Castle Dragonscar

Awesome Games I Own

2012-01-29T00:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of some of my favorite games. Bask in their glory.

(And yes, those ARE my crappy ancient slippers on the left side)

Awesome Books I Own

2012-01-25T00:02:00.000-08:00

I've got a digital camera, and I am therefore going to show you pictures of awesome books I own:

The Free City of Imira

2011-12-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

Here's the map of the starting town in my newly minted OD&D campaign:

Tolkien on Elves, Dwarves, and Men

2011-12-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a brief except of the Professor discussing the races of his secondary world.

Reflections on Tolkien and his Legendarium

2011-12-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

J.R.R. Tolkien is the author who still continues to astound me. Before I loved Moorcock and Lovecraft and Wolfe, I was a reader of Tolkien. Middle Earth is still in many ways, for me, THE primal fantasy world. I recently finished the excellent biography of Tolkien by Humphrey Carpenter, and I've fallen into his works once again. This time, I find myself appreciating things that I never did when I was younger: his intensive control over language, the songs, and the total willingness to be himself in defiance of literary conventions of his time. In regard to The Hobbit, I find I'm realizing just how funny the book is.

When I was younger, after having read both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I read The Silmarillion. The early chapters were daunting at first and after a time I put the book aside. This is a very common story that I hear over and over from many people who loved The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. They find themselves unable to find a way into The Silmarillion. There are no Hobbits here to ground us into the fiction. We are off flying deep into the secondary world and it is, perhaps, too much of a leap for some. I was very fortunate that I DID find a way into The Silmarillion. I happened to pick up the book one afternoon and for some reason I decided to skip to one of the later stories. What sounded interesting? The chapter I read was simple titled "Of Beren and Luthien" This tale, little did I know, is, along with the story of Turin Turambar, one of the key stories in all of the Professor's Legendarium. It's a tale of love and adventure and loss like no other. After that, I was hooked. I went back and read from the beginning and this time it was different bacause I'd already fallen in love with this world that he was showing me. I can't say it enough. If you enjoy Tolkien and you haven't read the Silmarillion--try to find your way in--you won't regret it.

Here's Tolkien reciting one of his poems in Elvish:

Gandalf's Reflection (The Hobbit Soundtrack 1977)

2011-11-30T09:12:00.001-08:00

Another clip from Ranking Bass' ROTK

2011-10-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

This clip from the Rankin-Bass Return of the King also has a certain something to it. I've got lots of problems with this animated adaptation, but this scene isn't one of them. GO GROND!!

Most of my good feeling about the film comes from the fact that I first saw it when I was seven and that I had a book and record set telling the story of the film. I also had the book and record set of the Hobbit which was just about my favorite thing in the world back then. Much of my fondness for fantasy (and subsequently D&D) come from seeing these movies. I didn't get around to reading Tolkien's books for another three years, but these films were enough to get me started.

In some ways this is better than the Peter Jackson film. . .

2011-10-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

I've had a love-hate relationship with the Rankin-Bass naimated Tolkien adaptations since the 1970s. Return of the King, for one example, has way too many goofy songs! However, it has its moments too. I always liked this moment in the film:

Low Anthem!

2011-10-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

This video is the perfect collision of image and music. It haunts me.

I WILL read the Necronomicon!

2011-10-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a brilliant video from the same folks who brought you the Elder Sign commercial which I posted back HERE

Running Stormbringer at SoCal MiniCon IV (July 30-31).

2011-05-06T00:06:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: My slot at the SoCal Minicon has been cancelled due to obligations that have come up since I first signed up for running this game. I'm sad that I won't be able to attend, but hopefully it will work out for me to go next year.

It's now official: I'm going to be running Stormbringer at the So-Cal MiniCon. I'm one of those gamers who doesn't go to cons very often, but I went to MiniCon last year and had a great time. I played in Tavis Allison's OD&D game where I played a Sleestack, and I played in Cyclopeatron's legendary Mutants of Metal session which you can read about HERE.

As if that wasn't cool enough, one of the designers of Stormbringer, Steve Perrin, is running a session of his homebrewed version of Runequest that afternoon!

My game is in the 7pm Saturday Evening slot on July 30. There are plenty of seats as of now--so sign up if you're up for some old school sword and sorcery goodness. Details and schedule can be found HERE.

Blood and souls for my Lord Arioch!

1980s Fantasy Art: Robert Gould's Moorcock Art

2011-05-04T00:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a selection of images by Robert Gould who remains one of my favorite fantasy artists. Back in the 1980s his work graced the covers of most of Berkley's Moorcock novels. His Elric covers remain the definitive version of the character for me--although I also quite like Brunner, Whelan, and Cawthorn's Elric work as well.

The above picture here is my favorite Elric image ever. Its was used as the cover for my favorite book in the series: The Vanishing Tower (which was a re-title as it was originally called The Sleeping Sorceress).

Here's Gould's wonderful cover for Moorcock's City in the Autumn Stars--the sequel to The War Hound and the World's Pain.

The Return of SSSLASIFFON!!! (More Campaign Stuff from Thirteen Year Olds)

2011-04-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

Here’s a listing of characters from a campaign I was running when I was thirteen. After a while all of our games started to bleed together so that by this point I was stealing from everything. There’s nods here to D&D, Gamma World, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World (with the Para-demons and such), Moorcock’s Eternal Champion stories, Traveller, and whatever comic books or TV shows I was watching at the time.

What I love about looking at this is that it’s totally a stew of all of those things, and by putting all this together it starts to have its own crazy vibe. Feel free to pilfer names or ideas from this list, but I make no apologies for any of the names as I was thirteen when I came up with this stuff. What would a campaign with these characters look like?

Asmos (Human Warrior, Technician)
Geendra (Human Scientist)
Aldrak Human Scientist)
Umok (Human Warrior, Twin of Vomok)
Vomok (Human Warrior, Twin of Umok)
Aleesha (Aerianian Queen)
Kumanseth (Para-demon, Commander)
Ajagramund (Para-demon, Commander)
Toosath Poitav (Para-demon, Commander)
Bashab Dall (Para-demon Monarch)
Sarash (Para-demon Monarch)
Oolg (Giant Para-demon)
NARTHOX (Dark Lord) (Yes, written in all caps so you know he’s badass)
Lord Toxic (Osab-Human Crossbreed, First Slitonitusikus)
Nitrav, the Enslaver (Master of Taurin 4 Prison Planet)
Tors (Centaurin King)
Hisha (Centaurin Queen)
Eleesha (Amazon)
Teena (Amazon)
Mygala (Amazon)
Henelim (Amazon Queen)
Ssslasiffon (Vapor God King) (The Vapors were sentient deities made of gaseous
Ammox (Vapor God King) materials as I recall)
Timso 99 (Head Borg)
Alamond 12 (Borg)
Prince Bellark (Son of Narthox)
Zoe Wiseguard (Sorceress) (PC)
Prince Jodane (Warrior of the Worlds)
Rendikose of Drexil (Warrior of the Worlds)
Enrom (Warrior of the Worlds)
Brath (Companion to Enrom)
Dimos Bloodsheddar (Warrior of Gehenna) (Para-demon hero)
Admiral Moorsh

Gamma World Drawn by Thirteen Year Olds.

2011-04-20T00:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some old Gamma World related pictures drawn by my friends who played in a particularly long running campaign inspired by Dune and Robotech and Heavy Metal magazine and anything else we happened to be into at the time. These drawing would have been done (I'm guessing) in 1985 when we all around thirteen.

This last one was drawn by Yours Truly. I don't totally remember who the Gathian tribes were, but I do remember they has a cool looking city. I'm thinking they were some kind of cross between Logan's Run and the Robotech Masters.

Old School DMs: How Do You Prep For Running a Game?

2011-04-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

The blog has been fallow recently, but I'm back and so here's my initial return post. Hopefully some people are still paying attention. Anyway. . .

I'm interested in hearing about how old school DMs prep for their games. In the comments please answer the following questions:

1. How much prep do you do for a typical session? How much time?

2. What materials do you have in front of you at the table?

3. How much do you actually have written down vs. what's floating in your head?

4. Have you found this changes over the course of a campaign?

Edit: Added the "How much time?" part to question 1.

1970s Fantasy Art: Philippe Druillet

2010-11-24T00:04:00.000-08:00

Philippe Druillet is, along with Moebius and Caza, one of the founding visionaries of the movement that took french comics by storm in the 1970s. This movement found its locus in the magazine these artists founded known as Metal Hurlant. The American Heavy Metal magazine was the version of this material that manifested in the States, but Heavy Metal as a magazine lacked the artistic and idealogical vision of its progenitor. Metal Hurlant was about taking comics where they had never been while Heavy Metal seemed caught in an adolescent fascination with the "adult material" it featured. Now I retain a certain fondness for Heavy Metal as it was the first place I ever saw work by Bilal, Moebius, Druillet, and many others, but I also can see its limitations as compared to the creative vitality of Metal Hurlant.

I had largely forgotten about Druillet in particular until several years ago when I stumbled upon a copy of his Lone Sloane/Delirius collection at a used bookstore. This was roughly translated edition put out by Heavy Metal in the mid-seventies, but that didn't matter: my brain was already smashed all over the insides of my skull. The comics in this book were a fever dream of what every Heavy Metal album cover tried to be and failed. Here was the Heaviest Metal of them all.

Few artists have captured the same infernal imaginative ferocity that fills the work of writer's like Lovecraft, Clark Aston Smith, and William Hope Hodgson but Druillet has. His work evokes a demonic universe of howling gargoyles, beastial cyborgs, and satanically designed interstellar warships. Well you don't need me to TELL you. Just look at what this man puts down on paper.

I'm uncertain of the dates of many of these pieces, and Druillet has continued to work up until the present. Its entirely possible that some of these are from the eighties or even later, but I'd argue that his work retains a certain resonance with the decade which birthed D&D.

Here's a youtube video featuring more of his work:

Pendragon Images

2010-10-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a bit about Pendragon recently. In 2008 we ran a Pendragon campaign where we played out the Uther period in The Great Pendragon Campaign. We're thinking of playing Pendragon again in a few months when our 4E campaign comes to a good stopping place. I did a review of the game a while back which you can look at HERE. So here's some classic Arthurian images for you:

OD&D One Shot (Part I)

2010-10-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

Last month, I ended up running an OD&D game for my weekly group that was very enlightening. We’ve been playing 4E weekly for a while now, and while I’ve enjoyed it-the combats do take quite a while. I’ve likely mentioned this before but here’s our situation: the group meets for around three to four hours and in that time it’s difficult to get through more than two encounters. Sometimes we only get through one! That said, the combats are quite nice in that the monsters create different tactical situations based on their particular abilities. This aspect of 4E’s monsters is one of the best innovations to the game. Combat is fun and is really the primary focus of the game.

One of my regular players wasn’t able to attend, so I thought we’d try a one-shot of OD&D as a change of pace. After having played in some great games at the So-Cal Mini-Con III, I was inspired to let the players have a free hand in making stuff up. I explained as per the OD&D rules you could play a fighter, a magic-user, a cleric, or anything else that you wanted to play. I was determined to let them play whatever they wanted.

I had them roll 4D6 in order (AD&D style drop the lowest) as I was feeling generous. I probable didn’t have to do that because my first player right out of the gate rolled some of the best stats I’ve ever seen on a character. AD&D style stat rolling certainly makes a big difference!

I also started them at third level as per Gygax’s OD&D house rules which were floating around in various places on the web a few years ago (I think I first saw them was at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse). Weapon damage was 1D6 with an additional +1 for two handed weapons.

One of the players arrived before the others and so we were discussing what he might like to play when he asked, “Can I be somebody from Earth who’s trapped in this world. What if he’s a gamer. He’s survived because he knows quite a bit about D&D monsters from his gaming days.”

“Okay. That’s fine. What sort of abilities do you think he might have—is he more of a Magic-User type?”

“No, I want him to be more of a regular guy. So I’ll basically make him a fighter.”

“But he’s from another world and he’s got this fantasy gamer knowledge?”

“Right.”

Thus was born Tom Prosec. Trapped in a world he never made! His special ability was eventually settled on as “Planar Weirdness”, and we were off. Tom also acquired a few henchmen. He asked at the last minute if one of them could be an Ewok.

“Fine, one of your henchmen is an Ewok. He’s got leather armor and a spear.”

Another player rolled up a Chaotic Elven cleric named Darkwood Fiddlestix who was a worshipper of Gozer the Gozarian (“The Destructor”). I only gave him some of the Elven abilities as he was varying from the typical model of the Fighter/Magic-User Elf character. His henchmen were two dwarves named Tomax and Zamot.

Rounding out the group was a Dwarf Wizard. Okay, so I decided she must be from an offshoot mutant race of magical using Dwarves rather than one of OD&D’s “true” Dwarves. Her name was Kore, and she had high charisma and five henchmen including a Lizardman who was named “Bob”.

With all that they were ready to descend into the dungeons of Castle Dragonscar.

Part II coming soon.

Music From Another World

2010-10-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

I'm currently on an Arthurian kick and so here's a song from another world: France in 1300 A.D.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN-jTlDx9BI&feature=PlayList&p=9B20E40BC97DCC4D&index=0

Marvel Super Heroes Campaign Wiki

2010-10-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the campaign wiki for the Marvel Super Heroes game that our GM has put together for the game. He assembled it our the last few weeks, and he's got quite a lot of good stuff there including some incredible artwork he's assembled from across the interwebs. We're playing the children of various heroes who've belonged to the Avengers of this alternate Marvel Earth. For example my character, Archon, is the child of Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) and Ms. Marvel.

We ran our first session of the game on Friday and it was a total blast. Tempest, the son of Thor and another one of our PCs, got a grandslam and knocked Ultron a whole city block. I figured out how to get Avengers Mansion's defenses back online by smashing a gizmo in one of Ultron's vehicles. The system did a great job of giving the feel of a Marvel comic book. We've added a couple of tweaks to the combat system, but we're mostly playing it by the book.

The link for the wiki is HERE.

Marvel Superheroes 1966

2010-09-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

I'm back reading comics after a long hiatus where my reading was heavily fantasy oriented. Right now I'm reading some old Captain Marvel (or rather Mar-vell) comics and so I thought I'd post some video nostalgia.

I used to watch this show on Channel 44--a UHF channel broadcast out of Chicago in the late 1970s, and it was my introduction to many of these characters. Yes, the animation is practically non-existent, the dialog melodramatic and obvious, the voice acting over the top, but as far as I'm concerned this show is the closest anyone has ever come to distilling classic Marvel Comics onto the small screen. I can feel the crazy energy in these shoestring budget "animated" shorts far more than I can in whatever big budget productions come down the pike for the cineplex. These stories were directly adapted from the comics and the artwork was actually drawn from the comics as well. So here is the 1966 Gantry-Lawrence animation version of Lee and Kirby's Thor for your viewing pleasure:

Part 1 The Power of Pluto

Part 2 The Verdict of Zeus

Part 3 Thunder in the Netherworld

What I've Been Doing When Not On The Internet

2010-09-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

I've been spending time away from the internet recently as I've been feeling like it was eating up too much of my free time. Oddly enough, despite my lack of posting I've been doing some good reading and gaming recently. Here are some of the highlights:

My wife and I have, in the past, enjoyed reading books out loud together. We did this a few years ago with The Count of Monte Cristo and it was great fun, but we decided to read the Alan Dean Foster novelization of Star Wars which we'll be following up with Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Its a fun book that's reminding me what I loved about the first film when I saw it as a kid. Interestingly, violence isn't quite as sanitized: lasers blow holes in Stormtrooper helmets and melt bone and flesh.

Our 4E game is going well, and last week they did some actual dungeon exploration besides just killing stuff. They're currently exploring the Castle of Teraktis, an ancient dragon that was said to have been slain more than a hundred years ago. The party was hired to find the legendary Casket of the Ancient Dead: a small carved box which is said to contain great mystical secrets and power. They investigated a deserted sorcerous laboratory (complete with demon summoning circle), found a place where some prisoners were being held, checked out a tapestry which featured Demogorgon devouring sacrificial victims, found a mystically sealed door, and they also kicked some Kenku ass (dudes with the heads of ravens). We're playing again on Friday, and I'm looking forward to them finding some of the other stuff in the dungeon.

We also played a game of Wizard's Castle Ravenloft Boardgame, and it was quite fun. I don't recommend splitting up your party!

One of my regular players is working on his dissertation this school year, and he's not going to be able to make it every week so the rest of us decided we should play something else in the weeks he's not able to attend. One of my other players has long wanted to run a superhero game, and three of us are old fans of the TSR Marvel Superheroes game.

Thus we've decided to play a Marvel Superheroes campaign where we play the teenage offspring of the Avengers. I'm playing the child of Captain Mar-vell and Ms. Marvel. One of us is playing the child of Thor whose been basically been raised by Jocasta (who in our Marvel Universe is the computer which oversees Avengers mansion). The third member of our group is the child of Crystal of the Inhumans(and thus royalty I suppose) and an as yet undetermined father. Rounding out the group is the child of the Skrullian Skymaster (the Squadron Supreme's version of Martian Manhunter who was only briefly featured and never really appeared in the comics except in flashback). We rolled up our characters and we'll be playing our first session in a few weeks.

My group, as I mentioned in a previous post, recently played a game of OD&D which really emphasized the differences between the editions for me. My thoughts on this have been percolating for a while and I'll post about them soon enough.

OD&D Characters

2010-09-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Here are the character sheets for three of my players who I roped into playing OD&D the other week. I'll post about the session in my next post. Now off to work. . .

Doctor Who 1970

2010-08-27T01:23:00.000-07:00

I grew up watching Doctor Who on PBS on Sunday mornings, and while I'm a big fan of the new series the old show still has something special about it.

I'm currently in the midst of watching a pile of old Doctor Who stories featuring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. This follows up on my watching a number of the old series episodes several years ago. I just finished watching "The Frontier in Space" and "Planet of the Daleks": excellent Who episodes with topnotch writing and acting even if some of the effects aren't quite up to our modern "standards". I've known people who refused to watch the show on the basis of the effects, but if you can look past that aspect of the show (or even learn to enjoy it) there is some brilliant stuff there. I'm currently in the midst of watching "Doctor Who and the Silurians" which has turned out to be another great one.

The beginning of the Third Doctor's era saw him stranded on Earth without access to a functional TARDIS (his travelling space-time machine for those not in the know). The series has him cruising around England in his roadster "Bessie" and acting as a consultant for UNIT. The tone of the show had darkened from the previous era, and it often took on a definite anti-establishment tone at times. The series was clearly influence by Nigel Kneale's excellent Quatermass stories.

Here's a list of five of my favorite old Who serials*:

1. Inferno (Third Doctor)
2. Genesis of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor)
3. City of Death (Fourth Doctor)(Written by Douglas Adams)
4. The Ark in Space (Fourth Doctor)
5. Planet of the Daleks (Third Doctor)

I've got a copy of the old FASA Doctor Who roleplaying game which I picked up at the San Diego Comic-Con in around 1990. Maybe I'll dig it out and try another round of RPG Excavations like I did for Rolemaster. I've never played the game, and I only have the barest recollection of the rules. Stay Tuned.

* The show is broken into half hour episodes. A serial is a single story and can be comprised of anywhere from four to ten individual episodes!

1970s Fantasy Art: Rodney Matthews & Roger Dean

2010-08-08T01:21:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm feelin particularly inspired by these Rodney Matthews pieces and their odd feeling. A Matthews inspired campaign might be interesting. Giant mushrooms, weird skull mountains, insect dudes wearing robes, huge trees, unearthly flowers, crystalline cities etc.

This first piece is an illustration from the Michael Moorcock novel The Champion of Garathorm, which I recently read, and whose protagonist is Ilian of Garathorm the only female incarnation of the Eternal Champion featured in one of Moorcock's novels.

And how about some Roger Dean too?

I Got Raggi's Game.

2010-08-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

When I came back from an appointment this morning I found a present on the doorstep from the mailman.

The summer class I teach just ended and so this is perfect timing.

I think someone is paying attention. . .

2010-07-29T00:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, well the OSR is a pretty small niche within a small niche but I just noticed this over on Wizards website concerning GenCon 2010.

Here's the quote:

Embrace Your Edition!
This year, we’ve invited many independent D&D DMs running games of any D&D variety to come up to the Sagamore Ballroom and host their tables alongside ours! Whether it's 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, 3rd or 3.5 Edition, or the original game, all fans of D&D have a place in the Sagamore Ballroom. If you have a hankering for an old-school game, the Sagamore is now the destination for all things D&D!

Here the link back to the page here.

I don't know what to think, but it would be cool to see some folks running OD&D in the midst of 4ELand. There's some recognition at least that there are still plenty of folks who prefer the older editions of D&D.

And have you seen the rather familiar cover to the new 4E "Starter" Box?
Check it out.

Hey, you got OD&D in my 4th Edition!

2010-07-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, I'm running D&D 4th Edition right now. I've been wanting to run a nice campaign of OD&D or AD&D 1st Edition with my weekly group for a while now, but they pretty universally were more interested in 4th Edition. So NEW D&D is better than NO D&D I suppose, and, besides, it appears that everyone is having fun.

However, almost immediately I started to figure out ways to reference back to these older editions--if only to entertain myself while I'm being DM. Okay, nobody in my group knows about stuff like how the Outdoor Survival Map was the original campaign map but that wasn't going to stop me from using it. I originally filled in far more of the map, but I soon discovered that I needed the breathing room to let things grow more organically, so I've pruned the map back a bit from the earlier version. I'll fill in more of the castles and adventure locations as time goes on.

As you see:

(BTW: big thanks to Snorri over on the OD&D boards for posting this redo of the Outdoor Survival map.)

I'm also thinking of using the wilderness travel rules from OD&D or the 1st Edition DMG. I've never really done a hex crawl type game before, but I've been curious about this style of play for a while now. The campaign won't be a "pure" sandbox, but I definitely want to incorporate some sandbox like elements into the game. If I'm going to run this game old school I'm going to have to make some good wandering monster tables, but it isn't as easy as I'd like it to be. Looks like they may have to be "wandering encounters" or something, but I think it can work.

My most radical move though is going to be this friday: running a mass combat using Chainmail!

I'll post more about that today or tomorrow.

H.G. Wells, Uncle Toby, & The Really Old School Gamers

2010-07-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

I perpetually haunt used book stores in my area, and I recently picked up a copy of Little Wars by H.G. Wells. This book was originally published in 1913, and it is, essentially, the first modern book outlining rules for tabletop wargaming. My edition is a paperback reprint from the late seventies. I hadn't planned to even read it right now as I'm deep into teaching my summer English class, but I just was looking it over and its proving to be an interesting little book (no pun intended).

The opening chapter has some interesting speculations concerning the prevalence of this type of activity in the past. I was particularly struck by the following passage. Quoth Herbert George:

But first let it be noted in passing that there were prehistoric "Little Wars." This is no new thing, no crude novelty; but a thing tested by time, ancient and ripe in its freshness--like spring. There was a Someone who fought Little Wars in the days of Queen Anne; a garden Napoleon. His game was inaccurately observed and insufficiently recorded by Laurence Sterne. It is clear that Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim were playing Little Wars on a scale and with an elaboration exceeding even the richness and beauty of the contemporary game. But the curtain is drawn back only to tantalise us. It is scarcely conceivable that anywhere now on earth the Shandean Rules remain on record. Perhaps they were never committed to paper. . .

Tristram Shandy, for those unacquainted with Eighteenth century literature, is a remarkable book in which the above mentioned Uncle Toby spends most of the novel staging and re-playing a battle with toy soldiers. This battle is a re-creation of the events of an actual battle Uncle Toby was wounded in when he was younger. The specifics of his war wound are never gone into, but it is repeatedly implied to have been to his genitals.

What interests me about Wells' quote above is his particular interest in the rules of the game that Sterne was writing about. Wargaming, as Wells is pointing out here, has been with us for a very long time. You might also be surprised who some of the enthusiasts have been. James over at Grognardia posted an interesting Little Wars connected post a while back here featuring one of my favorite horror actors.

My weekly group is currently playing D&D 4E, and one aspect of it that I'm enjoying is the arts and crafty element of preparing a physical landscape and playing with miniature figures which is something I never really did when playing earlier editions of D&D.

This aspect of using the figures has got me more curious about Chainmail than I've been in some time, and after reading aldarron's wonderful distillation of the rules which you can get here. I'm rather excited about trying to play OD&D with Chainmail.

See you in the Garden!

Freaks & Geeks D&D

2010-06-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the most sympathetic portrayal of the game we love in popular media. The writer's clearly knew what they were talking about right down to the 1E items referenced in the episode. In this episode James Franco's stoner character plays D&D with the titular geeks.

This was also the last episode in the series "Dungeons & Discos".

Lovecraftian Metallica

2010-06-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

This is a wonderful live version of "The Thing That Should Not Be":

And here's the studio version of their instrumental "Call of Ktulu":

OD&D Science Fantasy Campaign

2010-06-12T22:47:00.001-07:00

One of my regular players and I were discussing what he likes about 4E. He liked all the new races, classes, and how things like psionics seem to have been incorporated into the system in a way that finally seems to make sense. He's also a bit bored by the standard Tolkienian races of Elves, Dwarves, Halflings etc.

I pointed out how flexible OD&D is, and it got me wondering what would happen if we came up with our own OD&D game made to to fit our specifications. We've been talking about doing a Science Fantasy game for a while and it dawned on me that this might be a way to incorporate some elements of games like 1st Edition Gamma World or Mutant Future. The campaign would be a mixture of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Flash Gordon type stuff along with Eighties adventure cartoons like Masters of the Universe and Thundarr.

This is still a work in progress, and there are a few more races I've been having trouble with: Titans and Wolf People. What sort of abilities might they have? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I previously had a thread going on more playable races over at the OD&D Discussion Forum, but I thought I'd post them here as well. Hopefully, I'll eventually post ALL of the house rules I create for this campaign.

PLAYABLE CLASSES

Cleric
Druid
Fighter
Paladin
Ranger
Magic-User
Thief
Assassin
Psion

PLAYABLE RACES

Ancients
• Able to see into the ethereal plane (50 ft. range).
• Prophetic dreams and visions.
• +5% Bonus to Psionic Abilities.
• +1 to Hit and Damage when engaged in Hand to Hand combat.

Androids
• +1 bonus to Hit Dice.
• Immune to aging, sleep, charm, poison, and disease.
• No unconsciousness at O HP. Able to function until killed at –lvl HP.

Avians
• Able to fly at a speed of 15”.
• Ability to speak with any winged birds.
• Enhanced vision allows +2 on vision based perception checks. Avians can also see great distances.

Cat People
• Bite and Claw attacks (1D4)
• Detect invisible opponents at a base of 30% and with a +5% bonus every two levels.
• Only -2 to hit invisible opponents.
• +1 bonus to Dexterity.

Devas
• Able to see into the astral plane (50 ft. range).
• +1 Bonus vs. Infernals and infernal associated creatures.
• Immune to fear (and fear creating magical spells)
• Able to generate create Light once per day for a number of rounds equal to 3 + the Deva’s level.

Dhamphir (1/2 Vampires)
• Bite attack for 1D6 damage. They gain Temporary Hit Points equal to ½ of the damage they do up to their current Hit Points level.
• Able to transform into a wolf or bat.
• Double damage from silver weapons and fire.

Forest Folk (Elves)
• Infravision (60 ft. range).
• Find secret and hidden doors (1-4 on a D6).
• +1 to hit when using a sword or bow.
• +1 to hit vs. Orcs.
• Racial benefits when acting as Thieves.
• They speak the languages of orcs, hobgoblins, and gnolls in addition to their usual tongues.

Humans
• Humans automatically receive a +10% bonus to earned experience.
• +1 bonus to an attribute of their choice.

Infernals
• They possess a limited form of telepathy (send and receive thoughts only). Range: within sight.
• Immune to Fire and Cold damage.
• Able to create Darkness once per day for a number of rounds equal to 3 + plus the Infernal’s level.

Lizard People
• +1 to AC due to thick hide.
• Immune to poisons.
• Poisonous bite (1D4 Damage). Save vs. poison or bite deals double damage.

Merfolk
• Able to breath underwater and swim at 24”.
• AC 7 natural armor class (may be improved by Dexterity bonuses and armor).
• They speak the language of Dolphins and Whales.
• They receive a +1 Bonus to their Constitution.

Mountain Folk (Dwarves)
• They have a high level of magic resistance, and they thus add four levels when rolling saving throws against magic.
• They note slanting passages, traps, shifting walls and new construction in underground settings; and
• They are able to speak the languages of Gnomes, Kobolds and Goblins in addition to the usual tongues.

River Folk (Halflings)
• Saving throws vs. magic are (as Dwarves) four levels higher.
• +2 to hit with simple melee weapons.
• They gain racial bonuses when acting as thieves.

Shadow Folk (Drow)
• Infravision (100 ft. range)
• Able to move silently (even in armor).
• +2 bonus to all saving throws vs. magic.
• Shadow Armor receives an automatic +1 to its AC.

Dragon's Lair Opening

2010-05-29T22:45:00.000-07:00

I'm currently experiencing a bit of old school video game nostalgia. So here's the opening and bit of gameplay for one of my favorite frustrating arcade games that I spent waaay too many quarters on when I was younger. I never got near the end.

Hmmm. . .I wonder if anybody's made a dungeon that's a homage to this game? I should do that for the 4E game were playing right now.

More Rock & Roll Moorcock

2010-05-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Hawkwind:

This one isn't directly connected to Moorcock's fiction but its the opening tracks from the album Warriors on the Edge of Time:

Moorcock Video Inteview

2010-05-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

These's been a few posts today in the OSR sphere about Moorcock, so I thought I'd round it out with some multimedia goodness from YouTube.

The interview is interesting, but I will say it just sort of wanders where it wants to. I'm just imagining young Marc Bolan following Moorcock around as he was trying to work.

RPG Excavations: Rolemaster 2nd edition (Part 2)

2010-05-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

I think one reason I’m enjoying figuring out Rolemaster is that I’ve always been addicted to tinkering with games. However, I’ve noticed with my deconstructions of both AD&D 1E and Rolemaster was that I started thinking I’d create some sort of homebrew that took elements from these systems, but I ended up adopting more and more of the system until I felt comfortable with the entire ruleset and felt like didn’t really need to create a house ruled version. It may be wrong to go into a game thinking, “how can I change this?” or, in my case, “how can I make this simpler?” Yet I’m relatively certain that I wouldn’t have as intensive an understanding of these games if I hadn’t approached them with my game designer’s hat on.

So I’ve been reading Spell Law, and I’m very impressed once again. The spell system is pretty simple, and the spells are just brief writeups with a few notes such as range or duration. They remind me of OD&D’s spell write ups. Spell Law is also the easiest system to port into another game. Using Arms Law in D&D would require the wholesale replacement of the combat system and alterations to the monsters (already too much work), but, I feel like, Spell Law could be adopted without disrupting the other systems of the game. Spell Law is something to consider if you want a more holistic magic system that has a rationale for its various parts. One aspect of Spell Law that is rather well thought out is the fact that psionics, known as Mentalism in Spell Law, is incorporated from the start as a distinct sphere of power. It is a part of the system rather than being an entirely new system that was awkwardly bolted onto D&D. Psionics haven’t really worked very well in D&D, in my opinion, until the most recent addition of the game (largely because all of the various powers now use essentially the same exception based design elements).

I can see why people looking for more detailed rules have often preferred Rolemaster to D&D, but I’m also very aware that this system is also quite a lot to take on. Rolemaster also seems to have been a fairly influential system as there are elements to the system that clearly influenced later games. For example, you can see D&D 3E as a descendent of Rolemaster. They are both Class and Level systems, for example, that also use extensive skill systems.

I’ve been reading various posts about Rolemaster and the one complaint people often have about the system is that it take quite a while to resolve combat. We’ve been playing D&D 4E, and the combats can be rather long sometimes. As a result, I’m becoming increasingly aware that two hour combats are not the thing that keeps me coming back to the table each week. Combat can be intense and fun on its own, but if it’s eating up all of the time you have at the table then I’m less certain about its usefulness. So I’m torn about Rolemaster in regards to this issue. On one hand I admire quite a bit about the Rolemaster system, but I’m unsure if it wouldn’t be too much to take on as a system. I could be wrong though—other folks claim if you stick to mainly just the core system then combat moves along fairly quickly.

I’m looking at maybe using the combat charts from Rolemaster Express, which I recently downloaded, to begin with. I figure if you started with the more simplified charts it might not bog things down too much, and you could move onto the full on Arm Law system eventually if you felt like you wanted the additional detail.

If anybody has some advice on this it would be great.

Frazetta's Spider Man

2010-05-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

I didn't comment here on Frank Frazetta's passing the other week largely because I didn't know what to say. I've loved the man's work for a good portion of my life. I loved Fire & Ice, for example. However, I didn't become a full-on Frazetta fan until I was in my mid twenties, and I checked out a book of his artwork from my college's library. I posted a gallery of Frazetta images a few posts back that had some of my favorites (Silver Warrior and Dark Kingdom in particular). It is the image below which just blew me away when I first checked out the Frazetta book. The hellish intensity of the picture is amazing. Please click on the image to see it larger.

Blue Oyster Moorcock

2010-05-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

There's been a fair bit of discussion in the OSR recently about the connections between Heavy Metal and D&D.

So here's Blue Oyster Cult with lyrics by a certain Michael Moorcock (one time resident of Ladbrook Grove and author of this writer's favorite fantasy adventure novels). I'd put Blue Oyster Cult in the "Hard Rock" category I suppose but in the late 1970s Fantasy and Rock were definitely cross polinating.

So as you listen just imagine the stories of Elric. . .Hawkmoon. . .Corum. . .Erekose. . .Cornelius. . .von Bek. . . Arflane. . .

RPG Excavations: Rolemaster 2nd edition

2010-05-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve had copies of the Iron Crown Enterprise’s Rolemaster books among my rpgs for about fourteen years. I inherited them from a friend who was moving away and wanted to get rid of his gaming manuals. During the time I’ve owned them I would sometimes take them out and try to read through them. I had trouble making any kind of sense of these books. They were filled with charts and abbreviations which were, to say the least, inadequately explained. Arms Law’s notorious critical hit charts were fun to look at, but I had very little idea of how they might be used. MERP was supposed to be a simplified version of Rolemaster, but I found myself lacking the patience to even get through that book. I considered getting rid of them numerous times, but I hung on to these tomes because, for all their obfuscation, they still called to me: there’s a good game in here somewhere.

Back in my rules lite days of playing Amber Diceless and Fudge, I used to make derisive comments about the guys who I saw at the local game store who were all clearly Rolemaster heads. They couldn’t have been roleplaying, right? They were just sitting around looking at charts, weren’t they? The even more complicated versions of Rolemaster that came out in the 1990s seemed to confirm to me this vision of the game as “Chartmaster” or “Rulemonster” as its often referred to by its detractors.

So the other day I was taking a look at Arms Law and suddenly the light came pouring in. I found myself understanding more and more. This led to much more intensive investigation of the game than anything I'd previously done.

My reaction? Holy $*%#! It is quite a game, and it has some brilliant aspects. However, this is a game for hardcore gamers who are looking for a very detailed system, but it actually uses a fairly simple system at its core. The game's major flaw isn't the system itself, but it is the confusing organization of the rules. Like the AD&D 1E Dungeon Master's Guide, there's more here than you'll need and sometimes important things are not clearly spelled out.

One of the things you have to realize about Rolemaster is that the system was designed to be modular. The golden rule is: use only what you need. You can always expand things later. I initially was thinking that I’d create some bastardized homebrew drawing bits from Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying system (which I love) and Rolemaster, but I’m becoming more enamored of Rolemaster on its own.

The character creation system is interesting because it combines elements of a skill system and a class/level based system. Basically you buy skills as you advance in levels with what are called development points. The catch is that different skills cost different amounts to buy depending on what your class is. Fighters can buy weapon skills relatively cheaply while they pay much more for magic based skills. The nice things is though that you can build whatever skills you want into any class. Swordwielding mages are totally a possibility here.

I’ve got a pretty good handle on Arms Law, which contains the combat rules, and I even managed to roll up a character using Character Law. Spell Law, the game’s magic system, still eludes me, but I’m confident that I’ll soon get a handle on that as well.

I likely won’t be playing this game anytime soon as my group is currently deep in 4E territory, but I’m glad I’ve got a better understanding of just what’s under Rolemaster’s hood. Now I just need to take her out for a spin. I’ll being doing a follow up post soon.

Gamma World Wilderness Maps

2010-04-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

Here's two maps I made a while back for an abortive Gamma Wold Campaign. It was set on a ruined colony world hundreds of years in the future. There were going to be mutants, robots, genetically altered supermen in suspended animation, and even some aliens for good measure.

AD&D Character Sheet Revisited

2010-03-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

AD&D has been my recent old school obsession. I've realized that I keep coming back to AD&D. My old hardcovers have become recreational reading for me when I get a moment to relax. I recently started to read the pdf of the Osric 2nd edition rulebook, and I was heartened by how clear Osric is. It doesn't have all the rules I might like, but, for example, I can easily use the wilderness travel rules from the DMG if I like. The more I keep looking at the rules the more I like them. I'm thinking of developing a science fantasy AD&D/Osric campaign using some stuff from my First Edition Gammma World rulebook.

I posted a version of an AD&D character sheet a while back, but I've been tinkering with it. Its now four pages, and I'm pretty happy with it. Page three even has a space for followers and hirelings.

More visual inspiration!

2010-03-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

The above image is from the videogame Darksiders. I'm not particularly interested in playing the game, but the artwork for the game is particularly evocative. This image makes me want to run a game set in the world of this picture (not the game's world but the world suggested by the picture).

Anybody else inspired to do campaigns based on pretty pictures?

Frazetta! Frazetta! Frazetta!

2010-03-22T12:51:00.000-07:00

Vin Diesel is an Old School Gamer

2009-09-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not a Vin Diesel fan (although he's quite good in Pitch Black if you haven't seen it), but I've been interested in the fact that he seems to be the only celebrity who at all talks about gaming as a positive thing.

I'm guessing he's an AD&D 1E guy from what he says here:

D&D My Way: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make My Own House Rules

2009-09-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

I've spent a lot of time in the last few years thinking about which edition of D&D is the best for me. I've got some real fondness for Basic D&D, AD&D 1E, OD&D, and I even think that if I was going to run the original Ravenloft: Realm of Terror boxed set I'd be willing to go with 2E just because that set is so brilliant(although I wouldn't pick 2E under many other circumstances). So. . .which edition (or retroclone) is the one I'd prefer? The answer is: there's good and bad with all of the above editions. There is no one ideal choice (although Moldvay comes pretty damn close in my book) which, I suppose, is WHY we all keep re-engaging with these rules.

I though I'd sort of found my answer in OD&D several years ago when I first stumbled onto Philotomy's OD&D musings (which you can find at http://www.philotomy.com/ ) . Initially, I was pretty fundmentalist. I thought: "Okay, just the three brown books from the original OD&D set. Who needs the Thief and screw variable weapon damage! We are going to go as old school as you can get!" Well almost. . .I didn't decide to play some crazy Blackmoor-styled Chainmail variant (although reading about that stuff is inspiring). Problem is that I almost never got to play OD&D, and when I did play it became clear that some of the elements of later editions were more valauble than I'd first believed. For example: I wanted more classes!

Which then led me to crack open my AD&D 1E Player's Handbook, and The Dungeon Master's Guide. The rules were both cumbersome and obscure in places, and in others as clear and as simple as daylight. My time looking at OD&D was very helpful, because for the first time I saw how AD&D had both retained and tried to move away from the previous ruleset. Instead of being clearer, AD&D was just obscure in different ways. I needed help, so I looked at OSRIC. I read posts online at various forums about AD&D. I studied, and I thought. In the end, I created a house rules document (which I posted here a few months ago) that took out all the stuff I didn't want, so my AD&D ended up looking more like OD&D. That was the hewing back AD&D approach, but it occured to me that there was another route to go as well.

What about OD&D with the supplements? That's when I started looking at Swords & Wizardry as an option. The PDF was free afterall, right? After poking around a bit, I found the wonderful S&W Companion at http://swcompanion.wikidot.com/ . The supplement at the S&W Companion site called White Box Heroes was pretty much exactly what I'd been looking for. So earlier this summer I ordered both S&W White Box and White Box Heroes from Lulu (along with the excellent S&W Monster Book).

I'm in the process of prepping a session for this Thursday with my gaming group. We decided that I was going to run a one shot of old school D&D for two of my players who are pretty much new to roleplaying. So what was I going to run them in? Moldvay? Holmes? AD&D? Nope. After almost deciding on Moldvay, I decided that using S&W White Box with the White Box Heroes book was just about perfect for new players. I revised an old OD&D character sheet I made, and I even created a house rules document and some reference sheets that are pretty spiffy.

I'm curious to see how OD&D/S&W plays with a few more options. I'll definitely post about it here afterwards.

In the end, I'm like a lot of folks who seem to be looking for something with the core simplicity of OD&D/Basic D&D with many of AD&D's options. James Maliszewski at Grognardia has called this D&D 0.75. The link to his post is here.

I've Started

2009-09-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

I've started working on a pulp science fantasy novel that I'm hoping to actually finish. It occurs to me that while I've written lots of stories with genre elements I haven't written anything quite like this since I was eighteen. For long time I wrote stories with "literary" aspirations (largely because I was writing in a college MFA program that encouraged those sorts of stories), but I never wanted to write like Hemingway or Graham Greene. When I was thirteen, I wrote a number of stories that were pretty much pastiches of Michael Moorcock, but they brimmed with imaginative imagery. I feel like I've gone back to that well for the first time in a long time. Maybe, I'll have a few more things to say now that I'm in my late thirties.

BUT. . .the book IS going to have swords, monsters, a doomed heroine, and all those things that have drenched my journal and my imagination for a long time. I feel like I'm finally letting them out to play.

I'll update on my progress as I make some.

Best
Nick

Prince Valiant on Mars

2009-08-08T03:02:00.000-07:00

The following is my implementation of an Edgar Rice Burroughs type Mars setting based on the Chaosium Prince Valiant Game by Greg Stafford (which is sadly out of print, but it shouldn't be too hard to track down a used copy). This is a brilliant little game that I highly recommend picking up if you're looking for something really rules lite and which does a good job of creating the feeling of old style adventures like Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, or even Burrough's Mars novels. The system is ideal for introducing new players to the idea of roleplaying. It is also notable for being influential on many later designs but was relatively unsuccessful when it came out. I've substituted dice for the coins the game uses, and I've created a set of careers and skills specific to Mars. For a fuller explantion of these notes see the Prince Valiant rulebook.

Maybe I'll try to write up some of the characters from the Burroughs books in the next few days.

PRINCE VALIANT ON MARS

SYSTEM

Characters are rated from 1-6 in just two attributes. These are BRAWN and PRESENCE. The rating indicates the number of D6s they may roll when making an attribute check. Attribute checks roll ONLY on the attribute.

Skills are rated from 1-6 and also indicate the number of D6s they may roll when making a skill check. However, unlike attribute checks, skill checks combine the skill and the attribute to get a total dice pool.

For example: If you were rolling on your Horsemanship skill and your Horsemanship was 3 and your Brawn was 2 you would combine these for a total dice pool of 5D6.

Any roll of 4 or higher is considered a success. Any character that rolls successes for ALL of the dice in his current dice pool has attained a COMPLETE SUCCESS. Any character who rolls a complete success may add 1 additional success to his roll.

If the action you take next round is related to the action you took this round (such as a continued opposed contest like a fencing duel between two characters)then the character may BANK his/her successes for the following round if they so desire (Note: this banking may only be done ONCE).

DIFFICULTY FACTORS

1 Successes: Very Easy

2 Successes: Easy

3 Successes: Normal

4 Successes: Difficult

5 or more Successes: Very Difficult

Skill contests (like combat) involve rolling your dice pool and comparing the number of successes with your opponent. The one with the most successes is the winner.

A tie indicates the contest was a draw.

CHARACTER GENERATION

Beginning character have 7 points to divide up between their attributes. Each attribute must have at least 1 point in it and no attribute may have more than 6.

ATTRIBUTES

BRAWN
PRESENCE

Next, divide 9 points among 6 skills, with at least 1 point to each. No skill may be rated higher than 6.

BASIC SKILLS

AGILITY
ANCIENT SCIENCE
ARMS
BATTLE
BRAWLING
CHARM
COURTESY
DEXTERITY
DISGUISE
FELLOWSHIP
FIREARMS
GAMING
HEALING
HUNTING
LORE
MECHANICIAN
MONEY-HANDLING
ORATORY
PILOTING
READ/WRITE LANGUAGE
RIDING
SPEAK LANGUAGE
STEALTH
TELEPATHY

OCCUPATIONS

(Red Martians)

Airman
Must have Arms and Piloting.

Assassin
Must have Arms and Stealth.

City Noble
Must have Courtesy and Telepathy.

Merchant
Must have Money-Handling and Charm.

Prince / Princess
Must have Arms and Courtesy.

Scout
Must have Hunting and Riding.

Scoundrel
Must have Brawling and Charm.

Slave
Must have Courtesy and Dexterity or Agility (Choose one)

Warrior
Must have Arms and Firearms.

(Green Martians)

Barbarians
Must have Riding and Firearms.

(Black Martians)

Pirates
Must have Piloting and Stealth

STORYTELLER POINTS

A character may use a single Storyteller point in order to invoke a Special Effect at an appropriately dramatic moment. This effectively allows the player to temporarily take control of the narrative and automatically declare that a particular event happens.

Here is a listing of the Special Effects that can be invoked:

SPECIAL EFFECTS

TERRIFY
SAVE IN COMBAT
FIND ESCAPE ROUTE
ESCAPE BONDS
FIND SOMETHING HIDDEN
HIDE
KILL A FOE IN COMBAT
KNOCK AN OPPONENT SENSELESS
INCITE LUST
SUPRESS LUST
INSPIRE INDIVIDUAL TO GREATNESS
CONFUSE CHARACTER
AROUSE PASSIONS OF CROWD

MODIFIERS SUMMARY

Melee

Mounted vs. opponent on foot +1
Superior Position +1
Superior Numbers +1
Flanking +1
Surrounding Opponent +3
Attack from Behind +3

Weapons

Normal Weapons +1

Ranged

Target Behind Cover -1 to -3
Draw and Attack -1

Morale

Positive: Love, Loyalty +1 or +2
Negative: Fear, Panic -1 or -2

Presence

Character has 1000 Honor or more than opponent: +1
Character has 10000 Honor or more than opponent: +2

RANGED WEAPON DIFFICULTIES

1 Success: Point Blank Range
2 Successes: Short Range
3 Successes: Medium Range (Default)
4 or more Successes: Long Range

ADVANCEMENT AND HONOR

(Awards per Session)

Minimum Award 100
Standard Award 200
Significant Award 300
Maximum Award 500

100 Known among circle
500 Famous in Home Town
1000 On the Road to Real Fame
10000 A Famous Adventurer
50000 Famous throughout the Country (and the World)

1 Skill increases 1 point at the 1000 Honor mark (and every subsequent 1000 mark).

1 Attribute increases 1 point at the 5000 Honor mark.

Skills may also be increased if a complete success is rolled. The character should then roll an unmodified skill roll (with no attribute combined) and if that roll also comes up all successes then the character may add an additional point to that skill.

Japanese Giant Robot and Monster Shows

2009-07-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

Warning: YouTube nostalgia ahead!

I used to watch many of these shows and now inflict them on you!

For some reason I used to want to fly around in Rodak's bat wing space ship thing with the glowing white disco ball embedded in it.

Yikes! I'd forgotten I used to watch both Spectreman and Ultraman until I watched the openings!

"Use robot punch!"

Okay. . .I never saw this show when I was a kid, but I now want that guy's helmet.

Okay. . .I never saw this one either, but If I'd seen this when I was eight it would have been my favorite TV show ever. I would have then created a D&D campaign where they have laser guns, swords, and werelions on horseback.

Three Headed Monster Games

2009-07-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

One thing I've always admired about the indie rpg scene is the very real way in which those folks support each other in publishing, promotion, and even just actually playing of each others games. It's nice to see a bit more of that sort of creative support coming together in the OSR. So check out the guys over at Three Headed Monster Games:

http://thmgames.blogspot.com/

I keep thinking about this fellow when I hear the name:

Where I First Saw OD&D

2009-07-12T00:28:00.000-07:00

I mentioned this in my previous post, but I though I'd expand on this story because the memory now haunts me (but in a good way as you'll see).

I was a kid living in Crystal Lake, Illinois when I discovered D&D, and I would often make trips to our local bookstore which, despite it being an independently owned shop, was located in a mall. I can't remember the name of the store for the life of me, but it was something like "The Book Hollow", but their bookmarks, as I recall, had the image of a small gnomelike fellow with a beard standing next to an old gnarled tree.

So in around the spring of 1982 I discovered one of the later editions of OD&D in with a bunch of other D&D stuff at this store. The box set was from the last set of printings which have "Original Collector's Edition" written on the box. In addition to the box set they had individual copies of Men & Magic and the other two volumes from the boxed set. I'm also certain they had copies of Gods, Demigods, and Heroes, Chainmail, and Eldritch Wizardry.

These books confused me as I hadn't seen them in any of TSR's catalogs such as their "Gateway to Adventure" catalog which had come with my Basic Set. Maybe it was the cover to Eldritch Wizardry which said: "Okay ten year old Nick this one isn't for you. . .and besides HOW are you going to get this one past your Mom?" I don't think I even had a clear understanding that these were the original rulebooks--I probably thought they were freaky old miniatures supplements for AD&D. Only years later did I realize what those little white booklets were.

Now, I keep thinking: if only I'd bought them!

Yet I think it was this memory which was fired when I stumbled across places like the Knights & Knaves Alehouse and the OD&D Discussion Boards. Soon I bought the OD&D PDFs from RPGNow, and I was off into creating my houseruled version of OD&D.

I think in that initial flurry of the OSR it felt a bit like we were excavating the origins of so much stuff that's now central to our hobby. It was exciting. And all that made me love D&D again.

My Gaming History

2009-07-03T04:57:00.000-07:00

Its far too late and I should go back to bed, but this just crawled into my brain and so I thought I'd post this. Here's what I've played from when I was a wee gamer until now.

This is a long post (I've been gaming on and off since 1982).

(I've stolen this idea from a thread at Vincent Baker's blog Anyway)

Here's mine:

Played made up "dungeon" game with a six sided and a dungeon board drawn on a piece of construction paper in my fourth grade English class (we weren't supposed to be doing this).

AD&D ran by a friends older brother (it was Against the Giants)

Got Moldvay Basic.

Left Moldvay behind for the siren call of those AD&D hardbacks.

I see one of the later editions of the "white box" in with a bunch of other AD&D stuff at our local bookstore. They also have copies of Gods, Demigods, and Heroes and Eldritch Wizardry. They confuse me as I haven't seen them in any of TSR's catalogs. If only I'd bought them!

Played Dungeon! over at my friend Tom's house.

Top Secret.

Gamma World.

(Wow there's a horrifying infomercial on right now for a "male enhancement product". That's what I get for being up this late).

Lots of AD&D!!

Lots and lots of Top Secret (This was our main game for several years).

Call of Cthulhu (this game blew my mind and led me to read the pulp trinity of Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith).

Traveller (we never used the Third Imperium Setting--I made up my own setting ripping lots off of Dune).

My friend buys GURPS claiming it is the Holy Grail of Gaming: you can play ANYTHING. That's intriguing but we never end up playing.

Marvel super heroes. I only got the original basic set and then wised I'd waited and got the "advanced" set--which was really a much better and more complete game.

Paranoia at my friend Mike's house. We all kill each other and laugh about it.

AD&D 2nd edition.

TMNT and Heroes Unlimited

Car Wars (I'm not very good and die quickly in our arena combat).

Pendragon (great game).

Top Secret/S.I. This continued on from where our old Top Secret campaign left off (with the same characters).

I don't game for about two years.

Cyberpunk.

More Cyberpunk.

AD&D 1st edition Dragonlance.

Vampire.

FASA's Star Trek.

Amber Diceless (I've fallen in love)

Lots of Amber.

Mekton.

Ars Magica.

I buy the Different Worlds printing of Empire of the Petal Throne.

I buy Stormbringer (4th edition) but never manage to get a game going.

Gene Wolfe inspired fantasy thing using a AD&D 2nd edition and later a freeform system without dice (inflicted mostly on my friend Erik).

More time not playing.

Epic Mekton campaign that lasts almost two years.

Run a great long running Amber game.

Don't game for a few years.

Various homemade Amber-inspired settings using freeform rules.

Another Mekton attempt that crashes and burns.

Amber inspired thing using the FUDGE rules.

Supernatural themed FUDGE game inspired by British TV shows like Sapphire and Steel.

D&D 3.0

We convert our D&D 3.0 campaign to Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System (which becomes our go-to system for a while).

Follow up/alternate take on our FUDGE amber inspired game using the Basic Roleplaying System--this one ends up being a grittier modern era game.

Abortive Star Wars game using Basic Roleplaying--the system finally fails us.

Pendragon (5th edition) using the Great Pendragon Campaign.

Figuring out what I want in D&D.

Discover Philotomy's Musings and the OD&D boards.

OD&D baby!

Simultaneously discover indie scene and the Forge. Now I have too many games to play!

D&D (4th ed)

GMless X-men thing.

Talisman with my wife and friends.

The 9th Division.

Tell me yours?

Dungeon Squad and Other Rules Lite Fantasy Games

2009-06-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I spent a little bit of time reading up on a game I had downloaded a while back called "Dungeon Squad" but had never taken the time to really look at very closely. It strips the idea of something like D&D down to its essence in quite an interesting way.

The game was originally written by Jason Morningstar, author of such games as The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach and Grey Ranks, as part of a 24 hour rpg design challenge. According to the wikipedia entry on Dungeon Squad the idea came from an unsatisfying session of D&D 3.X which he ran for some kids at the local library. Dungeon Squad tries to cater to younger roleplayers by providing a fun and rules lite system with lots of rolling dice, killing monsters, and getting gold.

It looks like it could be a blast to play and its given me a kick in the butt to actually finish Dungeon Battle!--my ongoing dungeoncrawl boardgame project.

Here's a link to Morningstar's original draft of "Dungeon Squad":

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/dungeon-squad

Here's a thread on Dragonsfoot from a while back with some discussion of the game as well as some great links. Meepo's version is quite good as it keeps the stripped down quality of the original with just a little bit of expansion:

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23582

Here's are some of the various versions of Dungeon Squad which people have made posted at the 1000 Monkey 1000 Typewriters website:

http://www.1km1kt.net/?s=Dungeon+Squad

Here another little fantasy game called "Adventurer" which looks kind of nifty too:

http://www.1km1kt.net/rpg/adventure-rpg

Here's a link to the brilliant Microlite 74 which is a distillation of the D20 system down to its essence so that it closely resembles the earliest editions of the world's most popular fantasy game:

http://www.retroroleplaying.com/content/microlite74

Here's a link to the 1000 Monkeys 1000 Typewriters website which hosts lots of cool free rpgs--poke around I think you'll find some interesting stuff.

http://www.1km1kt.net

9th Division: The Protagonists

2009-06-22T14:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief description of my character and her aspects:

Name: Dietrich

Description: A bald woman in her late twenties/early thirties with an exotic air. She has swirling tatoos around the back of her head and wears dark forties style suits made out of unusual materials.

Here's her list of aspects as per the questions in Wheel of Fate:

What is your greatest strength?

Her physical superiority to human beings.

What is your greatest flaw?

Acceptance of her slavery (she's an android).

What do you want?

To be seen as the best cop she can be.

What is keeping you from getting it?

Perceptions of other officers about her being an android.

What are you doing about it?

Being a perfectionist/ overachieving.

Here's another of our character-protagonists.

Name: Dr. Victor Choi.

Description: 4'8" weightlifting psionic Chinese-American (2nd generation psion).

Here's his list of aspects as per the questions in Wheel of Fate:

What is your greatest strength?

Perception and analysis.

What is your greatest flaw?

His inability to relate to others.

What do you want?

To understand people.

What is keeping you from getting it?

His intellectual and conceptual remove.

What are you doing about it?

Being among troubled people / Working for the police.

Here's the last of our character-protagonists.

Name: ??

Description: Middle aged detective.

Here's his list of aspects as per the questions in Wheel of Fate:

What is your greatest strength?

Commited professional cop / workaholic.

What is your greatest flaw?

Ambition for promotion

What do you want?

Promotion out of the 9th Division.

What is keeping you from getting it?

Has the stink of corruption on him from a previous scandal which he was made the scapegoat for.

What are you doing about it?

Closing cases at all costs.

The 9th Division: Setting Document

2009-06-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

We're gearing up to play this homebrewed gmless science fiction rpg right now. We collaborated on generating the setting: which came together gradually through various conversations (mostly over the phone), and last night we finally sat down to finish tweaking the setting and roll up our characters. Our PCs are members of the eponymous police unit which specializes in investigating crimes of an unusual nature. Influences on the campaign include: Blade Runner, Gattaca, The Wire, and Minority Report.

We're all excited about the setting, we like our characters, and we're all pretty much on the same page. I thought I'd share what we've come up with just because I think its pretty nifty stuff.

Here's the setting document as it stands right now:

Sometime in the late 21st Century of an Alternate Future

Location: The City

Video phones with rotary dials and monographic screens.

Monochrome green screen computers.

Computers used as databases and calculation machines but there is no real internet.

TV and Radio still dominates as major media.

Vinyl is used—no tapes or CDs.

Paper still dominates society—newpapers, phone books etc.

Chunky cybernetics.

Cybernetics are a cheaper medical alternative to cloning.

Androids are being incorporated into various aspects of society (such as the police).

In the last sixty years or so there has been genetic modification of embryos to “improve” them.

Gene-mod children develop psychiatric and psychological problems, various disorders, and even low-level psychic abilities.

Some of these traits (such as psychic abilities) become inheritable—thus the gene modification experiments have permanently altered the human gene pool.

Most people travel by public transportation as duty charges on things like registration and licensing for private vehicles are exorbitantly expensive.

Government agencies like the sanitation department, the police, and emergency crews still use institutional vehicles.

The 9th Division is a specialized unit within The City's regular police department.

The 9th Division’s mandate is dealing in “specialized” crime, but the division is now a bit of an orphan as the people who created and shepherded it are no longer there.

The 9th Division is not a prized division and rumors abound about the division being on the chopping block.

Jurisdiction issues with local cops and 9th Division.

Combination of modern, retro fashion, and future fashion.

Futuristic drugs: Rebirth.

Rebirth rewrites your memories in strange ways—replacing old memories and creating new ones at the same time.
Non-lethal weaponry in commonly used by police units—various stun weapons.

Light pulse based weapons—shuts down your nervous system.

Needle Gun with CO2 cartridges.

Tracking goo from air-gun.

OD&D Dungeon

2009-06-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a dungeon I made that was stocked by using the rules in The Underground & Wilderness Adventure. For my money the advice packed into those few pages trumps is more compelling than most other later attempts at this type of thing. This method keeps things simple and fun and for some reason fires my imagination.

This dungeon is not as large or as intricate as Castle Dragonscar, but I'm pretty happy with the selections of encounters. You'll notice I placed the slimes and black pudding in the corridors as per Vol. 3 pg. 7: "Note that Ochre Jellies, Black Puddings, Green Slime etc. are generally distributed randomly, usually in passages without treasure."

Sharp Teeth and Other Things of An Ellisonian Nature

2009-05-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've always liked Harlan Ellison. My copy of the Essential Ellison sits on the shelf behind me--I remember pouring over that book and reading story after story when I was twenty years old, had very little money, and was living New York. It was the perfect book to be reading. I even wrote a couple of stories that were certainly "Ellisonian" in tone but, mostly, they weren't very good.

But I've been thinking about doing some "real" writing again after not really doing it since I got out of school back in 2004. We'll see.

In the meantime this documentary about Harlan Ellison called Dreams With Sharp Teeth is due out this month on DVD. Looks great.

The Finish Line is in Sight

2009-05-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

I'm a college English instructor, and I'm currently buried in Final Exams that need to be graded. My postings have been fewer recently due to end of the semester craziness, but I'm hoping to do more writing here at the blog and on a couple of other writing projects I've got lined up (among them two different game designs and a fantasy short story).

Looks like later in the summer we'll be playing this crime-noir science fiction campaign we've been talking about (using a Frankenstein ruleset I came up with that's cobbled together from various indie games). My friend James even came up with a nifty name for it: The 9th Division.

My Current Project: Dungeon Battle!

2009-05-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

A few month ago I started fiddling with rules for a dungeon miniatures boardgame that was inspired by things like OD&D, Heroquest, Warhammer Quest, and the old Heritage USA rules for their paint and play sets like Crypt of the Sorcerer and Caverns of Doom. I'm calling it Dungeon Battle, The Fantasy Fighting Game. I recently started writing the rules up in earnest and when its finished I will post them here to the blog.

Right now the game has little in the way of an advancement system--you just collect treasure and magic items, but I'm considering trying to cobble together an advancement system that would suit this style of play. Right now the game also doesn't have a single GM--it has a rotating role known as the Sorcerer who places and controls the monsters for a single encounter.

Here's a preview of the write ups for two of the Hero figures:

Barbarian

Move: 5 squares Spells: None
Fighting: 1D6+1 Miracles: None
Defense: 1D6
Missiles: 1D6+1
Magic Resistance: 1D6+2
Wounds: 1D6+1 (roll before game)

Weapons: Two-Handed Sword (roll bonus die on fighting)
Throwing Knife (Range: 2 squares)

Dwarf

Move: 4 squares Spells: None
Fighting: 1D6 Miracles: None
Defense: 1D6
Missiles: 1D6+1
Magic Resistance: 1D6+3
Wounds: 1D6+2 (roll before game)

Weapons: Battle Axe
Throwing Axe (Range: 2 squares)

Nick's Headspace: A Clockwork Orange

2009-05-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

Just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again.

Been thinking about Kubrick lately. I just watched this clip of the opening to A Clockwork Orange, and I have to say that his use of the camera is hypnotic. He's all about the power of deliberate slowness whereas many director today cut fifteen times in a minute. Kubrick makes us look.

This is one of the best openings to a film that I can think of.

So look now at Alex and his droogs:

Thoughts on Jaws of the Six Serpents & the PDQ System

2009-05-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

I received my copy of a new rpg last week. The game is called Jaws of the Six Serpents and it is written by Tim Gray and published by Silver Branch Games. The game uses Chad Underkoffler's Prose Descriptive Qualities System (PDQ). Gray had previously published another PDQ game called Questers of the Middle Realms which from the title you might have guessed is a game that emulates tolkienesque high fantasy. So why the need for another PDQ fantasy game? Well, Jaws of the Six Serpents is inspired by the dark fantasy and pulp sword and sorcery stories written by writers such as Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, Glen Cook, Karl Edward Wagner, and David Gemmell. When I read about it online I decided to give it a go since I was familiar with the PDQ system and was curious to see a real sword and sorcery implementation of it.

I really dug into the game last night, and I have to say I'm quite excited. For some time I've been looking for a system that suits my style of play and which might be well suited to pulp sword and sorcery. D&D can do this, but it misses the mark in a few areas. D&D' s reward system is generally built around exploring underground spaces, killing monsters, and collecting magic items and while this makes for a great and fun game it doesn't really replicate the sort of stories written by the above gentlemen. Some of the folks over at the OD&D boards have some brilliant house rules and variants of OD&D that bring D&D in much closer line with this sort of fiction, but I've been curious to try this type of story using a more narrativist system

I should also note that one reason systems like OD&D, Tunnels & Trolls, the Fate System, The Shadow of Yesterday, and PDQ appeal to me as a GM is that I can be terrifically lazy when it comes to game systems. I don't want to do anything like the sort of prep that something like D&D 3E requires. I'm older, busier, and I've got a family which means that my prep for games should ideally be both easy and fun. I'm done with taking three hours to stat out bad guys that are going to eat it in five minutes when my bloodthirsty players get their hands on them. I want to spend my prep time thinking about interesting npcs, environments, and situations for my players to deal with.

Jaws makes all that stuff quite simple. I'm not going to go into an extensive discussion of the PDQ system here, but I will mention a few things. The system runs on modifiers which are attached to Qualities that the character possesses, and the modifiers range from -2 to +6. Examples of Qualities might be "Swordsmen", "Beserker", "Walks with a Limp", or even things like "Always Carries a Red Scarf in Remembrance of His Slain Lover". The modifiers from the relevant Qualities are added to a roll of 2D6 and compared against a target number or another character's roll. That's the basic mechanic, but the most innovative aspect of the system is the damage system which involves the character taking damage to their respective Qualities. However, the player decides which Qualities will be affected. Eventually, if the character has lost all of their ranks in all of their qualities they are considered to be "zeroed out" which means they've been defeated (but probable not dead unless the stakes are really high for the story). Jaws itself introduces some unique elements to the PDQ system such as Dark Learning points for Secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know, and the demonically tainted magic you often find in Sword & Sorcery tales--as opposed to the sort of magic you find in various high fantasy settings.

I'm an incessant tinkerer when it comes to game systems (which is why OD&D/AD&D are so much fun), but Jaws pretty much sold me on running the system as is--which says quite a lot.

I could see using Jaws for all sorts of fantasy games. The system will work pretty well for any sort of low-magic dark fantasy setting, but it could be easily adapted to science fantasy settings or a variety of other things as well. I'd definitely recommend the system if you're looking for a rules lite system that facilitates narrative play, and which allows you to run a dark fantasy styled game.

Buy Your Elder Sign Now!

2009-04-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

I think this is the best thing my eyes have ever seen.

AD&D House Rules & Character Sheets

2009-04-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

AD&D is a game that (despite the rulebook's insistence that there is a correct way to play and an incorrect one) has always been houseruled. Even when I was younger and didn't understand all of the rules, I just ignored what I didn't get--which, I suppose, is a type of house ruling. So in the light of that, I thought I'd offer some brief notes as to what I'd change in AD&D.

Not using the armor vs. weapon type table.

No weapon speed factors.

Using the revised Monk and Bard Classes from The Best of Dragon vol.III.

Ignore the unwieldy hand to hand rules from the DMG.

Not using weapon proficiencies.

I'm going the keep the prices and coin from the Player's Handbook, but in practice I'll likely almost entirely ignore electrum and platinum pieces.

Characters make attribute checks by rolling their attribute or lower on a d20 for class attributes. Non-class attributes are rolled at the attribute minus 4.

Things I'm unsure about:

Not sure whether I'd want to use the classes from Unearthed Aracana. I like the idea of Barbarians and Acrobats, but the rules seem increasingly fiddly.

Not sure about casting times. I might just adopt the OD&D/Basic D&D method for casting--which is basically that spells take place instantaneously.

I'm by nature a lazy DM and much of these rules are me just trying to shape the ruleset into something that I'd feel comfortable running.

Here's the character sheet I made:

The Dungeons of Castle Dragonscar Levels 1 & 2

2009-04-24T02:23:00.000-07:00

Here's both of the completed levels together. I'm toying with the idea of a random stocking method which I'll try to detail in a later post. Certain chambers would be "setpiece" encounters, some would be designated as empty, while other rooms would have randomly generated encounters within.

I mentioned over on the OD&D boards that drawing these feels like a weird stress reliever. Call it Dungeon Therapy.

Anyway, here they are:

Deleted so my players won't see them!!!

Nick's Headspace: The Fountain

2009-04-21T00:04:00.000-07:00

I know this is strictly speaking a tabletop RPG blog, but I've been listening to the soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain rather incessantly. This all started in order to find inspiration for this gmless fantasy/ horror/ western we're thinking of playing this summer, but I can't help but remember how bowled over I was by this film.

If you want to see the aching pain of real cinematic beauty see The Fountain. Leave your questions at the door and let it wash over you.

Behold:

2009-04-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Just saw this bit of brilliance about Dave Arneson.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0644.html

Castles! Castles! Castles!

2009-04-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

Here are a few castles that I created for an epic interdimensional fantasy campaign that was partly inspired by Roger Zelazny's Amber series. Icewatch is loosely based on a real world castle (Caernarvon Castle in Wales), and Ravengard was my attmpt to create a seat of sorcerous evil, and it was inspired by the interpretation of Barad-Dur from the old Rankin-Bass Return of the King animated film. They both exist in the frozen Norse-inflected realm of Valtallas.

Dave Arneson (1947-2009)

2009-04-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

I never met Dave Arneson, and I only had the barest sort of contact with him through his occasional postings on the OD&D board, but I'm realizing we've lost the person who's innovations led to our hobby. I mean Dave was the guy who said to himself: what if we did THIS with Chainmail.

It's a sad day.

Fantasy Boardgame Fun-A-Rama

2009-04-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

So we've been playing Talisman (the edition by Fantasy Flight Games) and its been lots of fun. When we picked it up a few months ago the guy at the game store described it as "D&D meets Candy Land" which sounded just about right to my wife and I as we'd tried to play The Fury of Dracula over Christmas and found it a little frustrating (likely due to the fact that I'd not carefully gone over the rules). We want games that are fun, not too complex, and which are playable in under three hours. Our Talisman games have been running about three to four hours, but there are several ways to speed up play which we might want to do from now on.

I've been curious about Descent for a while now, but I've read enough descriptions that make it clear that the game can often take four or five hours. Unfortunately, my wife and I aren't really up for a five hour game. After reading a bit of stuff online it has become clear to me that there are lots of older dungeon crawl boardgames that would serve us better. I used to play TSR's old Dungeon boardgame when I was younger but now I think I'm looking for something with just a little more complexity. Milton Bradley's Heroquest (which was licensed from Games Workshop) might be fun, but everything I've read indicates that the sweet spot for dungeon crawlers was really hit with Games Workshop's Warhammer Quest. The bad news is that Warhammer Quest is long out of print and copies of the game go for ridiculous amounts of money on Ebay.

Lots of people cried in horror that 4e was becoming a boardgame and while I sympathize I actually think 4e is almost more interesting as a boardgame or as a boardgame/rpg hybrid (which is what it seems to be). I prefer older editions of D&D, but I can see that for the type of game that it is 4e is pretty damn good game. I've got a bunch of WOTC dungeon tiles and some of their figures, and it had occured to me that a slightly sripped down version of 4e might be lots of fun if you essentially played it as a boardgame. Ideally, you'd be able to play without a DM as it is discussed in the 4e DMG. I read a post over at En World a while back suggesting that WOTC should sell 4e in big box with a slimmed down rulebook, lots of minis, a nice set of dungeon tiles, power cards, encounter cards, and advancement rules through 10th level. And they should sell it at Target and Toys R Us. I know I'd buy it.

Anyway all of this has led me to consider trying to cobble together my own dungeon crawl boardgame. It occurs to me that older versions of D&D might also be easily adapted to this sort of play. I downloaded the Dungeon Bash pdf a while back which is game that adapts D20 as a boardgame, but it also wasn't what I was looking for.

I'm going to need to think on this.

The Room of A Hundred Dwarves and Other Highlights of Third Grade

2009-04-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

Unlike a lot of other rpgs D&D has for a variety of reasons always been linked to boardgames in my head. This likely has to do with my early experience of the game. You see I started playing D&D even before I owned the game. This must have been around the spring of 1981 or so when I would have been in 3rd Grade. I had seen some kids at school playing, and so I endeavored to make my own D&D game. This consisted of me drawing a dungeon on a piece of construction paper from school and looting a green six sided die from an old game set at our house. I drew numbers on the rooms and that’s all I figured we needed. Having noticed the squares on the dungeon maps I’d seen, I imagined that you rolled a die to move through the dungeon—just like in Clue or a million other boardgames.

Then my friend Eric (who we decided should be the DM because he’d actually played “real” D&D with his neighbor) would make up whatever he thought should be in the room. I think we just rolled a certain number on the six-sided to hit. Goblins might have needed a 3 to hit while a Dragon (the nastiest thing we could imagine) would have probably been a 6. I’m not even sure we were using hit points, but we might have been. There were also no classes: we were all playing warriors of some type. I didn’t even bother to name my character. There was one room where we had to fight like a hundred Dwarves. That was rough (although they died really easy and never made any kind of a group attack). It just took a looong time to kill them all. We’d get to a room, kill everything in sight, and then we’d find whatever gold or magic was in the room (and there ALWAYS was gold or magic). It was fun.

One of the funniest things was that we’d mostly play during our English class! We were supposed to be doing some sort of project, but we’d sit and play our D&D game instead. Our teacher got upset at us several times, but at other times she ignored us. We weren’t being particularly disruptive and the group of us were generally “good” kids who had a little more leeway.

At home I decided I wanted to have a D&D game with miniatures. I had a couple of knights and a pack of plastic monsters and dinosaurs my parents had bought me at a local drug store. I then took some cardboard and drew a dungeon with permanent marker that was big enough to move the figures around on. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that one of the plastic monsters I had was the same plastic monster that Gary Gygax had utilized several years before as the now infamous Rust Monster. At the time, I, of course, had no idea what a Rust Monster was. These dungeon boardgames went through several iterations, but they were all fairly rudimentary in their construction, but that hardly mattered to me: I was in love with the idea of a "dungeon" game.

It occurs to me now that this endeavor of mine explains a lot about the person I’ve become. I started out making and hacking games and I’m still doing that today.

The Dungeons of Castle Dragonscar

2009-03-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

I posted this over in the OD&D forums a few weeks back so some of you might have seen it there, but I decided to post it to the blog at least partly so the resolution would be a little clearer. Just click on the image above.

You can see on this version the elevators, pits, and whatnot I included. I'm not sure which levels the elevators go to, but right now I'm thinking one should go to Level 3 and another to Level 6.

My intention is to stock the level myself, but things have been crazy with tons of grading and two bouts of sickness in the last month. I'll post the results here when I'm finished.

Oh, and as I noted on the forums--feel free to steal this baby and use as you will.

Here's the original forum thread in case anybody's interested:

http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=workshop&action=display&thread=1900

The Nine Hells

2009-03-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to go to Hell.

Okay. . .not actual Hell, but when I played AD&D I wanted to send the characters to Hell. Despite Dave Sutherland's wonderfull depiction of "A Paladin in Hell" from the AD&D Player's handbook, I was always initially more facinated with the demons as opposed to the devils in the AD&D Monster Manual. That changed thanks to Dragon Magazine and Ed Greenwood. Greenwood's articles on the Nine Hells (from issues #75 and #76) captured my imagination in a way that only a few other articles in the magazine ever did.

Greenwood's articles gave life to those images in the monster manual. Hell was a place rife with intrigue, plotting, and lots of really awful adversaries. More than that the Hells as depicted were an interesting and varied planar environment. Not just a flaming pit, here we had disease filled swamps, frozen wastes, icy rivers, and a few massive dungeons located under the fortresses of Hell's rulers.

When TSR tried to de-Hellify the Nine Hells and turn it into Baator was about when I lost interest in 2nd edition D&D. Planscape was a wildly creative setting and had some gorgeous artwork, but after years of parents freaking out over Satan and D&D they decided to first just kind of not mention Hell and then later to recast it as Baator. Granted they didn't change much about the actual setting--it was clearly still loosely based on previous published versions such as the Manual of the Planes (1st ed.) and Greenwood's articles--but the name change choked out any of the mythic resonance. It was actually Wizards of the Coast who made Hell Hellish again, but I find myself looking over the Greenwood articles and being more inspired by them than anything later.

Despite my facination with the articles I never really ever sent any of my players to Minauros, Maladomini, Avernus, or any other of the Hells. I always was waiting for them to get powerful enough--which we kind of never did. Pretty soon I was under the spell of another game's depiction of cosmic evil: Call of Cthulhu.

One thing that always puzzled me about parents concerned about Satanism and D&D was that the Devils and Demons were clearly put into the books for players to fight. Having a party of 20th level characters butchering their way through Hell and the Abyss and taking out hordes of demons hardly seems like Satanism to me. Gygax and the folks at TSR put them in the books because Players wanted to go up against the big bads of the mutiverse, and you can't get a better depiction of mythic evil than Hell. Enter Asmodeus and his cohorts.

So here's my pitch: a full on campaign set largely in Hell. Screw the we have to wait until we're 15th level and all that. I ride on the hells tomorrow. . .

RPG Video History: D&D Computer Labyrinth Game

2009-03-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

I'm slammed with grading this week. But here's another bit of D&D video nonsense.

Beware the Dragon!

King Arthur Pendragon: An Appreciation

2009-03-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

I've always loved King Arthur. Malory, Howard Pyle, Wolfram Von Echenbach, The Grail Stories--I was obsessed with it all. My Dad used to tell me stories about King Arthur when we'd go out to eat when I was four or five. I guess he figured that it was a way to keep me occupied. I remember once going to a medieval themed restaurant and listening with rapt attention to his half remembered stories of Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad, and the evil Mordred. Looking back I realize that he was probable picking details from whatever he could remember from when he read the stories when he was younger and whatever movies he could remember (likely films such as Knights of the Round Table).

Which brings me to King Arthur Pendragon by Greg Stafford. This game is one of my favorite roleplaying games of all time and my admiration for it has only grown over the years. Greg Stafford has said the game was a work of love for him, and I have to say that it shows. Moreover, the game's rules (despite multiple editions and being published by three separate companies) have essentially stayed the same for over twenty years. And that's a good thing. In a world where new editions of games are coming out all the time that supposedly "improve" on previous ones Pendragon knew something that it might not always be bad to listen to: if it isn't broken don't fix. Different editions have made adjustments to various parts of the rules but most of the changes have been relatively minor and often were for the better. No attempt was made to pull out core mechanics and "re-imagine" the setting. The game was perfect the way it was.

Pendragon was quite innovative for its time as well. Foremost among these innovations were things like passions and personality traits. Some have balked at the idea that a die roll might tell me how my character might react to something but lets take step back and look at the source material. Do the characters in the Arthur stories behave in such a way that they are always doing the tactically smart thing? The best thing? No. They make mistakes. Epic HUGE mistakes. They fall in love with people they shouldn't. They betray each other. Traits and Passions are ways to have characters do those things that really push things in unexpected direction. My group really liked leaving some important decisions up to the dice. And you needn't use traits and passions all the time--they become important at various key points. They should be a resource for deepening the characters rather than something the group should feel slavishly bound to.

The PCs are also bound by their social obligations and responsibilities. Characters are a fundamental part of the game world's society. No wandering sellswords with no social connections in this game.

However, my favorite element of the game is the seasonal advancement. Pendragon plays out over YEARS. In just a few sessions your characters might have aged several years. They grow older like real people. They have losses. They have families. And they die. That's one thing you know for sure in Pendragon. That if you keep playing--eventually the character is going to die. Combat (and the combat is deadly!) or just the advancement of time--one of them will win out in the end. It occurs to me that this sort of advancement could be (and likely has) been utilized by D&D to reflect a different sort of campaign that's more clearly medieval in tone.

Greg Stafford has a website where he's putting new PDF and print supplements for the game as well as lots of free content. Check it out--there's some great stuff there.

Check it out at:
http://weareallus.com/pendragon/

Lament for a Lost World: The World of Tarna

2009-03-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

So a few years ago two of my friends and I created a fantasy campaign world known as Tarna for a proposed D&D 3rd edition game. We ran into problems when we got into the game only to realize that we weren't really enjoying the system that much. 3rd edition is great for some folks, but we were all too busy and too lazy to spend the amount of time that the game would have demanded. We ended up converting the game to a Basic Roleplaying variant we cobbled together, and this second attempt at the campaign was much more what we were after. Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying system is brilliantly intuitive system that worked well and provided us some memorable and gritty combat. I now realize that Basic Roleplaying has its limits as a system as well, but it worked well enough for us at the time.

However, we loved the little campaign world we'd created, so we kept adding little bits to it. We kept adding, brainstorming, and adding more. We were off dreaming up this world under the heady spell of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films and about a million other things. The stuff we came up with rocked, but it had one little drawback: it was never going to come into the game. Looking back it was one of the most important lessons in my gaming life. It really taught me that while worldbuilding can give you great stuff--you can also drown in it. And we were drowning. Eventually, we moved on to other games having absorbed some of the lessons of our Tarna experience. Yet I keep looking back on that stuff wondering if I should still do anything with it. I've been tempted on a few occasions to run it as an old school OD&D campaign, but the best thing I got out of the Tarna campaign was a stronger sense of what works in the GAME not in some massive fictional world you keep tinkering with.

Some interesting features of Tarna:

* Elves were very long lived, mystically potent, and had held the people of Tarna in slavery for several hundred years, but were now mostly extinct (although they'd left behind massive tomb complexes).

* Goblins were a "plague race" that infected people and turned them into goblins.

* The planet itself was a living deity.

* Magic was an aberration created when the chaos planet Umaen hurled a piece of himself into Aeos (the planet the land of Tarna was located on). This shard of Umaen was the locus of mystic energy on the planet and located far out in the ocean stabbing like a knife far into the atmosphere.

* The savage war goddess Shiara had the head of boar.

Here's one of my maps:

Enter the Magical World of Adventure Gaming

2009-03-05T09:34:00.000-08:00

WARNING: MORE D&D NOSTALGIA AHEAD

This page from the 1980 Sears Catalog is (almost) single handily responsible for turning me into a gamer. My parents got me both the Moldvay boxed set and the D&D Computer Fantasy Game because I showed them this. The computer game was what I really wanted, but it was the Basic Set that I ended up becoming far more interested in. I still have the Computer Game (although it doesn't work) and the nifty metal figurines that came with it.

AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide: Finding the Gems

2009-03-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

Despite my earlier posting about my youthful frustrations with AD&D, I've recently grown to appreciate and understand the massive baggy monster that is Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition.

A key part of getting more out of the books is in understanding the play style that they seem to support. I never appreciated things like Wandering Monster Tables, Random Dungeon Generators, and hexcrawl wilderness exploration when I was younger. I suppose part of the problem was that I was too focused on a creating story like Lord of the Rings rather than appreciating what the game WAS good at.

This is something that I feel I've learned from both the old school and the indie gaming communities in the last few years: the story is wherever the players are and what they are doing NOT whatever grand scheme is in your head. Provide your players with situations they can dive into and DON'T provide them with plots that aren't ever going to be realized or that you have railroad them through. Railroading can be okay and provide a satisfying play experience, but it requires significant buy in from the players. D&D can get around railroading by focusing on what might be called environmental dangers (i.e. the dungeon or the wilderness) that by their nature are situational. The major buy in for the players is usually at the beginning during the scenarios set-up or "mission briefing" phase. Once they are in the "situation" they've usually got all sorts of motivations to interact with the imaginative environment. This usually means killing stuff, getting treasure, and getting killed by stuff in return, but it also might mean solving puzzles and avoiding traps.

Anyway, part my problem seemed to be that I just needed to give myself permission to see the game as a toolbox and move from there. I'd argue that AD&D at its core is a pretty simple game actually, but it suffers from a complex presentation and lots of extra "stuff" that got bolted on over the years (Unearthed Arcana I'm looking at you!). The DMG in particular is a labyrinthine text that while filled with some great stuff also has lots of "extras" that you may not need.

Here's Dr. Rotwang's appreciation of the DMG from a few years ago:

http://xbowvsbuddha.blogspot.com/2006/11/you-have-one-right.html

So ignore the chaff--find the gems--and dive into the dungeon!

RPG Video History: D&D Commercial

2009-03-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

Remember this? And when you DM make sure to always point your finger the air like you're declaring something important.

RPG Video History: When We Were Witches

2009-03-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

Wow. I'd forgotten how bad it was. The story is quite a hatchet job. Shame on you 60 Minutes!

Gateway to Adventure?

2009-03-02T09:01:00.000-08:00

The TSR catalog that came with my Moldvay D&D Basic Set was titled “Gateway to Advnture.” If you’re curious you can take a virtual tour of it here:

http://www.dantiques.com/tsr/newtsr1981.htm

Being a kid of about ten—I immediately wanted lots of stuff from it. I loved my Basic Set, but AD&D (1E) looked “cooler” to my eyes—I mean there were all these hardcover books and the covers were great! So of course I felt I should get those—it was only natural, right? Of course, I was entirely unaware that AD&D was more game that I was probably ready for. To compound things even more, I decided that I was going to be the DM. I didn’t have enough cash to go buy ALL the D&D books, so I decided that The Dungeon Master’s Guide would be the best thing to get first (one of my friends bought The Player’s Handbook and I don’t even remember whether we initially even had a Monster Manual). Now I love the DMG, but it is far from a beginner friendly rulebook. Despite Gygax’s claims that AD&D was a separate game than OD&D, it seems to me that to really make use of the DMG it helped to have a background in OD&D.

When I played AD&D, I mostly just reverted to what I understood from my Basic Set and eventually the game reverted to some sort of bizarre Star Wars game where out characters were essentially in charge of the Death Star. It was fun, but it had stopped being D&D of any kind. The rules had mostly disappeared. I can't remember what dice system we were using, but I know I'd mostly stopped paying attention to the hit charts in the DMG.

I ran a few campaigns in later years that hewed much closer to actual AD&D, but I don’t think I played close enough attention to the rules then either. I grew up with AD&D, but I also feel a bit like I’ve never actually played AD&D (with one or two exceptions where I was a player in someone else’s game—usually someone older with a better sense of how to play the game). From what I can tell my experience does not seem to be unusual. Looking back, I might have been happier if I’d have stuck to my Moldvay Basic Set and just gone from there.

It wasn’t until comparatively recently that I really dove in and took a hard look at AD&D’s rules. After I felt I had gained an understanding of OD&D, AD&D 1E’s idiosyncrasies seemed to make more sense. So I did what I never did when I was younger and which I should have done all along. I created my own House Rules document and a custom AD&D character sheet that, while not being the most attractive thing in the world, certainly reflects my “take” on the game.

Sometimes we so desperately want to be "Advanced" when we may have been happier with "Basic".

Now to find that Time Machine--there's a ten year old boy I'd like to give some advice to.

My Sandbox Wilderness

2009-02-27T22:31:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a sandbox setting that would be a AD&D/OD&D hybrid. I was inspired by Judges Guild's Wilderlands, Robert Conley's Point of Light setting, Badger's excellent "The Wilderness Architect" article, and the wilderness setting from the Cook/Marsh D&D Expert Set.

The region was once known as the Archmagery of Tregarth and was ruled by a family of Wizards who exerted their power over the region from the imposing Dragonscar Castle (which is sort of my Castle Grayskull meets Castle Amber meets Greyhawk Castle). The political authority has largely collapsed in the region--leaving several villages and the town of Rivermead to fend for themselves. These areas of habitation are relatively safe, but outside the villages the region is rife with raiders, monsters, and wild animals.

To the north is a the Black Eagle Barony (from the Cook/Marsh Expert set) and to the south are the frayed borders of the decadent and ancient Maurelian Empire.

The PCs will start in the village of Tarvan--I'm thinking I'd like them to maybe even be from the village.

Here's the map:

Purple is mountains, Primrose is hills, dark blue is water, aqua blue is marshland, dark green is forest, light green is plains, and yellow is arid plains.

Here are some locations of note on the map:

The Caverns of Everlasting Darkness: An underground stronghold that is a locus for chaotic humanoids (basically my local version of the Caves of Chaos). And, of course, there's a nasty Minotaur lurking in there.

The Ghostwood: A haunted forest plagued by the spirits of a dead elven kingdom.

Temple of the Nameless One: A temple to one of the forbidden Chaos Gods whose noxious influence brings madness and death (think horrible Lovecraftian deity). The temple was destroyed long ago when the Maurelian Empire more firmly controlled the region. There have been rumours that the Temple has been reoccupied, but even the Goblins in the region fear to come to close to its ruined walls.

Port Ren: A city that thrives as a haven for pirates and slavers. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and well you know the rest. . .

Barrow Fields: A vast arid plain set with burial mounds of an ancient horseriding warrior people. This culture occupied the region long before the Maurelians entered the region.

The Old Keep: My starter dungeon with lots of skeletons and such (ruled by a cursed Skeleton King!)

The Black Eagle Barony: I was never particularly enthralled with the Baron himself but the name is good. I was thinking a Baroness with various distinctive henchmen would rule the Barony. She's not an intended as an explicit "villain"--she's just self interested and wants what she wants. She'd like to get more control over the Valley of Tregarth and is seeking the undermine the Sheriff of Rivermead.

The Sheriff of Rivermead is appointed by the town council of Rivermead and is charged with maintaining law and order in the the villages of Rivermead, Tallow, and Tarvan. The reality is that the Sheriff is a good man, but he is surrounded by corruption and lawlessness.

The Tower of Wailing Stars: A mysterious tower that seems to phase in and out reality. I'm thinking this is a slightly higher level location involving extraplanar baddies (Githyanki anyone. . .). Its current situation is the result of a magical experiment gone wrong.

The Forbidden City of Shahara: A large ruins site located on an island. Not sure what's going on here yet. Any thoughts?

Fort Uzar: A Maurelian outpost occupied by hardbitten troops who might not be to friendly toward wandering adventurers as the region is rife with bandits.

The Sea of Dreams: was once a thriving ancient kingdom but it was wiped out in some sort of cataclysm (doesn't every fantasy setting have to have a cataclysm). However the psychic echoes of this kingdom still plague those who sail the sea--giving them strange dreams of lands long dead.

Votus Marsh: The Lizardmen here are aggressive and hate outsiders who stumble into their domain. They ride giant swamp beasts and hunt down all hapless folks who wander into their marshland home.

Faringdale: A Halfling community overseen by an elected ruler known as the Autarch. The community is highly suspicious of outsiders and "big folk." Their soldiers are well trained and organized. Faringdale has suffered numerous incursion attempts by the Orc Tribes to the south. So far the Autarch's men have been able to fend them off.