Playing D&D With Porn Stars

Secrets Of The Chill Master Revealed!

2012-01-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

So where was that mystery passage from?

Guesses have included: Roberto Bolano, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Castaneda, and Thomas Pynchon pastiching one the above.

Actually it was from Terevaldo Roberto Flechero L'unares' second novel.

Now Terevaldo Roberto Flechero L'unares is not merely an author of fiction, but (Borgesially enough) a fiction himself: an imaginary author whose work appears in the Vampires supplement for 2nd Edition of the horror RPG Chill.

Which is to say that passage was actually written by either Gali Sanchez or Drake Mallard, the authors of said sourcebook.

More to my point today, this passage pretty much encapsulates 2nd ed Chill.

On the one hand: it's kinda good, isn't it? Like it isn't maybe mad genius, but the ideas and execution are not just at "frustrated novelist" (which is like what you're called at 0-level if your class is Game Designer) but actually maybe even buzzing hummingbirdally up near "actual novelist".

I mean, it could give you genuine nightmares. And I love the bit about the transistor radios.

On the other hand: What the fuck does all this humid glitterball poetry have to do with a game, Chill Vampire Sourcebook?

And therein lies the glossy black vein of pre-White Wolf retropretension that is Chill 2e. Copyright 1990 and looking every inch of it. If, in looking through it, we can undeniably ascertain that it is not only Retro (now as it was not then) and Pretentious (as anything subtitled "A Scary Game For Scary People" could not hope to not be), but also Stupid, then we will know that Chill is perfect.

-Cover: Color pencil drawing of threatening version of masky Montreal opera clown in blue and orange instead of the traditional purple and pastel. Beneath ransom note.

-I like the layout of the table of contents: it reminds me of the menu for an upscale Washington DC restaurant where they have wrought-iron chairs out on the patio and an awning in racing green and all the drinks have olives in them.

I mean, fuck off if you want to know which of the 43 pages under "character generation" contains the 'taxi driver' career, but it looks nice.

-Quote from some made-up author named "Robert Davidson" who is not HP Lovecraft about the nature of fear. (Not-being-Call-of-Cthulhu is a major theme of Chill. As is Vampire The Maskthingy not existing yet.)

-Another aspect of Chill: artists who are almost Bill Sienkiewicz but not. More than one. Though one of them has a side of not-exactly-that-Hollywood-caricature-guy-who-works-his-daughter's-name-into-everybody's-face next to his Sienkiewiczwich.

-Beginning of the book: "If you've never played a roleplaying game, or if you haven't read the 32 page Introductory Insert in the back pocket of this book, you'd better stop reading now." (emphasis fucking mine). 32 pages is half of Vornheim. 32 pages is longer than Vault of the Drow. 32 pages could get you introduced to most of Western philosophy and all of Greek cuisine and still have room for house ads. Anyway fuck me because this pdf doesn't have it. But boldly I soldier anyhow...

-"Now that you’re ready to begin, you’ll probably want to know what’s in this CHILL book. Well, hang on to your. .. dice! We’ve got brain worms. We’ve got gorillas. We’ve got scientists, yetis, and monkeys. Thieves, mystics, and reporters. Gazelles, bears, and alligators. And, of course, flies, rats, mummies,werewolves,vampires...you name it!"

First: "hang on to your...dice!" Hah, we fooled you! You thought we were going to say "hat"!

Second: Isn't this suddenly sounding like a Hellboy RPG?

-"The second section of this book contains the mechanics of the game: both the players and Chill Master (CM) should read up on..."

Yes, that's right, if you're running this game, your players have to call you The Chill Master. Which is ok by me because that's what everyone calls me anyway.

This guy is totally The Chill Master.

-Like Cthulhu, skills are on an easy-to-grasp 0-100 scale. (Knowing you have photography at 45% tells you a lot more than having photography at +3. +3? Is that good? Is it like Lois Lane good or William Eggleston good?) Unlike CoC and its Chaosium Basic Roleplaying ilk it also has ability scores (strength, health...) on the 0-100 scale. While this has a pleasing surface simplicity and many a CoC or Runequest player mayhap has wondered why their system didn't do the same thing, the gears grind a bit when you do it this way, as we shall soon perceive...

-The basic abilities chosen seem pretty well picked for a horror RPG--Dexterity is like fingeriness and Agility is like jumpiosity and then Luck, Perception, Personality, Stamina and Willpower. You can instantly think of situations in horror movies where any of these things matters. No "intelligence", which I do hope is a nod to "player-skill-not-character-skill"

-Willpower is a depletable stat, like hit points. This is not quite as nice as Sanity Loss in CoC but the idea has legs.

-Some dipshit named 'Rax' who is, I believe, never identified is periodically quoted talking like Eddie from Iron Maiden periodically and going on about lickspittle and mantasting and generally failing to scare me.

-The crippling late-Silver-Ageness of the system comes into play with skills: first of all, the base number for each skill is often some derived crunch nightmare of mixed ability scores (Climb is the average of your agility, perception, stamina and strength f'rinstance), second of all the system doesn't have just pass/fail, with fumble and impale for rolling really high or low, it also has a degrees of success system: Low Medium High Colossal.

Dig the madness--"T#" stands for "target number" (usually like 45 if the skill is at 45):

The following chart summarizes results of Specific Checks:

L result =T#through (T#-tens digit) +I
M result = tens digit through (T# t 2) + 1
H result = T#t 2 through tens digit + I
C result = I through tens digit

And on top of that, the target numbers are variable to begin with. So you don't just go "you have to pass a check at minus 20", but "you have to pass a check at minus 20 and then get higher than an 8th of the tens digit plus a 4th of the twelves digit and fuck is this math really easier than just going HEY THE BETTER YOU ROLL THE MORE INFORMATION YOU GET OUT OF LITTLE SALLY ABOUT THE BAD DOLL THAT TRIED TO STEAL HER HAIR, JUST GM IT YOU FUCK"

Maybe.

-Oh and why is it bad to have the ability scores on the same 0-100 scale as the skills in this here modern skillheavy system?

"Using The Skill List:

The CM must be familiar with the following list of (like 80) skills to prevent players from using simple Ability Checks to allow their characters to perform actions that require skills"

So while yes, it is as crunchily satisfactory as a Snickers to have your Martial Arts score actually related to your Strength and Stamina scores (unlike in CoC)--actually getting all that math to work together is harder than it might seem. Either character generation is long and mathy (Runequest), skills are always higher than associated ability scores and quickly reach superhuman (any "+1" system), or some other weirdness. Skill-based systems claw at the soul.

-The lack of a straight-up Intelligence stat makes the ability-derived skill system a little wonky, too, like your Art Criticism skill is derived from Perception and Willpower. Though, honestly, having done a bit of it I can see that: must...look at..terrible...Felix...Gonzalez...Torres...sculpture before..deadli...zzzzzzzz.

-Almost every skill has a special spell-like mechanic attached to it. The bowfire rates are under the bow skill, f'rinstance. Explosives have an even-odd result on top of the degrees-of-success result. Okay, I like that one.

-So anyway point is clunky.

-The scariness advice in the GM section is excellent, though. Every Halloween somebody asks me how to write a scary adventure, it's all here: Isolation. Mystery. Reversal. Tease. Fuck with sensory information. Unexpected sound effects.

-(Well almost all, here's another tip: Find an emotion adjacent to fear--dislike, anxiety, disgust, confusion, etc.--and worm your way in from there.)

-Interesting/surprising highlights in the (basically unarguably classy and extraordinarily tasteful and loaded with stuff like Dracula and Rosemary's Baby) recommended reading/viewing section include:

WILLIAM GIBSON (?)

ANY UNIVERSITY ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY TEXT

BLUE VELVET

ERASERHEAD

THE HUNGER

Brazil

Doom Patrol (and the rest of the DC Vertigo line--so maybe this was just because Mayfair was also publishing the DC Heroes RPG)

Grendel (the comic book)

Blood (Epic Comocs)

Creatures on the Loose (Marvel Comics)(notable to me because I have never heard of this comic. You know how I often I go "I have never heard of this comic?" Not often.)

Not Present for Predictable But Still Kinda Funny Reasons:

H.P. Lovecraft

-But are the monsters good? Yes, here's the Mean Old Neighbor Lady:

If the child escapes and returns home, he finds to his terror that his parents do not recognize him and return him gladly to the neighbor lady who comes asking about her “nephew who’s visiting from out of town.” “I’ve been worried about the little tyke,” the creature explains, “because of that wild imagination.”

The creature keeps the child in the darkness of the cellar, taunting him with playthings that “you can’t play with because you’re bad,” starving the child, and threatening to send the dog down into the cellar if the child cries or makes any noise. The child’s Willpower sinks from fear and hunger, until at the equinox (mid-March or mid-September), the neighbor ladv completes it wicked act by using the Minion Discipline: the child becomes a gamin, and is released to wander into nearby homes, where it begins its evil game of “murder.”

AaaaaaH!!

-..1)Although the creature does not suffer normal

physical damage, it does take wounds from eggs
used as thrown missiles.

Nice.

-And then there's Puppet People: made of wood, with a thin covering of flesh and they always hunt in pairs "The origin of these perverse creatures remains a mystery; all that is known for sure is that they are nasty and incredibly ignorant."

-And, of course Werejaguars. What a wonderful word. Werejaguar.

-CoC is a horror game and Chill is a horror game and any game can be played in any way but the basic form of conflict suggested in both the rules and modules for purist Cthulhu is: investigate investigate be confused investigate MEETTERRORYOU'REINSIGNIFCANTGoINSANeDIE. Whereas Chill 2e--while not as Universal Horror as the first edition, is much more cinematic than Cthulhu. It is about the PCs. They can win. They are interesting and maybe psychic. But then so are the monsters. It's a dance. It's more of Silence of the Lambs thing, more of a back-and-forth...

When I think about making a D&D character I think about a bundle of stats who will one day turn into guy I am going to have to learn to like, when I think about making a CoC character I think of someone who would be fun to see go crazy, when I think about making a Chill PC I think about how this guy is my fucking vampire hunter in my vampire hunter movie.

-(One could posit that the White Wolf products push even further in the DC-to-Marvel scale into it's-all-about-you-and-how-very-interesting-you-are-and-the-world-is-dull.)

-If I was going to play a Chilly game today here is what I would do: use the CoC system, throw in The Art (Chill's psionic-PC powers) (just let people pick or roll randomly for 1-2 powers) and call it done. The rest is just writing the scenarios. "Your car breaks down on an abandoned stretch of road"

Tunnels & Trolls DONE DIRT CHEAP!

2012-01-26T04:44:00.000-08:00

This happened on Google +.

You kinda have to read the whole thing to get the full effect. Most names have been removed to protect the innocent and the guilty.

____________________________________

Zak S

It's always been weird to me that in Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap the guy goes "Concrete shoes, cyanide, T&T". I would've figured them for Runequest guys.
___________________________________
- Comment
+7 -

43 comments

(Somebody) - Tunnels and Trolls much easier to play when drunk
Yesterday 6:55 PM +2

Zak S - ..and upside down--they're Australian.
Yesterday 6:56 PM - Edit

(Somebody) - and when they roll dice they spin in the opposite direction
Yesterday 6:56 PM +1

(Somebody) - its true we Australians can stand on our hands for days at a time
Yesterday 6:57 PM

(Somebody) - I could definitely picture Bon Scott as being a Runequest fan, but the rest of the band definitely strike me as more of a T&T kind of crowd.
Yesterday 7:06 PM

(Somebody) - On a vaguely related note... Palladium's TMNT "Mutants Down Under". It hasn't aged gracefully. Racial slur on opening page. 0_o
Yesterday 7:14 PM

(Somebody) - Was it the accents?
Yesterday 7:14 PM

Zak S - I WILL HEAR NO ILL OF THE SECOND BEST-ILLUSTRATED BOOK IN THE HISTORY OF RPGS THAT ALSO HAS PUNK UZI KANGAROOS IN IT!!
Yesterday 7:14 PM - Edit +1

(Somebody)- I know, it's freakin' awesome, isn't it? I love that book.
Yesterday 7:16 PM

(Somebody)- The Palladium Fantasy book "Adventures in the Northern Wilderness" also has some kick-ass Eric Talbot artwork. Siembieda had a good eye for artists back in the day.
Yesterday 7:19 PM (edited) +1

(Somebody) - I figured they'd watch more TBS than anything...
Yesterday 7:23 PM

(Somebody) - I've never actually played T&T. What about it is a "dirty deed"?
Yesterday 7:27 PM

(Somebody) 40 bucks! That's hardly "dirt cheap"

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tunnels-and-Trolls-PC-Big-Box-11118-/270836742499?pt=Video_Games_Games&hash=item3f0f20b963
Yesterday 7:32 PM

(Somebody) I must now ask for the name of the BEST illustrated book in the history of RPG's that also has punk uzi kangaroos in it.
Yesterday 7:35 PM

(Somebody)T&T free/lite: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=54407
Yesterday 7:35 PM

(Somebody)He's saying "Thunder Chief". Now that's rock and roll.
Yesterday 7:42 PM

Zak S - 3o thieves and the thunder chief. Best illustrated? the 2 volumes of Realms of Chaos: (Slaves to Darkness and The Lost and the Damned) for the original Warhammer
Yesterday 7:55 PM - Edit +1

Ken St. Andre - I love that song, Dirty Deeds--Done Dirt Cheap! Never made the T & T connection before. Hey, you should tweet that comment, or let me do it. :)
Yesterday 8:01 PM

(Somebody)"Thunder Chief" is totally RuneQuest.
Yesterday 8:03 PM

Zak S - Tweeted!
Yesterday 8:13 PM - Edit

(Somebody)For me, G+ has totally bumped Twitter lately.
Yesterday 8:19 PM

(Somebody)Is that some of euphemism y'all kids use now-a-days?
Yesterday 8:20 PM

(Somebody)YOu can blow up a lot of tunnels w/ Trinitrotoluene
Yesterday 8:24 PM

(Somebody)It works using the literal definition :-)
Yesterday 8:25 PM

(Somebody)In that the Google building has literally collided and struck the Twitter offices?
Yesterday 8:28 PM

(Somebody)OED: "North American - displace from a job, especially in favour of someone else: she was bumped for a youthful model "

Or maybe I am young! /clicks heels/
Yesterday 8:32 PM (edited)

(let's call him "David")- Man, "T&T" had some infantile spell names...
Yesterday 8:59 PM

Zak S - Them's fightin' words.
Yesterday 8:59 PM - Edit

David- "Glue-You", Smith!
Yesterday 9:02 PM +1

(Somebody)- There's nothing infantile about playing pretend!
Yesterday 9:05 PM

David - True...but there are levels. I've heard the game itself is solid but "Yassa Massa"? Really?!?
Yesterday 9:10 PM (edited)

(Somebody) - Oh dear! :-D
Yesterday 9:11 PM

David- From the T&T 1st edition: "Yassa-Massa! To be used only on previously subdued monsters / foes. Total strengths I.Q. & Charisma. Will permanently enslave monsters with ratings lower then the above total." Amazing...
Yesterday 9:13 PM

(Somebody) It was the 70's, ROOTS (1977) was a real popular TV mini-series & Book(1976)! ... the seventy's was a different world; not so quick to judge: I don't think it was meant to disparage. It was in the mass psyche of the times. ;0)
10:52 AM (edited)

David: I know, I was a child of the Seventies. That still doesn't prevent me from wanting the ask the designers: "What the f#@$ were you thinking?!?!"
11:47 AM

Zak S - Go ahead and ask, the designer is right here on g+ and his name is right in front of you
5:29 PM - Edit +1

David- Kens st andre? On G+? where? WHERE??
10:50 PM

Zak S - Look up.
11:00 PM - Edit

David - Holy crap!!! I'll just be over here keeping my mouth shut...
11:07 PM (edited)

Zak S - Laugh
Out
Loud.
11:11 PM - Edit +2

How To Keep Keep Simple Combat Interesting

2012-01-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

Oddysey does a great job here of explaining how just because D&D has a lot of rules for combat it doesn't mean it's about combat.

She touches on something which you hear a lot from newies raised on WOTC D&D which is: well isn't combat without all the feats and ninjitsu dull?

Initiative. Roll to hit. Damage. Roll to hit. Damage. Initiative.

No it is not. But, and this caveat goes for all Old School D&D: you have to have a good DM. Oh well.

Let us say you would like to be one of those good DMs? How do you make simple combat interesting?

Get yourself a simple combat-moves system.

Want to trick the catpegasus into charging the wall? I use d10 + stat vs. d10 + target stat. High roll wins. Other people might just use chances on a d6. If you trust your DM to come up with fair chances, these systems are nice and easy and fast. If you do not, do not play role playing games and make gingerbread cookies instead and then mail them to me so that I can eat them while I GM well.

Monsters love grabbing people.

Monsters are the grabbiest!

Roll to hit. Target number is as if for a touch attack or dex-as-(ascending)-ac. Success means target is grabbed. Less damage is done than usual but the target is still grabbed and can be hurt at will next round unless they do something about it.

Or their friends do--which isn't that hard, since their friends should get a +1 or +2 for trying to hit the monster while it is busy trying to rip their paladin in half. Unless it has like 20 arms...

Monsters Love Throwing People

Especially at other people.

Monsters Are Smart

Do your PCs use hit-and-run tactics, heal a lot and shoot from cover? Well so do the goblins.

They also hate your party's cleric above all other foes.

Monsters Are Dumb

Monsters (like players) often don't just sit back, look at their ability scores and go "Hmmmm...what't the most effective attack I could make?" they go "Gah! Shiny man hit Gorg! Gorg mad!"

Just saying, in a combat, "Well since Caroline keeps whaling on him, he's definitely going after her" both adds a little texture to the encounter and reminds the PCs they are acting in a cause-and-effect world.

Try To Use Your Half Of The Combat To Change The Tactical Situation Every Round

There are lots of things you can do that are mechanically identical to roll-to-hit-AC, roll-damage that nevertheless move people around and mix things up. If the bear hits the thief, see if the thief tumbles back and knocks a torch off the wall. Then roll to see if leather armor is flammable. Then roll to see if bears like the smell of cooking thief more than they fear fire.

Make The Tactical Set Up Interesting To Begin With

Pool of water, fireplace, ledge, multiple exits...if you are making a dungeon, put the monsters next to something they or the PCs can use to their advantage.

Use The Die Rolls

Take fumbles and crits and use them to complicate the situation:

If someone rolls a 20 you are totally allowed to go "Ok, hold it, lemme think..." and take a second to imagine that if the vampire was about to bite the ranger and the wizard rolled a 20 to throw the holy water than that probably means the vial of holy water went right into the vampire's mouth and so the vampire has a throat full of holy-water-covered-broken glass going on.

If someone rolls a 1 while charging the lizard man this means s/he's charged right past one, tripped over a lizard tail and landed in the pile of lizard eggs. Oh they are terribly upset now--but they don't want to break the eggs either...

Monsters Make Noises

A strangled gargling sound can go a long way, I find.

If you ever feel like breaking your players' hearts--have Orc A suddenly say Orc B's name as Orc B is dying. The effort-to-effect ratio is staggering.

Fear of Death Is The Mother Of Invention

This is standard OSR cant but it's true: a scared player is a thinking player.

If You Have To Say "No", Explain Why

Sometimes a player has an awesome plan and it should work. Sometimes a player has an awesome plan that is not going to work and why this is so would be clear to their PC.

Explain why it won't work in enough mechanical detail that the parameters of the problem are clear. "We need something stronger than silk, hmmmm...."

Recap Continuously

"Ok, you're grappling the plover, you have one leg in its mouth and you are in the lava" Players are easily confused in the hurly burly of the speedy exchange of blows.

Everybody knows a good DM narrates combat, but remember sometimes you just have to say it all again so that everybody is always in it.

Is It Easier Than Backstabbing?

This is standard: A thief gets +4 to backstab an opponent who doesn't know s/he's there. Basically any bonus that you give players or foes in combat should use this as a baseline: is this easier or harder than backstabbing some goggle-eyed cluelacker?

If You Can Remember It, You Can Have It!

You want to keep things moving.

"Is it d6 or d8, can't remember...."

"Well I'm telling you it's d6 since you didn't write it down"

Next time they'll write it down. In big red letters.

Relax, You Can't Do It All

(DM Energy + DM Attention) Divided By (# Of PCs + # Of foes) is a limiting factor here. Sometimes you just have to go "12? You miss. Next!" and move on to something you can do a little more with.

___________

P.S. Answer to yesterday's Latin American literary mystery is coming, be patient.

Name That South American Magical Realist...

2012-01-25T06:17:00.000-08:00

Can you guess what novel this is from?

Or the author?

Then over the zocalo Don Roberto would fly through the many-layered and fabulous night, changing the frequency of the townspeople’s transistor radios...

This time, when Don Roberto entered the glitterball, the two men smoked cigars, and Don Roberto told Josue Maldicho about the tower and its lancet windows, a tower indeed so tall that it was said that the servants aged unspeakably climbing the stairs that led from its cellars to the large, muraled study at its pinnacle. The mural depicted the history of the region, so delicately crafted that once, when Don Roberto spilt wine on the eastern wall, he had to use great speed and diligence in cleaning up the accident: had he not, the volcano called ”La Malinche” would never have existed. So it was that the younger servants worked on the ground floors, the middle-aged on those floors of the tower which lay only slightly above the cloud cover, and the aged where the air was so thin that only those who had faded, who needed less than before in their diminishing lungs, could survive. Don Roberto, of course, ate, slept, and lived on the floors above his servants. ”The stratospheric Don,” whispered Josue Maldicho with reverence, as brilliant parrots, conures, and jandayas disguised slyly as parakeets joined in chorus above the zocalo-a chorus that agreed with Maldicho, if not in reverence: “Yes, the stratospheric Don.”

”You flatter me,” disclaimed Don Roberto, the end of his cigar glowing in the darkened interior of the glitterball, its smoke rising invisibly through the gaps between the mirrors and into the air above the zocalo, where it rose toward the moon, passed through several time zones, and dispersed in a country where the dogs laugh, where solid architecture is valued, where the stars bowed in magnificent homage, and the years turned under.

Must...Organize...Useless...Ideas...

2012-01-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time this blog had zero followers. Assuming you are reading this before the end of all things, it probably now has more than that. Here's a highlight reel for anybody who might've jumped in mid-stream.

WTF is This Blog?

An orientation I wrote once

Our TV Show (episode 18 is the best, they let us kinda do what we wanted starting around episode 5, the ones starting at 8ish are the most popular)

Yeah, We Were In Maxim

Essays

Oh I Love Dungeons

Published dungeons should be better

So you wanna write a random table?

DC=Old School Marvel=New School, Sorta

Snakes Are Books ( a quick setting bit)

Everybody like this long essay I wrote where I explain that D&D is a story, it's just a picaresque story, not a 3-act story

Monsters and the Imaginability Issue

Why roguish PCs and sandbox play go together

On Buy-in: why we like D&D and don't convert to storygames

The Best D&Dable Comic Books

On Player Knowledge and Sandboxing

Panic In The Hands of An Indifferent God (How I DM)

How Jeff DMs

Irony and D&D: Not-Immersion Isn't So Bad

How to do a sandbox

The Mood/Morality Scale

Psychotically long but kind of useful post about degrees of railroading

My biggest fattest blog project: going through all the monsters in alphabetical order--this tag links to the posts in reverse order of when they were written

The DNDWPS crew explains how to play an RPG

When do you need mechanics for stuff?

On That Which Is Weird

How I Want To HearAbout Your Setting

The Explosions In Space Rule (or How To Weed Out Stupid Players)

Kimberly Kane's first game--an early example of my current group rolling

I review Type IV D&D

Allegedly funny

Caveats

Of Snacks

In The Car After Play Report

McCormick & His Paladin

Resources

All The Monsters I've Invented & Blogged Up Should Be Under This Tag

Ditto For Items

And The Random Tables

Here's a one-shot I wrote that won a contest

Cathedral of All-Flesh (A dungeon)

Adventure-seed generating hack of Jeff's Carousing Table

Early version of the kind of stuff that got made into my book, Vornheim: The Complete City Kit

Worst Review of Vornheim Yet

All the "actual play" posts

All the pretty pictures

Some rules & DM tricks I use and, sometimes, why I use them:

Simple initiative

Nested Wandering Monster Tables

Lucky Number Kung Fu (a simple bolt-on martial arts system)

RPG Politics & Other Blah Blah Blah

Just link to this instead of saying "Yes, I know about your game, I actually am playing my game on purpose"

Subclans of DIY D&D and OSR people

The girls on hot RPG chicks and pin-up art

Teaching Nerds How To Talk About Taste

Dear Wizards

The "I Call On My Years Of Training" System

2012-01-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

Once per day a PC may say "I call upon my years of training!" and thereby add his/her level to any ability check involving a task characteristic of his or her class or race.

This can only be done once per day no matter how many different kinds of class-appropriate challenges come up that day.

The maximum is + 1o. (10 total including ability score bonuses, if you're using a DC system). After 10 you get to do it twice a day and split the bonus numbers however you want.

___________________

Example:

Scruffy The Bandit and Muppet the Sorceress want to try to interpret the hieroglyphs in a dusty old codex. Scruffy has to roll an Int check (at -8 or at a DC of 18, because the DM says so). Muppet also has to roll an int check (also at -8 or at a DC of 18, because the DM says so) however, Muppet may choose to call on her vast sorceressy training to do this and thus can add +5 since she is level 5.

If, later that day, they come upon an obscure alchemical substance, Muppet is out of luck and has to roll like everybody else, as she's used up her training bonus for the day.

If she was level 13, she could add 5 and bank 8 for later that day or add 10 and bank 3, or whatever, up to 10.

___________________

Optional extras:

-If you are including thief functions in this, thieves do it all the time--not just once per day--up to +10 total (including any ability score bonuses, if you're using the DC system). Edit: In an old-school system, this means the standard array of thief abilities tops out at +10, so this requires a further hack--maybe at this point the thief starts being able to dip his or hands into other classes' skill pools. Like how they can start to read magic or whatever at a certain point...

-If you want to use it with a whole skill system, then just modify the rule so it says "Once per day a PC may add his/her level to any single ability check involving a skill s/he has"

...and otherwise skills don't do anything.

-This whole system probably doesn't apply to saving throws. But consult your GM

___________________

Um, Dude, Why Bother?

I like this system because it creates a situation where tasks that challenge a high-skill PC do not have to be completely out of the range of possibility for low-skill PCs.

It compresses the difficulty scale, essentially.

The high-level adventure does not have to be full of tasks that only one possible class (ranger, thief, druid) could possibly do right.

So you can make a wall at, say, climb check= dex - 4. A fighter might have trouble climbing that wall, but they could make it. A thief of any level could also have trouble climbing that wall, but their level would still matter if they wanted it to.

Or you could make tracking a foe through a marsh check at simply -1 int. The ranger does not have to have a high int to successfully follow the tracks and be better than other people at it, but anybody else still has a shot to follow them. Because, hey, it's tracks in the mud.

There Is Life After Dangerous Ice Monkeys

2012-01-20T23:31:00.000-08:00

Dear players:
This is where you are. You are in the ice maze. I'm sure you remember all about the Royal Fist Monkeys.

This is Brug. Remember Brug? Sam is (was?) playing Brug. Now Brug is an ice statue. If Brug gets knocked over by monkeys, even an Ice-To-Flesh spell is not bringing back Brug.

You are in the Ice Maze because the naturalist Miriya Essik is paying you to capture the ice medusa. This is Myria's home.

Just catch the ice medusa, get her to your boat, and sail for 6 days.

Miriya has promised you 2000 gold pieces each. If you return the ice medusa, she will probably offer you more gold to go find her an even more dangerous monster.

Do you have to do it?

No, you can do whatever you want.

Like what?

Here are some outstanding issues you have created:

This is Connie. You remember Connie? Connie's PC got drunk and..well a lot of things happened that got rolled on a random table. One of them is she got in a jam and prayed to her god that she be not in that jam any more. Vorn answered her prayers.

Only problem is: now Vorn wants something in return...

...some crown. Which one? Vorn says Connie will know it when she sees it and it's hidden somewhere in a fortress or dungeon somewhere in the islands you are now in.

Every day she spends not looking for this crown she will lose a saving throw point. That is bad.

So she has to either look, or find a way to get the quest spell lifted. Vorn is watching.

This is Queen Jayaeleene. You rescued her from the ice maze and took her back to her kingdom of Vrokk (one of the islands). She appreciated that. You are welcome to visit whenever.

However, also visiting her is this here white elf, Gormengeth. He's kind of creepy, frankly.

This is Mandy. She is still hallucinating. Someone might want to try to do something about that before the most powerful and unstable member of the party starts imagining flatworms crawling out of your eyes and tries to mace them.

This is the witch, Frost. She's had a vendetta against Mandy ever since she killed one of her bodies waaaaaaaaaay back at level 2. Last time you guys left the ice dungeon, she was there waiting and attacked...

...with her leopard men. They are vicious and leopardy. They will put you in jeopardy.

Then there's always your home, back west, which you have fled, on account of that skeleton invasion. Who the hell knows what's going on back there now?

And, as always, there's the whole rest of the planet to check out. Click to enlarge and be even more confused.

Evolution

2012-01-20T02:17:00.000-08:00

Idea....

The most commercially successful games all have a default answer to this question built in to the system:

How will play in this same campaign 8 months from now be fundamentally different than it is tonight?

In D&D the default answer is: you'll be levelled up by then, and this means something. You'll be fighting crazy godlike monsters and exploring planes instead of dungeons or be building castles. Here is the concrete evidence: the spells go up to level 9 and the monsters include like Tiamat and Demogorgon. Look, there it is, waiting for you...

In Rifts the answer is: you'll either be fucking with this Coalition that rules North America or you'll get to see some whole new continent full of more crazy robodemonborgs. Proof: look at these crazy splatbooks we keep putting out Japan, South America, Africa etc. Unlike D&D, your PC will not have changed that much, but you will be seeing new stuff, so keep on.

In Vampire: TM the default answer is: you'll be higher up in the convoluted Vampire hierarchy and/or you will be further along in the metaplot that you've noticed we keep publishing. See, it keeps coming out. Even though you will still be pretty much some bloodsucking badass like you already were, the story will have progressed to some new phase.

In Call of Cthulhu the default answer is: you'll be dead or insane. Or more insane. Or insane in some new way. Or you'll be surrounded by dead or insane friends. Anyway point is the situation will have become entertainingly more desperate.

In Warhammer the default answer is: you'll have a whole new (better, more badass) career and you may also be insane. Or mutated.

-Shadowrun: possible exception?

______

Point is: every RPG session produces changes in that session. "Bangs" "assignments""plot developments""twists""occurrences" whatever.

The really successful games promise or suggest (though do not mandate) a specific kind of change will occur over the long haul.

This is like a barely perceptible carrot keeping the players interested session after session, even when they don't know it. The game is going somewhere.

______

Notes for GMs:

-Not all level-up systems automatically produce this idea of change. In D&D, level 20 is not just level-1-but-more-powerful, it's practically a different game. You go through distinct phases (usually) in D&D: useless schmuck, badass hero, crazy godling loaded down with items. In other systems, levelling up just means you are kind of better--but the enemies are still the same relative to you.

-The game ending is not an expectation of change. In The Oddyssey the sailors expect to be done and not sailing any more when they finish. That's not what I'm talking about. If they thought in 4 months their boat would be flying and four months after that they'd be maybe going through time then that would be what I'm talking about.

-If you remove a game's built in "change engine" or it doesn't have one but you still want long-term campaign play then either: the players have to trust that the supply of new and crazy exciting ideas you are coming up with is basically infinite (which you may be able to guarantee but the system can't) or you have to create (or let the players create) a developing plot that intrigues the players and makes them want to see what's next.

-Example (thanks John): a D&D ranger guy who is doing a land survey, mapping uncharted territory. If the player thinks genuinely that the next territory will be new and interesting, that is an expectation of change over time. There you go.

Or: A Conan type trying to conquer stuff. If the player expects to conquer stuff and then the game ends, that isn't the expectation that'll keep tons of people interested. If the player expects to conquer stuff and then the game changes to where it's about armies and castles and new lands--that's a change over time.

Smart GMs seems to set up these expectations automatically--like Jeff Gameblog has a dungeon full of 1st-4th level PCs and he is already talking about the dragon in there and the wizard that built it and the possible portal to Hell in the lower depths.

This also may be why lite indie games have a reputation for being one-shotty. Unless the players (or GM, when there is one) makes up a specific change-over-time expectation, the games usually don't provide them on their own. (I have no quarrel with Noisms comment below about how this is often a feature and not a bug.)

____

Now in the comments today we will inevitably meet someone who goes "Oh I played such-and-such for 80 years and nothing ever changed and my whole group loved it". That's great. We believe you. Pat pat.

So, Answerers, here is another question..

2012-01-19T04:02:00.000-08:00

The striking thing about yesterday's questionnaire (aside from how popular Death Frost Doom apparently is among readers of this blog) is the answer to the last question:

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Came up repeatedly: "Well, there's the wife..."

So, to follow up, in her own words: why does your girlfriend/wife not play?

(Huge Bonus Points if you can get an answer better than "I don't play RPGs because I'm not really into RPGs.")

(If some life reason makes asking her impossible, you may go ahead and guess.)

(And yes yes yes I know there are many of you smug bastards--like me--whose significant others do play. Or whose S.O. is male. Or who are currently bereft of the pleasures and enigmas of physical intimacy. But today's question isn't aimed at us.)

GM Questionnaire

2012-01-18T01:21:00.000-08:00

Repost and answer. Or, if you don't have a blog, answer in the comments. Or be a big rebel and do neither.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

2. When was the last time you GMed?

3. When was the last time you played?

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

10. What do you do with goblins?

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

What's In The Flippin' Castle?

2012-01-17T15:31:00.000-08:00

What's in this room? (somewhat crowdsourced from G+)

1-king
2-queen
3-prince
4-princess
5-advisor/vizier
6-castellan
7-wizard
8-prisoners
9-guards
10-moat monster
11-majordomo (domestic boss)
12-captain (military boss)
13-servants
14-kitchen servants
15-cook

16-stable guy
17-tutor
18-cleric

19-sycophant

20-little kid

21-diplomatic guest

22-minstrel

23-jester

24-doctor

25-messenger

26-herald

27-torturer

28-nurse

29-astronomer

30-astrologer

31-actor

32-courtesan

32-page

33-squire

34-knight

35-merchant

36-falconer

37-sheriff/reeve/johnny law

38-spy (roll again for cover)

39-midwife

40-old relative of queen or king

41-smith

42-ostler

43-porter

44-gaoler

45-chamberlain

46-keeper of the keys (awwww yeah)

47-tailor

48-embroiderer

49-food taster

50-clerk, accountant, or other math-related jamoke

51-painter

52-noble child of vassal kingdom

53-idiot son

54-librarian

55-poet

56-sculptor

57-architect

58-engineer

59-carpenter

60-tapestry-making type people

61-castle brewer

62-70 Roll twice

71-80-Useless fancy junk

81-90-Not much but you can hear some conversation because these morons are all "I, Claudius" and forget to close doors

91-Armory

92-Treasure room

93-Winch room or other device room

94-00 Oooh, something special and weird and unguarded

Assume nearest guards are d4 rounds away.

Assume locks are omnipresent.

Assume room layouts are boring.

Exterior profile of fortress can match this.

Additional castle shenanigans.

Some Things Someone Should Point Out About A Possible New Edition

2012-01-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

Note: none of this shit will make much sense unless you read this and maybe this and are aware that the company that currently makes D&D has announced it will be releasing a new edition which will theoretically make everybody happy.

If this is all greek to you, just assume this is one of those "inside baseball" posts and move on.

Anyway, just to prove it could be done, in the posts linked above, I wrote up some rules that should approach making players interested in any previous edition basically happy (or at least able to talk to each other) possible.

-Grumpy Grognards:

Even if you never intend to buy a 5th edition written the way I outlined, the beautiful thing is, if one of your players does and then makes a character in 5e--you can run that brand new PC through any classic TSR module and s/he'll still fit. It scales fine. Bone Hill, Castle Amber, whatever.

-Here's a key concept I encoded in these rules:

People who want 4th edition-style powers and 3.5-style feats get them not by making their PC more badass than an Old School simple no-customization PC, but by trading away the default advantages of leveling up as a basic PC.

Like in order to get Whirling Blade Of Knives once per day upon reaching level 4, you have to trade away something a fighter would expect to get upon reaching level 4, like a +1 to fortitude save or to hit.

This combined with the principle that "monsters don't get bonuses to shit they aren't actually good at just for being high level" (giants don't get a reflex bonus) as sketched out here should result in a balanced game. Or at least a balanceable version of the game. No sweat.

-The differences between the kinds of adventures people expect in old editions and in 4th ed differ wildly, but these differences actually stem from very minor changes in the actual rules. Like I said before: you change the numbers----> changing the numbers makes the game more predictable---->making the game more predictable changes the playstyle.

-Therefore, the actual points of friction between the games are probably less than most people think.

-Example: Old School PCs can fight Type IV monsters easy. Given enough hit points, you can totally run a battle of an Old School PC against a 4th edition monster and it makes perfect sense. It'd be like a 5th level PC vs. a 1st level monster but still. Once per battle, the monster can do something scary, it can shove the PC around the battlefield, it can do another scary thing once per day, etc. etc. This is, in essence not too different from how monsters already worked in D&D--remember the Fog Sloth may Cause Darkness 2/day etc. The difference between "saves" and "defenses" is basically cosmetic.

-Good question: If Classic players aren't using powers, where do we put the powers? I think it should be a boxed set: Player's book, GM book, Powers & Spells book. Many superhero games back in the boxed set era were sold like that. Having powers & spells in their own book also just sorta makes sense at the table, that way at the end of the session when the thief and the wizard both level up, the thief can look in the PHB to buy new stuff while the wizard's looking up spells.

Also, the core books would only have a basic array of powers. There would be a ton more powers in a Tournament Players Supplement. PLUS there should be a simple math algorithm to convert existing 4e powers to Tournament 5e powers. At least until Wizards publishes new versions of them.

-Another thing: clever use of different fonts and graphic design should make it so it's really easy to tell which parts of a page are relevant to you.

There is a surprisingly vocal Oh No There Might Be Something On The Page Not Relevant To My Own Personal Game brigade. These people are kind of the mirror image of the people who complained that although I provided optional 4e stats in Vornheim I didn't put in monster "roles", and they get the same smack down: If you can't tell a flailceratops is a "brute" you should not be DMing, likewise if it distracts you that the word "(brute)" appears next to the word "flailceratops" in a monster description, you shouldn't be DMing. How the hell did you manage to ignore "Psionics: Nil" and "Treasure Type" and "No. Appearing" all those years in the AD&D Monster Manual?

-Healing surges:

I like this Wolverine alternative for Heroic and Tournament modes--instead of just having a bank of healing surges, basically in these modes, do this:

*When you first take more damage than you have hp, you are considered to be just "out of the fight" for a bit and no matter how much damage you took (unless you were like disintegrated) you're just at 0 hp. Not negative yet. You can, however be killed if folks keep whaling on you down to negative level (Heroic) or negative level + con (Tournament)

*Each round you can make a Con check. Success indicates you got 1 hp back.

*You have a choice then--spring up with your 1 hp and attack, or play possum, keep rolling, and pop up Wolverine-style after everyone's forgotten about you.

*However, as long as you play possum, you are still vulnerable to a death blow.

This makes healing a little easier to narrate plus adds a level of tactical complexity to using healing.

-Minions. In 4e you have dudes called "minions" who can be killed with one hit. Just change that to a rule that Tournament PCs can kill anything with one HD with one hit. Problem solved.

-If Tournament PCs start at 3rd level and Classic PCs start at 1st, how do tournament PCs fight goblins? Easy: 4e already constantly uses multiple versions of monsters--it already supports wimpy minion and dangerous levelled versions of the same monster.

-How will monster HD look in the Manual? Do this:

Ogre

4hd/38 hp

(Classic gamers use the first number, Heroic and Tournament use the second. 3.5 manuals already look like that).

(That 40 hp figure, by the way is derived from: 9hp per every 2 dice plus a +5 con bonus per die. Though you could do it however.)

-Saving throws are cake. Using an old product with a different saving throw regime than what you're using is pretty easy. Old editions reference a save table, you can just ignore that and use the new numbers whenever a monster appears. No matter what edition you are using, you can get a plausible Save DC for a spell by doing 10+caster level+caster int bonus. i.e. you can take a wizard or demon from a TSR module and have him cast a spell on a 3.5 style PC and the chance to avoid the spell would still make sense.

-What would a Monster Manual statblock look like?

Ogre (Brute)

AC: 16 (15 flat footed)

Hit points: 4hd/38 hp (bloodied 19)

Atk: +4 (to hit) 1d10+4 damage

________

(An experienced DM in any edition could stop here, and this is the amount of detail I recommend for passing references in modules--the rest of this info would go at the back of a module or in the margin)...

________

Fort: + 6

Reflex: - 2

Will: - 5

Level: 3

_________

(That's all the Classic DM needs)(at most)(there would be a line or a color change in the text at this point to signify that the basics are over)

_________

Dupe:-3

Notice: -1

_________

(Classic DMs might want to use Dupe (charisma and wisdom based) and Notice (wisdom and int based) modifiers even though they have no direct equivalent in older D&D. I know I would, but that's probably because I kinda invented them.

_________

Intiative: -2

Speed: 60'/round/6 squares

S: 19 D: 7 C:19 I: 6 W: 6 Ch: 4

+1 track +2 climb (any other skills an ogre might have)

(plus all the other crunch in a 3.5 statblock here)

_________

(That's all a Heroic DM needs, unless s/he wants to use powers)

_________

Then here is a pair of powers that can be traded out for a -1 to hit or damage minus each:

*Grab And Bite: 1/encounter. Successful hit on adjacent size M or smaller opponent inflicts d4 damage for a grab, then d10 for a bite and the opponent is considered grappled the next round.

*Toss: at-will. Successful hit knocks Size M opponent up to 40 feet/4squares doing 3d6 damage.

-Giving levels to a monster is easy under the system I've sketched out, by the way, a 9th level fighter bugbear could just add +9 to hit and +9 to damage and bam, there you go.

-4e's Action Points (which do mix things up a bit) can stay for Tournament PCs. And go for everybody else. In a Tournament fight you get them, in a different fight you don't

-"Classic PCs can, on a successful check, execute a combat maneuver, however, it should be noted that doing the same trick over and over is considered bad form."

-How does this benefit Classic edition players? Two ways:

*WOTC should be able to start publishing materials useful to them (and modules that are useful to more than one playstyle simultaneously) and

*by establishing a common language, DMs of different styles will be able to talk to each other more easily. Oh I run Heroic and I find... etc etc

-XP scheme the same as i wrote before:

Classic: XP is given for monsters and treasure. Treasure usually nets about 4 times as much xp as monsters required to get to said treasure.

Heroic: XP is given for monsters plus each PC picks what kind of thing they want to get xp for based on their PCs' individual motives. Like: "My wizard wants knowledge,""My paladin wants to help the weak" etc. The GM can award these as s/he sees fit but the total can still be divided equally if the PCs roll that way--so if everybody helps one PC achieve a goal, they all benefit

Tournament: XP for monsters at x5 normal.

-Switching styles: if the DM (or PCs) in a Tournament game would like to do a "quick combat" (initiative by side, no action points) then vote.

An Excerpt From the Imaginary Type V Player's Handbook In My Head

2012-01-15T13:56:00.000-08:00

indicates Classic Play Options.

Classic Play Options make the game work like the earliest versions of Dungeons and Dragons. These games are about players relying on luck and outside-the-box thinking to survive situations that range from challenging to downright unfair. The high possibility of character death and of the players coming up with unusual solutions to problems means the dungeon master has to be constantly prepared to improvise and can't be wedded to one

idea of how the story of the campaign will progress. These games emphasize randomness and require an experienced or fairly ambitious dungeon master. Since the rules are relatively simple, these options are preferred by dungeon masters who like to alter or "hack" the rules and by players who trust their DMs' judgment.

Classic play options are for players who are all right with the challenge of starting out playing (for example) a cleric with 4 hit points and only one spell or dying because a door opens in rather than out and for dungeon masters who are willing to improvise an entirely new scenario because the players cleverly used a magic item to tunnel their way out of a carefully-constructed pit trap.

indicates Tournament Play Options.

Tournament Play Options make the game work like the most recent versions of Dungeons and Dragons. These games are about fast-paced, cinematic action, tactical thinking, and teamwork. The wide variety of well-defined powers gives each player a "role" in the group, ensuring that no single player dominates combat and allows dungeon masters to tell exactly how they will measure up against prospective opponents. This reliability also gives the dungeon master the power to plan a story with specific events without the mechanics of the game getting in the way. As the name

implies,* the Tournament Play options are favored for RPGA competitions because it's fairly easy to measure how powerful a character is versus an opponent.

Tournament play options are for players who'd like to make a character capable of confidently doing a backflip over an opponent and stabbing him in the neck once a day and for dungeon masters who'll be disappointed if the game doesn't climax with that character fighting a stone golem on a tightrope over a pit of boiling lava.

indicates Heroic Play Options.

Heroic play options are based on the versions of Dungeons and Dragons published between 2000 and 2008. These games are about customization and rules clarity. They allow players to build any kind of character they want, regardless of dice rolls--while giving them a decent chance of surviving, too. Heroic rules emphasize modularity and flexibility for the DM, too, and allow a DM to define every

aspect of the game world using clear rules. If you're not wedded to the anything-goes possibilities of Classic play or the reliability of Tournament play--or if your group is just starting out and you're not sure which way they want go, Heroic play may be for you.

Heroic play options are for players who know they definitely want to play an elven druid with a raccoon animal companion who specializes in climbing trees and for DMs who would like time to find out what kind of adventure is best suited to an elven druid with a raccoon animal companion who specializes in climbing trees.

Example:

Classes

Fighter

Hit points
d10**

d10 + Con modifier

Pick two of the following to start plus two more per level thereafter:

(Note: All Tournament PCs Begin at level 3)

+1 missile to hit

+1 melee to hit (may be chosen twice at same level)
+1 melee/thrown damage

+1 to fortitude save/defense

(Tournament)(Optional for Heroic) Add a new Combat Ability (Classic PCs and Heroic PCs not using this option may attempt to imitate the effects of Combat Abilities--or may invent new ones. In this case, the DM should think of a suitably modified ability check to test whether the PC is able to do this--one that balances the risk of possibly losing an action with the reward of possibly being able to perform an action more powerful than an ordinary attack. Both PC native ability and experience level should be considered as factors.)***
(Classic & Heroic Option) +1 to know stuff about foe (ac, hp, damage/attack, etc.) (Obviously the company should find a more elegant way to say this than I just did)

Skills

Fighters are assumed to be capable and have +1 to checks involving activities typical of medieval military activity.

Heroic and Tournament DMs should note that these, specifically, are: Climb (Str), Craft weapon (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Ride (Dex), and Swim (Str)

Fighters may trade bonuses in any area for a bonus in another (i.e. +2 total to swim in exchange for +0 in jump)

At each level, fighters can:

-automatically gain +2 by specializing in a narrower subskill of any skill s/he already has. For example, s/he could have +2 to climbing rocks if s/he already has +1 to climb, or...

-a fighter may make an Int check****, success indicates s/he can add one new skill (that is, +1 to something new) of any kind

Combat abilities

(This would be a list of "powers"--some look like 3e feats (though only situational ones--not the ones that just buff an existing ability), some look like 4e powers. Some are marked (Tournament only)--and there will also be (Tournament only) abilities or versions of abilities marked in the monster manual under certain monsters. A scale that says things like "2 squares/20 feet" will be used.

EDIT:

I forgot Starting Money/Equipment:

Classic fighters get d6x10 gp

Tournament fighters get the standard dungeon gear plus a long range weapon of choice, a short range weapon of choice, and chainmail or leather armor plus d10 gp. (Remember they start at 3rd level anyway.)

Heroic fighters get a weapon of choice plus d6x10 gp

_____

Anyway, point is, this isn't that hard. Further reading.

* being located entirely in my head, the new PHB naturally has a few weird misprints like this

**this may seem a little cruel to Classic PCs with a high Con (or a little kind to those with a low Con) but there's a hidden bonus: to turn a PC or monster into a Classic version of the same creature all you have to do is strip away the Con mod per level. And to do the opposite, vice versa. The module writers will thank this rule.

***Some may object that 4e-style combat is based on having a plethora of powers to choose from, not just one or 2--but remember, Tournament PCs start at 3rd level, so they've already got several powers from day one. (Trading the whole complement of powers out for new ones at a new level seems like an acceptable idea for Tournament PCs--depending on how the actual individual powers are written.)

****this preserves the 3.5e principle that higher int gives you more skill without having to count skill points each level.

(Oh and what kind of Int check? I suppose a DC 15 Int check since adding in roll-under mechanics would needlessly complicate things.)

Serpentor v. Hargrave

2012-01-14T12:29:00.000-08:00

"Sorry guys, I just woke up."

"No kidding."

"No I mean my character just woke up."

"Anyway, you're all fighting purple people and one has a raygun."

"Oh, man..."

(this turns out to be cake, actually, so we slay them, collect the raygun and then we keep looking around until...)

"Gilgamesh the Macho, a giant tick falls on you from the ceiling and rolls...very well actually...I'm using the Arduin crit tables for these and..."

"We attack and do stuff!"

(stuff is being done)

"So Gilgamesh the Macho you have a very serious wound coming from your neck"

"I'm torn between keeping on fighting--which would be the most macho--and tending to my gushing tick wound..."

"You should heat up something metal and then press it to your neck to cauterize it, then you'd be macho and medical."

"Well the Arduin crit I rolled on you just says 'You die in 3 rounds'"

"I saw Serpentor do that in GI Joe #50 and it worked."

"Well you can't ask for a better authority than Serpentor, I'll give you a saving throw to survive"

"Ok..............(roll roll)..................YES!"

"ALL HAIL SERPENTOR!"

("Who's Serpentor?")

"Ok, so Cobra Commander knew this dentist named Dr Mindbender and....

And that's how it was revealed that Serpentor is a deity of Wessex.

The 'Other Planet And Don't Know It' Phenomenon

2012-01-13T18:24:00.001-08:00

The Other Planet phenomenon...

I know people who are not like me exist.

I also know it's not because they aren't all lunatics who just don't know what I know.

Do they?

One of the strange things to me about the latest spasm of WellHere'sWhatIIIIIIThinkAbout D&D going around is how many Type IV players who are used to the newest edition of D&D do not seem to even be aware that not everybody rolls like them--like as if they think other people don't appreciate the features of the game because they didn't notice they exist.

Somebody on G+ linked to one of these folks and we had an interesting discussion about the nature of this gap...

I said:

This is one of those "we live in a different world" things. describing encounter balance as if it's always a good thing and describing changes to the game as "advances" just suggests this person's from a different planet. I know he's on a different planet--does he know how many gamers aren't on his planet?4:23 PM - Edit

Guy Who Posted The Link- Encounter "balance" is a good thing to me, because IMO it's easy to make an encounter easy or hard, but it's quite difficult to make one that's challenging mechanically without fudging the dice.

I do think that some of the "advances" of 3 and 4e brought up their own issues, hopefully this D&D NExt thing can reconcile some of that.4:50 PM

Zak S - See, that's totally alien to me. I find it really easy to make a challenging encounter and I never fudge dice. This is what I mean. I can't even figure out how it would be hard. Give the monster a high "to hit" and lots of hit dice. next problem...4:54 PM - Edit

Guy Who Posted The Link-So you're telling me you've never had a party either steamroll an encounter or get TPK'd unexpectedly in O,1 or 2e that you thought was going to be a challenge? I can't imagine that. Then again, maybe I just sucked at making encounters in those systems.

Zak S - Sure they sometimes steamroll or get TPK'd (maybe 10% of the time) but I do not see how that's a problem. Those things are vital parts of the game for me.
I think seeing a TPK or instasuccess as a disaster to be avoided is a hallmark of the "different world" syndrome. 5:11 PM - Edit

Guy Who Posted The Link-OK. I can see that. THe way I see it is, I want to have maximum control over the encounter difficulty so that when my party fights a BBEG or other major battle, I can be reasonably sure that they're not going to end up steamrolling it or being TPK'd unexpectedly. In my experience that's not really fun for the players or the DM. To me a lot of the drama from combat is sometimes coming down to the wire. Who is going to win? I want to be able to play my NPCs and monsters to their fullest without either wiping the party or being slaughtered, unless of course that's the purpose of the encounter.

The difference here that we're having right now is the biggest wall that WotC faces with D&D Next. Unless they come up with some great modular ways to give us both what we want. 5:18 PM

Zak S - Exactly! I want to be able to play my monsters and NPCs to the fullest knowing It MIGHT lead to a TPK! That way my players are genuinely scared and therefore genuinely, desperately inventive. Although that carries the risk of TPK, it also carries the reward of them maybe surviving knowing there was no "safety net".

I just feel like what's weird to me is it seems like half the 4e peeps posting don't even know this playstyle exists or is considered fun.5:23 PM - Edit

Guy Who Posted The Link-I agree, I'm not saying there should never be TPK's, I'm just saying I want to be able to better gauge the results. For my past groups, 2e was pretty swingy,which I think what 3e and 4e designers were trying to get away from. However, in the process they sometimes make it too safe. The 4e Healing Surges is an "advance" that I'm not a fan of because of this. Additionally when you're healed up to full every day my brain rebels as "unrealistic!

___________
It's surprising how much of it is all down to a few numbers really:

Adjusting the numbers increases or decreases the chance of Unexpected Immediate Party Success or Unexpected Total Party Kill.

Unexpected Total Party Kills and Unexpected Immediate Party Successes both lead to the GM having to improvise to fill up the rest of that 2-hour session.

And being ok with improvising is the difference between a GM who has a story to tell and a GM with no planned story.

And the difference between a GM who likes a planned story and a GM who is ok without one is pretty much all the difference in the world.

Ooh ooh ooh My Turn!

2012-01-11T19:31:00.000-08:00

I regret that I cannot jump on the post Type V D&D Announcement Telling Game Designers How To Do Their Job bandwagon since I already did last month. However, let it never be said a week went by without me bringing in some solution-to-a-problem-nobody-had from left field

If Wizards doesn't want it, someone else can take it. Free:

Strike a blow for social justice and for keeping RPGs totally metal by creating rules for damage resulting in permanent handicaps and badass ways to overcome them: weaponized prosthetic limbs, seeing-eye jaguars, sword-tipped peg-legs, steampunk gnome ocular thingies that only work for a few rounds at a time, etc.

And, naturally, art directors--keep it sexy. Actually, expand the sexy. Give us hot maimed people and dyslexic people but also hot fat people and hot dead people and whatever else you've got (still have Brom's number?). America lags far behind the rest of the western world in non-neurotic thinking about sexy, give it a kick.

This here proof-of-concept is one of the pictures I did for my all-female cyborg space pirate version of Blood Meridian (that's the Judge on the right with the cigar). If it were up to me, there would be no pictures of men in anything ever, but more than half the population likes men so maybe put one or two hot, mute, deaf, blind, hebephrenic guys in there too. I guess. Worked for Michael Moorcock.

Oh and remember, even Tieflings don't have to be skinny goth chicks...

Do You Have Asperger's Syndrome?

2012-01-09T10:40:00.000-08:00

I once had a friend who couldn't spell.

Not like normal can't spell, but like over-the-top insayne hadd too sownd out eetch lettr and than tipe it evry time couldn't spell.

Learning disability.

And he was in a business where text messaging and chatting and doing shit fast was the best way to get things done-so spell check was not an option.

In real life he was an intelligent and articulate sounding person, but on the page his disability (plus a sort of tendency toward oblique hipster code, perhaps developed over time as a defense mechanism around his spelling) made you expect--if you never knew him--that you were about to meet Bennett.

But despite all this trouble living in a wired and therefore text-centric world, he did a fine job of it and did well and convinced many people to do many things via the written word and was eminent in his field.

His secret was: he told you that he couldn't spell. First message he'd go: "Sory I hav a lerning disbility I cant spel, forgive me. Now onto bizness: wear will you be on tha 25th?"

And it worked fine. People didn't assume he was a moron or too lazy or disrespectful to run spell check, they just went, oh he has that thing, let's move on.

__________

So now Asperger's Syndrome.

I don't have it, nor do I know anyone in real life who does. Or knows they do anyway.

What I knew about it before I started D&D blogging comes from Mandy--who is an expert on all physical and mental maladies--and a Fantastic Four comic book.

(For those of you who don't know, the shorty is: Asperger's Syndrome is a kind--maybe range--of subtle autism that makes people think kinda like robots and have a hard time socializing. I hope I got that right, apologizing in advance if I didn't.)

Anyway, I don't know if it is provably true that the D&D community contains way more people with Asperger's than the art world, the porn world, or the literature world but I sure know that my email inbox contained zero references before this blog existed and now it comes up all the time. Anecdotally: I have way more contacts from outside the D&D world than in it but all references I've heard to the syndrome are within that social circle.

So: some people with Asperger's are really cool. They send me stuff, they talk to me about what they're working on and what I'm working on and are usually indistinguishable from everyone else aside from maybe they send longer emails. And they appreciate rigor and precision, which is always nice.

(A few have weird reactions to my art. There is apparently some connection between autism and the perception of detail and a handful of people with autism tend to have an intense-love or panicky-fear reaction to my more elaborate pictures.)

However, once in a while we have a conversation like this:

Them: "(something I don't understand)"

Me: "I don't get it. How does (whatchamajigger) relate to (whosamacallit)?"

Them: "(Wall-of-text-that-sounds-technical-but-is-actually-easy-to-understand-but-doesn't-actually-explain-anything)"

Me: "Thanks, I know that already. But I still don't get how blah blah blah"

Them: "(Exact same wall of text)"

Me: "No, I mean I know that, I don't think you're listening, I just...Ok, this might be an Asperger's thing."

Them: "Yeah, probably, skip it."

What's striking about this conversation is that, other than the last two parts, this conversation precisely resembles the beginning of an insane, endless Internet argument.

This is because, this behavior--

"Request for explanation"

"Explanation"

"Request for clarification of explanation"

"Exact same explanation again ignoring what you just said"

--is, outside Asperger's, mostly commonly found in:

-Idiots

-People who are hiding something and hoping that if they just keep saying the same thing over and over the other party won't notice (most notably politicians and press agents)

-Internet trolls

Of course, these email exchanges with people I've met do not result in insane internet arguments because I know the person I'm talking to has Asperger's. Because they said it. So it's cool and whatever.

This is presumably a known fact within the Asperger's community but I'll just reiterate it here: if the person you're talking to (even online) doesn't know you have Asperger's then it is very easy for certain conversational tics to be mistaken for idiocy, bad faith, or trolling.

Now, from what I understand, five things are true:

-Within the Asperger's community, socializing on-line is generally pro-indicated as a way of meeting people and having conversations in a less risky environment

-A lot of people in the RPG community have Aspergers

-A lot of people in the RPG community get into fights over interesting-but-not-important things because one party thinks the other is an idiot, a liar, or trolling

-The local cluster of people around the OSR and DIY D&D communities is a bunch of cool people who will be understanding if you tell them you have Asperger's before getting into any kind of complex rhetorical thing with them and will understand that, despite communications problems, you may be smart, honest and talking in good faith even though it doesn't seem like it at first

Now I don't know what the official therapeutic line on it is (and maybe this is the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do, in which case I apologize now), but I'd just like to ask, on behalf of everyone in DIY D&D: if you do have Asperger's, please go ahead and say that, especially if you sense you're getting involved in any kind of heated conversation. It'll lower the temperature considerably and make things you say easier for the other person to understand and head off trouble.

And if you do that and anybody has a problem with you having AS and gives you any shit about it, they are invited to go fuck themselves. We will back you up 100%.

Appendix S

2012-01-06T23:57:00.001-08:00

S is for "short attention span".

If you need to explain quickly what playing D&D is like to a clueless party, then I have found some entirely perfect links:

Adventure Time Episode 18 "Dungeon" (hit "continue as free user" after a few seconds)

A boy and his talking dog go into a dangerhole in order to overcome a self-imposed challenge and are aided by a very impatient pink-haired princess.

The parallels with my own game and existence are terrifying.

Powerpuff Girls Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever

There is almost nothing in this that is not exactly like D&D.

Home Movies: Renaissance

This is what everything else about D&D, besides playing D&D, is like.

Bonus utility: Next time some smarthole asks you what brand of Fantasy Adventure Literature exactly is D&D meant to be simulating send them right here.

Just Add Pie

2012-01-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

So Nine-And-Thirty Kingdoms (always worth a look) posted this method for procedurally generating landscape instantly using what he calls over there "dice-maps" and what I call over here "die-drop tables" for reasons lost to time.

Basically his idea is, you drop a handful of d6s on the piece of paper and it gives you a map of nearby stuff plus distances to it.

This first thing I thought is, for any given landscape, you could go to Google Docs, quickly make a pie chart, and stick it in the center so that you could make custom "collapsed" maps for any given continent or area. So you not only know the distance to places but their character as well. Jsut extend the pie lines out and features in that sector is that kind of thing. This took 3 minutes:Then I figured you could do this for buildings, too--though in a slightly different way. Basically you write a "destination" (i.e. interesting-stuff-having location--the kinds of things where you start drawing and think "I know I want a lich riding a wereworg in here and a pile of old tapestries but that's about it...") in each part of the pie, then the dropped dice indicate how many rooms away in each direction said feature is. The numbers that actually come up on the dice can then be your wandering monster rolls for each direction. A little ball-and-stick flowchart connecting-the dots and bam--instant dungeon. Good for when the PCs reach levels you haven't finished yet...

In other news, the second one came out as an inverted peace sign for some reason.

Tense Moments

2012-01-04T22:43:00.000-08:00

Thinking about this--this isn't so much a skill system as an alternate way to use the systems D&D (and games like it) already have to adjudicate situations when you want to add tension.

So:

Skills (or "Noncombat tasks that a PC might reasonably specialize in").

Simple skill is like: there's a task and a number you have to roll, roll over, roll under.

Sometimes, though, you want to make the execution of a skill as dramatic and tense as combat.

Quick review: Why is combat drawn out in most RPG rules?

1. The stakes are generally high (life or death)
2. A partial success or failure is meaningful (injured foe or friend--this injury matters even after the combat's over)
3. The task and subtasks it consists of are fun events in-themselves, even outside of any context. At least if the DM is doing it right. (You dodge, you swerve, you slash and lose a finger and all that.)

In contrast to fighting, D&D skills in the basic rules tend to be simple--pass/fail.

Type IV introduced skill challenges, of which I know little, but which, as a player, I have experienced and not really noticed having an effect much--though I assume the idea is to create just such high-tension skill moments. Crossing the tightrope, ooo, nope, whoa, ok.. etc. the general scuttlebutt on them seems to be: the quality of them is highly dependent on GM skill.

Anyway here's my idea:

Each test either has a difficulty class (DC) like in Type III D&D (this is just like an ascending AC. A number you have to roll w/modifiers to do the thing) or if you are using a roll-under-attribute system it has a bonus or penalty associated with it (make a dex check at -2 or +3 etc.). Both are ability score based--int for making stuff, dex for tricky physical tasks, str for swimming, etc.

Like a hard task could be DC20 or it could be -5 to attribute check.

(This is all old news. This is how people already do stuff in versions of D&D.)

If you don't have the skill, it's just pass/fail. You succeed, good, you have made a tea kettle or climbed a wall. You fail, the bad thing happens, the lock seizes up, the knot uncurls, the trap fails to spring, etc.

IF you DO have the skill and you succeed, well, good. You succeeded just like everybody else.

(Still, all this is old news. Here's the new bit...)

If you DO have the skill and you fail, the DM rolls d6. If the die is over your current level, you fail. If it's equal to or below, the DM narrates some mayyyybe-it's-working type situation ("the lock is rusty but a tumbler is beginning to come loose...""you slip suddenly, but catch hold of a badger-shaped rock at the last minute..") and you have two options:

1. You can try again.

2. If the task is the kind where you can start doing it and give up half-way without catastrophic disaster (i.e. you make it half-way across the chasm and then turn back rather than just falling) you have the option to "chicken out" and stop rolling now and have things go back to more-or-less how they were before the failed roll.

If you try again:

If you succeed, good.

If you fail, the DM rolls another d6, if this d6 plus the previous d6 is over your level, you fail. If it's still under, you can try again.

etc. etc. until you run out of levels or succeed.

This means by 6th level you will obviously automatically get one reroll. By 12th level you automatically get 2 rerolls. (No need to keep track of this, the dice will make it obvious.)

Why a d6?

I figure 6th level represents the point at which you obviously are definitely reliably always a little better at your specialty than the average PC. (This is going by thief PCs in AD&D--until about 6th level you still kind of suck much of the time and using your abilities is often a bad idea.)

____

In addition to the tension factor, I also think this system will scale better at high levels than simply giving skilled PCs one-re-roll per level or +1 to the roll per level--After 4thish level everything is way easy unless the basic task has such a high DC or negative modifier that nobody unskilled could ever try it. In other words, doing it that way means you have to have a lot of walls that only a skilled person could climb, and even then you keep having to scale up the difficulty as the PC gains in power.

This system means that (since the basic roll is still just vs. unmodified attribute) a skilled PC is measurably better at doing things than an unskilled one, but does not live in a world where s/he'll start automatically succeeding and need more and more difficult tasks just for the game to justify having the PC have the skill in the first place.

(I mean--if there's a wall in a 10th level dungeon only a thief with a skill can climb then that means either the party has to have a thief or the players know on the metagame level that there must be another way in. Plus I also just find degrees of awesomeness beyond, say +6 difficult to really appreciate on a visceral level. If you get to a point on a d20 system where some PCs are at +4 and some are at +9 and anybody below +5 is actually kind of crap, relatively, I find it hard to imagine what that's like in real-world analogues. What's a +9 guy look like compared to a +15 guy? +15 vs +20? It gets kind of abstract and numerical.)

Plus no skill points to keep track of in this system. Though I like the LOTFP 6-point system, it's not compatible with the have-it-or-don't skill system already in my campaign.

____

So, anyway, this seems like a decent bolt-on for any have-it-or-don't skill class-and-level system. It requires no new things on a PC's character sheet.

And again, I wouldn't use it for every test, just when I wanted to add suspense when the consequences are a big deal.

Split-Column Assignment Generator

2012-01-03T22:15:00.001-08:00

Dear Exploring Infinity,
I have no idea how I found your blog, or this nifty situation generator that you made for Firefly. I also don't know anything about Firefly other than that it happens in space and has something to do with that Buffy guy people like.

Anyway, since it seemed pretty much useful for any game, I reformatted your table in split-column format. That way, if you have to roll a new situation fast (as you often do in sandbox D&D) you can roll once and read across, or, if you have a few more seconds, re-roll again for any result you don't like. I don't know if this kind of speedy flexible table is useful in the kind of games you play (we have no followed blogs in common and your categories are all games I don't run) but it is for me, so thanks! Your table is appreciated and has been added to the archive.

Rock.

An Embarrassment of Impressive (& More Pie Charts)

2012-01-02T11:39:00.000-08:00

Finally finished reading all the way through Secret Santicore and I have to re-say: it is very good. Like I can't think of the last time I saw anything published (for money or otherwise) that had this much stuff that was actually going straight into my game immediately.

People keep asking for The Complete _________(something other than a city)_____ Kit? Well a lot of what would go into a thing like that is right in this obscure little pdf. (And it's nice to see many of the Hack Vornheim Contest winning DMs continuing to come up with creative stuff here.)

The little details really make a huge difference here: like Jeremy Duncan's Vat Spawn character class? Ho hum more mutants, yeah yeah, weird weird--but he tells you they are immortal and their whole personality and skillset 're-boot' every 100 years. That explains so much and suggests so many possibilities. Plus the actual mutations and weirdnesses he gives them seem actually thought-out and playable rather than just the typical Dragon Magazine grab-bag of abilities-inspired-by-the-last-movie-I-saw.

Anyway, highly recommended. Again.

Also worth a look: Zombiesmith Miniatures appears to be producing some intriguingly Cobalt 60-ish miniatures, from what I can tell from their extremely poorly-organized site. (No offense, so far as I can tell, all miniatures sites ever are extremely poorly organized. Whats up with that?)
Aaaaand here are some entirely unrelated infographics regarding the girls' race and class choices over the course of all sessions. I have limited the info to only PCs in games I GMed in order to avoid filling my head with even more useless data and maybe accidentally crowding out things like what month it is and what city I am in.

Games I Ran In 2011

2012-01-01T17:35:00.000-08:00

By location, just the LA group:

Not that you care, but I just discovered the pie chart maker. Just marking time until I decide if there's any point to using one to make a drop-die chart.

The Best D&D-able Comic Books According To Me

2011-12-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

Slaine
Simon Bisley is to Warhammer what Frank Frazetta is to D&D. Or Warhammer is to D&D as Simon Bisley is to Frank Frazetta. Anyway, when he wasn't drawing insane Doom Patrol covers that bend all minds, Bisley did this totally metal barbarian comic and you should buy it.

Ironwolf
I was surprised to hear Keith Baker hadn't seen this steampunk-before-steampunk tale of sabres, swashbuckling, wooden starships, vampires, werewolves, aristocrats, honor, snottiness, cynicism and intrigue before inventing Eberron. When I showed him his eyes just about rolled back in his head.

Howard Chaykin's self-pencilled 70s original is mainly remarkable for the make-Barbarella-weep astrofabulousness of the female character designs and the later, Mike Mignola pencilled Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution is remarkable because fuck yeah Mike Mignola.

Hellboy
Speaking of Mike Mignola. If you are interested in Hellboy but have never checked out the comics and don't know where to start, I'd start off with The Chained Coffin and Others then, if you're hooked, buy all the others with Mignola art and read them in order. If you're still hooked, the Ryan Sook and Duncan Fegredo ones are an acceptable methadone, though the fact that both artists are both so good when they aren't being hired to draw just like Mike Mignola makes their work there somehow coverbandish in a slightly depressing way.

Some notes here: Mignola's Fafhrd & Grey Mouser adaptation sounds like it can't lose, but the lack of true Leiber prose plus Mignola's inability to overcome the perennial challenge of doing medieval scenes using the traditional comic book coloring process makes this about 25% less sweet than it should be. For things in the same fantastic vein that work out a little better, see the Lovecrafty "Sanctum" story in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight and Doctor Strange/Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment.

Blood: A Tale
Kent Williams paints some excellent stream-of-consciousness gobbledegook vampire stuff with swords and snakes and trees and dreams and more unerotic nudty than I have ever seen outside a wrestling ring. 4-issues, easily acquired in one bit.

Elektra Lives Again
Why is this Frank Miller drawn/ Lynn Varley painted modern ninja book listed here?

1-It is criminally under-appreciated and with Frank Miller's reputation sinking every time he opens his mouth, its star will probably only dip lower in years to come, and

2-It has the best medieval-weapon slugfest scene ever in a comic book.

Cerebus
Oh, Cerebus... For those who don't know, Cerebus is 300 black-and-white issues of an Aardvark acting like Conan and a comic book creator going from making fun of Conan to being sublimely inspired to succumbing to a particularly uncharming, pleonastic, and misogynistic brand of insanity. Dave Sim gets very good at drawing shadows and aardvarks, though his people are a little rubbery (though these days a lot of people like that kind of thing, so whatever).

The rundown for the unitiated:
The cheapest preview is a single issue called Cerebus #0. If you like it, buy more:
First book: Cerebus: the "funny-animal" original stories--they read like unusually ambitious Dragonmirth strips but are maybe essential to understanding the more serious stuff that follows.
High society--the first intimations of awesomeness.
Church and State and Jakas Story--What the legend is built on. This is the goods right here. Wintry weird politics, slapstick, isolation, and eccentric worldbuilding.
Melmoth--expendable divagation into an Oscar Wilde obsession.
Flight, Women, Reads, Minds--Good, interesting, maybe great, but the rot is clearly approaching and the misogyny first appears I think in Reads. (Cerebus is rather like the Star Wars question: everyone agrees Empire is the best and that at some point the franchise became terrible--nobody agrees about what point that is.)
Guys--Not as terrible as it is about to get, but clearly now just an old hippie telling jokes about bars.
From then on: total mind rot in progress. Very sad.

Moebius
For English readers, the best starting place is the Epic/Graphitti collected edition #2--Arzach and Other Fantasy Stories. If you like that trip into his frenchy, pterodactyl-laden greenskinned dreamland then you''ll probably like the sci-fi stories in volume 3 Airtight Garage and volume 4 Long Tomorrow. His style has wandered quite a bit over the course of his career: dreamy greens, lumpy cowboys, unhatched New Age-isms, spirally psychedelic erotica, bog-standard balloon-nose French slapstick, so preview anything before spending too much money on it. This might help.

Little Nemo
The earlier full-color strips are a jaw-dropping mix of Ringling-Bros fire-engine-colored Americana, opiated surrealism and art nouveau elegance. There is so much to admire that ignoring the black character in Sambo-makeup and pointlessly meandering plotlines is pretty easy. Last I knew, a complete edition hidden behind an incredibly ugly and unrepresentative maroon-colored hardcover was still available.

Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 4 #5
Oh, it's a long story. But basically a crazy wizard manages to fuck up history so that magic defeats technology up until even the 30th century. So this single issue is the Medievalized versions of the superheroes trying to get their timeline back. Keith Giffen manages to do what Mike Mignola couldn't and creates the most convincingly Lankhmarish visuals in comics history.

Some people thought Keith Giffen's run on Legion was too dark, too dense, too complex, and too hard to understand. These people are all child molesters. There is nothing like it in the history of comic book storytelling and if we had to lose a few illiterate waterheads off the fanbase in order to see it, then those are the risks of the culture business.

Many more people have never even heard of Giffen's run on Legion of Super-Heroes because nobody fucking reads Legion of Super-Heroes. I envy these people because they can go buy back-issues of the first few years of Legion Volume 4 and be extremely surprised and confused and engrossed and happy for a few days in a way that's otherwise fairly difficult to do without taking off your clothes, leaving the house, getting fat, or paying some creep with weird facial hair for a carefully-titrated helping of something illegal.

Thor #337-#367
Walt Simonson's run on Thor is exactly what level 15+ D&D should look like: Fire demons and usurpers and lone heroes mauling legions and hordes and bad elves and sound effects that take up half a panel and galaxies on fire and visuals like Viking tracery in a pinball machine. It was worth Stan and Jack making a beardless nordic Superman ripoff with a wingy helmet and six dots on his red-caped costume just so Walt could turn it into this. Check it.

Years later, Simonson did Elric, it didn't work.

Sandman #50
Neil Gaiman's stories always work best when the artist inspires the dizzy wonder he wants you to feel and P. Craig Russel's take on Arabian-Knights-era Baghdad is as dazzling as it needs to be. Planescape fans also must read Gaiman's "Season of Mists" storyline. It is pretty much exactly where Planescape came from. Plus Kelley Jones drew it, so even if you disagree, hey, Kelley Jones.

Speaking of Kelley Jones: Batman: Red Rain is Batman + Dracula so kinda maybe you have to read that and Jones' Deadman is full of horrific-pretty-much-even-the-end-table-looks-like-a-zombie KJ visuals.

_________
There are, of course, many other comics that deal with the fantastic. Did I hear about (your favorite one here)? Bone? Red Nails? Prrrrobably. Did I like it? Probably not, otherwise it would be here in this list. But if I haven't, I'd love to check it out. Good comics are hard to come by.

Yay!

2011-12-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

Vornheim got an award for Christmas.

Books, being inanimate and leading basically sedentary lifestyles, are pretty hard to shop for. But that'll do.

Thank you to everyone over at Diehard GameFAN.

For no reason, here's a picture of a lich:

And A 103 Pages Of Stuff In A Pear Treeeeeeee

2011-12-26T10:40:00.000-08:00

The Secret Santicore pdf is finished.

42 things, over 100 pages.

On the design and organization front, Jez Gordon knocked it out of the park on this one. (Or, for Eastern Hemisphere readers: 'He scrummed it off the barbie in the ocker' or whatever you say.) Point is he went vastly above and magnificently beyond what any sane person would have done with a bunch of house rules and random things whipped up by various bloghappy DMs in response to the whims of various other bloghappy DMs.

I, for one, am more than pleased by the table of mechanical traps Andy Wise devised for me, and am eager to finish this entry such that I might peruse the rest of this vast feast.

Creatures, adventures, equipment, traps, tables, encounters, locations, even some Shadowrun, Modern, and Mutant Future stuff.

COMPLETELY FREE natch.

Courtesy of everybody who participated in Secret Santicore.

Be jolly about it.

Now, who wants to do some infinitely repeatable adventures for Groundhog, Giant Day?

Green Manilishi With The Two Pronged Crown

2011-12-25T21:10:00.000-08:00

Sitting on the

couch

drawing

waiting to go

home.

Type IV Hypersensitivity + Ask Questions First

2011-12-22T16:30:00.000-08:00

No worries, this story has a moral...

Here is quite possibly a new low in mountain-out-of-molehill (mole-valley, really) facepalmingly dumb mom's-basement nerdrage nitpick embarrassment-to-the-gaming-populationdom:

People are calling each other names on account of other people saying 'Type IV D&D' instead of '4th edition D&D'.

Allow me to explain...

So long ago, in the days of yore, I noticed an annoying thing:

Whenever Old School D&D people made any reference to the 4th edition D&D, no matter how oblique or unrelated to the gameplay (''I think my uncle's third cousin on my mothers side worked on the graphic design for a 4e adventure''), some other (often otherwise sane) Old School person would inevitably begin to uncontrollably gush unrelated invective at 4e for 12 paragraphs. Like clockwork.

Like good people everywhere, I found this dull and redundant. Every characteristic of 4E had been exhaustively catalogued by the internet hivemind seconds after it was released and nobody needed now or then to hear about all the alleged problems with it again in the middle of some conversation about Clark Ashton Smith's will or whatever. Saying '4e' on an Old School blog was getting to be like saying 'Israel' on NPR. (Or 'OSR' on the touchier message boards.)

I realized early on that the reason it set people off was that some old schoolers saw 4e as being--consciously or otherwise--an updated replacement for the game they loved--rather than what it de-facto-is-no-matter-what-any-company-says given that games do not ever die--a version of D&D. Just as OD&D is a version, AD&D is a version and Moldvay is a version and Mentzer is a version and Stormbringer is a version and Pathfinder and Rolemaster and whatever else is a version. It just happens to be a version in print.

So I started calling the official TSR and WOTC versions of the game (all of them) Type I, Type II, Type III, and Type IV. This emphasized that they were options--different types of D&D whose bits a DM could call upon in whole or in part to hack together a workable game to fit his or her group's individual needs. It had the added bonus of making the iterations of the game sound like demons from the original Monster Manual, which, if you haven't noticed, is funny.

(For those familiar with the early hobby: pre-2nd ed D&D actually went through way more permutations than just one, so the scheme isn't perfect, but I am not one of those bloggers who cares about or refers to the Moldvay, Mentzer or OD&D versions very much so it didn't much bug me at the time.)

So anyway, this name scheme caught on with some other people. Rather than the to-the-uninitiated-equally-opaque '4e', some DIY D&Ders started calling the official version of the game 'Type IV' (including people who play it almost exclusively). No-one in their right mind really gave a shit because seriously why would you? either the sentence is readable or its not--call it Suzi Quatro for all I care.

Then one day some people saw the words 'Type IV' and decided it was worth calling people names about. Since the term 'Type IV' usually only appeared in stuff written by people who read this blog, it was assumed by some folk eager to be displeased that the phrase was some kind of cryptic Old School slur on 4th edition and it raised hackles.

Assumed out of nowhere, I might add, since I like Type IV and play it sometimes and have said that nearly every time it comes up here. But the internet is like that: people began losing their shit over something and slinging insults into the void when they could've just saved themselves the effort by being like -type type- ''Hey you, why do you call it Type IV?'' and waiting a day or two hours. Which is actually less work than writing a 900-word post on how anyone who says 'Type IV' is a motherless jackal.

And its all the more embarrassing because the phrase 'Type____' was adopted as an anti-edition-warring measure.

Moral of the story:

Before getting upset about something someone said or did, always ask a question first. Otherwise, no matter how many dicks are in the room, you are one of them.

If you're wrong, you saved yourself a pointless argument. And if you're right, your question's likely to make the the offender say something even more clearly crazy and over the line and more entertaining than the original thing that pissed you off, and then you've got a headshot. Furries Undermine Legitimate Cosplay!!!!!!!

Always make sure. And why not? Things are often not what they seem.

Reddited Again

2011-12-21T22:26:00.001-08:00

Hi again, visitors from Reddit.

There you go. That's a welcome post from the last time this happened.

All is explained there. Happy holidays or whatever they have over where they think only boys play D&D.

The Power Of Disloyalty+Top 10 Posts of 2011

2011-12-19T15:13:00.000-08:00

So, first:

MySpacebarIsBroken.ThatMeansItIsATremendousEffortToNot
WriteAllScrunchyLikeThis.

Second:

DIY D&D (AndAllOtherIndependentRPGPublishers) ShouldDo this.

Basically,OfferIncentives(likeFreePDFs)ToCheckOutOtherPublishers
LikeThem.

Like,SayIfYouHaveProofOfPurchaseFrom BuyingAFrogGodGames
ProductAndAnLOTFPProductYouGetAFreeGoodmanGamesProduct.

Etc.

TheNiceThingAboutThisIs:

WeAllKnowTheOnyWayToCompeteWithWalMartIsFor
IndependentsToStickTogether.

ButStickingTogetherIsAnnoyingBullshit. There'sPolitics
AndResourceProblemsAndTasteDifferencesAndAll
That. ThatIs,AfterAll,WhyTheyWentIndependent
InTheFirstPlace:TheyDon'tGetAlongWithOtherPeople.

WithIncentivesLikeThis,EverybodyIsHelpingEverybody
Else,ButWithoutHavingToActuallyWorkTogetherAnd
ThingsDon'tGoAllAltamontAllOfASudden.

ISuggestThatThePoolOfPublishersParticipating
ShouldBeRelativelyLarge,ButTheNumberOf"Proofs
OfPurchase"YouNeedToGetAFreebieBeRealtively
Small. Like:20PublishersParticipateButYouOnlyNeed
2ProofsOfPurchaseFromAny2DifferentOnesOfThem
ToGetAFreebieFromAThird.

ThisWayYouDon'tHaveToBeAnInsaneOSRJunkie
ToCollectOnThePrize.

Now,Top10PostsOnRPGBlogsThatICanRememberAbout
LikingIn2011:

one--D100 table from Scrap Princess

Token Jeff post to stand in for 60% of all Jeff posts

This worked wonders for my game and you can do it too, only $0.00!

Rolang's Bring It Series

Huge Ruined Scott knows how to keep the old reliables interesting

Small But Vicious Chris has an even rarer skill: making an on-the-face-of-it-niche-translation between 2 extremely similar systems into the first fun-to-read-rulebook-plus-commentary-on-that-rulebook in history.

Am I cheating, putting another download here? fuck it. Challenge of the Frog Idol is impressive, ladies and fellows

It's easy to lose track of how things actually get figured out and understood and new useful pieces of verbal technology get created after long discussion and lines being drawn, but it does happen once in a while. -C getting all pissed about the Quantum Ogre and sparking off other posts on it all over got some shit explained this year.

The Emiras Necklace is an impressive distillation of the wondrous persian-miniature beauty of Teleleli

Jeremy the Underdandy is a dab hand with tables. (yes that's more than one table and thus more cheating. Fuck off with your rules.)

________
Proof of Concept:

If your comment below provides evidence that you read at least 3 of the links above, I will write a short holiday-themed couplet in your honor, absolutely free.

How I Like Magic To Work

2011-12-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

Dr Strange then explains how the spell shows the target an image of everyone they've ever slain. Maybe no big deal for 90% of foes. But if you're Galactus and eat planets all day, it's exactly the right spell. That's how magic would be, in my perfect worldgame. Devastating when the planets align and the situation is precisely right, otherwise kinda meh.

But we don't live in that perfect world/game and this is a game not a novel so I can live with utility spells if they've got enough flavor. We all have to make compromises in this cruel vale of tears.

Even Dr Strange uses a Bolt of Bedevillment half the time. Lazy ass.

The Party Barbarian Shot This

2011-12-17T23:45:00.000-08:00

So this has nothing to do with D&D but goddamn, Kimberly Kane is a good photographer.

Did I Mention That Fun Was Good?

2011-12-17T13:29:00.000-08:00

I had a whole post about how this was pretty much indeed as epic as Jeff made it out to be with some added blather about how you pretty much cannot escape 10 years in art school without hating Frida Kahlo unless you are the hippiest of all possible hippies (and don't know about Dorothea Tanning or Suzanne Van Damme) but blogger ate it. Such is life. I just hope there's a Sol LeWitt vampire down there somewhere.

Despite this contretemps, since last sunday I also killed two spirit bears, sicced 3 evil cherubs on the girls who made the PCs blind deaf mute and unconscious not necessarily in that order, got to use 3 thief functions successfully in one fight (climb the wall, hid in the smoke on the ceiling, then backstabbed the Spelleton of Bone Hill)(really probably the first time ever any of that worked. 5th level is nice. Yes, thieves are kind of crap.), saw my dog mutated into a half-troll in the Vats of Mazarin and fended off an attack by the Tedious Weasels despite the cowardice of some of our Crocodile Clan allies. Plus I got to sit around painting Andy San Dimas and her dog Pantera during most of this, discovered that "Carcosa" backwards is "A Soc Rac" and am now eating a spicy genoese sausage with cheese on a chocolate croissant. Who questions this awesomeness?

Notes On The Maxim Article

2011-12-15T03:03:00.000-08:00

(right click and go Open In New Window to see it big and avoid blogger's dumb windowbox effect)

So the very polite and pleasant Davy Rothbart came over and played D&D with us and was a druid and wrote about it for Maxim (temporarily adopting the Maxim house style to do it).

(The pictures were taken on a whole other day.)

The article is very sweet and pro-D&D. If you're curious, it's the January 2012 one and is out now. It has something called a JWOWW on the cover.

Some notes:

-In the big picture of Satine using a Tiamat-paintjob Reaper hydra to attack another Reaper hydra held aloft by Connie, (full-frontality cunningly concealed by Maximvision) careful attention to the foreground will reveal a gummi worm attacking a pair of minis.

-Photo includes my hair looking even more disastrous than usual. I have no idea how photographers manage to find these angles.

-The girls' ship, the HMS Tastycakes, is a schooner, who knew? Not I.

-Day of- actual play.

-Our apartment is "quaint".

-For the record, only Satine would read Game of Thrones. Well, read it and be glad she read it. I would maybe carve a sword into my desk.

-There are a lot of references to-, and quotes from people in-, TV shows which I never watch but (judging from the blogs) you do, in the article

-Fact checks: 1.It was not "a friend" who put in my first movie, it was a total stranger 2. Mandy contacted me, not the other way around. 3.And she is like a GG not a DD. But honestly Maxim did a way better job on the accuracy and fact-checking front then 90% of highbrow mainstream media outlets so I'm not bitching. Basic rule: bigger the budget, the worse the fact-checking.

-This is a good bit: the girls are talking and "...comparing their male costars like golf caddies sorting though a bag of donated clubs"

-Semi-related: Joke and ye shall receive. There is now a snark-spawned a Tumblr called Female Fighters In Unreasonable Armor courtesy of the lovely Ms. Fishlemons. Submit your sword-wielding cheesecake today.

There is a lesson in the fact that Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor is run by a guy and Female Fighters In Unreasonable Armor is run by a girl. And that lesson is? All the fun girls like good grammar.

-And for no other reason than that looking at Maxim leaves everyone feeling distractingly nipple-denied for the rest of the day, here's Mandy wearing no clothes:

How To Be An Obnoxious G+ DM

2011-12-14T01:30:00.000-08:00

Spooky room

Door opens

Zap

Multiple zaps

Warp sound

Laugh Track

Ba-Dum-Tissss

Applause

OOooooOOOOooooooohhhhh

Awwwwwww

Bum bum ba bummmmmm

Shinggg

Death screams

Glass breaking

Spooky wind

Punch

Jungle

Growwwl

ThE WiZaRRrrd

You must die!

...or else you will die!

It burrrrrns!

Youu killed meee!

You saved me!

Love scene

This is illegal you know!

Dear lord! They're back!

We're doomed! Doomed I tells ya!

fuckyeahmetalrollinitiative

Either that was a dimensional gate or you're hallucinating

Castlevania

The Call of Cthulhu spelled wrong but it's a transliteration from an unpronounceable antisonic dimension so, y'know...

Medusaaaaa

VIEW THEM THEY ARE PICTURES!

2011-12-12T01:35:00.000-08:00

Viking menace.
Ubu Roi. Now there's a king.
Self explanatory. Or maybe it isn't: THIS IS AWESOME MAKE MINIATURES LIKE THIS.
Blue medusa. One of mine. Acrylic paint on paper.
"We got two forces of toy soldiers, set out a lumpish Encyclopaedic land upon the carpet, and began to play. " -HG Wells
There is absolutely no doubt that this woman from a White Dwarf cover is based on a real-life woman and that that real-life woman is British.

This is like a roadsign I think.
A place.Level: Wolf.
Level: Pig.
Good crunch from Metamorphosis Alpha. The further you are from your native gravity the more it affects combat.
Racist much, Jim Ward?
Level: Stag.Now that Go Make Me Repetitive And Intolerant is over, there's no go-to aggregator for sexy female D&D pix. Anyone want to start a tumblr called Female Fighters In Unreasonable Armor?

Three pictures of Mandy and Stoya fighting snakemen.

Man prepared to gladiate.
Asymmetric gladiation in progress.
Spooky old chess.One of mine.
Displacer Beasts Undermine Legitimate Panthersnakes.
Undefeatable gun.Birds shoot lasers at snake held aloft by way metal green man while arrowed snail observes.
Spaceship from White Dwarf.
The scissor. An old gladiator weapon.
I been there, man.
The Zhua--a sort of Chinese claw-mace.

Anatomy Of A Good Houserule

2011-12-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

Jeff's Carousing Mishaps table. It's a classic. Tons of people use it. Jeff has many tables on his blog--why does this one work so well for so many people?

Let's pull this bitch apart:

-It deals with something that's already in the game but isn't usually dramatized in the game. Your PCs don't have to do some new thing or behave in a different way to use this table. It's assumed that characters are always drinking and wenching when they're not punching giant rats. It's also usually assumed that the game is about when they're punching giant rats and not about when they're drinking and wenching.

-It gives the players a toy. Let's face it: DMs have a million toys to choose from. What Color Is The Slugvomit? I have a table for that... Sometimes the game's moving at a pace where you'll use it, sometimes it isn't. This table is part of a subsystem that the players get to decide to trigger--that's slightly unusual. Give the players a wheel and generally one of them will spin it.

-It's something that comes up a lot. If you run the game like Jeff does, where each session is one delve, it can potentially come up every session. If you don't, it can still come up any time the PCs end a session in a town or city.

-The subsystem is simple. It's all over in one roll. Or two. Or maybe three. Not only are the new rules in the system simple, but unlike my plot-seed version of it, it doesn't make any demands on the game that it doesn't wrap up quickly. That hangover? That just means -2 to saves the next day--it doesn't suddenly change the whole game.

-The rules don't overlap with other rules This table doesn't have to replace or displace any other system in most other games.

-It's fun to read None of the entries stop at "functional". There's always some pithy description and some subrule or result tagged onto it. This is useful on account of:
1-Nobody's gonna decide to keep a table unless they read it, and...
2-You don't have to transfer it into game terms mentally to explain it to your players--they're written in such a way that you could just read them off the table to the group if you felt like it.

-You know why you're rolling on it Unlike this equally awesome table, the Carousing Mishaps provides color but is subtly more directed: you are rolling to see what horrible thing happened when you got drunk and how it will affect your next adventure. Story color is converted into mechanics in an interesting way. There will be a result and you, the DM, know roughly the scale of that result, so you know how much "design space" to let it have in your game--and you know it will mean something to your players.

-It doesn't make you do any work. It isn't one of those "Here's some ideas, make something up" tables. It's all right there.

-They're funny but don't force your game to be You do not necessarily have to shift over to Planet Gonzo to use these rules--partially because they compartmentalize the action into one small thing that happens at the end of a game.

_____

I'm sure there are other reasons and I'm sure I'll see them in the comments. But there you go: that's one way to write some genuinely useful rules.

Now, in the words of Jeff:

"Now somebody please go and post something twelve times cooler than my chart."

Last Day To Get Vornheim Ungodly Cheap

2011-12-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

I don't like doing posts like this.

So here's a picture of an engraved Indian punch-dagger with 2 pistols attached:

Now go buy books for 1.35$ each. Quick.

That is all.

Barbaric Tribe Generator

2011-12-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

(My Secret Santicore gift...)

• The cruel and barbarous ways that they adorn themselves

1-With dogs. Each is chained to a dog. Roll a dog.

2-With a strange bluish paint that grants them +2 to hit and -2 to int for ten minutes'

3-With the skins of their forebears. Each tribesman must grow all fat in his dotage so that his son may wear a suit made from his skin and hide inside it. Nobody knows what they look like.

4-With barbarous tattoooings. Actually they're pretty bright--each tribey keeps all his or all her important info tattooed somewhere. Notes on habits of local fauna, phases of the moon, maps, last time the dog was walked, all that

5-With the garish and mismatching patterns of many animals. So they look like the Misfits not the Danzig When I Turn In To A Martian ones but instead the Jemm and the Holograms ones.

6-No, wait, they do look like the Danzig ones. With the devil-lock. Except it is way longer and at the tip of it is a morning star and they whip it with frenzy in furious battle.

7-With bugs. they a-smear themselves and do bathe in the honeys and spices of their fragrant land and are thus wise in eternity are then surrounded by a halo of stinging and crawling things.

8-With the bones and teeth of their fallen (human) foes which I know sounds like who cares but they HAVE to. So: new and untested tribesmen and tribesgirls have like no clothes upon them because they never killed anyone and the old warmaster crusties have like bonetooth armor so many Harkonnen layers thick they can barely move. Sometimes veterans will not kill you because adding your bones and teeth and the boiling and the drilling and the sewing isn't worth it like cops not shooting you on account of paperwork.

9-With a color code. It's like the Federation but with body paint.

10-With fucking poison. Save or die Mr Touch Attack.

• Their savage and ignorant beliefs

1-Like Marilyn Monroe in that movie The Misfits they don't believe in killing animals because they're innocent. Got no problem killing people though. Any animals involved in their Barbarous Adornments (above) are considered to all be bastards.

2-They believe the soul is contained in the right foot and will evince an unhealthy obsession with severing a foe's right foot, to the exclusion of all other hit locations. They wear a big shoe.

3-They hate food and the eating of food. Publicly. In secret they all eat food (of course) and like it but in company they pretend they don't. It's weird.

4-They don't believe in global warming, evolution, racial equality, birth control or social justice. They do believe in the survival of the luckiest and that the judgments of fate are true and righteous altogether.

5-They believe that emissaries of alien gods are an abomination and will concentrate all their energy on destroying your party cleric.

6-They believe it is blasphemous to use anything that is not stolen. Their equipment, homes, mounts and mates are all stolen.

7-They believe that if they are seen by anyone older than them they'll be owned by them in the afterlife.

8-They believe the first attack must always be a bite. They sharpen their teeth.

9-They believe animals are wiser than men and swarm around any foe their warbeasts attack.

10-They believe that heaven is contained inside an anonymous rock hidden somewhere on the planet.

• Details on the tribe's leader

1-S/he is hideous and clothed in shadow.

2-S/he has worms in his/her head.

3-S/he has a hump like a camel, filled with jewels.

4-S/he owes a PC a single favor.

5-His/her fingernails are nine feet long.

6-S/he is a a ogre or hag.

7-S/he hopes to wage war agains the moon.

8-S/he is supple as sin. I have no idea what that means but George RR Martin made millions writing like that so let's assume it means something. Like: s/he is a contortionist and able to twist his/her body into the shapes of the 32 symbols of The Divine.

9-S/he is drunk and silly but has a voice like an avalanche.

10-S/he is, secretly, at the center of all events in the campaign.

• Their vicious bestial totems

1-Their totem is the locust. They gibber and swarm
2-Their totem is the maggot. They revel in ignorance.
3-Their totem is the jackal. They belong to treachery.
4-Their totem is the crocodile. They are patient, they are swift.
5-Their totem is the crow. They seek the poison tree.
6-Their totem is the stag. They drink from rivers.
7. Their totem is the hog. They wallow and they wail.
8. Their totem is the serpent. They are old.
9. Their totem is a nine-pound hammer. They bash and bruise and boast.
10. Their totem is the scorpion. They live in solitude.
11. Their totem is the toad. Their lives are moist and dull.
12. Their totem is the centipede. They form a long lean line.
13. Their totem is a basking lizard. They dine on dogs and wine.
14. Their totem is a pterodactyl. They come from out of time.
15. Their totem is a broken shackle. They were once a lower caste.
16. Their totem is the whiteblack leopard. They move in darkness.
17. Their totem is the wolf. They harry and howl.
18. Their totem is the mutant rat. They speak in whispers.
19. Their totem is the salamander, They will burn you.
20. Their totem is the fivefold tiger. There are no children among them.

• The tribe's most sacred and vile object of reverence

1. A powder with unusual properties.
2. Yak butter. A mound of it.
3. Your tears and those of many foes. In a great urn.
4. A sacred bastard named Choard.
5. The clothes once worn by earless elves.
6. A pitchfork.
7. The spines on the back of a red reptile, dreaming of war for a thousand moons.
8. The night, silence, quiet, stillness and stone.
9. A fat, four-footed weasel carved of lard, smothered in beets.
10. Severed fingers, kept in cloths.

• The twisted shamans that guide them.

1. Atavistic, armed with acid, aided by asps.
2. Belligerent, bony, bedecked with baubles. Breathes bats.
3. A crazed and crooked crone. Covered in clusters of candles.
4. A devious dervish. Dominates demons with a dazzling dance.
5. An eight-eyed exotic. An eater of eldritch energies. Engages in echolocation.
6. A fat faction of fleshy flagellants.
7. A glossy gadfly. Guarded by ghosts.
8. A hebephrenic harlot. Housed in a hexagon.
9. An idiot and an incunabulist.
10. A jovial juvenile in a jewelled jerkin.

Chatter On The Wire About Monkeys, Parents And Horror

2011-12-07T17:38:00.000-08:00

And by wire I mean Twitter.

Here's Rog, postgame:

Kim Kane: Dear god @ZakSmithSabbath is a sick DM!

Mandy :We gotta remember to keep quiet so monkeys won't get us

Rog: These monkeys are the talk of the town

KK: Where is the ice medusa?!!

M: We'd find her faster if we weren't always interrupted by monkeys

Adam: Can't believe we had to fight my parents. That is like sooo embarrassing!
A: My suggestion for title of your next blog post on last night's game: "Parents just don't understand."

KK:We totally killed* your parents, it was soooo Midwest.

A: I woulda gone all Menendez on 'em--just as soon as I finished all that important running away and cowering I had to do.

Zak: (to players who had to leave early) They decided to crack open the glass ball and fight the jewelled monster. it didn't go well

Carloine Pierce: it was a terrible idea. Not like it was gonna get out lol. Oh well! Still fun :D

M: I'm bored of killing monkeys!! I think squamous monster is a challenge

C: True, but it's a challenge most of us are useless against lol :D

M: Almost everyone has some magic item of some sort

CP: The Ice Medusa probably isn't even home :/

K: I have magic & rage but only 9 hit points :(

M: I think we can do it!
M: I can help on the hp front, rage won't help much though
M: unless you rage with a magic weapon! i have lvl3 rage too now

_____
Note: Adam's parents were knocked unconscious and then the mysterious hourglasses hanging around their necks were crushed, at which point they disappeared. Had they been actually slain, the consequences might have been...different.

The Google, Cut, Paste, Sure-Why-Not? Method

2011-12-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

I have no idea what Warhammer Fantasy RP adventure the underlying relationship chart here was stolen from (I'm sure someone in the comments will), but it's mine now.This took an hour.

I didn't bother hunting down personalities for the dead people. I figure they're dead, y'know?

A Few More Quickies

2011-12-03T12:32:00.000-08:00

-Anyone ever try this?

-Force Someone To Do Work For You While Simultaneously Helping Orphans Or Seals Or Something I highly recommend Rolang as an idea factory. The man's got ideas. Take advantage before he regrets his largesse.

-If you are not on Google +, you should be. Even if you have no interest in Constantcon games there's just a fucklot of very fast-paced, high-quality gaming bullshitting going on. Recent topics have included Jeff Rients' "If You Like Frazetta You Should Also Check Out _____", Oddyssey on building relationships in campaigns, Huth on the GUMSHOE system and the great Passive Perception Check debate, "Giant Robots Ruin Sci Fi Settings vs. Headbands Ruin Sci Fi Settings", getting Tristan Tzara, Hemingway and Dorothy Parker into the same RPG, etc. Recommended. Add me on G+ (the b&W zak smithw/ the asymmetrical haircut), then email me and tell me you want into my RPG circle. zakzsmith at hawt mayle dawt calm . Include a link yo your G+ profile address in the message.

(If you have already added me on g+ but haven't seen my most recent post "ANYONE WHO WANTS TO RUN OR PLAY IN A G+ GAME OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS POST HERE." (3:07 pm today) that means you are not in my RPG circle so you will pretty much see nothing on the gaming front from me until you write me.)

EDIT: oh yeah. by the way:
From now until the 10th, you can get Vornheim for less than the price of a pack of gum.

View Now. Awesome.

2011-12-02T07:39:00.000-08:00

No time to explain, faster if you just click link.

Of Patience and the Lack Thereof

2011-11-30T10:25:00.000-08:00

-"Aaaaalright peeps, if you remember, your are in the ice maze, you are in a room in is forty wide it is thirty north south there is an exit to the north there is a door to the south, you came from the north, there is a statue, you got attacked earlier by an ice lamprey (eeew) there is a pool, in the pool is bluish water and some viking skeleton people, you were chased here by monkeys, what are we doing?"

I have a cup of coffee, because it is cold, and I have a cup of Dr Pepper because I am hopelessly dependent on it. I am alternating. I am also playing Schoenberg's Farben for its Ice Labyrinthy and rising mix of cinematic sublimity and teeth-putting-on-edge tinkiness.

My players are looking at each other. The veterans and the tenderfeet. Very quietly. What do we do?

Who is the leader?

Not the most intelligent, not the most experienced, not the one who remembers what's going on best, not even the most charismatic. Not the most anything.

The least patient.

-Local example:

If I (Lord Impatient Imperial Entirely) am DMing and not playing, then the impatience goes like this:

If Mandy has a plan, we're doing Mandy's plan.

If Mandy is absent or feeling too sick to have a plan, Connie does something impulsive from which the party is about to have to rescue her.*

If Connie is absent, Kimberly says "Well fine!" and then hits something. Or throws a switch. Or
solves the puzzle. She's is often a lot like "Ok, well if none of you people are going to step up then so I'm going to do something--as like punishment--and I'm sure it's the wrong thing to do and you'll all be sorry" and then she does it and it's the right thing. Is there a compound German word for that?

If none of them are around, it all becomes very strange. Unless like McCormick is around.

-If the patience equations aren't clear (and they become unclear around the mid-2os each month) you get exchanges like this:

"We go forward!"
"Forward is, regrettably, not a map direction"
"What? I gotta look at the map?...ok...." (shuffle grumble)
"It is indeed a terrible burden, I know"
(shuffle shuffle) "...ok, fine, we go East!"

-I have noticed when I play in G+ games I am real fucking impatient.

-I wonder what goes on in the mind of the patient player when nothing is going on: is it "Whatever, man, it's allllllll gooood" or "Fuck I'm bored but I'm too shy to say anything" or "Fuck I'm bored but I'm not confident enough to say anything and don't want to be the one responsible for killing us all" or "Man it's fun watching Mr Impatient over here tie himself in knots figuring which statue to kick..."

__________
*I recall saying Connie never died last week. I remember now I was wrong, she died in a pit trap I'm remembering now. I think it was a gnome.

It Came From White Dwarf!

2011-11-27T09:01:00.000-08:00

Random notes from lying in bed reading the World's Once Greatest Hobby Magazine...

-First, here's a half-finished dungeon using only pictures from White Dwarf 1-9 or pictures of (disturbing) minis that I tracked down from them being advertised in 1-9...
(Click to enlarge.)
(Note walktopus.)

-Magazines. Your blog--wait, statistically speaking, if you're reading this you don't have a blog. anyway, blogs--are magazines. Like this here you're reading is the opening editorial. Then over on the right there we have my departments. The only difference is: lots of things you can probably figure out without my help. Point is you can see all the brains that will be making the next generation of RPGs here in the magazine's bylines. Steve Jackson, Ian Livingstone, John Blanche...

-Quote I just got in the mail from A Certain Game Development Professional Who Reads D&DWPS:

Just read your follow-up to the pay thing. You are 100% right.

You could argue that the entire business history of D&D has been an ongoing, losing fight between a company trying to treat D&D like a publishing business and a fan base that wants to treat it like a hobby.

-Discuss?

-Speaking of White Dwarfs, has anyone seen the new Ricky Gervais show with Warwick Davis? Is it any good?

-Hot.

-Judging from the reviews and ads, the number of kinda wargame/kinda boardgames (like Divine Right) from this era is staggering. I wonder if the current resurgence of this kind of game (Small World, Carcassone, etc.) coincides with the re-interest in old school D&D? I mean, I wonder enough to post on the internet about it, not enough to actually, y'know, do the research.

-White Dwarf #13 contains an Houri character class all about creepy what-lonely-'70s-GM-dreamed-this-up sex magic. In a game it would just go to terrible and tedious places, but it's actually a decent character idea for a story. Or a tentacle porn. Brian Asbury you were working in the wrong medium.

You could also profitably pull a spell like Kiss of Disfigurement off the houri list on a scroll to add optional hilariousness to an intrigue-heavy setting.

-Holy fuck! How much of the '70s does this explain:
?

Time To D.I.Y.

2011-11-26T04:06:00.000-08:00

So what was that question all about?

It was about this...

Everybody who has vague dreams of making an RPG thing: it is time to publish your book.

No, not because it's National Game Design Month. (Though it is.)

Because I heard from the people you saw in the comments from yesterday and I heard, via email from a few more RPG professionals (including a couple heavies) and they all gave me basically the same numbers.

And here's the bottom line on those numbers...

Let's say, just hypothetically, my publisher--James Edward Raggi--decided to take all the money he still owes me plus all the projected future profits from the rest of the print run from my book, Vornheim, and go off to Tahiti to sit on the beach and spend his ill-gotten loot sipping mudslides and forcing homeless midgets to dance to Formulas Fatal To The Flesh for pennies and none of us ever heard from him again.

Even if he did that and I had only the money I already got for Vornheim, I would still have made more off of it than had I written a thing of equal length for any big publisher you care to mention. When the first printing sells out, Vornheim will have made as much money for me as a top-tier freelancer would've gotten for a gangbusters-selling book of equal length from WOTC or the Wolf at its height--and that's after splitting it with James.

You know how many copies Vornheim sold--in the scheme of things, compared to the regular not-RPG books I've been involved in? Compared to how WOTC books sell? Fuck all is how many. You know how many copies Geoffrey McKinney sold of the original--pictureless--Carcosa? Even less than fuck all. And he still is doing wayyyy better than if he'd freelanced on a wildly popular splatbook.

So the moral of the story is: find a little game company willing to split the profits with you--or just self-publish. Make some insane crayoned-together folk-art niche product that only a handful of people could possibly want--but do it your way and do it without editors and make something totally fucked up.

As of late November 2011 this community will, apparently, support you in your desire to make any dumb thing, so long as it is weird enough.

So let the squareglasses sit around and worry about growing the hobby and meeting the market halfway and having sex with their own grandmothers--you can do better for us and for you by making something really different that won't get made without your own special little snowflake brain than you can helping the machine pump out one more generation of hobbits.

In the long run, are "nobody-bought-one-but-everybody-who-did-started-a-band" albums better for the health of the overall business than spending hours filing rough edges off your thing so it can achieve Crossover Profitability at or equal to the calculated Gaga Maximum? No idea. But I know which one is more fun.

And if you do have dreams of one day working on something big for Games Workshop or the 'Bro: "did this, which is awesome" on your resume is at least as good as "one of the 900 people involved in that".

So, please: you can do whatever else it is you do for eleven other months out of the year, but take one (not necessarily continuous) month's worth off work you would've put into a freelance gig and write your nutjob project. You've probably done the R&D just running your home campaign. It will be more worth it than working for the bigs. The price of publishing is cheap enough, PDFs are popular enough, the audience is still spending money and--at least right now--you have our attention.

Do it.
Now.

RPG Professionals: Rude Question, Luckily This Is A Blog So You Don't Have To Answer

2011-11-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

So, full-time RPG professionals...

How much do you make? A month? Per project?

You don't have to answer, (obviously, since I don't even know which of you are reading) and if you want to email it zakzsmith at hawt mayle dawt calm then go ahead. Your anonymity will be preserved.

But I've been looking at old Dragons and White Dwarfs and wondering about the economics of how it all fits together.

Data provided may or may not contribute to forthcoming useful insights.

What's That? Sleigh Bells? No! It's Secret Santicore!

2011-11-24T04:01:00.000-08:00

Come sit on my lap--and watch out for the tail spikes, they do d6 each. HO HO HO..

Have you been nice? Just kidding, I'm sure you've been nice, no-one naughty reads Playing Dungeons and Dragons With Porn Stars.

So, what do you want for Christmas?

20 Rumors About Murderonymous Castle?

20 Reasons The Goblins Are Carrying So Much Gold?

20 Side Effects of Being Healed By A Cleric of The Wrong Alignment?

20 Hacks for H3--Hall of The Mountain Grill

20 Stupid Doppleganger Combat Tricks?

6 Geese A Laying?

5 Gollllllldennnnnnn Rinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngs?????

Sorry. Anyway...

Click this link to meet a little elf named Jez and tell him you want to participate in Secret Santicore and have your holiday wishes come true!
HO HO HO!!!!

Royal Fist Monkeys Are Trying To Kill You

2011-11-23T08:16:00.000-08:00

This is a Player Service Announcement.

Dear My Players:

Royal Fist Monkeys are trying to kill you.

They are small and white.

They have large stone-and-metal gloves on their right hands, encrusted with precious gems.

They are trying to kill you.

They hate you.

You broke into their ice house looking for fun and profit, they have decided you will never leave.

You have observed these things:

They are fearsome.

They are organized.

They are horrible.

They do not die fast.

They know how to use both fire and flaming oil.

They killed Roger's guy.

Their Royal Fists are capable of delivering one punch doing d8+8 damage. After the punch they bite for d4+4.

You know because you have seen this happen 24 times.

There are many other dangers and wonders in the Ice Labyrinth of Hakleth besides Royal Fist Monkeys.

But you will never see them if you fight Royal Fist Monkeys all day.

Tips:

-When you're in a big echoey room with a bottomless pit, and Kimberly Kane is like "Hey what's over there?" and I go "Are you yelling that across the room?" and Kimberly is like "Uh, yeah, sure" then be all "NO, NO KIMBERLY DON'T DO THAT! THE ROYAL FIST MONKEYS WILL HEAR US AND CHASE US AND THEN WE WILL BE FIGHTING ROYAL FIST MONKEYS FOREVER AND ALL DIE IN THIS HORRIBLE ICY MONKEY DUNGEON"

-Actually, that's the main tip. I can't think of any others right now.

________________

To Any Other Readers Of This Blog Who Play Google + Games Or Are Thinking About It:

If any of you have characters hanging out back at the FLAILSNAILS Cantina, you have heard the bartenders of Earth-Amalagmated-FLAILSNAILS have started a betting pool on the success of this expedition.

Here's how it works:

You chip in 100 gp.

You say who you think will survive, who will die, how successful you think it will be that week, you make any other crackpot prediction you see fit.

There are no penalties for extra incorrect predictions beyond the first, so go ahead and make as many as you like.

Whichever player is the most right gets all the gold (and associated xp). If there's a tie, you split it.

Here's the deal so far:

They are in this maze looking for an ice medusa name Moroschka--trying to capture her and bring her back alive.

The Royal Fist Monkeys make traps. They are alerted to the PCs presence. They have 6HD. The last time there was a fracas there was 17 of them.

Other hazards have included an ice lamprey and some kind of emerald ooze. One each. Neither was too much trouble so far.

The core contestants on any given day may include, but are not necessarily limited to...

Kimberly Kane as Miss Mold Pig--5th level Bloodthirsty ADD half-elf barbarian. Accompanied by her (relatively lucky) dog, Sueno #6.

Mandy Morbid as Tizane Ildiko--5th level Curious Fancy tiefling cleric of Vorn and 1st level Barbarian. Accompanied by her wolf, Ursula. She has recently been reduced to 12 wisdom and has begun hallucinating after looking at a rug.

Caroline Pierce as Smacky the Fighter--5th level Laid Back human fighter. A very experienced and careful RPGer.

Darren, who plays a 4th or 5th level Sneaky Laid Back dwarf and tends to show up an hour late, save everyone and then leave.

aaaaand...

Connie as Gypsillia--4th or 5th level Sneaky ADD Greedy half-elf thief. Like Kimberly, she is impulsive yet has never died.

There are several other players in the mix potentially, but since all of them either have erratic schedules right now or you can't really find out much about them on this blog by clicking the 'players' tag (or watching old Axe episodes) then I don't think it'd be fair to make you guess what'll happen to them. These four have been taking point lately in most of the recent games.

Metamorphosis Amber

2011-11-22T06:47:00.000-08:00

The vessel contained complete Terran environments...Life became a struggle merely to survive for those humans that were left. In this struggle, all knowledge of the ships mission or even, in fact, that the humans were on a ship, was lost. Ship's systems were maintained in a minimum operative state by the vessel's main computer and the robots that were operating at the time of the cloud's entrance into the starship. Later generations of humans lost all sense of identity with the ship regressing into a state of savagery.
--Metamorphosis Alpha

The Ambers live magically lengthened lives, but they have seen too much and are bored. They seek anything to relieve this boredom. On top of their other traits, the Ambers possess a bizarre sense of humor. It amuses them to watch adventurers battle obstacles which the Amber family members place in their way. The Ambers are equally amused whether the adventurers succeed or fail. A good spectacle is more important to them than defeating the adventurers.

--Castle Amber

_____________

So, basically, there was:

-a prophecy of a great flood that the inhabitants of this fortress have been waiting for for a verrrry long time, or
-an actual great flood which they don't know is over yet, or
-some primordial lich or sorcerer-patriarch decided the outside world was in a Miasmatic Phase that his family and the lands they protect would have to wait out, so as to be able to begin a literal Renaissance spawned from uncorrupted lifeforms once it was all over

Anyway, point is now there's this palace--colossally imposed on the landscape like a dead stone god, hermetically--in every sense of the word--sealed, containing all the flora and all the fauna and all the items of culture and technology, because it's an ark.

Needless to say: this didn't work at all. After a few thousand years, most species were outDarwined or eaten, others simply dried up from lack of sunlight or welcoming weather. Everything that thrived was a dangerous mutant, everything that could think went insane.

It is laughably easy to get in. The locals will tell jokes about the inbred idiots that haven't seen the sun in centuries, and then they will tell you that no-one ever comes out alive.

The hobbies of the Antediluvian inhabitants include, but are not limited to:

-Breeding sharks in tiled pools.
-Alchemically modifying their own digestive juices so as to be able to chew and metabolize rock.
-Throwing babies.
-Pretending to be dead for decades at a time.
-Playing elaborate combinatoric wargames in an attempt to model what they suspect is going on in the outside world.
-Asking intruders questions and not believing the answers and then becoming very upset.
-Hiding from blasphemous deformed freak descendants of their own pets.
-Devising new and unusual ethanol-based beverages.
-Trying to renovate the architecture so as to ensure a decent and continuous supply of ice.
-Casting Speak With Dead and/or passing out behind the glass case in the All Maps Yet Devised room and waking up thinking they'd just cast Speak With Dead.
-Looking for new and exotic lifeforms to evolve so they can sacrifice them to their cruel gods.
-Puppet shows!!!!
-Making elaborate and very focused traps to protect themselves from creatures that may or may not have become extinct millennia earlier.
-Trying to murder each other through proxies. (Their complex dogma suggests outsiders are irredeemably fallen and so if they can get them to bump off their despised relatives without directly suggesting it they'll remain pure until the flood or miasma ends.)
-Polishing things in the Flatware Of All Known Nations Room.
-Composing works of taxonomy.
-Placing mystic seals across doorways after unfortunate mishaps.
-Insipid brunches that last 60 years where no-one really wants to talk to anyone else but does anyway.
-Losing maps they made of this sector that they could swear they left just over here on top that thing.
-Praying the new genus of octomantis will taste better than the previous three.
-Researching ways to build portals to dimensions that aren't more dangerous than where they already live.
-Waiting for creatures to become smart enough to hire or enslave.
-Experimenting with time compression.
-Astronomy.
-Multi-classing.
-Furniture design.
-Trying to create jesters via eugenics and controlled exposure to confidence-eroding phenomena.
-Trying to remember who got polymorphed into what and why, when, and whether this gecko might be them.
-Dress rehearsals and dry runs for internecine intrigues.
-Fox-hunting. Though what you they call a "fox" and what you call a "fox" may not be exactly the same thing.
-Admiring the way the words "Invoked Devastation" just trip off the tongue.

Blue But Vicious Rose

2011-11-21T14:39:00.000-08:00

"In the high fantasy quests of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, or the larger than life swords and sorcery of Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and others, heroic loners or small groups of rebels, outcasts, or eccentrics perform great deeds and go on quests to obtain power and glory or to protect the world from some threat.

"In the mid-1980s, a generation of new fantasy authors - Diane Duane, Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, and many others - wrote fantasy novels different from any that had come before. The main characters in their novels occasionally start out as loners and outcasts, but find a place in society, generally as members of some prominent group or official organization that goes on exciting adventures to protect ordinary people from danger.

"Developing a sense of belonging and finding comrades are central features of these novels. Most of these novels are in series, and by the end of the first book, the main character has usually found a community where he or she belongs. Many of the character’s adventures involve either becoming a more fully integrated member of this group or protecting the group from harm...in all romantic fantasy worlds, nature is a positive magical force, and anyone who protects it is on the side of good."

--Blue Rose (Introduction)

"Slaai communicate in enigmas and koans through their crystal balls (with ESP and clairaudience as standard), and can easily overwhelm your tiny monkey brain with mind blasting telepathic insights into their ancient cosmic frog perspective (save vs. death, fail = dead, pass = terror for 1d6 turns)."

--Small But Vicious Dog (Menagerie)

_____

So if you don't know, Blue Rose is a d20-derived hippie version of F.A.T.A.L.--that is, another example of the distasteful and disastrous things that happen when the "fantasy" in "Fantasy RPG" is interpreted as meaning "wish-fulfillment" rather than "invention".

(It is also just all-around baffling. Here's a suggested adventure seed--the whole thing, verbatim: "51. A daring thief steals from the wealthiest people in the city". Um...Good? How is that an adventure seed?)

Small But Vicious Dog is a hack designed to make Basic/Expert D&D emulate Warhammer Fantasy Role Play which is nowhere near as boring as it sounds. Which, well, how could it be? Hacking a third-generation D&D-derivative to match the slightly different rules of a second-generation version of D&D may not sound like a terribly ambitious way to spend a weekend but Chris Hogan rips into his task with terrifying verve.

SBVD is a rules hack, sure, but more than that it's a creepily well-written running essay on all the differences between D&D and its transatlantic counterpart (in micro) and the grimdarkbrutalLOLweird take on fantasy vs. TSR's more catholic let's-just-make-this-game-about-anything-less-boring-than-the-midwest take on the middle ages RP.

_________

Anyway the point is--obviouslyDuh--Blue Rose and Small But Vicious Dog need to be one setting.

For sure.

The DIY D&D Google Plus Brain Trust has been consulted:
(names obliterated to protect the abominationists involved)

"Thought for the day: Blue But Vicious Rose."

"Romantic fantasy with chaos attributes or Mercedes Lackey for cuckolding fetishists: You Can Have Both."

"We accept all philosophies in The Magical Kingdom of Chaoldea (*..sparkle sparkle..*)"

"Elsewhere, my zebra skin and long nose were shunned but now I finally fit in (weeping, hugs pegasus with oozing wounds)"

"Now I'm picturing the magic deer walking upright on scaly ostrich legs, dispensing wisdom from a tiny, parasitic faun that lives in its chest like the little guy in Total Recall."

__________

Tell me that would not be awesome: not just your typical "something's not quite right in Stepford Camelot" set-up, but one where just every citizen is oblivious to the fact that all the symbols are always pointing in the wrong direction.

There's like an eight-gulleted Negaboar vomiting on children in the streets and ripping their ears off and wearing them like legwarmers and everyones' just like "He's just expressing himself!" The kingdom's main export is tediously optimistic NPCs found in random oubliettes. "Oh I'm so glad you found me! I've always believed the human spirit was powerful enough to triumph over any adversity!"

Do the Chaoldeans have secret plans to spread their utter lack of prejudice and imagination across the entire continent or is it just a very disturbing place to go buy a unicorn-hoof talisman? Hey, you're the DM, it's up to you.

Gotoallthedungeonsandplayallthegamesforever

2011-11-20T13:31:00.000-08:00

So Jeff was like ok Zak you have your thief and your talking dog that can talk because he sat in the chair that maybe raises your ability scores or maybe makes you goo and it raised his intelligence and which is named Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter because of how he was named after a guy on the internet who..(ok well that's a long story, anyway)...ok point is anyway you are going down into the Caves of Myrddin with a few newbies who have never been.

So we did and didn't really find anything because we mostly spent time looking for vampires but found dead minotaurs instead but then so one of us decided to take a dead giant playtpus beak and use it as a fulcrum to steal the talking-dog chair and slide it away on dead snakeman bodies which didn't work and we got like no experience points that day.

However the upshot was when we went back to where the one guy left his donkey it had been all sucked by vampires. Aha!

A clue!

So I'm like:

Before returning to the Caves, Blixa would like to consult a sage:

Oh sage, how long must one give a donkey nothing to drink but holy water
before the donkey's blood is saturated with it?

And Jeff is all:

Sages are hard to come by without considerable travel and expense. However, you can consult the Abbot of the monastery, who will talk to the elder brothers about the issue. They suggest that for best results start the process after taking the donkey to mass on a Friday, then have him drink a vial every day at breakfast for three days, then on that Sunday have the donkey attend mass. He should be good to go for the rest of the weak, providing he doesn't commit any serious sins.

You should donate at least 100gp for the advice, one of the brothers explains to you rather shamelessly. Getting a donkey in to mass will require at least another 50gp in donation/bribery.

So I shelled out and the ass saw the angel and all that and then it's like the next day in real life and I am working and I see this thing pop on the Google + :

Need 2 FLAILSNAILS players with PC ready to go for Caves of Myrddin pick-up game right now!

Because Jeff was supposed to be going to this Nightwick Abbey dungeon but that didn't work out so then he started this game at whatever I'm tired in the morning and I was like ok Abe so then I get there and look at this 2 more newbies.

And I say: Gentlemen. I have a plan. Sit with me and watch a donkey and wait for vampires, first level guys.

And they were like yeah. Because of there's a reward.

So then we did it and then there's not just two vampires that I expected but four whole other different vampires including a Gilligan one and a Tattoo from Fantasy Island one (who bit the donkey) and I was like man a lot of vampires and then rolled a four so missed and Jeremy rolled something low but then our level one wizard caught three vampires in his holy-water-soaked net and then he threw a bucket of holy water on them and then I disintegrated one (long story) and so there was just a Gilligan hat and treasure map left but two of them escaped because they were fog.

Then we followed the map and got a magic sword.

Then we went to town and were like Drinks on us! And rolled on that and got in a fight and lost three hit points but man you should've seen the other guys because one was married and one was inveigled in love and one was a pig.

Then the guy who was all supposed to be running a dungeon got his internet working and so we went but then Boner the vampire-killing-helping thief was a pig but I was like come on with us anyway pig since you have a map and we fought zombies.

Also it was hard because it was made of geomorphs so the rooms were all where are we.

But anyway the moral of the story is that even in Lamentations of the James Raggi Wants Your Character Dead Fantasy Role Dying if you're fighting zombie on stairs then a talking dog and a smart pig are actually more useful than they might first appear because guess what are zombies coordinated? No they are not and they trip a lot.

So then after all that I had to go because I had to GM and my players were like hey and I was really tired because I had been up all night in dungeons-of-opportunity and then the girls were going into The Ice Labyrinth!!!!!

So first they chased down a white leopard man who was following them from last adventure and they were like he's our hogtied trap tester now and sure enough there's a trap and they shove him in and yep there's a pit with mastodon bones and a Royal Fist Monkey trap.

So then they fight the white monkeys that climb and hit with jeweled monkey fists. Then they went more into the dungeon and were like oh there's an alarm idiot tied up and the idiot starting howling and calling the monkeys so Mandy shot him and then all the monkeys were clambering forward.

So trouble happens and I roll d20 monkeys are coming...17. 6 HD each. With Royal Punching Fists.

Adam showed up at some point and he only had a Type IV character so I was like "whatever, we'll do a quicky conversion" but his crazy animunchkin sleep spell still only caught 3 then Kimberly Kane hucked a lantern at them.

Now I know some of y'all have some modernist notions about lanterns not making particularly effective firebombs but I figure: ten foot corridor, 17 monkeys, 3 asleep. That is a lot of fur in one place is what I figure. So now many of the monkeys are alight.

Mandy summons some monsters. Frogs. Then summons again and gets...roll...fucking fire elemental. So there is a lot of monkeys on angry fire hopping fighting frogs and 11 are on fire but our heroes remain surrounded with only a cul-de-sac and I had to sleep which reminds me I should calculate their xp.

But so anyway I wake up the next day in Glorantha because Runequest and I was like Barry Can I Just Use My Stormbringer Guy and he was like No You Are A Primitive Tribesman! And I was like fuck I better learn this magic system because jesus look at this strength and dex.

So then the other two primitive tribesmen were pretty much catching deers a lot and rabbits and getting bronze stuff from dwarves while I was just like Man, please spirits of the mountain guide my arrows which I didn't even shoot all day. And my guy's Size was 6--did I mention my guy's size was 6? SIZ 6 means you're a Runequest midget.

Anyway so then we went around and met lizard guys on birds and they were just like Hi and then we told people and then we got captured by the Bald Boar tribe and they sold us to someone else who tried to read our mind and then this chick tried to poison Arcadayn and I was in the stables with the horses and I was like WHAT DO YOU EVEN DO IN RUNEQUEST BECAUSE THIS PLACE IS CRAZY AND I'M PRIMITIVE and then we tried to escape and I bit a guy on the leg while Arcadayn rolled a 100 (which is bad) for like the fourth time and fell off a wall and they just decided we were crazy and sent us to some other lady who gave us porridge. I hope I get my stuff back.

So yeah.

Oh, and Bone Hill tomorrow.

Constantcon is fun.

Since Nobody Asked Me...Here's My Type V

2011-11-18T05:39:00.000-08:00

Before I give you these totally useless design specs, here's something actually helpful: autogenerator for NPCs with stats done as 3d6 in order.

Now, on with the main event...

How I'd do Type V D&D if I was WOTC. It combines, flexibility, customizability and simplicity in one completely untested, probably fatally flawed package.

Design principles:

1. I tried to alter the systems involved as little as possible across all editions while keeping the other principles in mind.

2. Just having every class slowly getter better at to-hit and saves--regardless of class--over time doesn't really make them better since the monsters also have to get better to keep up. This leads to a situation where a big slow, dumb monster like a giant has to have a +6 or whatever reflex save just to keep up with its alleged difficulty level, which makes building new monsters a little harder than it should be and adds unnecessary book-keeping and number-crunching all around. Plus it means like a little 0-level old lady couldn't throw a bucket of water at a giant and probably splash it, which is bullshit. So nobody gets better at anything unless it's part of their class. Thieves (for example) who want to get better at punching people can just take a level in fighter. (James Raggi's LOTFP:WFRP made me realize this.)

3. On the other hand, it is nice to have all PCs genuinely way more confident at fighting at high levels than low levels so the game changes scale over time, and so you can have a basic "one day you'll be badass enough to kill Demogorgon" idea in everybody's head. So everybody does get more hit points as they level up no matter what.

4. PC options should be available for customization, but you shouldn't be at a disadvantage if you're the kind of player who doesn't want to sit around and fiddle with them all day. In other words: they should make your PC more customized, not more powerful. It also means WOTC can still sell splatbooks if they really have to.

5. Likewise, if you're inventing a monster off the top of your head, there should be a straightforward way to make it equivalent to a fighter of a given level without sifting through an OED of powers or feats. If a bear is a ninth level monster (i.e. equal to a ninth level fighter) you can assume it has 9 hit dice +con modifiers and +9 to hit +9 to damage +strength modifiers and needs no feats or powers to make it a competitive monster.

6. This is just a sketch. Considering the way +1 to hit is, in the long run, better than +1 to damage, there's probably some unevenness here if you have players who are hardcore optimizers but the problem can probably be fiddled away by moving some numbers around or putting maximums on things so I haven't bothered.

7. Making new classes, monsters and even powers under this system should be as easy as, if not easier than, pie.

______

System: everything's pretty much resolved on the D20 system. D20 + modifier to get a target DC.

Bonuses are as d20. i.e. 12-13 =+1, 14-15=+2 etc.

Classes gain hp as d20.

No matter what class you are...

Strength modifier applies to:
melee to hit
melee/thrown damage

Dex modifies:
ac
reflex save
finesse/missile to hit
finesse weapon damage

Con modifies:
fort save
hp per level

Wis modifies:
will save
averaging wisdom and int bonus gives you your Notice (passive) and Search (active) check

Int modifies:
know stuff (lore, basic knowledge, etc.)
averaging wisdom and int bonus gives you your Notice (passive) and Search (active) check

Cha modifies:
persuade
dupe save (this is a new save, kinda like "sense motive" which is whether you have enough
social intelligence to tell whether someone's full of shit)

_________________
You can use your xp to take a level in anything.

Levelling up is on a "pick your prize" basis, with each "prize" usually only takeable once per level unless otherwise noted. Bonuses are cumulative.

Ranger
Pick two to start, two per level:

+1 melee to hit
+1 melee/thrown damage
+1 missile to hit (may be chosen twice in one level)
+1 missile/finesse damage (may be chosen twice in one level)
+1 to know stuff about foe (ac, hp, damage/attack, etc.)
+1 to combat non-direct damage maneuvers (trip, disarm, etc,)
-you spent some time outside this level: add +1 to both climb, jump, other athletics and acrobatics, etc. and to woodland lore/outdoor survival and to find/notice checks outside
-At seventh level they can start choosing off the fighter list

Cleric
Pick two to start and two per level:

-new spells of current available spell level according to whatever progression
-an extra healing spell
-an extra spell related to their particular god's domain
+1 melee to hit
+1 melee/thrown damage
+1 persuade, +2 to those of the same faith

Thief/Rogue
Pick 3 of these to start plus 3 per level thereafter (thief abilities are pretty situation-dependent):

+1 backstab--points count toward damage and 'to hit'. The initial bonus for a backstab is the same as for a finesse attack.
+1 to climb, jump, and all other athletics and acrobatics, etc.
+1 lockpicking and other delicate tasks (disarming traps, etc.)
+1 find/notice (passive and active)
+1 stealth
+1 persuade
+1 dupe save
+1 reflex save
+1 to combat non-direct damage maneuvers (trip, disarm, etc,)

Wizard
Pick 3 (or whatever, really, depending on how powerful spells are in the new system) spells to start, plus pick two of the following per level thereafter:

A number of new spells (according to whatever spell-progression table)
+1 find/notice
+1 know stuff
+1 new spell of spell level 1 above currently castable level that only works on a successful int check. If this is a high level spell and the check fails, there'll probably be an entertaining disaster.

Fighters
Pick two of the following to start plus two more per level thereafter:

+1 missile to hit
+1 melee to hit (may be chosen twice at same level)
+1 melee/thrown damage
+1 to know stuff about foe (ac, hp, damage/attack, etc.)
-pick from a list of "If/Then powers" that are situational but, when they occur, very effective, like "Wrestle: + 4 to immobilize a same size opponent that is already knocked over or quadrupedal"
-at tenth level, can start choosing off the Warlord list below

This is where you start in with your splatbook stuff. (However, a DM just trying to build a high level fighter can ignore it and put all the level up points into to hit or damage or whatever)

Paladin
Pick two to start, two per level:

+1 melee to hit
+1 melee/thrown damage
+1 know stuff about foe (ac, hp, damage/attack, etc.)
+1 heal points of damage equal to the number banked here. once/day.
+1 holy smite: this number plus charisma modifier
+1 to deal with horses and hit and damage in mounted combat
-at seventh level they start being able to choose off the fighter list or the cleric list

Barbarian
Pick two to start and two per level:

+1 melee to hit
+1 melee/thrown damage (may be chosen twice at single level)
+2 more hit points
+1 to know stuff about foe (ac, hp, damage/attack, etc.)
+1 to hit and damage for your once a day rage freak out.
-you spent some time outside this level: add +1 to both climb, jump, other athletics and acrobatics, etc. and to woodland lore/outdoor survival
-at seventh level they can start choosing off the fighter list

Assassin
Pick three to start and two per level:

+1 backstab--points count toward damage and 'to hit'. (starts as a finesse attack)
+1 climb, jump, other athletics and acrobatics, etc.
+1 delicate tasks and stealth
+1 dupe save
+1 missile/finesse to hit
+1 missile/finesse damage
+1 know stuff about foe (ac, hp, damage/attack, etc.)
+1 handle poison

Druid
Pick two to start, two per level:

-new spells of current available spell level (may be chosen twice)
-you spent some time outside this level: add +1 to both climb, jump, other athletics and acrobatics, etc. and to woodland lore/outdoor survival and to find/notice checks outside
+1 charisma roll to persuade animals to do things
-annoying animal companion (maximum 1). If your old one dies you can use this option to get a new one.

Warlord
Pick two to start, two per level:

+1 melee to hit
+1 melee/thrown damage
+1 know stuff about foe (ac, hp, damage/attack, etc.) (may be chosen twice per level)
+1 to combat non-direct damage maneuvers (trip, disarm, etc,)
+1 to persuade
-pick from a list of "If/Then powers" that are situational but, when they occur, very effective, like "Wrestle: + 4 to immobilize a same size opponent that is already knocked over or quadrupedal"

Warlock
Really?

Bard
Bards suck.

__________

Multi-classing: you can take a level in whatever as long as it isn't in the subgroup you're already in, these subgroups are:

Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian, Warlord
Wizard, Warlock
Thief/Rogue, Assassin
Cleric/Druid

__________

Possible other hacks:

Instead of invisibility, improved invisibility, mass invisibility the spells will be named inivisibility-mass, invisibility--improved (etc.) so that when they're in the book and you look up one and it says "this spell functions just like some other spell (qv)" you don't have to turn the damn page.

Monsters have static xp values. Why not murder thousands of random henchmen at high levels just to level up? Because you're not that boring. Or, if you are and there's really no one else to play with, DMs can institute no-xp-for-challenges-more-than-x-levels-beneath-you rules.

XP can follow three patterns, the PCs choose which:

Old School: XP is given for monsters and treasure. Treasure usually nets about 4 times as much xp as monsters required to get to said treasure.

Newie: XP is given for monsters plus each PC picks what kind of thing they want to get xp for based on their PCs' individual motives. Like: "My wizard wants knowledge,""My paladin wants to help the weak" etc. The GM can award these as s/he sees fit but the total can still be divided equally if the PCs roll that way--so if everybody helps one PC achieve a goal, they all benefit

Tactical: XP for monsters at x5 normal.

Note:

I put some more thought into this once 5e was announced--these became "classic""heroic" and "tournament" more detail on how I'd do it here and here.

Battle Oracle Mechanic + Easy NPC Wizard Spells

2011-11-17T19:13:00.000-08:00

Battle Oracle Mechanic

PC wants to know how s/he'll do in the upcoming fight. Consults wizened and raisin-like oracle. Wizened oracle says something cryptic while fondling armor and PC's primary weapon. Then the PC openly rolls ten D20s and whatever die s/he uses for damage with his/her primary weapon of choice. DM does the same. The results are noted, in order.

The DM looks at these rolls, treated as the actual rolls that will come up, and says some goofy thing summing it all up like "The tide of battle will rush toward you, but break upon you like waves upon the shell of Inevitable Tortioise--but your sword's first strike will be a mere glancing blow..."

In the next battle, the PC's strikes--and those of his/her foe--will be treated as if s/he had just rolled exactly those numbers. In the order already written down for each side.

Naturally:

-the PC is told this

-this "number-matching" doesn't apply to the PC's allies

-nothing prevents the PC or his/her foe from using tactics that do not require an ordinary "to hit" roll or which cause a different kind of damage than the "primary weapon" die rolled

-the more the PC studies his/her foe, the more useful this oracle is

-DMs sensitive to non-immersive mechanics won't like this spell

-the PC doesn't necessarily already know his/her target number (the target's AC) in the fight

-the nice utility-but-vagueness of this oracle is based on that ignorance-of-the-target-number, so using the same mechanic for tasks that require no input from the other side is less interesting. If you want to adapt it for persuading, climbing, or other noncombat tasks make sure the tasks use a GM-designed target-number system rather than a roll-under or otherwise static-target system.

Which Spells Does The Randomly Encountered Evil Wizard Have Left Today?

The wizard has one spell left for each letter in his slash her evil name, conveniently enough.

Consult the table below for Ye Olde Specifics. Same letter twice? They have it memorized twice. If the spell is over-level for the wizard, just make it a wimpy version with a save or something Hey--you're the god-damned DM, right?

A -Animate object
B -Blink
C -Command
D -Disintegrate
E -Evard's Black Tentacles
F -Fireball
G-Globe of Invulnerability
H-Hold Person
I-Illusion
J-Joke causing Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter
K-Kiss of Dismemberment
L - Lightning Bolt
M-Monster Summoning
N-New And Disturbing Limb
O-Otto's Irresistible Dance
P-Polymorph
Q-Quest
R-Reduce
S -Sleep
T-Transmute Rock to Mud
U-Undo Last Round
V-Volley
W-Web
X-X-Ray Vision (good for seeing your magic items)
Y-Yoink! (one object transferred from target to caster)
Z-Zone of Silence

Thus "Vorgon the Cruel" has...Volley, Otto's Irresistible Dance (twice), Reduce. Globe of Invulnerability, and New and Disturbing Limb.

If I wanted to be a real bastard I could also give him Transmute Rock To Mud, Hold Person, Evard's Black Tentacles (twice), Command, Reduce, Undo Last Round, and Lightning Bolt.

Quick Dungeon NPCs

2011-11-16T20:06:00.000-08:00

What's The NPC Want?

1. To get out of this fucking dungeon.

2. Revenge on a major monster in the dungeon. Random location. Roll a d12--whichever is furthest away near that o'clock

3. A fantastic treasure hoard they believe to be located...If your rooms aren't numbered so as to be rollable on a dsomething, roll a d100 and a d100 --it's somewhere around that location, treating the map as a cartesian grid.

4. The PC with the highest Cha.

5. A magic item they believe to be in the dungeon. This can either be one you already put in there or--if there aren't any--a regular item that you have in the dungeon that this loser thinks is magical.

6, To desecrate one of the altars in the dungeon.

7. To stir up dissent within one of the occupying factions (the goblins, the cultists, whatever) in the dungeon

8. To locate the rest of his her party.

9. To invent preposterous but plausible objectives to keep the PCs busy while s/he bumps them off one by one.

10. To slay and replace one of the heads of one of the factions in the dungeon.

Why Should The PCs Care?

1. NPC's an (average PC level + d4) wizard and if they don't help s/he'll kill them all.

2. NPC secretly or overtly controls a powerful faction in the dungeon.

3. NPC demonstrates extensive knowledge of much that is hidden--and will reveal more in exchange for aid.

4. NPC has a posse, a bad temper, and a map of the dungeon.

5. NPC is really hot.

6. NPC is on good terms with powerful creature in the dungeon and can get the PCs past it.

7. NPC has oracular powers or is a cleric with a few cure moderate woundses up his/her embroidered sleeves.

8. NPC is Sacred Fool of cleric's religion and cannot be harmed. Actual aiding is optional, but is recommended for ambitious holymen.

9. NPC is in a position to offer the PCs a sizable monetary reward once they are safely out of the dungeon.

10. NPC is like part faerie or leprechaun or something else enchanting and annoying so if the PCs don't help things may get a bit "whimsical".

Rhetoric 101 v. Nerdrage

2011-11-15T22:17:00.000-08:00

Trying to play music off John's laptop...

Me: What the fuck is up with all this Le Tigre? You're not secretly some American Apparel hipster who never heard of X-Ray Specs are you?

John: Do you like to dance?

Me: No I do not.

J: I like to dance--I like Le Tigre. If you don't like to dance, there's no reason to listen to Le Tigre.

(I briefly imagine John dancing before an appreciative crowd of deluded-but-perhaps-attractive American Apparel hipster girls who honestly have not heard of Poly Styrene and X-Ray Specs. Or are afraid of Poly Styrene and X-Ray specs.)

Me: Gotcha.

________________

What we just did there is we had a conversation about taste that ended.

It did not end in mystification, mutual suspicion, anger, or simply out of exhaustion. It ended with each party knowing just a little bit more than they did before.

We're really good at this--at having conversations that end--possibly because of the excruciating amount of time we spent in art school.

________________

People who have never been to art school often have the quaint idea that you learn how to make paintings or photos or sculptures or (even, maybe) video installations there (while drunk and deciding whether to get a nipple ring).

Not at all: what happens is you try to figure out how to paint, sculpt, draw or dress like a chicken or whatever all alone in a little room with no help at all and then drag the results across the street for a never-ending 4-6 year master class in how to have a conversation about the drawing, painting, sculpture or chicken costume that actually ends (while drunk and deciding whether to get a nipple ring).

Now: this is a narrow and mostly useless skillset--but it is the only one we all have. So we are proud of it.

You may not be able to draw, weld, stitch, take a picture, or hold down a job, but if you went to art school and can't have a conversation with an ending, you didn't do it right.

(Which, admittedly, many graduates did not since they were drunk and busy thinking about nipple piercings. But I digress...)

________________

Theory:

The eternalness (and non-enlightenment-producing-ness) of eternal nerd-culture debates along the lines of Mac vs. PC, 4e vs. (whatever isn't 4e), alleged realism vs. alleged playability, Old School art vs. whatever the other thing is, Star Trek vs. Star Wars, Kirk vs. Picard, Hot chick art vs. Not Hot chick art, are largely a result of the kinds of people who have them lacking one specific and vital piece of information about how conversations that don't begin with "Hello, this is Tech Support, can you please give me your computer's serial number?" actually work.

_______________

Example:

"I would still be playing (some kind of game) if (some other kind of game) was not better. I am sure to keep the cry babies at bay I must put here the obligatory "better for me"."

--some actual guy on some actual forum

_______________

The basic problem isn't the "crybabies" thing. Even The Internet already knows that isn't helping anybody get smarter.

The real problem here...

(And this is a common problem. This isn't just something trolls and 12 -year -olds do, it's something grown-ups do and then act all surprised when the predictable happens. It's as naive as going "What? This email isn't from an actual Nigerian prince?".

Common forms include when people seriously say:

"Gee, it's just my opinion! I'm allowed to have an opinion aren't I?"

--This one's from people trying to be all conciliatory--"Well I just add 'to me' onto the end of everything I see on the internet, saves a lot of trouble"

"I do it this way and if you don't you're a moron"

"I like this and if you don't you're having less fun than you could"

"I hate this and if you don't you're just a sheep"

"I used to like that thing, then I grew up", etc.)

...is that whoever wrote that--and all these other things--doesn't understand that it's not just that "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts", they also don't understand that this:

I would still be playing (some kind of game) if (some other kind of game) was not better, and

I would still be playing (some kind of game) if (some other kind of game) was not better, for me

...are parts of two different, unconnected conversations. As different as: "It's raining here in Charleston" and "Please fetch me the blowtorch, Melissa".

_______________

"...to me" is not about courtesy. At all. Or even about nit-picky logic or grammar or what-all.

Assuming--and this is an assumption whose naivete and generosity I am aware of--you're typing for some other reason than to see words appear on the glowwy screen after you hit the wordycubes, these two statements have totally different purposes.
_______________

When talking only to people who already agree with you:

A statement-as-fact and a statement-as-opinion come across as virtually identical, but the only point in saying them is to go ahead and say and do other things based on the idea that that's true.

Like saying...

Bards rule!

or

I like bards

...is pretty much the same if you already agree with the bard lover. But the only point in saying it would be to move on to some other thing, like: let's make a bard class for Encounter Critical!

It gets more interesting when people don't agree with you.

From the point of view of someone who does not already agree with you:

Announcing you believe a fact to be true is a way of starting a conversation about that thing.

Announcing your personal taste is a way of ending a conversation about that thing.

To people who don't agree with you:

When I go "I hate bards" (statement of personal preference) I am saying "If you like bards, keep them away from me, there's no point in trying to argue me out of it--it's fucking taste"

When I go "Bards suck" (statement of alleged objective fact) or even "I hate bards because...(and then give reasons based on alleged objective facts)" I am saying, in effect, "Tell me all the reasons you don't think bards suck."

Even if the post is kind of a joke to begin with.

_____________

If I go"Bards suck" and you say anything at all about why you like them. And I then go "Jesus, you guys, don't get your panties in a wad, it's just my opinion, they're like assholes, everyone should have one" that'd be like me turning on the tap and talking smack on the water when it comes out.

I mostly wrote this so I could link back to it whenever it comes up. Maybe it will help us get smarter faster.

One of those lazy link days

2011-11-13T20:39:00.000-08:00

If you are on blogspot and happen to check your trackbacks right when the clock ticks over to the next day you'll catch the first few searches people used to find your site that morning:...mister or misses #5 there somehow just almost broke my heart nestled in among the bad spelling and venality.

Anyway, if you're out there, get in touch, DIY D&D will find you some players somehow. Your pathos is too poignant to ignore.

Guy #1 you disturb me.

And guy #4?--I wonder. I really do.

_________________
Some links I have been enjoying having the little Stephen Hawking who lives in my Mac* read to me while I work:

Geoffrey Mckinney's got ahold of John (Excalibur) Boorman's acid-rock-damaged screenplay treatment of Lord of the Rings and is pulling out the highlights...

Gandalf takes each member of the Fellowship, puts him in the liquid water, and rotates his fingers over his eyeballs. All the while Aragorn keeps the Wargs at bay. Then Gandalf pours fistfulls of salts and powders on the fire, which makes the fire blaze forth and makes the wargs retreat. This allows Aragorn and finally Gandalf to take swigs and get their eyeballs rotated.

The Fellowship is helplessly giggling as they fall unconscious. The water flows over their faces, then freezes. The wargs can't get at them through the ice, so they give it up as a bad job. The next day chunks of ice (containing the Fellowship) break-off and fall into a swift stream. The ice gradually melts, freeing the Company.

...fun stuff. Depending on the way you look at it, Boorman either pulled Tolkien forward to fit '70s pulp sensibility, or (Mandy's take) pushed Tolkien back in time to match the sensuality and alien nastiness of the mythplasm from whence it sprang. Anyway, not boring.

This "Let's read every issue of Dragon all the way through" thread is kind of hypnotic if you read enough in a row. I think it's best if you play it simultaneously with Neurosis: Live in Lyon.

More apocrypha: Waaaaay early George Lucas Star Wars scripts and treatments. Before R2-D2 and C-3p0 were robots, when there was no Han, Chewie, or Ben Kenobi and back when the script was a more straightforward rip on Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. Courtesy of this guy.

______
*Highlight, Edit: Copy, Open: Preview, Edit: Paste, Edit: Speech > Start Speaking

100 Random Weird Historical Events

2011-11-13T03:37:00.000-08:00

The Marquis De Carabas, one of the winners of the Hack Vornheim contest asked for a d100 table: The topic I would like to see is: weird historical events. A table where I could roll a number of times on to construct the history of a kingdom, empire or city.

Well "to him that soweth righteousness shall be a sure reward" and who am I to argue with Proverbs 11:18?

Weird Historical Events

(I have included some less weird options in case you're rolling multiple times and want some sanity in your kingdom)

1. Linguistic chaos due to incursion of foreigners or Babel Plague
2. Influx of immigrants from (roll or pick) nearby land, distant land, beneath the surface of the planet, another planet, an alternate plane
3. Servitor or pet species (cats, donkeys, etc.) suddenly develops sentience or--less weird--a sudden and successful slave revolt or civil war resulting in emancipation
4. Nation becomes known far and wide for gastronomic delicacy dependent on ingredients ungrowable in other latitudes and longitudes
5. Children revolt, establish neocracy
6. Partial incursion of new religion (roll or pick) monotheistic, polytheistic, maltheistic/misotheistic, satanic/evil, baffling & seemingly arbitrary, hilariously primitive
7. Gears + steam = technological revolution. 50% chance of resulting disaster and reversion to local tech norms
8. Permanent flood turns buildings into islands
9. Ruler revealed to be demon. As a result all laws established during his reign (most fairly innocuous) are reversed by subsequent generations.
10. Entire population slaughtered.. (roll or pick) ...with no exceptions, ...except men, ...except women, ...except children, ...except members of an obscure profession (cobblers, etc.), ...except members of a common D&D class (roll or pick)... attackers uninterested in territory (or it was done by a disease) and leave them to build a new civilization.
11. Cities built in corpses of massive creatures
12. Complete change in religion--otherwise as (6) above
13. Roll on Jeff's table here--only results apply to entire area
14. War results in Great Wall of China-esque fortification. (Or is it a Great Trench?)
15. Anti-architectural phase. Citizens wear all-weather gear.
16. Size...(roll or pick) small, medium, large...monster species successfully domesticated and bred into various shapes and sizes, like dogs
17. Philosopher-kings
18. Land is cursed by witch-queen. Citizens born there may never leave (simple version) ...and that's that (complicated version)...women travel to the frontier to give birth so the baby comes out just on the other side of the border and is free to do as s/he likes. This only works about 1/4 of the time.
19. Obscure dietary restriction requires eating something fucked up once per day. (eyeballs, a pebble, manticore blood, etc.)
20. Belief in "supported consensus reality" becomes widespread. Nonbelievers in local religion held responsible for anything strange happening--that is: their unbelief creates distortion in reality-curves.
21. Carving and papermaking are tabooed/unknown. All important records & communiques from this era are tattooed on people or animals
22. Religious schism occurs when local god of important thing sells domain (seas, skies, justice, whatever) to rival god and moves on to other portfolio. Split between those who worship the deity by name and those (known as pathfinders) who worship what the god stands for.
23. Vindictive wizard: Populations' minds transferred into bodies of local livestock and vice versa. All animals are equal but the pigs are a little more equal than the others.
24. Nation oppressed by hyperintelligent rivals, universally adopt philosophy of unreason.
25. Obnoxious series of I,Claudius-esque assassinations and machinations results in constant confusion as to identity and policies of current monarch
26. Population wanders 40 years in desert
27. Dessert chefs rule population for 40 years
28. Nation enslaves neighboring nation. Suffers plagues from slave-nations god(s) as retribution. These are: frogs, lice, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, rivers turned to blood, slaying of the firstborn. These plagues continue for hundreds of years. Population becomes sad.
29. Genetic defect results in population having no right hands. Rely a lot on foreign labor.
30. Soil fantastically naturally productive for 200 yrs. All become massively fat. Almost immobile. Wheeled about in chairs or carried in palanquins by idiots.
31. A period of regrettable fascination with an obscure tome containing wisdom from beyond the stars.
32. Wars. Nearby land absorbed then lost again. Frequent border conflicts and nationalistic chaos.
33. Nation descended from- and has inferiority complex concerning- nearby other nation. Looks to them for learning, culture, etc.
34. Prophecy: there will come a Destroyer. An Axe Shall He Wield. A Throne Shall Be His.
35. Aristocratic caste so inbred it looks all freaky. In fact, it's gotten to the point where being deformed is seen as a sign of royal lineage. The weirdest-looking baby around is instantly coronated.
36. Queen obsessed with being fairest of them all incites pogroms resulting in extremely ugly population
37. Moistened bint lobs scimitar at young squire. Golden age ensues. You know the rest.
38. Population alarmed to discover 80% of sculptures in Hall of Statues are actually gorgolith. Begin wondering what the fuck is going on here. Though it does rather explain why recent sculptors seem somewhat crap.
39. Teratocracy (roll or pick) vampire, lich, alien, golem, dragon, doppleganger, naga, other
40. Curse, plague, or magical warfare results in landscape wholly unlike that of neighboring nations
41. Period of unrelenting brutality lasting 2d100 yrs. All is ash, ruin, and rot.
42. Period of rule by winner of "Cute Puppy" contest. Charm/Will save to avoid petting local pups
44. Land built on largely unassimilated ruin of previous culture. 10% chance it was a land of giants. 10% it was nonhumanoid
45. Massive battle leaves corpses of tower golems strewn across the landscape
46. Due to alignment of planets or magical disaster, nation spends a period of its history in the Realm of Faerie, Dreamlands of Unknown Kadath, Carcosa, or some other alternate plane.
47. Entire realm used solely as a necropolis for a period of time.
48. Period of crazy wizardocracy
49. Population dominated by ruling caste's control of mind-altering drugs/organisms/architecture/music
50. Thoroughbred slaves of the pleasure pits revolt: establish pornocracy
51. Custom demands rule by the (roll or pick) shortest, funniest, red-eyed, fattest
52. Infiltrations from the lands of madness and chaos have caused the population to engage in pogroms against all abnormals.
53. Capital of orthodox faith moved to this nation. Pope/patriarch/Sister Superior adopts diet of worms to prevent heretical infection.
54. Monarch involved in torrid love affair with (roll or pick) neighboring monarch, monster, distant ruler, inanimate object
55. Rulers hold a secret grudge against ostensibly allied nation for a perceived slight or betrayal in the distant past.
56. Nation and rival nation engage in Cold Warrish intrigues in hopes of acquiring powerful magical mcguffin.
57. Everyone in nation sold souls to extradimensional entity in exchange for protection from rapacious nearby empire. Are now an island of extremely boring people in a sea of otherwise ordinary kingdoms.
58. Due to geography or presence of vicious species nearby, the nation is--for some period at least--a strategic and commercial chokepoint.
59. Nation is entirely fortified due to centuries of unusually intense warfare.
60. Period of total pacificism and neutrality. Weapons and armor prohibited. How they lasted this long is up to you. Magic is the easy answer.
61. A legacy of moon worship, ongoing warfare, or an economy based on night-blooming plants (or all three) makes the populace primarily nocturnal for a few hundred years. Most crimes occur in daylight,
62. A comet known as The Initiator comes every 5 years and disaster predictably follows.
63. Democracy invented. Kept around for a bit.
64. New rulers must eat previous ones
65. Nation experienced warfare against intelligent mice, rats or insects. Obsessively clean for 100 + d12x100 years after
66. Nation entirely buried, by accident or--a la Petal Throne--by design.
67. Curse on throne: monarchs all die after 5 years. Rulers tend to be very live-fast-die-young.
68. Intoxicants outlawed. Travel to- and trade with- neighboring nations flourishes.
69. Cult of apathy ascendant
70. 700-year war to slay god of rival nation
71. Period where all citizens live in one enormous building
72. Nation overrun by hostile (roll or pick) demons, werewolves, zombies, dwarves, foodies, vampires, goblins, horsemen, elves, dinosaurs, mutants, other
73. Mathematics banned. Practiced in secret by anybody trying to get anything done.
74. King claims he's a pheasant (isn't)
75. Magic banned. Armored warrior cults defend nation
76. Brutal spartanistic throw-them-to-the-wolves-and-see-how-that-works-out culture fluorishes
77. Realm becomes client-state of larger empire. Many sons and daughters of local nobility sent off to be educated at foreign courts. They return (roll or pick) totally assimilated, full of hatred for the foreigners, feigning one the former while secretly being the latter, vice versa
78. Lottery-in-Babylon-style social order inculcated
79. Adventure diary/notebook of one of your players has been inadvertently sent thousands of years back in time and has been discovered and taken for a holy text by the locals
80. Age of (accurate) prophets followed by invasion. Records and transcripts of important prophecies lost and scattered. Much blood and treasure will be expended in ages thereafter to find them.
81. Monarch revealed to be (unknowingly) 1/4 changeling, sparking off confused and bloody succession war as the families of the various grandparents vie for power
82. Common vowel and associated sound declared heretical
83. Slaying of distant medusa turns much of the stone from which local buildings were made into flesh. Or if that's too weird, there was just an earthquake.
84. Inhabitants discover they are not human (or elf or whatever they thought)
85. Inhabitants discover sister nation with precisely identical history, culture, inhabitants, etc. on other side of world
86. Inhabitants discover hypercubic architecture--nation appears to consist of scattered settlements of unusually fine stone buildings on the outside, is in fact a bustling network of Escherian mazes on the inside. At least for a while.
87. Nation was shrunk, placed in a bottle, then an unshrinking ritual was discovered. However, by that time the area it had once occupied had been taken over. So the nation was moved to a new and more remote location, then unshrunk. Or so they say.
88. Religion causes dancing to be outlawed or mandatory
89. Periodic floods cause nation to be coastal for 50 years, then landlocked for 50 years--alternating forever
90. Nation invents medieval minimalist art style--cubic stone plinths with nothing on them and paintings of unbroken umber abound. Nearby cultures sickened. Many die of boredom.
91. Basically this part here in yellow.
92. Nation ruled by sentient paintings of dead rulers. The inhabitants were unaware that all their efforts were secretly directed toward creating vessels through which these souls might once again walk the earth.
93. Extreme neoplatonic phase. Everything that can be made spherical is: homes, weapons, the structures of poems, etc.
94. Extreme historian phase. Populaces divided into two parts: those who act and those who record their every action. Those who act are forbidden to do anything while their historian is asleep or otherwise unavoidably indisposed.
95. Inhabitants create simulatory "games of role-playing" to investigate possible outcomes of all courses of action before committing to them
96. Taxidermy takes the place of burial. Dead citizens, pets, and livestock in dramatic poses decorate the public squares.
97. Nation fears dispersion and disunity--all citizens are attached together by chains--each person is 900 links from the next. It is said some still hold to this practice.
98. Suffering-based legal system: the more wounded you are, the more rights you possess. King is leech-covered invalid.
99. Entire nation is The Prisoner/Truman Show-esque punishment/testing ground/combat arena during this era
100. 50% of population is acutely narcoleptic owing to aftermath of alchemical warfare.

Vox Google-y Eye

2011-11-11T18:19:00.000-08:00

So I was Googling, right? And the autocomplete was on. I was like "Dungeons and Dragons is" and my computer went ahead and finished my sentence...
...and I was like, huh, wouldja look at that.

(click to enlarge these, naturally)

Well Internet what do you think of...the devil?
It would appear my computer thinks D&D is worse than the devil.

Hmmm. What about, say.......George Lucas...?So, wait a second, internet, the artist responsible for your four favorite movies (Four? Yes. Have you seen THX 1138? I think you'd like it.) is a hack?

What about...dwarves?
Holy fuck! Tell me more, weird machine!Well, that's certainly a...lot...of opinions you have there on D&D. What about other games?Well Internet, you sure like Shadowrun. (Though you're so vain you probably think it's about you.) And it's nice how Vampire got off with "Vampire the Masquerade is a role-playing game". Probably the nicest thing I've ever heard you say about it.

What else is on your mind, Internet?I didn't realize there were so many Canadians. Though I did know alligators were unfriendly. What do you think of crocodiles?O.......K........ Got anything else to say?My bicycle and Hitler? I think you're just saying shit to fuck with me. Is there anything you just have a straightforward opinion about? I mean, besides Shadowrun?To be honest I haven't seen the new one and can't remember the last one too well--I don't like looking at guys' nipples.

Anyway, what I want to know is: how did you get so fucked up?Well....yeah....but, still, that seems a bit uncharitable--I mean, what makes you think you know so much?

Some work in progress...

2011-11-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

(I was going to write "hard at work" but after you've been in a few porn movies you just can't use that phrase ever again ever. Anyway you guys have fun with it. Here are some pictures for a big dungeon painting I'm working on...(click to enlarge but parts are blurry since I'm not using a scanner)These are details form this picture--none of this stuff is finished yet...

Here's me hard at wor...I mean working h...forget it.That's obviously a set and not our apartment, actually me working usually looks more like thisAaaaaaaand here's a couple overland maps I made...

Dear Wizards,

2011-11-09T05:57:00.000-08:00

"Hey man. I really dig your blog. I send links to it around the office often enough that I should probably be paying you a consulting fee or something."

--Mike Mearls

So, WOTC, I know some of you read this blog--so here is what I would like for Christmas...

Let me first say I am not going to be a jerk about this:

I am not going to ask you to start liking things you don't like.

I am not going to urge you to take directions you clearly have decided not to take.

I am not going to claim that the way I want things to be will definitely make more money.

I am not going to say Look at what you did here, it's crap, do better, hire better people--I presume you are hiring the best people you can, in the opinion of your editors, art directors, other relevant stakeholders and pie-piece claimers.

In short, I am only going to ask for things if I don't know why you haven't already done them.

So, here we go:

1. Publish two big hardcover coffee-table books with all the old TSR adventures in them.

Say...everything from the beginning until '85 in volume one, everything from there until the end of TSR in volume two.

Now, wait wait wait wait wait, hold on:

I am not asking you to do this in such a way that it will confuse your audience or in a way that will in any way challenge the notion that the current version of the game is the most modern and optimal of all possible versions of D&D.

Here is what you do:

-Do it like Marvel and DC Comics do with their oldest material: put it in a crazy retro trade-dress that emphasizes it as a collection of nostalgic pop-cultural ephemera. The kind of thing wives buy for their husbands in book stores. Put the word "Vintage" or "Classic" or even "Retro" in big letters on the cover. Make it look unserious but DeLuxe. 80s nostalgia is gigantic right now--they made a Smurfs movie for fuck's sake. There has never been a better time.

-You don't need to comb through the archives--print the original material as-is from scans of old modules in a little box (scotch-taped pages and all) in the middle, then, in the margins, in fancier modern-WOTC layout, have commentary and glosses on the modules from your current design team: anecdotes "Oh, I remember this room...", historical retrospectives, discussions of how this early material lead to the (you can imply) more sophisticated material you now produce.

Since this is the kind of thing your designers like to sit around and do all day anyway, you probably won't have to pay them that much to do it. Just send a memo around: Got a favorite retro module? A favorite room? Write us 300 words on it.

Since several of these modules have already been revised for later editions, you can even use this to sell the newer versions, and instead of commissioning essays, just reprint stuff the designers of these modules already said online in interviews about the old material.

You could also fill space with snatches of old reviews from the fan press or--if you want to get fancy--reminiscences from like China Mieville and Patton Oswalt and Vin Diesel. I know that sounds expensive but seriously if you just go to a Patton reading and say "Hey you ever run 'Keep on the Borderlands'? He'll talk for 20 minutes and you can just tape record it--I've seen it. And if you can't get them you can get the Order of The Stick or the KOTDT or the Robot Chicken people. I hear they work cheap.

In addition to making these old books more useful to DMs (of all schools) and making reading the modules feel less like scavenger hunts for ideas that still have resonance--cheaply--the commentary might also convince oldsters who don't play any more and who got the books mainly as cute retro-artifacts that the folks now working at WOTC are pretty clever fellows in their own right and might just be producing games they--the nostalgic old-timers--might want to play with their kids.

Aside from the luxurious hardcover exterior and a few color-plates in the middle for cover art, you can print the whole thing in black and white--how cheap is that? How are you not going to make money on this considering you will be able to sell this easy-to-throw together book to:

-Every single person who is into Old School gaming. That's 2-3 thousand right there. If you can sell what amounts to a hardcover artbook for adults (at hardcover artbook prices) to just that many people you'll do better than break even

-The aforementioned nostalgia not-currently-gaming demographic

-A good slice of your more dedicated and hobby-invested new-edition gamers

?

Its release will be an opportunity for the geek media to rehash the same 3 page think pieces they wrote when Gygax died--only this time you'll have something to sell them.

Plus, these books will act, functionally, as supplements to all the retroclones and postclones--everyone who plays Labyrinth Lord or OSRIC or LOTFP:WF will want one. You'll be making more money off their games than they are.

I suppose it goes without saying you can put a warm and amused intro at the front talking about how far we've come since these primitive days and how tortured and hilarious the mechanics are. If you get real neat you could provide 4e conversion notes on each module for your more ambitious GMs.

So there's that. I think that's the most reasonable think I'd like for Christmas. If you can't do that I'd like to hear about why--since I know somebody at WOTC will read this sooner or later.

2. Find a way to have your game easily work with other RPGs again.

I'm not one of those people who is going to claim Pathfinder's doing so well against Type IV D&D because Type IV is so much worse than previous editions. (Even if Pathfinder was somehow "objectively" better, we all know being good isn't necessarily good for business.) It's doing better because Type IV is so different from previous editions--and from every other game on the market.

I think Pathfinder's doing well because people already knew how to play Type III D&D and liked it and the new edition is almost completely incompatible with it so they gotta start over from zero.

Who would do that? Who would start over from scratch just to play a game in the same genre? Only two kinds of people will do that: hardcore players so jaded and with so much gaming-time on their hands that they will play a new system just to try it and totally new players who are just like "Hey, might as well buy what's in the store". You lost everybody who was just cruising along playing D&D and liking it.

Plus: To turn a 3.5 adventure into a Type IV one you pretty much have to rewrite every encounter from the ground up. Which takes almost as much time as writing the adventure in the first place.

Sure, any game not being currently supported with new stuff will wane in popularity, but if 3.5 was still being supported pretty much continuously from the second it was discontinued in the form of Pathfinder, why wouldn't people who love 3.5 just keep right on? Only one reason: the name is stupid. Who wants to Find Paths? Nobody I wanna play with. But other than that? No reason.

Say what you want about Type 2 D&D, it had a legitimate claim to simply being a tightening of the screws on AD&D--it was worth checking out if you played the old game. Type III rationalized a lot of mechanics that were already understandable to a TSR player. Type IV is just this whole other animal--not bad in itself--but it's trouble if the crux of your marketing strategy is "Why this particular fantasy RPG? It's the one called D&D".

Turning adventures written for any TSR version of the game into any other TSR version of the game was--as they say in computer programming--trivial. Even going from GURPS or Rolemaster to TSR D&D wasn't so hard because there weren't that many stats in D&D back then. Type 3 stats were like the TSR games only more of them. But going from Type IV to anything else requires more computational effort than going between any other pair of systems I can readily think of. I have literally never heard of anyone using a Type IV adventure for any system other than Type IV.

Now maybe your idea was to "wall off" Type IV so you wouldn't leak players off to other systems. But, honestly, I don't think that's working out, financially. Do you?

People who like using their brains well enough to understand and run D&D will eventually use them to try other games--the skills and enthusiasms needed to DM overlap with the skills and enthusiasms needed to hack a game system and investigate new game systems. DMs pretty much all do it. Why not use this fact to your advantage rather than have it work against you?

For TSR, this promiscuity wasn't a problem--folks trying other games didn't mean they weren't still buying TSR stuff. You could sell the Fiend Folio to someone playing MERP or Warhammer.

Now speaking here as both someone who has played and enjoyed Type IV and as someone who has a sort of vague democratic idea that all mutations must be preserved I'm not asking you to abandon that version of the game. I am asking you to do things with it that inject it back into the ecosystem of ideas that is the RPG hobby. Simple conversion algorithms on every product and notes on how to run things in older systems in every book would be nice, but most importantly of all, write the adventure stuff concretely rather than in abstracted language. This ensures that people might still buy your stuff even if they don't buy your system.

3. Switch to a more pluralistic and writer-centric model

I know you remember when Dark Knight and Watchmen changed everything in comics and the audience started getting older and I know you know that's happened in games too. One way comics dealt with that was by moving toward a more author-centric publishing scheme. Writers (and, on good days, artists) were given whole worlds to play with, alternate-universe versions of characters were published as Elseworlds, creator-owned imprints were created etc. etc.

One very pleasant effect of this was that different comics are now very different from each other without damaging the integrity of the overall IP. Grant Morrison X-Men doesn't read like Jason Aaron X Men but nobody questions that it's X-Men.

As I noted several times while looking at The Slaying Stone, there are a lot of things in there I don't think are Logan Bonner's fault. I think they are probably down to whoever decided "A D&D product is a D&D product and that means the goblins are all like this and the orcs are all like that all the time".

I do not think the world-centric approach (Forgotten Realms v. Eberron v. Greyhawk) really solves this--if you listen to the designers there's still a tremendous amount of stuff that gets left out of these products because they don't fit some overall vision. Plus we all know that if you create different gameworlds that (supposedly) don't overlap you're basically competing with yourself. That problem disappears if we're buying based on how it's Mearls or it's Monte rather than it's Eberron or it's Greyhawk.

Once a player has played for about 2 years they get how game mechanics work and they presumably have got themselves (or are) a DM who can write an adventure--the only thing a published product can offer these people any more is ideas. At some point, the WOTC stamp stopped meaning "This contains the work of the best paid--and therefore possibly best period--professional RPG writers in the world" and started meaning "This contains the most generic version of this writer's ideas you are likely to find--if it is at all interesting to you, seek out the things they wrote for smaller publishers who gave them a freer hand".

Authors should be allowed to offer genuinely different takes on what ever edition you have out all under the WOTC banner--different presentations, formats, rules hacks (carefully explained, of course) and deviations from world canon. Don't worry-nobody is going to forget it's D&D and that you own D&D.

Also, curmudgeons like me won't be able to complain WOTC's this and WOTC's that if you abandon an obsession with house style, continuity, and regularization--each product will have to get looked at on its own merits because there won't be a blanket assumption that it is all from the same factory. Plus people who work over there will probably like it and have fun and do good work because they are having fun writing what they love. You know--freelancer morale and all that.

4. More fun tools for DMs

I know, I know--selling handbooks to players makes more money than selling stuff to us. I could make a financial case for selling genuinely useful, durable GM tools but it might be total bullshit--I don't know.

Alls I know is: I wrote a book full of GM tools and it took a month and I did way better than break even--and I am a known pervert with a funny haircut, not a company that already owns the most valuable piece of intellectual property in the industry with enough money to maybe even print it in color and hire some guys who aren't them to draw pictures in it.*

Okay here's a financial argument: Every GM tool (Majestic Wilderlands, City-State of the Invincible Overlord, Dungeon Alphabet, Vornheim) brings a different specific style of playing into focus. Putting some truly decent GM-option books out would show the range of possible ways Type IV (or whatever version you have out at any given time) can be played. This expands the audience, this expands peoples' notions of how the game can be played and therefore lengthens the shelf-life of the game.

We all know D&D has lasted so long mainly because it can be played in 1000 different ways---why not use this fact to your advantage?

You must have some designers dying to write books like this. Let 'em! Have them take all those ideas they put up on the WOTC forums and in their blogs and in the old podcasts and newsletters and work on them until they turn into some concrete tools which show us what all can be done with your game.

5. Less padding

All this usefulness-to-people-who-aren't-all-Type-IV-all-the-time ceases to be useful if we have to pay three times as much for the privilege of never being able to find anything in the damn book.

Maybe you fixed this in Essentials, I haven't checked. I do know I managed to fit my entire Type IV Warlord on one side of one piece of paper and you didn't, so that suggests someone over there is napping on the job.(And yes, weirdoes who may have found this post via some weird forum: he is not optimized. I know.)
________________________

Y'know: what I think I'm saying overall is--at this point I feel like I am more likely to pick up something written for almost any other kind of RPG than I am likely to pick up a Type IV product. Which is weird because I don't play Dread or Car Wars or DC Adventures or Stormbringer--I play D&D. Hell, I even play 4e sometimes.

Theoretically, there should be something in a WOTC product that can gives me ideas. But no: Type IV products are about Type IV and not much else. And I don't think that helps anybody in the long run. And it doesn't have to be that way.

________________________

Alright, I'm done.

Note: Vociferous edition-warring in the comments will be considered boring.

_______________
*Mr James Edward Raggi IV would like to remind readers: 1) that Vornheim was in black and white because its author wanted it to be available for a reasonably low price, not because LOTFP couldn't afford it, and 2) that the pictures were done by me because I wanted to do them.

One Simple Step To "Weird"

2011-11-07T06:01:00.000-08:00

1. Take everything not weird and change it.

Not weird:

Ptolus is a major city of about seventy-five thousand people. It is located in the land of Palastan near a large bay on the southern end of the Whitewind Sea.

Weird:

Vrokk is a major city of about seventy-five thousand people. It is located in The Empire of Madness near a rock island floating 30' in mid air on the southern end of The Cerulean Forest.

Not Weird:

...it lies in the shadow of an impossibly tall (almost three thousand feet) and thin pinnacle of rock known simply as the Spire.

Weird:

….it lies in the shadow of an impossibly tall (almost three thousand feet) and thin pinnacle of rock known simply as the Tower of Inexplicable Idiocy.

Not Weird:

If the stories are correct, these catacombs include:
1.The sewers of the city.
2.Vast stretches of subterranean passages and chambers created by Ghul and his minions
3.The remains of an even older city.
4.An abandoned underground dwarven settle- ment called Dwarvenhearth.
5.And levels that plunge incredibly deep below the present urban area.

Weird:

If the stories are correct, these catacombs include:
1.The divination chambers of the Tenebriate Guild.
2.Vast stretches of subterranean passages and chambers created by Screel Hak and his minions
3.The remains of an even older city.
4.An abandoned underground jackalman settlement called Naqqara .
5.And levels that plunge incredibly deep below the present urban area.

Not Weird:

The city is ostensibly ruled by a council, at whose head is the Commissar, a representative of the Empire of Tarsis. The other main council members are Kirian Ylestos, the Prince of the Church, and the Mother Superior of the Sisterhood of Silence (see below). Other City Council members (with less influence) include guildmasters, the heads of the noble houses, and a few wealthy merchants. People of the town often refer to this body as the “Council of Coin,” because money is a powerful and influential force among its members.

Weird:

The city is ostensibly ruled by a female beggar, whose half-coherent alcoholic ravings are interpreted by agents of the Empire of Madness. These agents are Stoya Sel Nirik, the Baroness of the Fourth Doom, and the Child Inchoate of the Sisterhood of Need (see below). Other agents (with less influence) include guildbarons, the heads of the houses of mathematics, and a few wealthy choirmasters. People of the town often refer to this body as the “Council of The Drowned,” because their meetings take place in chambers half-filled with plum-colored liquid. (This ensures civility, as violent disagreements inevitably result in one or the other of the contenders being knocked from his or her floating platform into the poisonous ichor.)

Not Weird:

Helping to enforce the law is a special order of monks called the Sisterhood of Silence. These nonspeaking female monks patrol the streets and apprehend criminals, even though they are not— strictly speaking—sanctioned to do so officially. A male eunuch always accompanies a small unit of the Sisters of Silence to speak on their behalf.

Weird:

Helping to enforce the law is a special order of parasites called the Sisterhood of Need. These small, moist beings dwell in the ale sold in low haunts and crawl into the stomachs of criminals, even though they are not— strictly speaking—sanctioned to do so officially. A male eunuch always accompanies a small unit of the Sisters of Need to speak on their behalf.

I only killed one PC with this dungeon. Your turn...

2011-11-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

Here kids, have a system-agnostic dungeon. This is the one the girls just escaped...

(Believe it or not, the obvious-if-you-just-look-at-the-map cunnilingual motif was an accident produced by randomly rolling monsters...)

Cathedral Of All Flesh Notes & Stats

This is an abandoned stone cathedral on a hill overlooking the edge of the rugged and inhospitable area known as The Bleak.

It is shaped like four enormous, many-eyed goats leaning together like sticks in a campfire, struggling toward the sky. The exterior is pitted and cracked.

Roughly rectangular rooms have been carved inside into what appears to be solid rock. There are no windows. The cathedral was built by devotees of Tittivila, Goddess of All Flesh before the church of the Insect God drove them from the Hackleth Isles during the War of Golems. The Insect Priests who dominate Hakleth have declared it a forbidden place.

Its appearance is so terrible that no-one who can see it clearly can approach within 30 yards--as such, it can only be approached blindly or at night.

A corrupt Tittivilan cult from the East--lead by the insane cleric, Pearl Viper, uses the Cathedral as a secret meeting place.

Each night of winter, she summons the Orth--an inscrutable extradimensional creature--into a sacred circle on the roof of the Cathedral and commands it to slay random inhabitants of Hakleth in the night. She is accompanied by her servant, Otto, an illusionist. The ritual begins each night at sundown and goes until to midnight, at which point the Orth is summoned and begins to seek victims.

The local authorities have installed a sentinel in a small watchtower--30' high--a few hundred yards from the hill, to keep an eye on both the Cathedral and the pass out of The Bleak. The sentinel is dutiful and carries a small telescope.

The cathedral is rumored to contain fabulous wealth. Also, naturalist Myria Essik of the Isle of Oth is offering 12000 gp to any party who can bring the Orth back to her alive and 4000 gp to anyone who can bring all of it back dead.

Plying the locals for information will reveal most of these things and uncover a rumor that one man claims to have driven if off with fire and another claims it was invulnerable to fire.

The adventure as written is suitable for a party of 3-5 adventurers levels 2-4, however it is easily scalable-there's no particular reason the foes couldn't be made more or less powerful.

-If a party should enter the Cathedral, be noticed, and then retreat, Viper will send Otto to follow them--and kill them if necessary. She will also then hire six mercenaries to protect her for the next week--five will attempt to seize control of the watchtower and one will roam the cathedral while she performs her rites each night.

-Note disabling the trap in room 17 requires simultaneously flipping the switches in rooms 10 and 4.

-Assume all nonhuman creatures attack and fight as typical fighters of a level equal to their hit dice. Any details not given here can be made up by the DM--for example how much of Pearl Viper's armor class is down to her talisman.

Orth (A tentacled thing from beyond) HD: 14 AC: 18 or 2 Speed: 3/4 human Intelligence: Animal
Attack: 5 tentacle attacks for d8 each. An unmodified "to hit" roll of 17 or above indicates the target is grappled and can be automatically bitten by the central maw for d8 points of damage the next round unless the target makes a successful escape roll on his or her next turn (using whatever your local mechanic for that is--assume the Orth's strength is 16 per tentacle).
Defense: All forms of attack damage the Orth, but the Orth will always be immune to the last form of attack it was successfully hurt with. For example: if it is attacked with steel, it will be hurt but then be immune to steel until it is attacked with (say) fire, in which case it will once again be vulnerable to steel but invulnerable to flame.

Pearl Viper (Cleric, level 6) HD: 6 AC: 19 or 1 (magic talisman + dexterity) Speed: human Intelligence: 15
Attack: Spiked chain for d6 or by spell. Her unusual spells include:
Choking Garment-Single target's clothes begin to choke him/her for d8 damage per round. Strength roll required to tear off collar. No save. Range: 20'
Defense:
-Prismatic Denial -Caster becomes immune to attack from anything of a chosen color and anyone wearing that color. Only one Prismatic Denial may be in effect on a given caster at any time.
-Runic Prisoner-Range: 20' Area of effect: 15' diameter circle Save allowed. Prevents targets from performing whatever their last action was until caster is slain. Attacking with an axe is considered different from attacking with a sword, for example, but running north is considered the same as running south. DMs judgment is required here.
-Note: Once per day, Viper may teleport without error within 200 feet by emerging from a shadow and then he may disappear into the same shadow and return from whence she came the next round after taking one action. You may fill the rest of her spell list with the number of spells appropriate to a cleric of her level in your system.

Otto (Wizard/Illusionist, level 5) HD: 5 AC: 17 or 3 (dex) Speed: human Intelligence: 16
Attack and defense: To keep things simple, just assume Otto has 2 spells, each of which he has prepared 3 times-- One allows him to create illusions that affect one person within 40' who saves at minus 2 and one that allows him to create illusions that affect everyone within a 40' radius--all of whom get an ordinary save. The illusions have visual and auditory components but he must save to maintain them if he takes damage. If you know your illusion rules backward and forward you can have the spells behave as they should in your system, if you don't assume, they otherwise behave as above and make judgment calls.

Lingua Necrotica (or Plague Tongues--rotting pale creatures 3-4 feet tall) HD: 3 AC: 16 or 4 Speed: human Intelligence: non-
Attack: Their touch does d4 damage and (failing a save) transmits an unspeakable disease. This malady causes the sufferer to be seized with the desire to lick the nearest living being. A successful grapple causes a network of thin yellow filaments to spouts from the sufferer's skin, attaching the plague victim to the unfortunate target of his or her affections. If left unbroken, these growths will eventually grow together into a viscid cocoon connecting and entombing both parties and transforming them--over the course of days--into a new cohort of lingua.

Clockwork Needlebirds (Small brass birds with syringes for heads) HD: 1 AC:15 or 5 Speed: 1.25 x human Intelligence: Animal
Attack: A successful "beak" attack does d4-1 damage and puts the target to sleep for d6 rounds if they fail to save. There is only enough juice for one full attack per bird. Subsequent attacks only do damage.

The Hive Demon (A creature entombed in ages past by the Insect Cult, to be awoken should the Cult of All Flesh return to the temple), if awoken, should be rolled on this table: http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/09/demonic-attribute-table.html The DM may roll this creature in advance but I recommend having a player roll during the game (to watch the creature take shape). The DM should keep the results of the ability rolls secret. Otherwise the creature should have the following stats:
HD: 12 AC: 0 or 20 Speed: human intelligence: 17
It will be wreathed in a halo of flies. It will be attempt to slay any living thing in its path other than a cleric of the Insect Cult.

Mercenaries (Hired by Pearl Viper if she becomes aware of the PCs-they are Level 4) HD: 4 AC: 18 or 2 (splint mail, shield, high dex) Speed: human Intelligence: 10
Attack: light crossbow, net or longsword