique setting. But it led us to talk about What's Wrong with 3e and how to fix it.
Our takeaways:
1) The GM must keep tight control over what prestige classes exist. The creep and bloat of splatbooks can make a campaign collapse.
2) The GM must carefully control the magic items in the campaign. This ranges from 'no, you can't buy potions from a street vendor' up to using items that grow. While this may sound too obvious, the implied/assumed setting of 3e appears to be awash in magic items!
3) The GM must throttle access to spells for wizards and sorcerers and make sure cleric spell selections make sense in the context of the domains, deity, and alignment of divine spellcasters.
4) The GM must control access to feats, especially advanced ones.
5) Challenge ratings must be based on the level of play not the level of PCs.
This is from an old 3e campaign of mine- 6) Consider making the Barbarian and the Druid NPC classes
7) Play the rules as written.
We'll be trying this out over the next few weeks. We think with GM oversight and cooperative players we can have a 3e game with a real 2e feel and play!
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Classic Traveller Book 5: High Guard - Implications for World Building
I do love classic traveller. From that fantastic box cover giving us the mayday from Free Trader Beowulf to the crisp aesthetic to the crunch. Toss in the mini-games of ship design and it was an instant classic.
Book 5: High Guard was one of the best splat books ever added to a game, in my opinion. Advanced character generation, advanced ship design, detailed yet streamlined space combat.
Hard to top and it might not have seen its equal in the 37 years since it came out.
Lots and lots of people use HG to build ships, but I also use it to look at the 'Domain Game' of Traveller (or as Traveller calls it, the Pocket Empires game).
Let's talk about what the shipbuilding charts in HG tell us about building a campaign setting for Classic Traveller looks like.
First, a quick glance at FTL travel with the Drive Tech Table:
You need to have Tech Level 9 to have any FTL ships and you don't get longer than 1 parsec until TL11+.
Impact: To have interstellar travel you must have worlds capable of at least maintaining and repairing TL9 jump drives. To have real strategic speed you have to have TL11+. This means TL9 and 10 civilizations will be very 'local' compared to higher techs.
Now let's look at Weapons and Defenses, starting with major weapons weapons, i.e., stuff that's big for starships:
At TL9 you have access to heavy bay Particle Accelerators (or PAs), PA spinal mounts, and heavy missile bays. TL10 adds heavy repulsor bays and bigger PA spinal mounts as well as some light bay weapon systems. TL11 is a big jump where you gain Meson spinal mounts.
Let's look at turrets:
It can be hard to see, but the heavier energy weapons aren't available until TL10+ and they get more powerful fairly rapidly.
Last in this section, screens;
You can't have nuclear dampers or meson screens until TL12+.
I am not going to post the huge combat charts showing the various target numbers to hit and then penetrate, but the end result is - until TL10+ missiles, especially nuclear missiles, dominate space combat because they are more likely to hit and penetrate. Repulsors eat up some of (ok - a lot of) the advantage of missiles at TL10 and TL11, but once nuclear dampers are added to the mix missiles are matched by energy weapons. If you track missile reloads in large scale, long-term space battles energy weapons can take the edge, especially at higher TLs.
Impact: Missiles rule until TL12. After TL12 ship-killer mesons spinal mounts appear.
Now it is time to talk about a rather odd fact or two. Here is the computer chart:
This chart is important because more powerful computers = bonuses to hit and penetrate with weapon fire. This chart is critical to world building because of ship size.
Yes, really.
See that column that is headed'Ship'? That column is 'the hull tonnage size that requires that model of computer as a minimum'. In other words, that code is the largest ship hull available with that computer model. This means hull size is limited by tech level.
Here is the hull chart:
By cross-reference you can see that at TL9 maximum hull size is D, or 4,000 displacement tons while at TL12 maximum hull size is R, or 100,000 displacement tons.
There are some very interesting implications from this! For example, at TL9 the smallest PA spinal mount is 5,000 displacement tons while the largest possible space ship is 4,000 displacement tons. As a result, at TL9 PA spinal mounts are for planets, moons, etc., not ships. The most powerful weapon that can be put into a TL9 ship is a 100 ton missile bay with a weapon factor of 7. Next would be a PA bay or a total of 30 missile tube, both of which have a weapon factor of 7. A capitol ship for a TL9 navy might look like;
4,000d dt, Jump-1, Manuever-3
1 x 100 dt PA bay (factor 6)
10 x triple sand turrets (1 battery of factor 7)
10 x triple missile turrets (5 batteries of factor 3 each)
10 x triple beam turrets (5 batteries of weapon factor 4 each)
Armor factor 12
Agility 1 (emergency 3)
Computer factor 3
So while it has a relatively low agility it has fair survivability with the beam lasers capable of anti-missile fire and the sand to stop heavy energy attacks and decent armor.
On the other hand, TL12 is a big leap in capabilities. Ships get very big, meson spinal mounts, meson screens, and nuclear dampers are on the table, armor gets tougher, etc. The differences are pretty stark - the TL9 navy's capital ship isn't a match for a TL12 navy's frigate - the TL12 frigate would have Jump-2, heavier armor, better agility, and a more powerful computer in the same size hull. This means the higher TL ship chooses the range of engagement, hits more often, penetrates more often, gets hit less often, etc.
TL12+ capitol ships should be able to engage entire TL9 battle groups alone and prevail.
So how could a TL9 navy face a TL12 navy?
Two words - zergling rush.
The TL9 navy could put so many ships into play at so many locations that the TL12 navy would be forced to pick what it defends. With the TL12 navy pinned the TL9 navy could then swarm selected fleets, or even ships, with an overwhelming number of attackers. This depends on a few things, though:
1) They need to have that many hulls
2) They have to be able to lose a lot of hulls
3) They have to be willing to lose a lot of hulls
4) They must be committed to a long conflict
5) Their own economic and supply bases must be secure from counter-attack
That is a tough combo to pull off.
Impact: When doing world building within CT to achieve anything approaching parity between a TL( civilization and a TL12+ civilization the TL9 group must be much larger and have a lot more population and have well-defended manufacturing. If not the TL12+ group will be able to overwhelm the other at will.
Next time - how I used these elements to make my new CT campaign setting.
Book 5: High Guard was one of the best splat books ever added to a game, in my opinion. Advanced character generation, advanced ship design, detailed yet streamlined space combat.
Hard to top and it might not have seen its equal in the 37 years since it came out.
Lots and lots of people use HG to build ships, but I also use it to look at the 'Domain Game' of Traveller (or as Traveller calls it, the Pocket Empires game).
Let's talk about what the shipbuilding charts in HG tell us about building a campaign setting for Classic Traveller looks like.
First, a quick glance at FTL travel with the Drive Tech Table:
You need to have Tech Level 9 to have any FTL ships and you don't get longer than 1 parsec until TL11+.
Impact: To have interstellar travel you must have worlds capable of at least maintaining and repairing TL9 jump drives. To have real strategic speed you have to have TL11+. This means TL9 and 10 civilizations will be very 'local' compared to higher techs.
Now let's look at Weapons and Defenses, starting with major weapons weapons, i.e., stuff that's big for starships:
At TL9 you have access to heavy bay Particle Accelerators (or PAs), PA spinal mounts, and heavy missile bays. TL10 adds heavy repulsor bays and bigger PA spinal mounts as well as some light bay weapon systems. TL11 is a big jump where you gain Meson spinal mounts.
Let's look at turrets:
It can be hard to see, but the heavier energy weapons aren't available until TL10+ and they get more powerful fairly rapidly.
Last in this section, screens;
You can't have nuclear dampers or meson screens until TL12+.
I am not going to post the huge combat charts showing the various target numbers to hit and then penetrate, but the end result is - until TL10+ missiles, especially nuclear missiles, dominate space combat because they are more likely to hit and penetrate. Repulsors eat up some of (ok - a lot of) the advantage of missiles at TL10 and TL11, but once nuclear dampers are added to the mix missiles are matched by energy weapons. If you track missile reloads in large scale, long-term space battles energy weapons can take the edge, especially at higher TLs.
Impact: Missiles rule until TL12. After TL12 ship-killer mesons spinal mounts appear.
Now it is time to talk about a rather odd fact or two. Here is the computer chart:
This chart is important because more powerful computers = bonuses to hit and penetrate with weapon fire. This chart is critical to world building because of ship size.
Yes, really.
See that column that is headed'Ship'? That column is 'the hull tonnage size that requires that model of computer as a minimum'. In other words, that code is the largest ship hull available with that computer model. This means hull size is limited by tech level.
Here is the hull chart:
By cross-reference you can see that at TL9 maximum hull size is D, or 4,000 displacement tons while at TL12 maximum hull size is R, or 100,000 displacement tons.
There are some very interesting implications from this! For example, at TL9 the smallest PA spinal mount is 5,000 displacement tons while the largest possible space ship is 4,000 displacement tons. As a result, at TL9 PA spinal mounts are for planets, moons, etc., not ships. The most powerful weapon that can be put into a TL9 ship is a 100 ton missile bay with a weapon factor of 7. Next would be a PA bay or a total of 30 missile tube, both of which have a weapon factor of 7. A capitol ship for a TL9 navy might look like;
4,000d dt, Jump-1, Manuever-3
1 x 100 dt PA bay (factor 6)
10 x triple sand turrets (1 battery of factor 7)
10 x triple missile turrets (5 batteries of factor 3 each)
10 x triple beam turrets (5 batteries of weapon factor 4 each)
Armor factor 12
Agility 1 (emergency 3)
Computer factor 3
So while it has a relatively low agility it has fair survivability with the beam lasers capable of anti-missile fire and the sand to stop heavy energy attacks and decent armor.
On the other hand, TL12 is a big leap in capabilities. Ships get very big, meson spinal mounts, meson screens, and nuclear dampers are on the table, armor gets tougher, etc. The differences are pretty stark - the TL9 navy's capital ship isn't a match for a TL12 navy's frigate - the TL12 frigate would have Jump-2, heavier armor, better agility, and a more powerful computer in the same size hull. This means the higher TL ship chooses the range of engagement, hits more often, penetrates more often, gets hit less often, etc.
The Fun Lads Four refer having a more powerful computer in space combat "The Traveller Bless spell".
TL12+ capitol ships should be able to engage entire TL9 battle groups alone and prevail.
So how could a TL9 navy face a TL12 navy?
Two words - zergling rush.
The TL9 navy could put so many ships into play at so many locations that the TL12 navy would be forced to pick what it defends. With the TL12 navy pinned the TL9 navy could then swarm selected fleets, or even ships, with an overwhelming number of attackers. This depends on a few things, though:
1) They need to have that many hulls
2) They have to be able to lose a lot of hulls
3) They have to be willing to lose a lot of hulls
4) They must be committed to a long conflict
5) Their own economic and supply bases must be secure from counter-attack
That is a tough combo to pull off.
Impact: When doing world building within CT to achieve anything approaching parity between a TL( civilization and a TL12+ civilization the TL9 group must be much larger and have a lot more population and have well-defended manufacturing. If not the TL12+ group will be able to overwhelm the other at will.
Next time - how I used these elements to make my new CT campaign setting.
Monday, January 2, 2017
Play Report and Adventure Review for A Baker's Denizen
Howard Beleiff was kind enough to send me a pre-release copy of his adventure A Baker's Denizen for review.
Edit: It can be purchased here!
The Review
Layout and Such: I like the design and layout and found the page art very nice. He uses a classic illustration you better recognize!
Editing and Style: The adventure has a nice, conversational style that imparts a mood without overwhelming you. The writing is crisp and fun to read. The editing is great.
Content and Adventure: Try to come up with an adventure in an urban setting that is fun, engaging, able to be dropped into almost any campaign, and still has a unique hook. It is hard.
Howard pulled it off.
He uses rarely-seen monsters, a nice master villain, unusual layouts and floor plans, and a nice hook to craft a simple, fun adventure that is still capable of being adapted and changed.
My Score: Four out of Four
Edit: It can be purchased here!
The Review
Layout and Such: I like the design and layout and found the page art very nice. He uses a classic illustration you better recognize!
Editing and Style: The adventure has a nice, conversational style that imparts a mood without overwhelming you. The writing is crisp and fun to read. The editing is great.
Content and Adventure: Try to come up with an adventure in an urban setting that is fun, engaging, able to be dropped into almost any campaign, and still has a unique hook. It is hard.
Howard pulled it off.
He uses rarely-seen monsters, a nice master villain, unusual layouts and floor plans, and a nice hook to craft a simple, fun adventure that is still capable of being adapted and changed.
My Score: Four out of Four
Friday, October 7, 2016
Let Me Add Something on How To Add More People to the OSR
Over at Tenkar's Tavern the host has written about how to add players - play in public.
He's not wrong, but he's missing something.
See, he's talking about playing at a store aimed at us and bringing in people who play Pathfinder, 4e, and other things.
That's great! Bring them in! But there is more.
I have mentioned how my son started a new game with total newbies. Well, their tenth game is next week and there are now 5 regular players and they are recruiting more, all of them fresh to RPGs. That, to me, is even more critical than exposing people who play other games to the OSR - bringing totally fresh blood to RPGs in general.
And it doesn't just have to be teens.
Think about how long you have been playing RPGs. Now, in that time how many of your non-gaming friends and co-workers have you tried to 'bring in'? I have asked co-workers, classmates, and relatives. My most daring was either the guy sitting next to me on a 6 hour greyhound bus trip or a girl I met on a blind date on our second date.
Another thing Ii do these days is have stuff ready to email them - PDFs of OSRIC, character sheets, party log, and a simple free adventure module. As a family we buy those Pound O' Dice packs as needed so we can hand them a set of dice, too.
Yes! Play in public! But also talk to the people you know.
He's not wrong, but he's missing something.
See, he's talking about playing at a store aimed at us and bringing in people who play Pathfinder, 4e, and other things.
That's great! Bring them in! But there is more.
I have mentioned how my son started a new game with total newbies. Well, their tenth game is next week and there are now 5 regular players and they are recruiting more, all of them fresh to RPGs. That, to me, is even more critical than exposing people who play other games to the OSR - bringing totally fresh blood to RPGs in general.
And it doesn't just have to be teens.
Think about how long you have been playing RPGs. Now, in that time how many of your non-gaming friends and co-workers have you tried to 'bring in'? I have asked co-workers, classmates, and relatives. My most daring was either the guy sitting next to me on a 6 hour greyhound bus trip or a girl I met on a blind date on our second date.
She and I have been married for almost 25 years, now, BTW.I have had a lot of success bringing people into RPGs just by asking 'want to come over for game night?' and not saying anything else. I make sure I have a wide range of games - HERO system, Star Wars, Marvel Super-Heroes, Traveller, and (of course) AD&D. We talk to them about the movies and books they like and then pull out the game that seems most apropos. That date? HUGE Star Wars fan, so it was WEG's D6 Star Wars. These days it is easy to start with the LotR or Hobbit movie franchises or Marvel, but it all works.
Another thing Ii do these days is have stuff ready to email them - PDFs of OSRIC, character sheets, party log, and a simple free adventure module. As a family we buy those Pound O' Dice packs as needed so we can hand them a set of dice, too.
Yes! Play in public! But also talk to the people you know.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
What Do You Mean, 'What Is It For?'?!
Ah, the internet, where you can argue over all sorts of things. The most recent internet argument I got into was with someone explaining that monsters with a no-save level drain are badwrong and there is no reason to have them other than,
Of course, I had already pointed out some reason for having such monsters in your game, to wit;
"...imbecilic blind worship of the past..."Uh-huh.
Of course, I had already pointed out some reason for having such monsters in your game, to wit;
- Instilling terror in the players
- Driving quests for spells, etc. to get Restoration
- To 'throttle' level progression without nerfing XP/raising the bar or railroading players
What Do You Mean, 'What Is It For?'?!
Ah, the internet, where you can argue over all sorts of things. The most recent internet argument I got into was with someone explaining that monsters with a no-save level drain are badwrong and there is no reason to have them other than,
Of course, I had already pointed out some reason for having such monsters in your game, to wit;
"...imbecilic blind worship of the past..."Uh-huh.
Of course, I had already pointed out some reason for having such monsters in your game, to wit;
- Instilling terror in the players
- Driving quests for spells, etc. to get Restoration
- To 'throttle' level progression without nerfing XP/raising the bar or railroading players
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Why My Default Ruleset is 1e, or: I Like Your Ruleset, But Not That Way
I have a lot "in" the OSR: I write stuff to sell to people in the OSR; I write stuff for free I hope people in the OSR read; I chat with people in the OSR and, like any group, I like some people in the OSR, am neutral about others, and find some to be a bit off. Heck, I have that little OSR logo on my blog, just over there.
But I think I might be taking that off.
No, not because I dislike the OSR, or the people, of anything like that. Nor am I disillusioned by the OSR - there is a lot of great, creative, fun stuff coming out of the OSR. It is because I am not OSR in and of myself. I am of the actual Old School itself.
This hit me through two things. I decided to do an actual review of Swords & Wizardry (thanks for the feedback, G+ pals!) and I read in about 9 places in one week 'the OSR began with Castles & Crusades or with OSRIC'.
I own Castles & Crusades, and a lot of their stuff. I've owned it for a long time, actually, getting plenty of it as it came out. Admittedly, some of that was to find out why the Hell they had Redcaps led by someone called 'the Horned One' since I ran Lew Pulsipher and friends against the Horned One and his Redcaps back in 1988, but still.
I also have a ton of the OSR stuff from S&W to Blueholme, left, right, up, and down.
I also have the complete rules plus splats for HackMaster 4th (2 PHBs because we used them so much). I was an HMGMA member.
Remember HackMaster? Won Game of the Year at Origins? Was a monster impact and produced the most amazingly awesome GameMasters Shield EVER? They even took the old Combat Wheel from Dragon Magazine and turned it into a real thing that I freakin' own?
Remember that?
Yeah, well, in my opinion, that award-winning retooling of AD&D 1e/2e is what started the hard look at OD&D/AD&D/Basic that spawned the OSR. C&C came out three years after it, OSRIC five.
This doesn't take away anything from anything in the great work from the creators of the OSR, I think we just need to recognize one fact-
But AD&D is the core system I have used for my hobby since about 1978-79. My notes, rules, house rules, monsters, etc. - all based on that foundation.
So I use those books. I use that core ruleset.
"Fine, Rick," you say, "But that means you are part of the OSR."
Maybe not. I mean, let's look at OSRIC: it is such an amazing clone of AD&D that my house rules work as-is with about 3 word changes and dropping stuff about monks and bards and campaign specifics. My streamlined initiative and combat rules, updates to disease, maintenance rules, special hirelings, new NPC-only classes, spells, PC classes - SNAP! Fits right in, all of it. People that bought Far Realms and use it with OSRIC have given me such positive feedback, it really is humbling.
But I don't run OSRIC, do I? I run AD&D. If I couldn't get any reprints or PDFs of AD&D books I would have 3-4 hardcopies of OSRIC sitting around, all well-thumbed, with copies of my Book of Seaward (the in-house version of Far Realms) and enjoy it a great deal.
But I have AD&D 1e and 2e. I have OD&D and its supplements. And too much 3e. And 4e. And 5e. And all of the other rulesets that fill 3 bookcases in my house (not counting my kids' copies, which they keep track of).
I am also doing the public playtest of Rolemaster Unified and won three version of that system, too. And I think the kids are buying Palladium FRPG right now in the other room.
In the end this all boils down to two things, one of which I already said in another rant -
But I think I might be taking that off.
No, not because I dislike the OSR, or the people, of anything like that. Nor am I disillusioned by the OSR - there is a lot of great, creative, fun stuff coming out of the OSR. It is because I am not OSR in and of myself. I am of the actual Old School itself.
This hit me through two things. I decided to do an actual review of Swords & Wizardry (thanks for the feedback, G+ pals!) and I read in about 9 places in one week 'the OSR began with Castles & Crusades or with OSRIC'.
I own Castles & Crusades, and a lot of their stuff. I've owned it for a long time, actually, getting plenty of it as it came out. Admittedly, some of that was to find out why the Hell they had Redcaps led by someone called 'the Horned One' since I ran Lew Pulsipher and friends against the Horned One and his Redcaps back in 1988, but still.
Pure coincidence. Redcaps are creatures of folklore as is the Horned One.I also got OSRIC early on and refer to it a lot. heck, I have sent about 50 new RPG players to OSRIC as a resource in the last few years and will continue to do so. Great stuff.
I also have a ton of the OSR stuff from S&W to Blueholme, left, right, up, and down.
I also have the complete rules plus splats for HackMaster 4th (2 PHBs because we used them so much). I was an HMGMA member.
Remember HackMaster? Won Game of the Year at Origins? Was a monster impact and produced the most amazingly awesome GameMasters Shield EVER? They even took the old Combat Wheel from Dragon Magazine and turned it into a real thing that I freakin' own?
Remember that?
Yeah, well, in my opinion, that award-winning retooling of AD&D 1e/2e is what started the hard look at OD&D/AD&D/Basic that spawned the OSR. C&C came out three years after it, OSRIC five.
This doesn't take away anything from anything in the great work from the creators of the OSR, I think we just need to recognize one fact-
HackMaster 4th spawned the OSR
Anyway, one of the reasons I loved HackMaster (in addition to the fact that I have an abiding love for KotDT since it is set in my home town and is about my hobby) was I couldn't get AD&D stuff anymore without mortgaging my kids on eBay. Yes, the Source in the Twin Cities (one of the best FLGS I have ever been in, BTW) helped, but it was still hard. HM was great stuff, readily available, and it took minimal effort to make it AD&D.But AD&D is the core system I have used for my hobby since about 1978-79. My notes, rules, house rules, monsters, etc. - all based on that foundation.
So I use those books. I use that core ruleset.
"Fine, Rick," you say, "But that means you are part of the OSR."
Maybe not. I mean, let's look at OSRIC: it is such an amazing clone of AD&D that my house rules work as-is with about 3 word changes and dropping stuff about monks and bards and campaign specifics. My streamlined initiative and combat rules, updates to disease, maintenance rules, special hirelings, new NPC-only classes, spells, PC classes - SNAP! Fits right in, all of it. People that bought Far Realms and use it with OSRIC have given me such positive feedback, it really is humbling.
But I don't run OSRIC, do I? I run AD&D. If I couldn't get any reprints or PDFs of AD&D books I would have 3-4 hardcopies of OSRIC sitting around, all well-thumbed, with copies of my Book of Seaward (the in-house version of Far Realms) and enjoy it a great deal.
But I have AD&D 1e and 2e. I have OD&D and its supplements. And too much 3e. And 4e. And 5e. And all of the other rulesets that fill 3 bookcases in my house (not counting my kids' copies, which they keep track of).
I am also doing the public playtest of Rolemaster Unified and won three version of that system, too. And I think the kids are buying Palladium FRPG right now in the other room.
In the end this all boils down to two things, one of which I already said in another rant -
I am always making my own game and just sue AD&D as the jumping off point.
The second thing is something that I believe might separate me from being in the OSR-
I am not interested in stripping down rules and mechanics.
My goal is to make a set of rules and mechanics that allow me to create the game experience I want to pass on to the players. Here is an example - in AD&D there are some nice tools to roll for followers for fighters who become Lords. My charts are more involved with non-combatants, scribes, smiths, etc. More complexity, not less, to better reflect the total followers a fighter would get.
Here's the thing, though. That chart, that 'extra complexity' is for me a simplification. Before I made the chart I would sit down and spend a long afternoon working out the types of troops, their numbers, how many blacksmiths would appear, etc. 2-3 hours of solid work. At some point, about 1989 I think, I instead spent 3-4 hours making a series of charts so I could roll raw numbers in a few minutes, then spend an hour fleshing out details, modifying, etc. and - net - save myself time.
Swords & Wizardry, For Gold and Glory, OSRIC, etc. all meet their aims well - strip down rules to their foundations. But I've spent almost 4 decades tweaking, changing, and adding to the rules. That's why I love HackMaster 4th with its wacky, complex skills and such - it looks like what I saw in the '70's. It looks like a labor of love.
So keep doing what you like, OSR, and I'll keep making stuff that works with what you like. But my AD&D books will always be the ones most used at my house.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
What I Remember: A Rant About Old School and When Old Was New
There is a bit of a kerfuffle online right now about the 'real' Old School of TRPGs, who is telling who what, who is wrong, which people are 'the Taliban'.
BTW, if there is a person or group who is not involved in actual oppression, rape, torture, murder, and warfare but you call them 'the Taliban' because they have the unmitigated gall to disagree with you, please assume that I ignore all of your opinions about politics, culture, morals, ethics, and etiquette.Why? Because thus it has always been. I remember a spirited fight at the Ball State dorms about,
"No, man, like, the REAL way to play D&D!"In 1977. And these two guys had been having the argument for over a year. Then the Monster Manual hit and they really started fighting.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
The Tiny Kingdom: How Random Things End Up in the Campaign
I want to tell you more about my really, really old campaign. Seaward. And I want to talk about a supplement/game that I want.
But first, let's talk about ideas.
By that I mean - how do little bits of inspiration, insight, confusion, and such lead to creative ideas?
Let's talk about the Briars. This is a section of my main campaign world where a lot of adventures have happened over the years and I plan to have a great deal more happen as long as I am still alive.
And I know exactly where the Briars came from.
Growing up I was lucky enough to spend part of every Summer at my Uncle Don's farm in Indiana Amish country. We visited throughout the year, of course, and did everything from help with livestock to snowmobiling. And part of what we did was pick blackberries, dewberries, and cut back sweet briar. It was those outings that made the 'Lost in the Briars' picture in the 1e book so spooky to me; having gotten stuck in the briars when I fell into them at the age of 4 that seemed pretty horrible.
But more critically I remember when the only real neighbor of my Uncle Don sold his place - Uncle Don bought all the farmland, but the neighbor sold the house to a guy that owned a carpet and tile store in town 20-30 miles away. The new owner immediately put in a pool, about 18 tacky garden statues (lions with gold paint; cupids; that sort of thing), bought a peacock, and stopped maintaining the hedges and thickets.
That all happened the Summer I was 5. By the time I was 9 we needed an extra week every year to cut back briars along the property line. And briars are tough - the stems are long, very tough, and often covered in thorns. To get rid of the plants you have to trim them back, and then dig out the root. The new neighbor ignored my Uncle Don's questions, and his warnings, because he was only concerned about his 'main yard'.
My Uncle told me how much that upset him. Briars can spread fairly fast and can take over meadow and farm land making it useful only to rabbits and weasels. Without pruning and watching they can cover large areas and reduce the output of even uncultivated land. He said,
"If we ever get many abandoned farms around here the briars could take over miles and miles of the countryside."
That was the day after I drew the coasts and mountains of my setting. I added a large swatch of briars that night and they have been a fixture ever since.
For the first few years the Briars were just a well-nigh-impassable area with an old, very old, road cutting through their center. I placed the entrance to my Big Dungeon, Skull Mountain, at the other end of that road, but for a few years it was just 4-5 days of custom random encounters on the way to the dungeon. Of course, I had secrets tucked away in its depths, like the druid's grove that only druid (with their ability to travel through undergrowth) could reach, a hidden wizard's domain surrounded by impassable thorn hedges and cloaked by illusion, etc. But I was still eager to flesh them out.
I had been reading Tarzan and the Ant Men, a fun read. and then my kid sisters discovered the books about the Littles, tiny people who live in the walls of human houses. After a fair amount of wheedling I made some small houses and such and tucked them around the backyard so the two of them could play games about little humans, just 4" tall, visiting each other.
That is when I saw an ad in Dragon Mag for miniatures of armored knights on gigantic bees. I immediately thought,
"Why not little men on large bees? Heck, why not wee men on just bumblebees?"
And the Tiny Kingdom was born.
Deep in the Briars, surrounded by thorn hedges so thick only a druid could get through them, surrounded by harsh terrain and fierce monsters is the Tiny Kingdom. At the center is a walled city surrounded by tiny farms and villages, then a ring of forts - the Bee Men live here, called that because they have tamed bees. Their best warriors, the Knights, ride bumblebees to and from battle.
Outside the forts are the wild places where the Mice Men, fierce barbarians, roam. Ruins of past nations litter the area with ruined towers and abandoned vaults scattered about the realm. It would take a Bee Man 20 days of walking to travel from the center of the city to the edge of the Briars that surround the realm, the vast distance of - five miles!
I had sketched out rough maps, names, etc. when all sorts of Real Life things happened and I put it all aside. For the next 30+ years the Bee Knights and the Tiny Kingdom were flitting around, always on the edge of turning into something, hinted at in 100 things: pieces of loot; notes from sages; and tales from madmen; but never directly a part of my campaign.
Until this weekend.
Now that the Mice Men have been introduced my players have seized upon the idea with both hands.
They love the idea of the Tiny Kingdom and we brainstormed late into the night about possibilities. Some of the ideas so far are;
-The Tiny Kingdom as a full-bore OSR supplement/setting full of maps, NPCs, magic items, etc.
-Switching to normal-size anthropomorphic animals and release a setting where good-guy mice battle bad-guy weasels and there might be some sort of religious building involved.
-A complete, soup-to-nuts OSR game, with a number of tiny races and their foes.
-Change things a bit and make the setting a vast, enchanted garden of a powerful wizard who is unaware of the empires and battles of wee people in his arbors, then release that as a supplement.
-Combine the full game with the wizard's garden setting.
What do you guys think?
But first, let's talk about ideas.
By that I mean - how do little bits of inspiration, insight, confusion, and such lead to creative ideas?
Let's talk about the Briars. This is a section of my main campaign world where a lot of adventures have happened over the years and I plan to have a great deal more happen as long as I am still alive.
And I know exactly where the Briars came from.
Growing up I was lucky enough to spend part of every Summer at my Uncle Don's farm in Indiana Amish country. We visited throughout the year, of course, and did everything from help with livestock to snowmobiling. And part of what we did was pick blackberries, dewberries, and cut back sweet briar. It was those outings that made the 'Lost in the Briars' picture in the 1e book so spooky to me; having gotten stuck in the briars when I fell into them at the age of 4 that seemed pretty horrible.
But more critically I remember when the only real neighbor of my Uncle Don sold his place - Uncle Don bought all the farmland, but the neighbor sold the house to a guy that owned a carpet and tile store in town 20-30 miles away. The new owner immediately put in a pool, about 18 tacky garden statues (lions with gold paint; cupids; that sort of thing), bought a peacock, and stopped maintaining the hedges and thickets.
That all happened the Summer I was 5. By the time I was 9 we needed an extra week every year to cut back briars along the property line. And briars are tough - the stems are long, very tough, and often covered in thorns. To get rid of the plants you have to trim them back, and then dig out the root. The new neighbor ignored my Uncle Don's questions, and his warnings, because he was only concerned about his 'main yard'.
My Uncle told me how much that upset him. Briars can spread fairly fast and can take over meadow and farm land making it useful only to rabbits and weasels. Without pruning and watching they can cover large areas and reduce the output of even uncultivated land. He said,
"If we ever get many abandoned farms around here the briars could take over miles and miles of the countryside."
That was the day after I drew the coasts and mountains of my setting. I added a large swatch of briars that night and they have been a fixture ever since.
For the first few years the Briars were just a well-nigh-impassable area with an old, very old, road cutting through their center. I placed the entrance to my Big Dungeon, Skull Mountain, at the other end of that road, but for a few years it was just 4-5 days of custom random encounters on the way to the dungeon. Of course, I had secrets tucked away in its depths, like the druid's grove that only druid (with their ability to travel through undergrowth) could reach, a hidden wizard's domain surrounded by impassable thorn hedges and cloaked by illusion, etc. But I was still eager to flesh them out.
I had been reading Tarzan and the Ant Men, a fun read. and then my kid sisters discovered the books about the Littles, tiny people who live in the walls of human houses. After a fair amount of wheedling I made some small houses and such and tucked them around the backyard so the two of them could play games about little humans, just 4" tall, visiting each other.
That is when I saw an ad in Dragon Mag for miniatures of armored knights on gigantic bees. I immediately thought,
"Why not little men on large bees? Heck, why not wee men on just bumblebees?"
And the Tiny Kingdom was born.
Deep in the Briars, surrounded by thorn hedges so thick only a druid could get through them, surrounded by harsh terrain and fierce monsters is the Tiny Kingdom. At the center is a walled city surrounded by tiny farms and villages, then a ring of forts - the Bee Men live here, called that because they have tamed bees. Their best warriors, the Knights, ride bumblebees to and from battle.
Outside the forts are the wild places where the Mice Men, fierce barbarians, roam. Ruins of past nations litter the area with ruined towers and abandoned vaults scattered about the realm. It would take a Bee Man 20 days of walking to travel from the center of the city to the edge of the Briars that surround the realm, the vast distance of - five miles!
I had sketched out rough maps, names, etc. when all sorts of Real Life things happened and I put it all aside. For the next 30+ years the Bee Knights and the Tiny Kingdom were flitting around, always on the edge of turning into something, hinted at in 100 things: pieces of loot; notes from sages; and tales from madmen; but never directly a part of my campaign.
Until this weekend.
Now that the Mice Men have been introduced my players have seized upon the idea with both hands.
They love the idea of the Tiny Kingdom and we brainstormed late into the night about possibilities. Some of the ideas so far are;
-The Tiny Kingdom as a full-bore OSR supplement/setting full of maps, NPCs, magic items, etc.
-Switching to normal-size anthropomorphic animals and release a setting where good-guy mice battle bad-guy weasels and there might be some sort of religious building involved.
-A complete, soup-to-nuts OSR game, with a number of tiny races and their foes.
-Change things a bit and make the setting a vast, enchanted garden of a powerful wizard who is unaware of the empires and battles of wee people in his arbors, then release that as a supplement.
-Combine the full game with the wizard's garden setting.
What do you guys think?
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
DM's Report: Midsummer at Skull Mountain
System: AD&D 1e with the Far Realms supplement.
Campaign: Seaward, which has been ongoing since 1978
After what the party learned last time when clearing out the entrance to Skull Mountain (the third time that needed doing!) they returned to Oldbridge, leveled up, re-equipped, gathered henchmen, and headed back for Midsummer. Sa. was mildly upset his druid was out (because Midsummer) and the party spent a lot of time talking, since they had three objectives;
1) Explore the third secret door they discovered last time, which they never even opened.
2) Use the magical binoculars mounted on the peak to try to look at the surface of the third moon.
3) Deal with the evil female in a robe that had been controlling the previous inhabitants.
The party assembled was;
Je. played- Brigid, a 3rd level human barbarian (custom class)
and Brigid's henchman, Byron, a 1st level cleric
Ja. played- Seeker, an elf 3rd/4th magic-user/thief
and Seeker's henchman, Kaspar, a 2nd level scout (custom class)
Al. played- Starfalcon, a half-elf 3rd level ranger
Sa. played- "Clint", a human 3rd level paladin
and his various henchmen, starting with Akio, a human 1st level monk
as well as Arthur, his 2nd level human man-at-arms (custom NPC-only class)
also Willem, a 3rd human level hedge mage (a custom NPC-only class)
Ni. played Owen, a human 3rd level magic-user
and Owen's henchman, Octavius, a 1st level half-ogre fighter
plus Owen's brownie familiar, Mortimer
The party also had their hirelings with them: Alon (merchant), Jerb (porter), and Merle (medium footman).
That is a total of 11 with character sheets! So they set out with 14 horses and 3 pack mules up the Old Road toward Skull Mountain.
The party staged out of the walled town of Esber, the town closest to the Briars. While Esber is still prepared for battle the party's report of clearing kobolds and such from the mountain has eased fears greatly. They also received a 10 gp bounty each for returning the Count's horses and reporting the fate of his patrol.
It is literally the height of Summer, so the weather was very hot, something made worse in the Briars. Since the daytime temp was usually over 100 degrees the party traveled without armor and made frequent stops, adding to the travel time. The party encountered a ragged, gaunt man along the road. Although they were fairly sure he was a fugitive from justice their time limit led them to give him some rations and warn him to mend his ways. While gathering wood Kaspar encountered a brush cat, which he killed with some well-placed arrows.
When they finally reached the plateau outside the entrance to Skull Mountain they discovered the bodies of a few of the kobolds killed on the last adventure, but now gnawed upon and then well-rotted. Starfalcon identified the tracks of 4 trolls, one of whom was 'very large'.
The party reached the entrance cave, finding the main doors still sealed. Seeker scouted what they call the North Door; the door was open and the entrance room had rotting corpses of kobolds thrown into the corners. With the party at the entrance he went into the attached storeroom to find - a troll, sleeping in its new nest.
Very quickly the party formed into 2 group - the main group at the North Door watching the other 2 entrances to the entrance room as Starfalcon, Brigid, Seeker, and Kaspar ambushed the sleeping troll.
The attack went well, but there is only so well you can do against a troll. The troll was up and fighting quickly. At the same time in the entrance area Akio sensed a troll coming down the east hall and Octavius saw a troll charging, full speed, down the north hall.
Clint, Arthur, and Akio covered the east while Octavius set spear for charge to the north and the 'flying squad' continued fighting to the west. Seeker and Kaspar did well with arrows while Brigid dealt wounding attacks and Starfalcon took advantage of the ranger bonus damage very, very well. The troll from the east engaged Clint and Arthur, a little damage flying around. Octavius did great damage with his spear - and the troll pushed down the spear and hurt Octavius badly!
Byron rushed in and healed Octavius while Akio moved to back him up; Clint and Arthur stayed engaged; Seeker and Kaspar fell back into the entrance room while Brigid and Starfalcon held the door. During the next round Brigid and Starfalcon dropped the troll to the west, Seeker and Kaspar shifted fire to the north and east, respectively, and combat continued.
But! Brigid and Starfalcon caught a glimpse of a very large troll coming into the room to the west!
The party began to retreat to the south door, under pressure. Owen dropped a Stinking Cloud just inside the west door, catching the big troll. Clint, Starfalcon, and Brigid formed a line in front of the south door against the two trolls while Byron healed Octavius further. Over two rounds they dropped the two trolls and, looking at how much magic was used (Owen's Magic Missiles were also gone and Byron was critically low on cures and all the fighters were wounded) they decided to retreat while the troll was blocked by the Stink.
Unfortunately, the troll burst out of the cave in full pursuit while they were only halfway across the plateau.
And, on spotting him, Brigid went berserk and charged right back.
Luckily, Clint has Boots of Striding and Springing so he was able to reach the big troll alongside Brigid. The two of them did a lot of damage in the first round! But, they also took plenty in return. In the second round Akio arrived, attacking from behind while Clint and Brigid kept doing well and the troll missed all but a love-tap on Brigid. In the third round Brigid and Clint both hit again, Starfalcon arrived and engaged Ranger Powers, and Octavius finally made it - and rolled maximum damage, cleaving the troll from shoulder to hip!
Before an hour was up the trolls were gathered and burnt, the guard area was swept and found empty, and the troll nest looted. An hour after that the party was setting up a hidden camp on the eastern slope of the mountain, resting.
In the morning Clint and Byron healed everyone up and the party went back into the guard complex. The found that the one secret door which they knew of but hadn't opened was trapped and decided to leave it alone. Seeker finally realized an earlier hope and had Octavius rip the lower grate from the kitchen chimney, then clambered up the long, long shaft.
Along the way he found the grate from another fireplace (about 70' higher up); he could just see the corner of a Tonildan rug and the foot of a chair or table, both covered in dust in a room lit, somehow. At about 90' he found a side shaft that smelled of old smelter smoke and fumes angling off southeast and down. And at 120 feet he came to the upper grate, where he found, on the far side, the Wizard Mark of a member of a Mage House known for mage/thieves and evidence they had been stopped by the grate long, long ago.
In the rest of the complex they found a very old cell behind double iron grates - inside were skeletons still with their hands wrapped around each other's throats.
They left this area alone, too.
Last, they went to the Wizard Locked door and had Octavius try it.
A half-ogre with an 18(00) strength: he rolled a 1. The door opened.
Beyond was the far side of the bronze doors from the main cave, sealed up and held by an adamantine bar sunk into the living rock on either side. And in the other direction was a 20' wide, 36' high corridor stretching deep into the mountain. The corridor walls were carved with bas reliefs of cultists walking into the mountain accompanied by various devils.
The party followed the corridor for 1/10th of a mile before coming to a pair of evil shrines, one to ice (to the North) and one to fire (to the South), both behind pillars. The ice altar emitted cold, the fire altar emitted heat, and both were stained with old blood.
The followed the corridor further until it opened into a massive space 150' across, 200' wide, and 180' high. The north section had bas reliefs showing a devilish sea full of spiked seaweed, sahuagin, and sharks. The south section was carved to resemble a vast volcanic plane covered in fire with orcs and devils. In the middle of the north wall was a 20' wide, 10' long raised pool of water; the middle of the south was was a 20', 10' high fireplace.
The entire area was lit from above with a eerie, ruddy light, like the reflection of a forest fire from low clouds. The party continued down the middle of the space, between two rows of mighty columns, and kept going down the main corridor.
After about another 150' they finally reached the end - another set of huge bronze doors. But these are braced from this side with mighty timbers, each the size of a tree trunk, and huge iron stakes hammered into the solid rock floor. The timbers have obviously been enchanted to resist age and, according to Clint and Byron, enchanted to cause evil beings discomfort and unease.
The party, focused on their goal of stopping the female cult leader, hurried back to camp to prepare for the next day, which was the day before Midsummer Night!
The next day the party sent Seeker and Kaspar to the peak to observe the Old Road with the magical binoculars while Brigid, Octavius, and Starfalcon concealed themselves in the entrance cavern. Akio and Byron remained near the stables/North Door area with Clint. Willem and Arthur remained at the camp with the hirelings as a reserve.
About 5 in the afternoon Seeker saw dust from the road a,d the two rushed to the Room of the Eye; by 5:30 they observed a robed woman enter the plateau follow by two huge humanoids, 7'-8' tall and also robed. Both big figures were pulling a gaol cart, both holding 4 human prisoners.
The figures left the gaol carts in the center of the plateau, by the massive bonfire pit, and approached the cavern. The party prepared for trouble as the three walked in.
At that point Kaspar opened fire; the three were surprised for a segment, meaning that Kaspar (as a scout) got a +4 to all bow attacks for the round. He feathered the brisket of the northern-most giant twice and general combat began.
The medium figure threw back the hood of her robes, revealing her to be Arlissa, an evil mage the party had encountered years before and a known devil worshiper. As the party watched a door opened on the side of her capuchon, then closed and the door vanished. This prompted Owen, who knew that she had an Imp familiar, to hit the area with Sleep spell, in hopes of catching it (the spell failed).
At the same time the party's 'trick' appeared - Clint, on horseback with lance, rode out from behind a large stalagmite and charged! He struck the southernmost figure (they were both revealed as more trolls) and continued on so as to wheel and return.
Melee began with Starfalcon once again showing why anyone facing trolls needs a ranger friend and Brigid not berserking, but doing great damage. Seeker came in invisibly and back-stabbed a troll at a key moment, dropping it, and Clint's return pass put down the other just as an arrow pierced Arlissa and she fell over-
and vanished in a puff of sulfuric smoke as her familiar Dimension Doored both of them away.
Clint immediately spurred onto the plateau and spotted both of them out toward the gaol carts, Arlissa already regenerating to consciousness. Akio used his tremendous speed to follow as Clint rode down Arlissa and hit her full on with his lance square in the chest, breaking his lance and ending her life.
The cackling imp seized her soul and vanished back to Hell.
The party freed the prisoners, who were mainly villagers but did accept a healer (custom hireling) into service. Another prisoner was a nobleman; the last survivor of the Count's patrol who was slated to die at midnight.
All were hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and sore for days to weeks of beatings. The party settled them in their camp with the various henchmen and hirelings and returned to the complex, making their way to the peak.
As Midnight approached Seeker watched as Selene, the smallest moon, moved into view. The magical device revealed - a village on the surface of the moon, built as a circle around a central area. In that are was a stone shelf around a great pool. In the pool rested what appeared to be sailing vessels, but there were vast constructions of wood, metal, and crystal on the rock shelf in the shape of dragonflies and a swan.
The party all looked and soon observed one of the dragonflies lift off and fly away!
Turning the device toward the city of High Morath they observed that's nations Midsummer Festival, which involves the Pyrotechnics spell.
Turning it toward Timber Lake they observed a dragonfly ship landing in the lake and being met by elven boats! Starfalcon explained that each year at Midsummer the royal family of the elven Kingdom of Tirgalen goes into the lake with just their personal guards for a 'special ceremony' that all others are forbidden to observe.
They then looked towards the Demon's Eye, the lip of the volcano on Black Island, out at sea. They watched a massive humanoid figure, at least 30' tall, climb to the rim, look out towards the mainland, and then climb back down into the glowing mouth of the volcano.
Last, they turned their gaze back to Selene as it slipped out of the focus of the device. seeing another sailing vessel fly toward the moon village.
The party realized that the sailing vessels would fit into the dry dock on the peak of Skull Mountain.
The party made an OK haul of cash and a good haul of magic items, including a golden llama, a familiar's hat, and a flametongue, among other things.
Before they left they took an intact door from another section of the Guard Area, used it to replace the door shattered by Octavius, then had Mortimer bar it from the far side and before using Dimension Door to come back, sealing off the long corridor from intruders.
The party returned to Esber without serious incident!
Campaign: Seaward, which has been ongoing since 1978
After what the party learned last time when clearing out the entrance to Skull Mountain (the third time that needed doing!) they returned to Oldbridge, leveled up, re-equipped, gathered henchmen, and headed back for Midsummer. Sa. was mildly upset his druid was out (because Midsummer) and the party spent a lot of time talking, since they had three objectives;
1) Explore the third secret door they discovered last time, which they never even opened.
2) Use the magical binoculars mounted on the peak to try to look at the surface of the third moon.
3) Deal with the evil female in a robe that had been controlling the previous inhabitants.
The party assembled was;
Je. played- Brigid, a 3rd level human barbarian (custom class)
and Brigid's henchman, Byron, a 1st level cleric
Ja. played- Seeker, an elf 3rd/4th magic-user/thief
and Seeker's henchman, Kaspar, a 2nd level scout (custom class)
Al. played- Starfalcon, a half-elf 3rd level ranger
Sa. played- "Clint", a human 3rd level paladin
and his various henchmen, starting with Akio, a human 1st level monk
as well as Arthur, his 2nd level human man-at-arms (custom NPC-only class)
also Willem, a 3rd human level hedge mage (a custom NPC-only class)
Ni. played Owen, a human 3rd level magic-user
and Owen's henchman, Octavius, a 1st level half-ogre fighter
plus Owen's brownie familiar, Mortimer
The party also had their hirelings with them: Alon (merchant), Jerb (porter), and Merle (medium footman).
That is a total of 11 with character sheets! So they set out with 14 horses and 3 pack mules up the Old Road toward Skull Mountain.
The party staged out of the walled town of Esber, the town closest to the Briars. While Esber is still prepared for battle the party's report of clearing kobolds and such from the mountain has eased fears greatly. They also received a 10 gp bounty each for returning the Count's horses and reporting the fate of his patrol.
It is literally the height of Summer, so the weather was very hot, something made worse in the Briars. Since the daytime temp was usually over 100 degrees the party traveled without armor and made frequent stops, adding to the travel time. The party encountered a ragged, gaunt man along the road. Although they were fairly sure he was a fugitive from justice their time limit led them to give him some rations and warn him to mend his ways. While gathering wood Kaspar encountered a brush cat, which he killed with some well-placed arrows.
When they finally reached the plateau outside the entrance to Skull Mountain they discovered the bodies of a few of the kobolds killed on the last adventure, but now gnawed upon and then well-rotted. Starfalcon identified the tracks of 4 trolls, one of whom was 'very large'.
The party reached the entrance cave, finding the main doors still sealed. Seeker scouted what they call the North Door; the door was open and the entrance room had rotting corpses of kobolds thrown into the corners. With the party at the entrance he went into the attached storeroom to find - a troll, sleeping in its new nest.
Very quickly the party formed into 2 group - the main group at the North Door watching the other 2 entrances to the entrance room as Starfalcon, Brigid, Seeker, and Kaspar ambushed the sleeping troll.
The attack went well, but there is only so well you can do against a troll. The troll was up and fighting quickly. At the same time in the entrance area Akio sensed a troll coming down the east hall and Octavius saw a troll charging, full speed, down the north hall.
Clint, Arthur, and Akio covered the east while Octavius set spear for charge to the north and the 'flying squad' continued fighting to the west. Seeker and Kaspar did well with arrows while Brigid dealt wounding attacks and Starfalcon took advantage of the ranger bonus damage very, very well. The troll from the east engaged Clint and Arthur, a little damage flying around. Octavius did great damage with his spear - and the troll pushed down the spear and hurt Octavius badly!
Byron rushed in and healed Octavius while Akio moved to back him up; Clint and Arthur stayed engaged; Seeker and Kaspar fell back into the entrance room while Brigid and Starfalcon held the door. During the next round Brigid and Starfalcon dropped the troll to the west, Seeker and Kaspar shifted fire to the north and east, respectively, and combat continued.
But! Brigid and Starfalcon caught a glimpse of a very large troll coming into the room to the west!
The party began to retreat to the south door, under pressure. Owen dropped a Stinking Cloud just inside the west door, catching the big troll. Clint, Starfalcon, and Brigid formed a line in front of the south door against the two trolls while Byron healed Octavius further. Over two rounds they dropped the two trolls and, looking at how much magic was used (Owen's Magic Missiles were also gone and Byron was critically low on cures and all the fighters were wounded) they decided to retreat while the troll was blocked by the Stink.
Unfortunately, the troll burst out of the cave in full pursuit while they were only halfway across the plateau.
And, on spotting him, Brigid went berserk and charged right back.
Luckily, Clint has Boots of Striding and Springing so he was able to reach the big troll alongside Brigid. The two of them did a lot of damage in the first round! But, they also took plenty in return. In the second round Akio arrived, attacking from behind while Clint and Brigid kept doing well and the troll missed all but a love-tap on Brigid. In the third round Brigid and Clint both hit again, Starfalcon arrived and engaged Ranger Powers, and Octavius finally made it - and rolled maximum damage, cleaving the troll from shoulder to hip!
Before an hour was up the trolls were gathered and burnt, the guard area was swept and found empty, and the troll nest looted. An hour after that the party was setting up a hidden camp on the eastern slope of the mountain, resting.
In the morning Clint and Byron healed everyone up and the party went back into the guard complex. The found that the one secret door which they knew of but hadn't opened was trapped and decided to leave it alone. Seeker finally realized an earlier hope and had Octavius rip the lower grate from the kitchen chimney, then clambered up the long, long shaft.
Along the way he found the grate from another fireplace (about 70' higher up); he could just see the corner of a Tonildan rug and the foot of a chair or table, both covered in dust in a room lit, somehow. At about 90' he found a side shaft that smelled of old smelter smoke and fumes angling off southeast and down. And at 120 feet he came to the upper grate, where he found, on the far side, the Wizard Mark of a member of a Mage House known for mage/thieves and evidence they had been stopped by the grate long, long ago.
In the rest of the complex they found a very old cell behind double iron grates - inside were skeletons still with their hands wrapped around each other's throats.
They left this area alone, too.
Last, they went to the Wizard Locked door and had Octavius try it.
A half-ogre with an 18(00) strength: he rolled a 1. The door opened.
Beyond was the far side of the bronze doors from the main cave, sealed up and held by an adamantine bar sunk into the living rock on either side. And in the other direction was a 20' wide, 36' high corridor stretching deep into the mountain. The corridor walls were carved with bas reliefs of cultists walking into the mountain accompanied by various devils.
The party followed the corridor for 1/10th of a mile before coming to a pair of evil shrines, one to ice (to the North) and one to fire (to the South), both behind pillars. The ice altar emitted cold, the fire altar emitted heat, and both were stained with old blood.
The followed the corridor further until it opened into a massive space 150' across, 200' wide, and 180' high. The north section had bas reliefs showing a devilish sea full of spiked seaweed, sahuagin, and sharks. The south section was carved to resemble a vast volcanic plane covered in fire with orcs and devils. In the middle of the north wall was a 20' wide, 10' long raised pool of water; the middle of the south was was a 20', 10' high fireplace.
The entire area was lit from above with a eerie, ruddy light, like the reflection of a forest fire from low clouds. The party continued down the middle of the space, between two rows of mighty columns, and kept going down the main corridor.
After about another 150' they finally reached the end - another set of huge bronze doors. But these are braced from this side with mighty timbers, each the size of a tree trunk, and huge iron stakes hammered into the solid rock floor. The timbers have obviously been enchanted to resist age and, according to Clint and Byron, enchanted to cause evil beings discomfort and unease.
The party, focused on their goal of stopping the female cult leader, hurried back to camp to prepare for the next day, which was the day before Midsummer Night!
The next day the party sent Seeker and Kaspar to the peak to observe the Old Road with the magical binoculars while Brigid, Octavius, and Starfalcon concealed themselves in the entrance cavern. Akio and Byron remained near the stables/North Door area with Clint. Willem and Arthur remained at the camp with the hirelings as a reserve.
About 5 in the afternoon Seeker saw dust from the road a,d the two rushed to the Room of the Eye; by 5:30 they observed a robed woman enter the plateau follow by two huge humanoids, 7'-8' tall and also robed. Both big figures were pulling a gaol cart, both holding 4 human prisoners.
The figures left the gaol carts in the center of the plateau, by the massive bonfire pit, and approached the cavern. The party prepared for trouble as the three walked in.
At that point Kaspar opened fire; the three were surprised for a segment, meaning that Kaspar (as a scout) got a +4 to all bow attacks for the round. He feathered the brisket of the northern-most giant twice and general combat began.
The medium figure threw back the hood of her robes, revealing her to be Arlissa, an evil mage the party had encountered years before and a known devil worshiper. As the party watched a door opened on the side of her capuchon, then closed and the door vanished. This prompted Owen, who knew that she had an Imp familiar, to hit the area with Sleep spell, in hopes of catching it (the spell failed).
At the same time the party's 'trick' appeared - Clint, on horseback with lance, rode out from behind a large stalagmite and charged! He struck the southernmost figure (they were both revealed as more trolls) and continued on so as to wheel and return.
Melee began with Starfalcon once again showing why anyone facing trolls needs a ranger friend and Brigid not berserking, but doing great damage. Seeker came in invisibly and back-stabbed a troll at a key moment, dropping it, and Clint's return pass put down the other just as an arrow pierced Arlissa and she fell over-
and vanished in a puff of sulfuric smoke as her familiar Dimension Doored both of them away.
Clint immediately spurred onto the plateau and spotted both of them out toward the gaol carts, Arlissa already regenerating to consciousness. Akio used his tremendous speed to follow as Clint rode down Arlissa and hit her full on with his lance square in the chest, breaking his lance and ending her life.
The cackling imp seized her soul and vanished back to Hell.
The party freed the prisoners, who were mainly villagers but did accept a healer (custom hireling) into service. Another prisoner was a nobleman; the last survivor of the Count's patrol who was slated to die at midnight.
All were hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and sore for days to weeks of beatings. The party settled them in their camp with the various henchmen and hirelings and returned to the complex, making their way to the peak.
As Midnight approached Seeker watched as Selene, the smallest moon, moved into view. The magical device revealed - a village on the surface of the moon, built as a circle around a central area. In that are was a stone shelf around a great pool. In the pool rested what appeared to be sailing vessels, but there were vast constructions of wood, metal, and crystal on the rock shelf in the shape of dragonflies and a swan.
The party all looked and soon observed one of the dragonflies lift off and fly away!
Turning the device toward the city of High Morath they observed that's nations Midsummer Festival, which involves the Pyrotechnics spell.
Turning it toward Timber Lake they observed a dragonfly ship landing in the lake and being met by elven boats! Starfalcon explained that each year at Midsummer the royal family of the elven Kingdom of Tirgalen goes into the lake with just their personal guards for a 'special ceremony' that all others are forbidden to observe.
They then looked towards the Demon's Eye, the lip of the volcano on Black Island, out at sea. They watched a massive humanoid figure, at least 30' tall, climb to the rim, look out towards the mainland, and then climb back down into the glowing mouth of the volcano.
Last, they turned their gaze back to Selene as it slipped out of the focus of the device. seeing another sailing vessel fly toward the moon village.
The party realized that the sailing vessels would fit into the dry dock on the peak of Skull Mountain.
The party made an OK haul of cash and a good haul of magic items, including a golden llama, a familiar's hat, and a flametongue, among other things.
Before they left they took an intact door from another section of the Guard Area, used it to replace the door shattered by Octavius, then had Mortimer bar it from the far side and before using Dimension Door to come back, sealing off the long corridor from intruders.
The party returned to Esber without serious incident!
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
When the Wise Man Points at the Moon the Fool Looks at the Wise Man's Finger
[Sorry for the light writing, but October is a busy month around my house with 3 birthdays in 2 weeks.]
Over the weekend I was talking with my sons about gaming (ok, ok - that can describe every day) when the oldest, J., and I had this exchange:
J: "Didn't some of the high-level wizards in Greyhawk keep clones on their moon?"
Me: "Yup"
J: "How'd they get there?"
Me: "How do you think?"
J: "Well, maybe the air doesn't end between the surface and the moon, there. Or maybe they had something like an Apparatus of Kwalish that could fly."
Me: "Think easier."
J: .... "Hey! Teleport! Holy Moley - they can see the destination! It isn't even tough! And if they have Teleport without Error it's a cakewalk! Wow! The implications are HUGE!"
Yes. Yes, they are.
Let's talk about Teleport and the implications, shall we?
First, the AD&D 1e (and OSRIC) description of Teleport is pretty fun: It can't cross dimensional boundaries, but distance isn't a factor. That's pretty cool. Add in that the description says 'instantly' so there is no lag. It can be dangerous, though - if you aren't very familiar with where you are going you might end up rather dead. It is certainly meant mainly as a 'get out of jail free' card - in a tight spot you and your pals can get home. And if you are willing to accept some risk you could ambush the jeebers out of someone.
But can you go to the moon?
Well, on a clear night you can see the moon, right? Sure, it is far away, but distance means nothing to the spell. I might argue that your inability to see precise details at the incredible range means you'd max out at 'seen casually' until you actually got there, but that risk isn't that bad, and you could mitigate it a little. And once you got there you could certainly find some place, spend a few days there, and have a 'carefully studied' target location for future trips.
So, yeah - it looks like any 9th+ level wizard with access to the Teleport spell has Faster Than Light space travel, at least to the moon. And if, like me, you have Teleport without Error in your campaign that means that 14th+ level wizards can do so with essentially no risk!
"But Rick," you say, "The moon is an arid, airless rock! Who could live there?"
Well, your moon(s) could be different. A little air, maybe a bit of water like a desert? Or perhaps it is another world; unique plants, animals, even its own humanoids and civilizations.
Sounds like a lot of work, huh?
But even if it is an arid, airless rock - that's awesome! Between Necklaces of Adaptation, Helms of Underwater Action, and spells a powerful mage is going to see vacuum as a feature, not a bug. After all, it makes his remote wizard's tower even harder to attack, right?
Imagine it! An archmage's tower jutting up from the rim of a lunar crater, the crater itself 'roofed over' with Walls of Force and filled with a massive garden and small forest. Other Walls of Force keeping air within the tower. Occasionally servants of the archmage venture out in an Apparatus of Kwalish to retrieve unique gemstones for their master's research.
Then ages pass. The overgrown garden is withered and desiccated in the vacuum decades after the Walls of Force failed. The now-airless tower still looms over the lifeless moonscape as the archmage lich, unconcerned with breathing, watches over his sterile kingdom....
That could be a ton of fun.
Or perhaps the moon is a secret dock for spelljammers and powerful mages control the (rather exotic) trade with other spheres and treat any newcomer as competition or a smuggler?
Or the moon is the headquarters for an illithid invasion. Or it is the forgotten birthplace of the elves and is still populated by a strange elven race with access to unique magic. Or there is air between the planet and the moon and the moon is the breeding ground and nesting place for the most powerful dragons - the only creatures powerful enough to fly that vast distance. The catch is only the youngest, weakest dragons remain on the planet, meaning that the youngest, weakest moon dragons are larger, smarter, and tougher than any great elder wyrm ever seen....
No, I'm not done.
Think of the planets!
"Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" you say, "Rick, I might let a powerful mage Teleport to the moon with great risk, but planets?! They're just points of light in the sky! I wouldn't even allow a PC to Teleport as 'casually seen!"
Yeah. I wouldn't either. Or I might let you and have you end up in deep space or the center of the planet.
But!
Let's say your mage has been to the moon. She thinks it is nice, but too crowded. Planets are interesting because they act unusually - what if they're like the moon, but further away? Your 15th level mage knows how hideously risky it would be to Teleport towards something so obscure, but she has an idea.
Ever read the description of the spell Clairvoyance? I mean, really looked at it, especially since you read about jaunting to the moon? Guess what? In 1e, OSRIC, etc. it's like Teleport:
No range, it just can't cross the planes.
So if a curious and ambitious mage of sufficient power were to want to they could, over the course of weeks, easily cast Clairvoyance multiple times on a planet until they 'zoomed in' on the surface and could get a clear look at it. They could scan for a safe place to 'land', learn about any local plant or animal life, etc. long before they actually went there.
Oh, and Crystal Balls work the same way, even with time limits.
And I don't know about you, but if a 9th level magic-user had Clairvoyance active and attempted to Teleport to the scryed location, I would probably rule that to be 'studied carefully' and no risk at all for Teleport without Error.
If I may engage in a little emotional display.
ahem
Sweet Baby John the Baptist! Do you know what this means?! This means every wizard that knows both Clairvoyance and Teleport is effectively a one-man space program with access to FTL travel!
If you have Teleport without Error or similar in your campaign it means there isn't even that much risk involved!
Let that sink in for a moment. Savor the possibilities. Here's a few off the top of my head:
- Multi-genre adventures in any campaign.
- Every intelligent race came from other planets
- Evil space-thieves smuggling blaster rifles to the Hobgoblin King
- Encounters with a group of people in strange clothes that ask to be 'beamed up' and then vanish in front of the players
- The ability to hire mercenaries from another planet
- Remaking Episode I in my 1e campaign with monks FROM SPACE, bards FROM SPACE, and a horde of zombies for the bad guys
I mean, talking about what could be done with this would be a year of blog posts.
So - what are YOU going to do with space-mages?
Over the weekend I was talking with my sons about gaming (ok, ok - that can describe every day) when the oldest, J., and I had this exchange:
J: "Didn't some of the high-level wizards in Greyhawk keep clones on their moon?"
Me: "Yup"
J: "How'd they get there?"
Me: "How do you think?"
J: "Well, maybe the air doesn't end between the surface and the moon, there. Or maybe they had something like an Apparatus of Kwalish that could fly."
Me: "Think easier."
J: .... "Hey! Teleport! Holy Moley - they can see the destination! It isn't even tough! And if they have Teleport without Error it's a cakewalk! Wow! The implications are HUGE!"
Yes. Yes, they are.
Let's talk about Teleport and the implications, shall we?
First, the AD&D 1e (and OSRIC) description of Teleport is pretty fun: It can't cross dimensional boundaries, but distance isn't a factor. That's pretty cool. Add in that the description says 'instantly' so there is no lag. It can be dangerous, though - if you aren't very familiar with where you are going you might end up rather dead. It is certainly meant mainly as a 'get out of jail free' card - in a tight spot you and your pals can get home. And if you are willing to accept some risk you could ambush the jeebers out of someone.
But can you go to the moon?
Well, on a clear night you can see the moon, right? Sure, it is far away, but distance means nothing to the spell. I might argue that your inability to see precise details at the incredible range means you'd max out at 'seen casually' until you actually got there, but that risk isn't that bad, and you could mitigate it a little. And once you got there you could certainly find some place, spend a few days there, and have a 'carefully studied' target location for future trips.
So, yeah - it looks like any 9th+ level wizard with access to the Teleport spell has Faster Than Light space travel, at least to the moon. And if, like me, you have Teleport without Error in your campaign that means that 14th+ level wizards can do so with essentially no risk!
"But Rick," you say, "The moon is an arid, airless rock! Who could live there?"
Well, your moon(s) could be different. A little air, maybe a bit of water like a desert? Or perhaps it is another world; unique plants, animals, even its own humanoids and civilizations.
Sounds like a lot of work, huh?
But even if it is an arid, airless rock - that's awesome! Between Necklaces of Adaptation, Helms of Underwater Action, and spells a powerful mage is going to see vacuum as a feature, not a bug. After all, it makes his remote wizard's tower even harder to attack, right?
Imagine it! An archmage's tower jutting up from the rim of a lunar crater, the crater itself 'roofed over' with Walls of Force and filled with a massive garden and small forest. Other Walls of Force keeping air within the tower. Occasionally servants of the archmage venture out in an Apparatus of Kwalish to retrieve unique gemstones for their master's research.
Then ages pass. The overgrown garden is withered and desiccated in the vacuum decades after the Walls of Force failed. The now-airless tower still looms over the lifeless moonscape as the archmage lich, unconcerned with breathing, watches over his sterile kingdom....
That could be a ton of fun.
Or perhaps the moon is a secret dock for spelljammers and powerful mages control the (rather exotic) trade with other spheres and treat any newcomer as competition or a smuggler?
Or the moon is the headquarters for an illithid invasion. Or it is the forgotten birthplace of the elves and is still populated by a strange elven race with access to unique magic. Or there is air between the planet and the moon and the moon is the breeding ground and nesting place for the most powerful dragons - the only creatures powerful enough to fly that vast distance. The catch is only the youngest, weakest dragons remain on the planet, meaning that the youngest, weakest moon dragons are larger, smarter, and tougher than any great elder wyrm ever seen....
No, I'm not done.
Think of the planets!
"Whoa, whoa, WHOA!" you say, "Rick, I might let a powerful mage Teleport to the moon with great risk, but planets?! They're just points of light in the sky! I wouldn't even allow a PC to Teleport as 'casually seen!"
Yeah. I wouldn't either. Or I might let you and have you end up in deep space or the center of the planet.
But!
Let's say your mage has been to the moon. She thinks it is nice, but too crowded. Planets are interesting because they act unusually - what if they're like the moon, but further away? Your 15th level mage knows how hideously risky it would be to Teleport towards something so obscure, but she has an idea.
Ever read the description of the spell Clairvoyance? I mean, really looked at it, especially since you read about jaunting to the moon? Guess what? In 1e, OSRIC, etc. it's like Teleport:
No range, it just can't cross the planes.
So if a curious and ambitious mage of sufficient power were to want to they could, over the course of weeks, easily cast Clairvoyance multiple times on a planet until they 'zoomed in' on the surface and could get a clear look at it. They could scan for a safe place to 'land', learn about any local plant or animal life, etc. long before they actually went there.
Oh, and Crystal Balls work the same way, even with time limits.
And I don't know about you, but if a 9th level magic-user had Clairvoyance active and attempted to Teleport to the scryed location, I would probably rule that to be 'studied carefully' and no risk at all for Teleport without Error.
If I may engage in a little emotional display.
ahem
Sweet Baby John the Baptist! Do you know what this means?! This means every wizard that knows both Clairvoyance and Teleport is effectively a one-man space program with access to FTL travel!
If you have Teleport without Error or similar in your campaign it means there isn't even that much risk involved!
Let that sink in for a moment. Savor the possibilities. Here's a few off the top of my head:
- Multi-genre adventures in any campaign.
- Every intelligent race came from other planets
- Evil space-thieves smuggling blaster rifles to the Hobgoblin King
- Encounters with a group of people in strange clothes that ask to be 'beamed up' and then vanish in front of the players
- The ability to hire mercenaries from another planet
- Remaking Episode I in my 1e campaign with monks FROM SPACE, bards FROM SPACE, and a horde of zombies for the bad guys
I mean, talking about what could be done with this would be a year of blog posts.
So - what are YOU going to do with space-mages?
Friday, October 3, 2014
Religion, Churches, and More - How I Use Far Realms part 1
My Supplement Far Realms - which can be purchased here - is derived from the house rules of my campaign, called Seaward. This is the first in a series of posts where I will describe where the ideas in Far Realms came from and how I use them.
When I began my campaign, 1978, religion in AD&D was really nebulous. While a lot of people did a vague 'Law v. Chaos' thing similar to Moorcock, my knowledge of Three Hearts and Three Lions made me, frankly, contemptuous of Moorcock's ham-handedness of the same topic.A huge fan of the tales of Charlemagne's Paladins, I knew that clerics were like Archbishop Turpin, paladins were like Roland, and magic-users were like Malagigi, etc.
So, since I loved the tales of Charlemagne my campaign had a decidedly European Catholic flavor to it. Funny considering I didn't even know any Catholics at the time.
I wanted to create an experience, set up religion in the game that reflected how religion looks and seems in Real Life. So, I tried this:
The Church: A monotheistic church with saints, essentially a branch of the Catholic Church. It has been spread all around the world. The Church is the source of spells for clerics and paladins, it is in the villages, the towns, and the cities. The Church is a large part of what unites humans with the other races called 'demi-human' and separates them from the other races called 'humanoids'.
Druids: Druids have no gods, they derive their spell power from a combination of mystical connection to nature and powers (spells) granted by elemental powers [. This both explains why they are so different and their requirement to remain Neutral.
Cults: A general term for groups where at least some had access to cleric-like spells. While some are associated with elemental forces, most gain their power from pacts with devils and/or demons.
With this general structure I went on and set it up so that clerics of the Church had access to the 'standard list; of cleric spells and druids were, well, druids. Cultists had a mix of cleric and druid spells that reflected their source of power. Cultists had limited lists of spells and usually only up to 4th level spells. On the other hand, they often had 'dark gifts' from their power source: the ability to See Invisible, or to regenerate (but not damage from silver), or an imp familiar, or bonus charisma with other orcs, or something similar.
Combined this was a pretty simple set of mechanics to create an interesting "us vs. them" feel between demi-humans and humanoids and provide a reason for evil clerics to have surprises up their sleeves.
This also was part of what led me to create the Religious Brother/Sister NPC class. I envisioned the cleric as someone who fought the enemies of the Church, who opposed evil cultists face to face on the field of battle. They aren't pastors, or nuns, or even evangelists. So the NPC-only Religious Brother/Sister class was added to my campaign to be the pastors, evangelists, nuns, etc. of Seaward (although there is a bit more detail about how and why I developed NPC classes to read about on this blog).
But as well as it was working I was looking for a bit more. Some sort of method of separating not just the clerics but the rank and file members of various religions.I remember, very clearly, having a long talk with my friend David, who was running his own world, about some sort of spell that differentiated the members from each other. It was just before Christmas, 1981.
Two months later he was laughing at me as I was reading the Ceremony spells in Dragon Magazine. I grabbed the idea and ran with it.
I honestly can't remember the details of the official Ceremony spells anymore because my custom ones have been my go-to for over 30 years.
So the mechanics of religion are more concrete in my campaign. Here is how it works for most NPCs and characters:
-As a child they are Baptized into the Church. This spell/ceremony allows them to receive the full benefits of other spells. Unless Baptized a person cannot be affected by other ceremonies, won't get the benefits of Bless, Prayer, or similar spells, and have their chances or being Raised lowered.
-When they turn 16 they are Confirmed. Now they are members of the Church and recognized as adults. This also has other benefits.
-As they go through life other spells/ceremonies have other effects: Holy Orders grants new priests the ability to learn spells as a cleric or religious brother; Special Vows is what makes a paladin; Consecration is used to make objects holy (and is what makes crossbow bolts deadly to rakshasa instead of Bless!).
These spells have real in-game effects. For example, until a cleric receives the Ordination spell he can't attract followers.
Now, these various spells are only available to religious brothers, not clerics. This reflects the differing roles of the two classes (and makes PCs want to have religious brother henchmen).
Druids and cultists have similar spells and others for things like gaining dark gifts.
So a small handful of spells, an NPC class, and boom! I have all sorts of interplay between different 'religions', the ability to surprise my players with oddly-powered bad guys, and all without needed tons and tons of writeups about gods, avatars, etc.
When I began my campaign, 1978, religion in AD&D was really nebulous. While a lot of people did a vague 'Law v. Chaos' thing similar to Moorcock, my knowledge of Three Hearts and Three Lions made me, frankly, contemptuous of Moorcock's ham-handedness of the same topic.A huge fan of the tales of Charlemagne's Paladins, I knew that clerics were like Archbishop Turpin, paladins were like Roland, and magic-users were like Malagigi, etc.
So, since I loved the tales of Charlemagne my campaign had a decidedly European Catholic flavor to it. Funny considering I didn't even know any Catholics at the time.
I wanted to create an experience, set up religion in the game that reflected how religion looks and seems in Real Life. So, I tried this:
The Church: A monotheistic church with saints, essentially a branch of the Catholic Church. It has been spread all around the world. The Church is the source of spells for clerics and paladins, it is in the villages, the towns, and the cities. The Church is a large part of what unites humans with the other races called 'demi-human' and separates them from the other races called 'humanoids'.
Druids: Druids have no gods, they derive their spell power from a combination of mystical connection to nature and powers (spells) granted by elemental powers [. This both explains why they are so different and their requirement to remain Neutral.
Cults: A general term for groups where at least some had access to cleric-like spells. While some are associated with elemental forces, most gain their power from pacts with devils and/or demons.
With this general structure I went on and set it up so that clerics of the Church had access to the 'standard list; of cleric spells and druids were, well, druids. Cultists had a mix of cleric and druid spells that reflected their source of power. Cultists had limited lists of spells and usually only up to 4th level spells. On the other hand, they often had 'dark gifts' from their power source: the ability to See Invisible, or to regenerate (but not damage from silver), or an imp familiar, or bonus charisma with other orcs, or something similar.
Combined this was a pretty simple set of mechanics to create an interesting "us vs. them" feel between demi-humans and humanoids and provide a reason for evil clerics to have surprises up their sleeves.
This also was part of what led me to create the Religious Brother/Sister NPC class. I envisioned the cleric as someone who fought the enemies of the Church, who opposed evil cultists face to face on the field of battle. They aren't pastors, or nuns, or even evangelists. So the NPC-only Religious Brother/Sister class was added to my campaign to be the pastors, evangelists, nuns, etc. of Seaward (although there is a bit more detail about how and why I developed NPC classes to read about on this blog).
But as well as it was working I was looking for a bit more. Some sort of method of separating not just the clerics but the rank and file members of various religions.I remember, very clearly, having a long talk with my friend David, who was running his own world, about some sort of spell that differentiated the members from each other. It was just before Christmas, 1981.
Two months later he was laughing at me as I was reading the Ceremony spells in Dragon Magazine. I grabbed the idea and ran with it.
I honestly can't remember the details of the official Ceremony spells anymore because my custom ones have been my go-to for over 30 years.
So the mechanics of religion are more concrete in my campaign. Here is how it works for most NPCs and characters:
-As a child they are Baptized into the Church. This spell/ceremony allows them to receive the full benefits of other spells. Unless Baptized a person cannot be affected by other ceremonies, won't get the benefits of Bless, Prayer, or similar spells, and have their chances or being Raised lowered.
-When they turn 16 they are Confirmed. Now they are members of the Church and recognized as adults. This also has other benefits.
-As they go through life other spells/ceremonies have other effects: Holy Orders grants new priests the ability to learn spells as a cleric or religious brother; Special Vows is what makes a paladin; Consecration is used to make objects holy (and is what makes crossbow bolts deadly to rakshasa instead of Bless!).
These spells have real in-game effects. For example, until a cleric receives the Ordination spell he can't attract followers.
Now, these various spells are only available to religious brothers, not clerics. This reflects the differing roles of the two classes (and makes PCs want to have religious brother henchmen).
Druids and cultists have similar spells and others for things like gaining dark gifts.
So a small handful of spells, an NPC class, and boom! I have all sorts of interplay between different 'religions', the ability to surprise my players with oddly-powered bad guys, and all without needed tons and tons of writeups about gods, avatars, etc.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Far Realms is Almost Done - Time for a Give Away!
Far Realms is hard to quantify in terms of 'time to write'; it is mainly a collection of house rules from my 36+ year old AD&D 1e campaign turned into an OSRIC/OSR-friendly format. So on the one hand I could claim the book took 38 years to write (time from my first written house rule until now). On the other, I started the conversion about 18 months. It has been a great family project with the wife and 4 older sons enjoying the process as I took a little time most Saturdays to turn this into something other people can enjoy.
And that is, in the end, what I hope for - that other people enjoy the book.
And that is, in the end, what I hope for - that other people enjoy the book.
the back cover in black and white galley proof
It has alternate weapon specialization rules, additional abilities for thieves, assassins, druids, clerics, magic-users, and illusionists. I have an alternate initiative system, rules for upkeep and maintenance, and an OSR ruleset for disease and parasites.
I have expanded a hireling or two and added the healer and merchant hirelings. I have 4 NPC-only classes (the Man-at-Arms, the Religious Brother, the Hedge Mage, and the Scoundrel), and I have 4 new PC classes (Barbarian, Bard, Nobleman, and Scout).
There are rules for followers for barbarians and noblemen and expanded charts for fighter followers.
Oh, and 33 pages of new spells.
The front cover in black and white galley proof
We hope to have the final version up on RPGNow this weekend!
Of course, we are going to give away a free copy - just leave a comment on this post (or on google+) promising to write a 5-star review and we'll add your name to the list (OK, you only have to promise to actually read it). On Sunday morning my 11 year old will pull one of the names from a hat and we will get the free copy to the winner!
Monday, July 14, 2014
NPCs and the Magic Level of a Campaign.
My series on NPCs in 1e/OSR campaigns began with a discussion of 'the other guys'; NPCs who aren't placed by the DM, rolled up as followers or members of a guild, or part of a random encounter. The NPCs implied to be part of everyday life by the various PHB and DMG entries on henchman, etc.
It continued by examining the potential size of standing armies and such, which is mainly fighter followers.
Then I went on to discuss how these various NPCs could impact the economy.
While I mention followers, and leaders, and kings, and such my focus is really still on the 'other NPCs' because their existence, numbers, and levels mean a lot to how your world looks and works. Yeah, I know, it may seem a bit odd to focus so much energy on the elements of a campaign that are designed as background, but the wallpaper on your computer screen is important, too. Consider these articles a 'jumping off point' for a discussion.
This time, let's talk about what these leveled NPCs say about magic and magic item sin the campaign.
As we saw earlier if you follow the general numbers we can assume from the entries on henchmen in the DMG you will generally not have very many NPCs above 3rd level and very few of 7th level or above. Indeed, in the sample kingdom of about three-quarters of a million humans there is about a 17% chance of having a single 10th level magic-user. Expanding the math a bit you need a population greater than about 2 million to have a 17% chance of a 12th level magic-user and if you want to make sure you have at least one mage like that 'floating around' then the base population needs to be, oh, 8.2 million+.
What this implies is that there are not a lot of guys making magic items in the hinterlands. Large empires are the source of all those wands and holy avengers. Where a lot of adventures take place, the edge of civilization, isn't where these things are manufactured.
So why is it where they are found?
The very excellent blog The Hill Cantons (which you should be reading) describes this better than I can here and here. Essentially, a lot of the assumptions behind Greyhawk (and thus the original rules) are very Dying Earth/post-apocalyptic/lost glory based. While there are powerful people roaming around the world is full of the ruins of past glory beyond the ken of current dreamers....
The magical worldview that flows from the '1 in 1,000 NPCs has levels' assumption is that spell casters are rare and magic items are rarer. The vast majority of rural NPCs will never have met a magic-user of any level and there are probably less than 3 people in the kingdom that can cast Fireball or Lightning Bolt. This seems to mean that having a spell cast for you will probably be expensive if you can find someone who can cast it. After all, there are probably just a dozen mages who know Identify in the entire realm; half of them are above 1st level and will charge more since the spell is more accurate when cast by higher level magic-users.
It also means that the only clerics of high enough level to Resurrect (if any) will be specifically placed by the DM, limiting who can be raised as well as where and why. Magical cures will be far from common; only 6 clerics are high enough level to cast Cure Disease which means that even with the help of the 30 or so paladins plague can still easily sweep the land. Lay doctors and barber-surgeons will certainly be needed since there is only 1 leveled cleric per 9 villages.
On the one hand, I find this fairly refreshing, actually, because while the assumptions and implications may be about faded glories, this also means that the DM can determine exactly how common magic items are. How? well, the 'other NPCs' aren't going to have a lot to do with this; only NPCs specifically placed by the DM will be in the magic item creation business. There are just enough 7th-9th level magic-users and clerics around to justify potions and scrolls without an on-universe explanation for why +2 daggers aren't for sale from street carts (unless, of course, you want that). You can still use the threat of plague and famine as a strategic plot device, 0-level mooks are still a credible threat, etc.
On the other it really demands that the DM actively explain where magic items come from, why they are where they are, and maybe even why they were made. A strong argument could be made that hiring a spell caster would be hideously expensive and spell components might be, as well. And the party might be hard-pressed to convince the only cleric in 1,000 miles capable of casting Raise Dead that their companion deserves the spell being cast on him.
Further, this sort of 'density of characters with levels' puts the player characters into an interesting position - until about, oh, 5th level they will sort of 'blend in'; there are a fair number of NPCs in that range. From 5th, though, they really start to stand out and probably start to become famous and become a Big Deal at 7th+. Name level? They are now in a class of their own. All this fits smoothly into the idea that PCs are exceptional in how far they can go. There may be 150 magic-users in the kingdom, but the PC will rise to heights the others can only dream of.
Suddenly we can understand why PCs aren't unusual enough to be remarkable at 1st level but special enough at 9th to attract loyal followers. And while useful this analysis doesn't solve any of the real problems a DM faces in his campaign - the who, what, why, etc. of magic item creation, for example.
Next time I will discuss how to change these numbers to change the campaign.
It continued by examining the potential size of standing armies and such, which is mainly fighter followers.
Then I went on to discuss how these various NPCs could impact the economy.
While I mention followers, and leaders, and kings, and such my focus is really still on the 'other NPCs' because their existence, numbers, and levels mean a lot to how your world looks and works. Yeah, I know, it may seem a bit odd to focus so much energy on the elements of a campaign that are designed as background, but the wallpaper on your computer screen is important, too. Consider these articles a 'jumping off point' for a discussion.
This time, let's talk about what these leveled NPCs say about magic and magic item sin the campaign.
As we saw earlier if you follow the general numbers we can assume from the entries on henchmen in the DMG you will generally not have very many NPCs above 3rd level and very few of 7th level or above. Indeed, in the sample kingdom of about three-quarters of a million humans there is about a 17% chance of having a single 10th level magic-user. Expanding the math a bit you need a population greater than about 2 million to have a 17% chance of a 12th level magic-user and if you want to make sure you have at least one mage like that 'floating around' then the base population needs to be, oh, 8.2 million+.
What this implies is that there are not a lot of guys making magic items in the hinterlands. Large empires are the source of all those wands and holy avengers. Where a lot of adventures take place, the edge of civilization, isn't where these things are manufactured.
So why is it where they are found?
The very excellent blog The Hill Cantons (which you should be reading) describes this better than I can here and here. Essentially, a lot of the assumptions behind Greyhawk (and thus the original rules) are very Dying Earth/post-apocalyptic/lost glory based. While there are powerful people roaming around the world is full of the ruins of past glory beyond the ken of current dreamers....
The magical worldview that flows from the '1 in 1,000 NPCs has levels' assumption is that spell casters are rare and magic items are rarer. The vast majority of rural NPCs will never have met a magic-user of any level and there are probably less than 3 people in the kingdom that can cast Fireball or Lightning Bolt. This seems to mean that having a spell cast for you will probably be expensive if you can find someone who can cast it. After all, there are probably just a dozen mages who know Identify in the entire realm; half of them are above 1st level and will charge more since the spell is more accurate when cast by higher level magic-users.
It also means that the only clerics of high enough level to Resurrect (if any) will be specifically placed by the DM, limiting who can be raised as well as where and why. Magical cures will be far from common; only 6 clerics are high enough level to cast Cure Disease which means that even with the help of the 30 or so paladins plague can still easily sweep the land. Lay doctors and barber-surgeons will certainly be needed since there is only 1 leveled cleric per 9 villages.
On the one hand, I find this fairly refreshing, actually, because while the assumptions and implications may be about faded glories, this also means that the DM can determine exactly how common magic items are. How? well, the 'other NPCs' aren't going to have a lot to do with this; only NPCs specifically placed by the DM will be in the magic item creation business. There are just enough 7th-9th level magic-users and clerics around to justify potions and scrolls without an on-universe explanation for why +2 daggers aren't for sale from street carts (unless, of course, you want that). You can still use the threat of plague and famine as a strategic plot device, 0-level mooks are still a credible threat, etc.
On the other it really demands that the DM actively explain where magic items come from, why they are where they are, and maybe even why they were made. A strong argument could be made that hiring a spell caster would be hideously expensive and spell components might be, as well. And the party might be hard-pressed to convince the only cleric in 1,000 miles capable of casting Raise Dead that their companion deserves the spell being cast on him.
Further, this sort of 'density of characters with levels' puts the player characters into an interesting position - until about, oh, 5th level they will sort of 'blend in'; there are a fair number of NPCs in that range. From 5th, though, they really start to stand out and probably start to become famous and become a Big Deal at 7th+. Name level? They are now in a class of their own. All this fits smoothly into the idea that PCs are exceptional in how far they can go. There may be 150 magic-users in the kingdom, but the PC will rise to heights the others can only dream of.
Suddenly we can understand why PCs aren't unusual enough to be remarkable at 1st level but special enough at 9th to attract loyal followers. And while useful this analysis doesn't solve any of the real problems a DM faces in his campaign - the who, what, why, etc. of magic item creation, for example.
Next time I will discuss how to change these numbers to change the campaign.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Inspired by Other Bloggers - Back in the Day and Now
Last night I saw an interesting article in my Google+ feed - this fun bit. Inspired, I will do the same and related my experiences.
I started D&D in '77 on March 15th. Yes, I remember the specific day because there was a Shakespeare play going on at the time. The guy running it was a college freshman at Ball State and was using the white box rules for a game with his girlfriend, some high school kids - and me. I am forever grateful to the two girls who insisted I be able allowed to play even though I was 9.
I remember setting as fairly important; the DM used French to indicate when we were speaking to traders from other lands and his girlfriend used German to represent the barbarians from the North. I was soon with a group of middle schoolers with a high school age DM and he also had a fairly detailed setting with the politics between the elves and the dwarves really setting the tone.
By the end of the year I had Traveller, the Holmes basic set, and Chivalry & Sorcery. C&S has a huge impact on me because it was very focused on setting and on background. And Traveller added skills! I loved the snap and crunch of Traveller with all the math, the ship design, etc. And I liked the complexity of C&S. But I played D&D the most, with a bullet.
In '78 I started working on a setting for my own D&D campaign, a port city called Seaward. Originally it was a crude map of a small city, a nearby set of smugglers' caves, and where the wizard's tower was. My players seemed to love the background and settings. The style of play for us was similar to this;
-Make characters (3d6 in order, roll 3 sets and pick the one you like)
-Make the new character part of the setting with backstory
-Have fun.
Character death was fairly common.
Around 1980 I noticed that the modules I had gotten had really changed the map - figuring out where to put them, how they fit into the world, etc. really spread out the map and added a lot of depth. My house rules were both well begun and under constant revision. I was actively trying to figure out how to get Traveller-style rules in my D&D setting when three things happened in quick succession; I moved, I received the World of Greyhawk folio as a gift; and I received Rolemaster as a gift.
The impact of Rolemaster on how I thought about gaming was huge, bigger than C&S had been. The Greyhawk folio made me look at the Seaward setting from a 'top down' perspective; my new set of players were very, very strong on the rules without being rules lawyers.
Before you know it I was running two campaigns; one in Greyhawk where it was official modules and Seaward where it was original stuff. This was also the time of my first 'reboot' of Seaward - much like Crisis on Infinite Earths I fixed continuity errors and cleaned up the maps and storylines. Another interesting development was how the players wanted to move characters between the two campaigns. We also all used what we called 'strict time'; sometimes characters were unavailable so we began having henchmen go as adventurers when their boss was out - the beginnings of what I call jazz band adventuring although not nearly as sophisticated as it became later.
During this time;
-setting was still very important as a tool for adding depth to the game
-a lot of my players had henchmen as quasi-substitute characters
-When character death was a little less common character 'so messed up he is out for months' was more common than ever
After joining the army I was all over the map in more ways than one. My looooong training schools allowed me to participate in a very, very fun game of Champions and play in a campaign where the GM had only ever played Rolemaster, knew every rule inside and out, and was running in a homebrew setting. Those two GMs taught me a great deal about being prepared, session prep, plotline development, and collaborating with the players. I was also playing a fair amount of D&D including a number of very memorable 'one shots' with someone who went on to win several prestigious awards as a movie producer.
Then I was lucky enough to join Lew Pulsipher's D&D group. As I have mentioned before, Lew had already solidified what I call 'jazz band adventuring' and his setting, Tonilda, was a revelation in its simplicity. Most importantly, he is a full-blown game theorist and we often had long discussion about theory and did a fair amount of experimentation.
Of course, 2e cam out shortly thereafter and I did my second reboot of Tonilda to incorporate a lot of the things I had learned.
During this time;
-setting settled in as what I still consider it to be to this day - a framework for plot development that allows various stories, characters, etc. to interact so that there is a feeling of verisimilitude to the game and more depth for all involved
-I realized that the balance between complexity and simplicity should vary and that the difference in 'feel' between systems is often about this balance
I wanted to insert a little note, here, about my experiences as a gamer.
I feel like I am a bit unusual as a gamer - I have been to two RPG conventions ever and while I enjoyed them well enough I doubt that I will ever be to many more. I have never, ever had any experience with being bullied, etc., about gaming. I had motorcycle racers and football players in my games from day one and a small majority of all of my players were special forces, airborne, or rangers. With a few exceptions I have always had girls or women in my gaming groups. I sometimes feel that this is anomalous since a fair number of my peers talk about their experience as very different than this.
Storytelling/White Wolf/WoD came along just as I was transitioning from the army to civilian life. I have mentioned other places that I largely enjoyed WoD as a concept but I did not ever run it and was not a fan after playing it. Story and setting had been a part of my campaigns from the beginning but were always secondary to adventure and fun.
I did run 3e for a number of years and used Seaward (not the main campaign area) for those games. While there are certainly great elements in 3e the complexity level was a bit too high for my players and I to enjoy it as much as earlier versions. We kept largely the same attitude; fun and adventure is first, story and setting add to fun and adventure, rules need to be balanced between simple and complex. My 3e campaign died a neglectful death since my players were always asking to play something else.
I experimented pretty heavily in this time with Rolemaster, Fantasy Hero, new C&S, etc. but always kept coming back to 1e and 2e. I was an eager fan of HackMaster 4th and really enjoyed it. My wife is a huge fan of AD&D 2nd edition Skills and Powers so I eventually created a new campaign world, Blackstone, to run a dedicated 2e S&P campaign.
Blackstone was the primary campaign for a few years while Seaward lurked about. Eventually my kids wanted to play more 1e and Seaward was back out in full. We still keep story and setting in support of adventuring and fun, as the kids age we use jazz band adventuring more and more, and we like the level of complexity between 1e and 2e S&P.
4e went by pretty fast and it was some time sbefore I got the books - my sons play it as a tactical warfare simulator. I heard of and acquired OSRIC, S&W, etc. all pretty early and enjoy them a great deal.
I currently run a 1e campaign (Seaward), a 2e S&P campaign (Blackstone), and a Champions campaign (Champions of Atlanta). I still wish I could figure out how to play Rolemaster more. I still wish I played as much as I GM.
What are your histories like?
I started D&D in '77 on March 15th. Yes, I remember the specific day because there was a Shakespeare play going on at the time. The guy running it was a college freshman at Ball State and was using the white box rules for a game with his girlfriend, some high school kids - and me. I am forever grateful to the two girls who insisted I be able allowed to play even though I was 9.
I remember setting as fairly important; the DM used French to indicate when we were speaking to traders from other lands and his girlfriend used German to represent the barbarians from the North. I was soon with a group of middle schoolers with a high school age DM and he also had a fairly detailed setting with the politics between the elves and the dwarves really setting the tone.
By the end of the year I had Traveller, the Holmes basic set, and Chivalry & Sorcery. C&S has a huge impact on me because it was very focused on setting and on background. And Traveller added skills! I loved the snap and crunch of Traveller with all the math, the ship design, etc. And I liked the complexity of C&S. But I played D&D the most, with a bullet.
In '78 I started working on a setting for my own D&D campaign, a port city called Seaward. Originally it was a crude map of a small city, a nearby set of smugglers' caves, and where the wizard's tower was. My players seemed to love the background and settings. The style of play for us was similar to this;
-Make characters (3d6 in order, roll 3 sets and pick the one you like)
-Make the new character part of the setting with backstory
-Have fun.
Character death was fairly common.
Around 1980 I noticed that the modules I had gotten had really changed the map - figuring out where to put them, how they fit into the world, etc. really spread out the map and added a lot of depth. My house rules were both well begun and under constant revision. I was actively trying to figure out how to get Traveller-style rules in my D&D setting when three things happened in quick succession; I moved, I received the World of Greyhawk folio as a gift; and I received Rolemaster as a gift.
The impact of Rolemaster on how I thought about gaming was huge, bigger than C&S had been. The Greyhawk folio made me look at the Seaward setting from a 'top down' perspective; my new set of players were very, very strong on the rules without being rules lawyers.
Before you know it I was running two campaigns; one in Greyhawk where it was official modules and Seaward where it was original stuff. This was also the time of my first 'reboot' of Seaward - much like Crisis on Infinite Earths I fixed continuity errors and cleaned up the maps and storylines. Another interesting development was how the players wanted to move characters between the two campaigns. We also all used what we called 'strict time'; sometimes characters were unavailable so we began having henchmen go as adventurers when their boss was out - the beginnings of what I call jazz band adventuring although not nearly as sophisticated as it became later.
During this time;
-setting was still very important as a tool for adding depth to the game
-a lot of my players had henchmen as quasi-substitute characters
-When character death was a little less common character 'so messed up he is out for months' was more common than ever
After joining the army I was all over the map in more ways than one. My looooong training schools allowed me to participate in a very, very fun game of Champions and play in a campaign where the GM had only ever played Rolemaster, knew every rule inside and out, and was running in a homebrew setting. Those two GMs taught me a great deal about being prepared, session prep, plotline development, and collaborating with the players. I was also playing a fair amount of D&D including a number of very memorable 'one shots' with someone who went on to win several prestigious awards as a movie producer.
Then I was lucky enough to join Lew Pulsipher's D&D group. As I have mentioned before, Lew had already solidified what I call 'jazz band adventuring' and his setting, Tonilda, was a revelation in its simplicity. Most importantly, he is a full-blown game theorist and we often had long discussion about theory and did a fair amount of experimentation.
Of course, 2e cam out shortly thereafter and I did my second reboot of Tonilda to incorporate a lot of the things I had learned.
During this time;
-setting settled in as what I still consider it to be to this day - a framework for plot development that allows various stories, characters, etc. to interact so that there is a feeling of verisimilitude to the game and more depth for all involved
-I realized that the balance between complexity and simplicity should vary and that the difference in 'feel' between systems is often about this balance
I wanted to insert a little note, here, about my experiences as a gamer.
I feel like I am a bit unusual as a gamer - I have been to two RPG conventions ever and while I enjoyed them well enough I doubt that I will ever be to many more. I have never, ever had any experience with being bullied, etc., about gaming. I had motorcycle racers and football players in my games from day one and a small majority of all of my players were special forces, airborne, or rangers. With a few exceptions I have always had girls or women in my gaming groups. I sometimes feel that this is anomalous since a fair number of my peers talk about their experience as very different than this.
Storytelling/White Wolf/WoD came along just as I was transitioning from the army to civilian life. I have mentioned other places that I largely enjoyed WoD as a concept but I did not ever run it and was not a fan after playing it. Story and setting had been a part of my campaigns from the beginning but were always secondary to adventure and fun.
I did run 3e for a number of years and used Seaward (not the main campaign area) for those games. While there are certainly great elements in 3e the complexity level was a bit too high for my players and I to enjoy it as much as earlier versions. We kept largely the same attitude; fun and adventure is first, story and setting add to fun and adventure, rules need to be balanced between simple and complex. My 3e campaign died a neglectful death since my players were always asking to play something else.
I experimented pretty heavily in this time with Rolemaster, Fantasy Hero, new C&S, etc. but always kept coming back to 1e and 2e. I was an eager fan of HackMaster 4th and really enjoyed it. My wife is a huge fan of AD&D 2nd edition Skills and Powers so I eventually created a new campaign world, Blackstone, to run a dedicated 2e S&P campaign.
Blackstone was the primary campaign for a few years while Seaward lurked about. Eventually my kids wanted to play more 1e and Seaward was back out in full. We still keep story and setting in support of adventuring and fun, as the kids age we use jazz band adventuring more and more, and we like the level of complexity between 1e and 2e S&P.
4e went by pretty fast and it was some time sbefore I got the books - my sons play it as a tactical warfare simulator. I heard of and acquired OSRIC, S&W, etc. all pretty early and enjoy them a great deal.
I currently run a 1e campaign (Seaward), a 2e S&P campaign (Blackstone), and a Champions campaign (Champions of Atlanta). I still wish I could figure out how to play Rolemaster more. I still wish I played as much as I GM.
What are your histories like?
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Personal Rant - Dragonlance, Vampire, Story, Plot, and the Sandbox
[Since more than one person got a mistaken impression, mild edits were made]
There is a fair amount of love in the world for the Dragonlance setting. And a fair amount of hate. My personal opinion is... it isn't good enough to hate, but it sure impacted my favorite hobby.
Personal revelation time (again). I was 16 when the first Dragonlance book came out and, oddly enough, was already living outside the home while going to school and working. I had three great room mates who were all brothers and big gamers who were going to school and working, like me. I was running two games a week, one in my own campaign, called Seaward, and one in Greyhawk where we essentially played all of the official modules plus some unique stuff of mine. One of my room mates would also DM from time to time, usually his own stuff in Greyhawk.
When Dragons of Autumn Twilight hit the shelves we, of course, bought a copy. It was, frankly, bitterly disappointing. The characters were flat, the story line was terrible, the tension wasn't and if the companions were examples of what TSR employees thought was interesting and engaging PCs I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.
Before we continue, let me make a few things clear.
1) This is my opinion. Feel free to disagree.
2) My wife and I have worked as freelance, professional editors for large firms and authors whose names you know; we even had our own editing company and it was our primary source of income for some time. This is my personal AND professional opinion.
[If I am a professional editor why are there so many errors in my blog? One, this is for fun; two, the cobbler's kids go barefoot]
[still feel free to disagree]
3) Yes, I know the authors have written a ton of books, sold a ton, and have made a ton of money from this. My reply is - Flowers in the Attic has sold more than 40 million copies and it sucks, too
From the mary sue characters (Weis felt she had to tell us Raistlin was her favorite character?) to the eye-rolling cliches like: the twins (one is physically sickly but smart, the other strong but dull; the weak one is an evil wizard who resents his brother, the strong one is a good warrior who is blind to his brother's evil etc. (my then-nine-year-old sneered at this); the hot, dim, but feisty! barmaid; and the absent minded wizard who has vast power but can't feed himself - but is he really crazy?! (hint - of course not) I feared permanent eye strain.
And it got worse, of course. My mother bought me the next one, so I read it (dutiful son and all) and I received the third as a Christmas gift so I read it, too (I am older now and might not do it today). The writing was clunky, the story boring, the characters terrible, and the details like gully dwarves and tinker gnomes infuriating. I came to the conclusion that they were poorly written children's lit and was amazed at the love showered on them by the gaming community.
And let me add that it is my belief that the depiction of Sturm did more to cement the idea of Lawful Stupid in the collective mind of gamers than almost anything else.
The modules were worse; focused on either being the basis for later novels or (after the first few) being based on the existing novels they are almost the definition of 'railroad adventure': the modules must have certain things happen certain ways with certain conclusions or the rest of the modules don't work.
We will come back to this.
There were a lot of Dragonlance books published - more than 100 if the internet is accurate. And many modules and source books - probably also over 100. There were action figures, and miniatures, and all sorts of stuff.
Interestingly enough, even at the time when I would complain of the terrible quality of the books and modules a fair number of my gaming friends would reply with some version of,
"Well, sure, but it is bringing in a ton of new players!"
The argument was that the Dragonlance books and modules might be objectively terrible in and of themselves but a lot of younger people would read the books and then play D&D so, well, that was good! More players is good for The Community therefore, no matter how terrible the books or modules, Dragonlance was good for Gaming.
Right?
Now, since I haven't read anything Dragonlance in almost 29 years, why am I bringing this up?
Besides the fact that a lot of other OSR bloggers are talking about it, of course.
Because of story, plot, and sandbox.
Walk with me for a moment
In 1991 Vampire; the Masquerade was released and I, like many others, picked it up. I thought the stripped down mechanics were interesting (stripped to the point of being hard to use, in my opinion) and the setting interesting, if rather highly derivative of a certain author's works, I didn't like the game itself. Mainly because of its incredible focus on 'storytelling'. It reminded me a great deal of Ars Magica.
Ars Magica was an interesting system with a clever mechanic for spells, and interesting 'almost real world' setting, and a lot of potential but also a heavy emphasis on 'storytelling'; I liked a lot of elements of the system but didn't like it as a game entire.
I remember finishing reading Vampire and digging out Ars Magica and, boom! same guy involved in both, which I had suspected.
The World of Darkness concepts that flowed from the old Lion Rampant and White Wolf systems were wildly popular at the time and very influential. I believe that a fair amount of this was because of the 'advance work' done by Dragonlance; in those wildly-popular books and modules the goal was completing a story. In the WoD settings the goal was completing a story.
Let's start with the GM: if he is focused on story he must arrange for the entire dramatic structure: exposition; rising action; climax; falling action; denouement. Since the GM is supposed to have an overall story to tell ( the War of the Lance or whatever) the exposition, climax, and denouement of each sub-story, or 'adventure' must have certain things happen for the overarching story arc to be met. In the end this essentially demands that one of two things happen - either the GM places strict rails on certain elements of the adventure or the players willingly participate in the story telling effectively constraining themselves to the needs of the overall story.
It logically follows that character creation, design, and development is subject to and inferior to the needs of the story. If you have to have a Sturm to check of the boxes for 'knight of solamnia', 'lawful good', 'noble hero', and 'tragic death', well - someone better roll up a Sturm or the story ain't happening. And you better hit your marks, utter your lines with conviction, and sell that death to the crowd.
Further, the plot may well demand that you do create friendships with certain NPCs, dislike other NPCs, do certain things within certain time windows, realize certain facts within other time windows, etc. This constrains everything from the weapons selected and skills taken to even the appearance of a character. Just a few years after storytelling was seen as a prime paradigm of RPGs you saw articles on how to design characters level by level, stat by stat, skill point by skill point, in order to 'maximize' them.
There are obviously a fair number of people who enjoy this sort of play; damn near everyone in the Drama department of the local college was playing LARP Vampire within a year.
But to me this was instantly an Issue - I don't play RPGs because I am a frustrated screenwriter or actor, I play RPGs because I like RPGs. Yes, there are clearly elements of mutual storytelling in any tabletop RPGs. No, the goal isn't telling a story!
The goal of RPGs is for the players to have fun. For me and for a lot of people the railroading/constraints of the RPGs=Storytelling approach leach out the fun.
Personally, I have run what I call a 'near sandbox' for 36+ years. Seaward and Blackstone are both highly detailed, well-stocked, etc. with a large number of detailed NPCs, plot hooks, etc. scattered all over. The players are free to roam as they wish, if they wish, set their own agendas, change character goals on the fly, etc. Sure, the occasional adventure has a time limit imposed, but if the characters give that room a miss, meh. If they thwart the dragon without ever seeing it, great!
But I have seen a small handful of bloggers advocate something I will call 'pure sandbox'; the GM stocks the world, restocks it as necessary, etc., but gives no plots or any such thing to the players. New players with a 2nd level party of 5 in the campaign decide that Mount Thunder is a low-level goblin clearing when it is really home to the King of the Ogres?
"If you give them a hint, you aren't really 'Sandbox'!"
A particular player really wants to quest for such-and-such an item but you don;t have it in the mythology of your world?
"If you add it in you aren't really 'Sandbox'!"
I disagree. This is tying the hands of the GM and the players almost as much as the railroad style. Oh, I don't dislike it as much as 'well, I am 4th level so I better take Cleave or I will never be able to compete in 7 more levels' or 'OK, I get it - the dodgy alcoholic is a critical plot element or exposition center - I will sit and listen to him talk rather than follow that mysterious stranger'. But taken to this extreme it can seriously hinder the development of a campaign through ongoing co-creative work of the GM and players.
Are these extreme types of 'pure Sandbox' advocates common? No, but I see them and I suspect it is largely a rejection of storytelling as goal taken too far.
Remember those definitions I posted earlier? In my opinion any dynamic, internally-consistent, campaign world with a healthy, vigorous interaction between players and GM will "generate" plot lines for the characters to be exposed to that will naturally lead to a dynamic structure - it is just that the pace, climax, and denouement of the dynamic structure is not pre-determined and aimed for. Indeed, this dynamic, collaborative structure will result in better results than either extreme will ever be capable of.
The space between "story is goal" and "pure sandbox" is vast and most of us fall in that range already.
In my opinion, the thing to remember when GMing and playing is that there is a tacit agreement between all members of the group that a minimum level of cooperation is required to play and also that a minimum amount of latitude is also required to play: the GM can't have a story arc that from before anyone throws 3d6 in order requires a 9th level thief with Boots of Striding and Springing, a 67% Open Locks ability, and a volatile relationship with an NPC barmaid from 3 levels ago be standing at the altar of Baal at moonrise on MidSummer exactly 100 years after the paladin Gervine died. On the other hand, the GM also has to provide a bit more than 'you are in an inn, there are 6 other people in the room, you know no one, what do you do?'. Both represent extremes that take away from the core goal of RPGs.
Fun.
Opinions?
There is a fair amount of love in the world for the Dragonlance setting. And a fair amount of hate. My personal opinion is... it isn't good enough to hate, but it sure impacted my favorite hobby.
Personal revelation time (again). I was 16 when the first Dragonlance book came out and, oddly enough, was already living outside the home while going to school and working. I had three great room mates who were all brothers and big gamers who were going to school and working, like me. I was running two games a week, one in my own campaign, called Seaward, and one in Greyhawk where we essentially played all of the official modules plus some unique stuff of mine. One of my room mates would also DM from time to time, usually his own stuff in Greyhawk.
When Dragons of Autumn Twilight hit the shelves we, of course, bought a copy. It was, frankly, bitterly disappointing. The characters were flat, the story line was terrible, the tension wasn't and if the companions were examples of what TSR employees thought was interesting and engaging PCs I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.
Before we continue, let me make a few things clear.
1) This is my opinion. Feel free to disagree.
2) My wife and I have worked as freelance, professional editors for large firms and authors whose names you know; we even had our own editing company and it was our primary source of income for some time. This is my personal AND professional opinion.
[If I am a professional editor why are there so many errors in my blog? One, this is for fun; two, the cobbler's kids go barefoot]
[still feel free to disagree]
3) Yes, I know the authors have written a ton of books, sold a ton, and have made a ton of money from this. My reply is - Flowers in the Attic has sold more than 40 million copies and it sucks, too
From the mary sue characters (Weis felt she had to tell us Raistlin was her favorite character?) to the eye-rolling cliches like: the twins (one is physically sickly but smart, the other strong but dull; the weak one is an evil wizard who resents his brother, the strong one is a good warrior who is blind to his brother's evil etc. (my then-nine-year-old sneered at this); the hot, dim, but feisty! barmaid; and the absent minded wizard who has vast power but can't feed himself - but is he really crazy?! (hint - of course not) I feared permanent eye strain.
And it got worse, of course. My mother bought me the next one, so I read it (dutiful son and all) and I received the third as a Christmas gift so I read it, too (I am older now and might not do it today). The writing was clunky, the story boring, the characters terrible, and the details like gully dwarves and tinker gnomes infuriating. I came to the conclusion that they were poorly written children's lit and was amazed at the love showered on them by the gaming community.
And let me add that it is my belief that the depiction of Sturm did more to cement the idea of Lawful Stupid in the collective mind of gamers than almost anything else.
The modules were worse; focused on either being the basis for later novels or (after the first few) being based on the existing novels they are almost the definition of 'railroad adventure': the modules must have certain things happen certain ways with certain conclusions or the rest of the modules don't work.
We will come back to this.
There were a lot of Dragonlance books published - more than 100 if the internet is accurate. And many modules and source books - probably also over 100. There were action figures, and miniatures, and all sorts of stuff.
Interestingly enough, even at the time when I would complain of the terrible quality of the books and modules a fair number of my gaming friends would reply with some version of,
"Well, sure, but it is bringing in a ton of new players!"
The argument was that the Dragonlance books and modules might be objectively terrible in and of themselves but a lot of younger people would read the books and then play D&D so, well, that was good! More players is good for The Community therefore, no matter how terrible the books or modules, Dragonlance was good for Gaming.
Right?
Now, since I haven't read anything Dragonlance in almost 29 years, why am I bringing this up?
Besides the fact that a lot of other OSR bloggers are talking about it, of course.
Because of story, plot, and sandbox.
Walk with me for a moment
In 1991 Vampire; the Masquerade was released and I, like many others, picked it up. I thought the stripped down mechanics were interesting (stripped to the point of being hard to use, in my opinion) and the setting interesting, if rather highly derivative of a certain author's works, I didn't like the game itself. Mainly because of its incredible focus on 'storytelling'. It reminded me a great deal of Ars Magica.
Ars Magica was an interesting system with a clever mechanic for spells, and interesting 'almost real world' setting, and a lot of potential but also a heavy emphasis on 'storytelling'; I liked a lot of elements of the system but didn't like it as a game entire.
I remember finishing reading Vampire and digging out Ars Magica and, boom! same guy involved in both, which I had suspected.
The World of Darkness concepts that flowed from the old Lion Rampant and White Wolf systems were wildly popular at the time and very influential. I believe that a fair amount of this was because of the 'advance work' done by Dragonlance; in those wildly-popular books and modules the goal was completing a story. In the WoD settings the goal was completing a story.
Quick Aside: a 'story' is defined as "an account of people and events told for entertainment. May be real or fictional"
The definition of ;'plot' is "the events that make up the main part or parts of a story"
Don't forget the difference!But how does this affect actual gaming? Not just game play itself, but the metagame around it: GM prep, adventure and world design; post-game work, character design, party dynamics, etc.
Let's start with the GM: if he is focused on story he must arrange for the entire dramatic structure: exposition; rising action; climax; falling action; denouement. Since the GM is supposed to have an overall story to tell ( the War of the Lance or whatever) the exposition, climax, and denouement of each sub-story, or 'adventure' must have certain things happen for the overarching story arc to be met. In the end this essentially demands that one of two things happen - either the GM places strict rails on certain elements of the adventure or the players willingly participate in the story telling effectively constraining themselves to the needs of the overall story.
It logically follows that character creation, design, and development is subject to and inferior to the needs of the story. If you have to have a Sturm to check of the boxes for 'knight of solamnia', 'lawful good', 'noble hero', and 'tragic death', well - someone better roll up a Sturm or the story ain't happening. And you better hit your marks, utter your lines with conviction, and sell that death to the crowd.
Further, the plot may well demand that you do create friendships with certain NPCs, dislike other NPCs, do certain things within certain time windows, realize certain facts within other time windows, etc. This constrains everything from the weapons selected and skills taken to even the appearance of a character. Just a few years after storytelling was seen as a prime paradigm of RPGs you saw articles on how to design characters level by level, stat by stat, skill point by skill point, in order to 'maximize' them.
There are obviously a fair number of people who enjoy this sort of play; damn near everyone in the Drama department of the local college was playing LARP Vampire within a year.
But to me this was instantly an Issue - I don't play RPGs because I am a frustrated screenwriter or actor, I play RPGs because I like RPGs. Yes, there are clearly elements of mutual storytelling in any tabletop RPGs. No, the goal isn't telling a story!
The goal of RPGs is for the players to have fun. For me and for a lot of people the railroading/constraints of the RPGs=Storytelling approach leach out the fun.
Personally, I have run what I call a 'near sandbox' for 36+ years. Seaward and Blackstone are both highly detailed, well-stocked, etc. with a large number of detailed NPCs, plot hooks, etc. scattered all over. The players are free to roam as they wish, if they wish, set their own agendas, change character goals on the fly, etc. Sure, the occasional adventure has a time limit imposed, but if the characters give that room a miss, meh. If they thwart the dragon without ever seeing it, great!
But I have seen a small handful of bloggers advocate something I will call 'pure sandbox'; the GM stocks the world, restocks it as necessary, etc., but gives no plots or any such thing to the players. New players with a 2nd level party of 5 in the campaign decide that Mount Thunder is a low-level goblin clearing when it is really home to the King of the Ogres?
"If you give them a hint, you aren't really 'Sandbox'!"
A particular player really wants to quest for such-and-such an item but you don;t have it in the mythology of your world?
"If you add it in you aren't really 'Sandbox'!"
I disagree. This is tying the hands of the GM and the players almost as much as the railroad style. Oh, I don't dislike it as much as 'well, I am 4th level so I better take Cleave or I will never be able to compete in 7 more levels' or 'OK, I get it - the dodgy alcoholic is a critical plot element or exposition center - I will sit and listen to him talk rather than follow that mysterious stranger'. But taken to this extreme it can seriously hinder the development of a campaign through ongoing co-creative work of the GM and players.
Are these extreme types of 'pure Sandbox' advocates common? No, but I see them and I suspect it is largely a rejection of storytelling as goal taken too far.
Remember those definitions I posted earlier? In my opinion any dynamic, internally-consistent, campaign world with a healthy, vigorous interaction between players and GM will "generate" plot lines for the characters to be exposed to that will naturally lead to a dynamic structure - it is just that the pace, climax, and denouement of the dynamic structure is not pre-determined and aimed for. Indeed, this dynamic, collaborative structure will result in better results than either extreme will ever be capable of.
The space between "story is goal" and "pure sandbox" is vast and most of us fall in that range already.
In my opinion, the thing to remember when GMing and playing is that there is a tacit agreement between all members of the group that a minimum level of cooperation is required to play and also that a minimum amount of latitude is also required to play: the GM can't have a story arc that from before anyone throws 3d6 in order requires a 9th level thief with Boots of Striding and Springing, a 67% Open Locks ability, and a volatile relationship with an NPC barmaid from 3 levels ago be standing at the altar of Baal at moonrise on MidSummer exactly 100 years after the paladin Gervine died. On the other hand, the GM also has to provide a bit more than 'you are in an inn, there are 6 other people in the room, you know no one, what do you do?'. Both represent extremes that take away from the core goal of RPGs.
Fun.
Opinions?
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