Rules About Dying

This video has been up like three minutes and already there's stuff about how I'm "killing" the players. Seriously? There was an ambush, they saw it, they decided to go ahead and run into it. The dice made all the decisions from there. In D&D, death comes to those who don't make a concerted effort to avoid it. This does not have to be explained to anybody who reads this blog.



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Death rules recap:

-If you take more hit points than you have, you're considered to be at 0 h.p. and are unconscious unless you were hurt by something that would obviously kill you instantly (falling boulder, death spell, etc.).

-At 0 h.p. you're unconscious but will pop right back up if healed. However, if you go unhealed for an hour, you must roll under your constitution or lose d6 more hit points. At negative your constitution, you're dead.

-Unconscious characters can usually be killed at will by any old schmuck who has a free round on his hands and has no interest in ransoming, interrogating, prisoner-trading, or eating the PCs fresh.

Nobody's quite dead by the end of the video, but half the party's unconscious. And they are surrounded.

Chgowiz, Maze, Minis, Pigs etc.

-First off, RPG blogger Chgowiz is back. This is excellent news if you happen to be a smart person who likes reading about how other smart people play the games that you play.*

His focus has always been on how the game actually works when it's right there in front of you and on getting new people to play. Of which focus this blog mightily approves.

-Y'know how, when someone casts a Maze spell, the victim has to wander in it "for a period of time entirely determined by the creature's intelligence". Well how about some of that "player skill not character skill"? Go here and make a maze to have on hand.

It also works as a cheap dungeon plan generator, if you're having one of those hungover-didn't-prep days.

-I said I was going to write a paean to Shannon, the mini-painter Reaper assigned to "I Hit It With My Axe" as soon as I was able to take a decent picture of the minis she painted? Well here's my best attempt so far:

-Goblin Pigballoon Scout info:
(As Seen On TV)
The pig balloon is generally made by a goblin alchemist. The actual process involves removing the organs and bones, coating the pig with a glossy sealant (often of a gaudy color), and sewing the pig's mouth (and other orifices) shut after filling it with a lighter-than-air substance.

An average pig scout balloon can carry one goblin or one halfling plus 20 gp's weight. Altitude control is not good. The scout is usually armed with vials of standard green slime. Any failed missile attack on the balloon will have a 50% chance of hitting the pig, which will cause the balloon to descend rapidly and comically.

The scout's d20 stats are below, if you're using the old system that's AC 6.

Larger balloons made from giant frogs, giant puffer fish, and even whales have been conjectured but have never been observed.



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*If you're wondering why Chgowiz ever left in the first place, it's because he was sick of internet drama. Those specifically and desperately interested in seeing the last straw (plus some poorly fact-checked guesses about what system my group uses) can look here. It's all over now, though, so if you have some brilliant opinion about it, bear in mind that no-one cares anymore.

I Get To Dip My Donut In Dr. Pepper Because I Am The DM

Notes On This Week's Show That Have to Do With DMing:

-That map is just a small sketch I made of the area between the Goblin City and Vornheim so that the party could plan their route back. There are two river crossings on the map and an unknown number of river crossings not on the map. There was actually a lot (a lot) more discussion about which way to proceed than what made it into the episode, with Connie, Frankie and Satine wanting to go to The Place of Skulls (because of the name, nobody knows what's actually in The Place of Skulls), Mandy arguing for caution no matter which way they went, and Justine and KK pretty much waiting for the discussion to end so they could fight things.

-I had stuff prepared for both crossings on the map plus several other points nearby plus I had prepared for if they just decided to stay in the Goblin City or if they just headed randomly off west or east and said fuck the mission altogether. I realized after I had written all this material that every location involved pigs, warthogs, or groundhogs in one way or another.

Notes On This Week's Show That Don't Have Anything To Do With DMing:

-I stuck in a title card at the beginning of the show to explain all the things about the show that everybody who reads this blog already knows. When I watch the episode it wasn't up long enough for me to read it. I don't know whether that's a glitch or not. Either way there's nothing there you don't already know: We play D&D, we have for a long time, it's a d20/ad&d hybrid yadda yadda.

-Mandy got that all-seeing map during this adventure.

-Yup the episode is short. Some will be short, some will be long--that's the way it works.

-My Liverpool accent was well-received by actual British people which is surprising since usually I feel like you can never do a foreign accent well enough to please people actually from that place. That's nice.

-Astute viewers may have noticed that the beetles were red when the goblins were riding on them but now are suddenly green. It's a long story, but basically I painted the original beetles and Shannon at Reaper painted the second set and I liked it so I left it.

(Shannon/Qpenguin is one of the secret heroes of I Hit It With My Axe and I keep meaning to do a blog entry where I praise her to high heaven and talk about her marvelous paint jobs and the way she delivers requests for preposterous conversions with time to spare but I feel like that blog entry would need to have awesome photos of the minis to accompany it and I keep not being able to take those awesome photos--at some point I'm gonna have to sit down and do that.)

-Some people have asked why we switched sets--gold star for you if you realized that we didn't and we just turned the table a different way and shot from a different angle.

-Incidentally, the reason everybody always sits in the same place pretty much has to do with how close they need to be to the microphone. Mandy and Connie have the quietest voices so they have to sit the closest.



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Well That's Sweet

Hey girls, got this in the mail:

I really enjoy "I Hit it with My Axe." From one nerdy girl to all of them, thank you so much for making me feel normal! It's wonderful to see other girls playing and enjoying the same game I do in the same manner I do (full of random misadventures and shenanigans). I could care less about what everyone does for a living, although it does make the whole situation funnier; I'm just glad to have a bit a of badass chick power on the internet now.



I love it when people get the point.

Paying Off The Enemy, Keeping Your Crossbow Loaded, Macaroni & Cheese, etc.

D&D Issues Raised In Today's 'Axe' Episode:

-Paying off the goblins.

Interesting, no? Especially coming from our barbarian. Kimberly's idea of paying off the soldiers with their own king's loot has merit, but it's shoved aside without comment once Satine has her toss-the-medusa-in-the-air idea.

There is much to be studied concerning the art of decision-making in D&D. Sometimes people give up on their own ideas as soon as everyone gets excited about something else, sometimes they don't and everybody argues. No big deal.

The big deal comes, I think, later, when everyone's half-paralyzed or their knees have been turned to goo, and the person with the ignored idea then is like "Hey, I had a different idea but nobody listened" and everybody else is like "Well why'd you drop it?" and the first person's like "Well you guys got all excited about that other idea!"
"Well you should've fought for it!"
"Well it's not my job to make sure y'all listen to me!"
That argument has no ending. In practice or theory.


-"Can my crossbow always be loaded?"

During the credits I explain about how you wanna unload your crossbow before doing dangerous things. Got this in my inbox this morning:

Another reason (aside from misfires) that people didn't keep their crossbows loaded is that over time it weakens the crossbow. If you keep the steel in a tensed position, it gradually bends to that position, the string stretches, and so on. So when you pull the trigger.... it doesn't spring back. Or rather, not half so strongly as it did before. A crossbow kept tensed becomes a weak crossbow.

To which I responded:

clearly. but we can presume Frankie re-strings her crossbow every night and spends all her petty cash on new strings.

(See it bigger here.)

Other notes:

-Who's the girl on the calendar in the background?

Darenzia. Friend of ours. Possible future guest star.

-A macaroni & cheese note.

Mandy's sister watched this and I discovered something I did not know about Mandy's sister: macaroni and cheese disgusts her so much that she can't even bear to look at it. She can't even say the words "macaroni & cheese".

-Stab!Stab!

Connie sounds tired? She is. It had been a long day even before shooting started. Hey, realism.

-Ominous note:

Note--Satine is knocked unconscious, Mandy heals her, Connie's knocked unconscious, Mandy heals her, Mandy also summons two monsters. That leaves her with not a lot of spells. And they are still on the run from the goblin army.

Completely Disorganized Notes On Episode 12

(Before I start: Anybody know any good game stores in Montreal besides Valet D'Couer where they might have old games?)(Anyway...)

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What's down that tunnel? Yeah, of course, it would be way cool for it to be some whole new crazy thing down there, but this is a game. Things should make enough sense that the players can legibly plan a course of action or it's not a game, it's just a bunch of stuff I say hits you. So: you go back the way you came, you're going through the demolished homes of monsters you just killed.

So: angry spider-elves.

Where did Mandy get a flash bomb? It was a 2-part concoction: she found the first part looting a spider-elf with Sasha and the second part later in goblin palace. You tape something for 8 hours and cut it down to an hour of episodes and you leave a lot of stuff out.
Click here to see it full on.

I think I was perhaps less-than-patient with Frankie about backstab damage. But, to be fair:

1-She questioned my infinite wisdom.
2-It's more fun to go
"Roll d4."
"NOOOOOO! But..."
"D4."
"Grumble grumble"
"Ok, now you roll d6 twice!"
"Really! WOW!"

That's Dirty Harry, if you're wondering.

Just Some Pictures

Dennis McGrath is my favorite behind-the-scenes-of-porn photographer. He took this picture of KK on the set of her movie, Morphine. He also took these, for us...

Here I explain that, yes, Satan does have stats in D&D.

Here, Frankie said something about kittens.

Here I'm checking off some dead goblins.


Now I am dunking my donut in Dr. Pepper.

Now a TIE fighter is landing on my back.

And this is our pig, Ping Pong Von Laserstein.

The Carrion Crawlers Do Not Actually Want Our Women

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So, to you, this thing is just a carrion crawler, the kind of thing you'd expect to see in any old dungeon.

However, to the girls, through the magic of this finely re-imagined mini plus having not grown up with a house full of TSR crap, this is...well who the fuck knows?

What is it? How dangerous is it? Will it tentacle-rape us?

That last one honestly hadn't occurred to me. Honest. I'm so used to carrion crawlers as an essentially motiveless, quietly discreet vermin that lives in the C section of the monster manual that it would never occur to me that one might be so uncouth. But, y'know, they don't know that.

Frankly, if I was an Alternately-Limbed American I might be a little upset at the blatant bigotry that assumes that just having tentacles puts you under suspicion of being a sexual deviant. These Japanese hentai-monsters are giving the rest of the community a bad name.

Also, as a male adult performer, I roundly despise these illegal aliens for coming to our planet and taking our jobs at the very time we need them most.

In mechanical notes, you'll see I gave Frankie an intelligence roll to see if she knew some monster lore. I figure you can give people who haven't been playing that long a roll to see if they know stuff that players who have long since memorized the monster manual would know. It's fair to know stuff other people don't because you've played more, I don't think it's fair to know things other people don't just because you've read the books. Unless what they think is more interesting than the truth.

Asterisks on Today's 'Axe' Episode

I will be busy DMing when todays episode of I Hit It With My Axe goes up (noon Eastern I believe). But here are some notes in advance...

-Justine's character is really a half-orc wizard--the other half just happens to be medusa (not gorgon in D&D a gorgon is a goofy bull-monster, and this is D&D, not Greek mythology). Other than the turn-to-stone thing, all her stats are as-rolled during filming.

-Is having Justine be half-medusa unbalancing?

In theory: no. She's a lower level than everyone else, she can't use her gaze weapon if her friends are looking at her, and it doesn't work that well. Plus Justine's newer than everyone else so she doesn't really know what she's doing--in different hands it might've been devastating.

In practice: also no. Having now seen 3 sessions of Justine playing D&D, I can report back that, practically speaking, she spends no more time center-stage than anybody else. Plus Justine's not a dick, so she doesn't hog the spotlight.

-She explains how it went down pretty well, but in case anyone missed it: I basically said "If you want to do this, then you're the object of the quest and you're half-medusa, do what you want with that information. If you don't, you can just be anybody you want."

-Connie's D&D anxiety dream brings up a relevant point for new players--I touched on it here. Basically, social situations where you're expected to be creative are a lot more tense and meaningful for certain people (I want to say "women"--in my experience this usually applies to women--but I know men who also have this issue. I can think of two right now.) You might have some friends pretending they're too cool to play when really they're just afraid.

-The person occasionally in the background is Caroline Pierce. She's wil be guest-starring soon but was in town doing some movies and had nothing else to do so hung out and watched us tape. She plays a history teacher in our Cthulhu game.

-All the PCs except Kimberly are on the ground, and, though a lot of the sequences where people are grappling up the walls to the doorways have been cut out, they happened. ( In case you're wondering how people got around.)

-As Chris of Vaults of Nagoh pointed out, the goblin palace is based on the Forbidden City in Beijing. The girls don't get too far into it before deciding to try to assassinate the king for kicks and running back the way they came.

-The credits play over the sketch of the palace and some hit-locaiton sketches, designed to be used with this system. I only use it on special occasions. Fighting a hydra is always a special occasion.

Biology, Politics, and The Backwards Goblin Backstory

Why do the goblins in my campaign talk backwards?

It's simple evolution.

Our real-life perspective on neurobiology is predicated on the idea that humans evolved as the only intelligent life-form here on Earth. Our brains are basically wired to deal with avoiding, training, and preying upon dumber life forms.

However, what would evolution have cranked out if (like in most D&D worlds) we evolved next to other highly-intelligent, technology-and-language-using lifeforms and (like in most D&D worlds) the recorded history of civilized humanoids stretched back far longer than our real-world recorded history?

Well, we'd probably have all sorts of atavistic behavior patterns developed hundreds of thousands of years ago to help our primitive-but-still-civilized ancestors survive that are nothing but vestigial xenophobic weirdness now.

For example: Goblins--during, perhaps, their endless wars with the elves--developed a hormone which prevents them from ever telling the truth to another species. When Lighttouch Silverlegs interrogated Grungle Snumphungle at knifepoint and asked "Where doth thine catapults dwell?" Grungle had no choice but to say "Under a pile of carrots."

Of course, nowadays the goblins are more sophisticated and realize the value of both interspecies cooperation and occasionally telling the truth in order to more thoroughly deceive their enemies, but still, the verbal tic remains. Their biology--which served their species so well for so long--simply will not allow them to be honest with elves and people. Thus: they talk "backwards".
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As for why everything in the palace is on the ceiling, that's actually a whole other thing, and the answer is political rather than biological:

Despite having a king, the goblins are actually relatively democratic (teratocratic, I suppose, actually) for the middle ages, and refuse to let the king and his ministers leave the palace unless they actually do their job. So: all the palace ministers, guards, harem witches, etc. are bound to their own shadows--the shadows are, in turn, bound to the palace. An enchantment prevents the palace inhabitants from detaching from their shadows except on official business connected to running the goblin city's affairs.

So: they can only leave if they are carrying out a proclamation, legal decision, etc. Otherwise the government is essentially held hostage in the palace. Though it is, by goblin standards, a pretty nice place.

Putting everything on the ceiling makes it easy to spot intruders--anyone who doesn't belong in the palace isn't attached to their shadow and so can't walk on the ceiling.

Most of this information is, incidentally, findable in one place or another in the campaign. But like any good sandbox, there's no guarantee anybody'll find it.

The Real Goblin Palace

This is a sketch of the goblin palace the girls are exploring in the filmed campaign--a working palace dungeon (with shades of "Greater Crazy Wizard" dungeon) . It's pretty closely based on an actual historical palace--in order to make sure the rooms have whatever chamber-to-chamber logic one might reasonably expect. Most of these things are in there somewhere. Rooms in the goblin palace generally appear where their analogues are in the real-life model--I believe, for instance, that the fungus room appears where a formal garden in the real palace is.

Gold star for you if you can guess what building I ripped off.

Maybe You Saw It Coming, But If You Did, You Didn't Tell Me

See full-size here.


Dealing with the plumber and rolling Gia Jordan's character today--real post later.

Don't Tell Us Where The Prison Is

The farther we get along in the series, the less the Escapist argued with me--episode 8 gets us into the "Axe" episodes where the Escapist took the tapes I gave them and didn't complain at all or make me change anything. We'd agreed about where the good stuff in the show was going to come from and didn't have to ship the footage back and forth re-cutting from both sides.

(These were cut months ago, but, knowing people, I'm sure the haters on the boards who like the newer episodes will assume they get better because we're responding to their whining. "Make tha sho gooder!""Yes sir!")

-It's the first with Justine Joli flying in from New York to play. Though I've probably said it before and it's probably in the video there always seems to be profound confusion on this point so I'll say it again: Justine is new and this is her first game. The other girls are not new.

-Also in the category of I would-have-thought-it-was-obvious-but-experience-teaches-otherwise the action in-game here begins just as the last Sasha-guest-star-episode ends. That is, just after the girls have discovered the Goblin Palace.

-I handwaved Sasha's character's disappearance--as you do--though, since this game has a rotating cast of guest stars and so I know that people will be disappearing at intervals I suppose next time I might think up a slightly more elegant way to do it. I don't just want to kill them off though, you never know when people will be back.

-Click here to see bigger.



-The mushrooms and their effects were derived from a table made by Lee Reynoldson for the Fungus Forest on megadungeon.net--I actually didn't intend to include anybody's stuff but mine in this episode but the Goblin Palace was written up long before the show existed and it wasn't until I started editing that I realized Lee's invention had made it into the filmed game. James Mal helped me track him down and pay him for his contribution so it's all good there.

The cosmetic similarity between Satine's blue wood elf and the protagonists of a recent Ferngullylike science fiction film is strictly accidental and unfortunate.

--The mug Justine is drinking from says "Maybe I want to look cheap." Mandy's mom got it for her. Should be the motto for the whole show..

-"Disgusting grub monster."

Anyone wondering why my descriptive style as a GM is so minimal would do well to examine this short sequence. All I say is "this sort of disgusting grub monster" and I get an immediate and visceral eeeeew from the party.

Maybe this is a D&D principal: describe the thing until you get the reaction that tells you you've described the thing and then move on. I have managed so far to avoid hearing withering "yeah yeah we get it"s from both Kimberly and Mandy throughout my GMing career despite hearing them almost weekly from one or the other of them in ordinary life.

I think the Cthulhu rule would be something different: either describe the thing until you get the barest flicker of recognition or describe the thing until you get the reaction and then keep describing it and keep describing it and keep describing it until the players are just dying to do something about it.

-The upside down rooms predated me reading the tesseract articles in Best of Dragon. It's probably best that the Goblin Palace didn't have tesseracts--keeping track of everybodys position without fridge magnets glued to the bottom of the minis was weird enough by itself.

-"Funguses" is a word, anybody who says it isn't doesn't have Google.

Because of this I've spent years of my life explaining that "octopuses" is a perfectly acceptable plural of "octopus" because "octopus" is Greek, not Latin, so "octopi" isn't particularly correct and if you want to be all etymological about it then it'd be "octopodes". I would have a sense of humor about it if people didn't assume you were stupid just because they think they know more about plural nouns than you.

It is very hard not to despise people.

-They're making an awful lot of noise in the Palace but still not attracting any guards--there's actually a reason for that. Explained next episode.

-The footage underneath the credits is Mandy walking Justine through character generation, if you look carefully you'll notice Justine isn't wearing any pants. She doesn't wear any pants for the first 3 or 4 episodes she's in and nobody mentions it.

In Your Face, Dungeon Master

It's Wednesday, time for some show notes:

Here we see the party after 8 hours of D&D--some people are tired and some are drunk* but they all want to get out of the dungeon, so we keep going...

Some people can't stand DMing when everyone's gone loopy, I think it's funny. Like war, D&D should always begin with exquisite order and preparation and end in total chaos.

This battle was entirely vertical. Frankie aced the spider queen.

Connie and the oil: Of course there are more than 2 kinds of oil, but I meant 2 kinds that the party had gotten their hands on so far.

The blanket scheme: It wasn't the worst plan, but, seriously, no matter what Sasha says, you roll a one and that's that.

Next week:

The first Justine Jolie episode. It's sunny, everyone is rested and sober, and they get to find out all about what's in that Goblin Palace.

Click here to see it bigger and without the banner ad.


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*Apparently on a very sweet white wine Danny Wylde (straightedge) picked up at the liquor store--Sasha hated it, Frankie loved it and Mandy, while acknowledging its failings, nonetheless found it in her heart to accept it.

Sew Its Balls To Its Thigh

We're shooting pretty soon.

Filled the house with bottled water and Dr Pepper, moved some furniture around.

This just went up. I like it. Sasha Grey and Kimberly Kane do an amazing Abbott & Costello impression.
Satine remains calm.
Connie is reckless and bold, as is her wont.
Frankie wants to sneak...fast.
And Mandy says things that makes sense, despite having pink hair and boobs.

Also: Cameraman Benny pops up--as if visiting from the 19th century--to fact-check. Perhaps incorrectly.

Where's the TNT from? It's from an alchemists's lab Satine looted during our Thanksgiving game.

I did not expect them to chase the Spider Queen by just blowing through the wall. (And the unexpected is always good.)

As you can see from the sketch map, (with the pink indicating where they went) there's a lot of dungeon they would've had to go through if the Gordian knot hadn't been cut there.

The dungeon was set up so that on the first level down, you could see into a few of the rooms (the horizontal blue box shows which) but you couldn't go into them without going down one more level.

Closing the door was a smart move, all told, since all the monsters they avoided by going through the wall were behind it.

Ah, The Show

Here's how making the show works:

1. I cut it however I want and send it to The Escapist.

2. The Escapist (without whom there is no show) say they don't like it and want it cut the way they would've done it.

3. The girls (without whom there is no show) say they do like it and want it to stay the way it was in the first place.

4. I sigh, yawn, and re-cut it until both The Escapist and the girls are ok with it.

5. On some Wednesday, the show goes up, hundreds of thousands of people watch it, and 0.05% of them post comments complaining about it and making suggestions about how to make it better that I ignore because I'm not the one in charge.

6. I count my money and remember that, as side-gigs go, it's pretty fun, and does no harm.

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I've gotten about a thousand times more static for playing D&D with Sasha Grey while somebody filmed it than I ever did for fucking her while somebody filmed it, but the show does what The Escapist wants it to do and does it a lot, so no worries.

Anyway: today episode 5 of I Hit It With My Axe goes up, which is the first one which comes close to the kind of thing I would've done if I were the only person in charge.

I also feel pretty good about episodes 6, and 7, and all the episodes after that. The Escapist and I started agreeing after a while.

So, my advice: watch episode 5. If you like it, you will probably like all the episodes of "I Hit It With My Axe" yet to come, if you don't, then you won't.

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Like Scooby Doo, the idea is to have a different guest-star every few sessions. Episode 7 is the last one with Sasha guest-starring, after that there'll be a chunk of episodes guest-starring Justine Jolie (over there on the left). Due perhaps to Justine's soothing presence, the hacking and slashing slows down a bit and--look at that!--a plot starts to appear.

Guest stars after that include but are not necessarily limited to: Gia Jordan, Bobbi Starr, Caroline Pierce, and Andy San Dimas.
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I'm hoping to use the show to give exposure to people in the DIY D&D blogosphere who are making interesting things--I've already cut deals with James Edward Raggi IV, Jeff Rients, and Lee of New Adventures in Fantasy Fiction, and--with luck--the girls will end up sandboxing their way into something they wrote sooner or later.

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Also: if you have any questions about the show or anybody on it, the surefire way to get an absolutely verifiably incorrect answer is to post about it on your blog or some random message board.

Nothing says "My desire to know what I'm talking about is vastly outweighed by my desire to sit in a chair and type" than reading what someone says and then asking everyone but them for clarification. If you want to know how or who or why something is on the show, ask me, I'm right here. If I answer and you think I'm lying, I'll send proof.

I don't often say stuff like this, but I feel like I should go on the record:

If nothing else, this blog is about how everybody, even people who you may have seen taking 3 cocks at once, is an actual person and--like you--they have actual reasons for the things they do--and these reasons may not always be the ones you, in your infinite random-internet-user-wisdom, think they are. So, again: if you want to know something, ask. Because when you assume, you become just one more of those blathering, avatared wwwheads helping make everyone dumber and more boring.
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Oh, p.s.


Click here to see it bigger and without the banner ad.

It Gets Good At Episode 5 & Other Show Notes

Some stuff I would like to say about the show:

-In the beginning, The Escapist and I had a difference of opinion about how to cut the episodes. The original cuts were extremely fast, with lots of jokes and confusion and collage and jump cuts everywhere and were, I thought, highly entertaining.

They were like, hold on, slowwwwww down there, guy, not everybody will be able to follow this avant-garde shit and it gives some people in the office seizures. So now the show is more of the documentary-style thing you will be seeing every week.

Because of this, the early episodes are not exactly what I wanted to do.

But, starting with episode 5, I like 'em all just fine. The Escapist's plans and mine meshed, and it all goes smooth.

So. I ask you to reserve judgment until that one. If you like episode 5, you'll like the rest of the series after that, if you don't, then you probably won't. In the four seemingly endless weeks that will elapse between now and then I am going to plug my ears and ignore all comments about the show. I ask that you be a little kind to it until then.

I'd also appreciate it if the people who post angry screeds about how ugly all the girls are will continue to have screen names like Soul_Shredder and Magnusforce864.

-3-4 people started some internet controversy about the show here in the DIY D&D blogs. It was boring but it was enough of a headache for the Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Games Association,(who linked to the show) that it apparently contributed to one member, Chgowiz, taking his excellent Old Guy RPG blog down which sucks and makes it now officially not funny. For the most cogent analysis, go here.

-There is a small sub-controversy about exactly how "old school" my game is which will probably only grow once people have a chance to fine-toothed-comb every snippet of DM dialogue that appears on TV, I'll say here what I said before:

We use no feats, no skills, no prestige classes, no battlemat squares, no purchasable magic items, and house-rules everywhere.

I don’t know or care whether my game is “Old School” but I do know that the OSR D&D community is the only one that’ll have me.

It's also the only one that regularly produces stuff I like.

-On that note, I would like to start talking about licensing stuff different DIY D&Ders have come up with to use on the show. Fight on/Knockspell-esque stuff like charts, tables, maps, locations, etc. You will be credited and compensated. I'll give more details after episode 5 comes out, so you kind of know what you're in for and to give me time to map out exactly what kind of back-up campaign materials the ladies have sandboxed themselves into possibly needing.

If I end up getting something from you but not using it on TV because the circumstances didn't arise, you'll still get something. I'm sure you all know the fine and secure feeling of knowing you've got that "Things That Can Happen To You If You Eat Raw Troll Meat" table there if you need it.

-I will now go back to the pressing task of analyzing monsters in alphabetical order.

Notes On The First Episode

-I like this episode the least. I've seen over two months worth of episodes so far and every one so far is better than the first episode: the camera is less shaky, they're funnier, you can hear people. So stay tuned.

-Name of the show courtesy of Mandy.

-We talk a little about what happened the previous session there--most of that is courtesy of my adventure-seed version of Jeff Rients carousing mishaps table.

-Music is, like I said yesterday, courtesy of The Sword. Thanks to Shiro at RPG Corner for turning me on to them. As you probably know, it's hard to play D&D without music--which creates a problem for filming the show: in order to have us really playing like normal, we need music, but we also need the licensing rights to every single note of every single song you hear a snippet of on the show. So you can't just put whatever CD on and start shooting. (This also, incidentally, is why porn music is so bad).

Since I am a big Sword-during-DnD fan I took an outside chance that they'd do it and--Hey, look at that--lucked out.

-2 Things that wound up on the cutting room floor:

Satine and Connie planning to go out the window and circle around behind the militia guys and attack them.

During the interview part of the show, me asking Kimberly how many of the people in the room she'd had sex with and her take a really long time to remember before figuring out it was 5. Out of 8.

-They start in Vornheim, right in the middle of the map.

-There will be stupid. The response to this show will include clueless D&D fan snark, clueless porn fan snark and possibly clueless stoner metal fan snark and clueless-mainstream-press-on-slow-newsday-snark. If the past is any guide, the ignorance will go viral and have serious hybrid vigor. The main problem is when they spout disinformation. If you have ever found anything on this blog enjoyable or useful or interesting, I humbly request you correct any factual errors you may see about us out there in the psychotosphere. I appreciate it.

-As of this first episode:

Frankie's a 2nd-level dark elf rogue named Varla
Kimberly's a first or 2nd-level half-elf barbarian named Rookia
Satine's a 2nd level wood elf rogue named Mirror
Connie's a first-level halfling rogue named Jinx
Mandy's a 3rd-level tiefling cleric named Tizani Ildico, which apparently means something in some actual language
Sasha's a first level tiefling wizard named Foghorn Leghorn, then she changes her name to Mowgli, and then to Mo-Dog

-Because:

-They have a pretty nice miniature for nearly every classic monster in the game
-One of their sculptors, Werner Klocke, is particularly gifted at sculpting pulchritudious and callipygous females, and
-They put out a lot of minis.

Mandy and I like, own, and operate Reaper Miniatures a lot and so when we got the go-ahead to do the show, I asked The Escapist if we could get Reaper to sponsor us and the Escapist people made some phone calls and Reaper said "Yes".

Upshot being Reaper sends us whatever minis we want for the show. Which is indeed very pleasant and makes me feel even more like a spoiled brat than I usually do while working on this project.

So I decided, to make thing simple for myself: on the TV campaign, I use monsters that I can represent pretty well with a Reaper, and for my home games I'll use all the monsters that I've got some Citadel or Ral Partha or whatever other mini for, or which are as-yet-un-minied.

Anyway, what this means is Step One involves me going through every single page of the fantasy sections of the on-line Reaper catalog and deciding who's in.

If you're wondering, looking at every single Reaper mini takes six hours. This is both fun and grueling and definitely makes your eyes hurt.

Then, once I got a list of all the minis I liked--plus thought up a few conversions we could do with Reaper parts--I grouped the monsters according to the environment I wanted them to show up in. The list of available environments were based loosely on a gameworld evolved from this map.

So then I write up a kick-off event for the campaign and think--ok, if they start here, where could they plausibly end up after two sessions? And I ask Reaper to ship all the low-level miniatures that match those environments and figure out adventure seeds I can drop around there.

Then we shoot.

Then, after that, depending on which seeds they picked up, I write up new material for wherever the party could plausibly get to in one session from there and ask Reaper to send all the stuff that matches those environments--plus any new stuff that evolved out of play. Like, for example, the girls stole some riding beetles from some goblins the other day so I got Reaper to send some riderless beetles.

I have a flowchart with all the environments in boxes with the monsters and other adventure ideas next to them for mapping out what stuff I'll need to write up when. If they do X then I have to prepare for eventualities Y and Z, if they do W, then I have to write up Q and Z, etc.

As time goes on, there will be some triggerable events that will lead to things getting horribler in one way or another (don't know what those'll be exactly--or which ones the PCs will blunder into--we'll just have to wait and see what develops) and I'll begin to throw in plot ideas based on what happens during the game that shape the material so that events in the sandbox begin to point toward the major villains.

We are using new-school level advancement, partially because that's what Satine was used to, and partially because it means people watching can actually see the PCs grow over the course of the year, but mostly because I want to be able to fit the awesome, earth-shattering monsters into the first season.

Ignorable Post

So I've heard people complaining that there are too many good DIY D&D blogs to read them all, so, in deference to their sensibilities, I will make sure this entry contains no useful information about games and instead just say that the TV show launches tomorrow at noon Eastern Standard Time.

The rest of this entry will consist mostly of stuff I've already posted before:

Here's what I can tell you about the show:

-It'll be called "I Hit It With My Axe".

-It's for a website called The Escapist, which also publishes James Maliszewski's column. They apparently heard about this blog and decided to get in touch.

-There'll be a new episode every week for a year.

-The first episode is like an intro episode so it's kinda the least funny, in my humble, but there' s no way around it.

-All music will be by The Sword.

-It'll be like us actually playing D&D in a continuing campaign you can follow. It's not scripted so I guess it's a "reality show" but unlike other reality shows, it is funny.

-So, yeah, that means that I have to run two campaigns, one for when we film (so it's easy to follow on the show), and one for our normal games. The filmed episodes pick up after this session.

-For those keeping score: I won't be posting Actual Play reports from the filmed games (that'd ruin the surprise). I will still be posting Actual Play reports from the unfilmed campaign, which starts here.

-The cast is the usual suspects: Me, Mandy Morbid, Satine Phoenix, Kimberly Kane, Connie, and Frankie (four porn people, a stripper, and a hairdresser)--plus a rotating guest slot of our friends who are newbies or people who don't live in LA, and they'll be models or adult industry types--the guest for the first adventure (first 7 episodes) is Sasha Grey, the guest for the second adventure is Justine Joli.

Here's what I can tell you about the rules we'll be using:

I like AD&D, but Satine--my most experienced player--started with 3.5, so I am running a very lite version of 3.5 made so it is as much like AD&D as possible.

My rapidly levelling-up players have begun to creep around the Player's Handbook and ask unsettling questions like "What's a skill point"? I fear soon they will all want a level in Demonborne Fleshtoucher or some shit.

Problem is, once you give someone a toy, you cannot take it away. So I have to stitch together a mongrel game of the old rules which I like, and the new rules which everybody here is used to.

So, Type Mongrel:

-You can be whatever basic class or race from whatever type D&D you want. Except, for obvious reasons, any kind of bard.

-No prestige classes.

-No battlemat--I got a ruler if you don't believe me that the deathgrub just moved 6".

-Complex tactics in battle will be house-ruled on the spot.

-Experience point awards and levelling-up will be as 3.5. No x.p. for traps. You can also do this.

-Beholders will appear to be spherical eye-ball monsters rather than the deformed product of a night of incautious passion between a bell pepper and the Kree Supreme Intelligence.

-To hit and AC will be as 3.5.

-Hit points, damage, and ability-score bonuses will be as 3.5.

-# of spells and class abilities will be as AD&D except what anybody's already got when we make the switch at the beginning of the game.

-Saves will be as 3.5 because come on AD&D. Wands, staves and rods?

-Thieves will have whatever skills (a "skill" was/is interpreted as the privilege of re-rolling a failed ability score check roll to do the relevant thing--that is if you have "climb" you can roll twice on your strength to climb a rope and use the best result) they had from 3.5 before the switch + normal AD&D pick locks, find traps, etc. chances.

-No feats.

-Skills are only for thieves.

-Barbarians can still Rage as in 3.5.

-Spells you already have remain as-is. As for new spells--if you can find it (in any type of D&D or any other game, for that matter) you can have it. Precise effects of non-AD&D spells may vary slightly from what's printed, according to DM fiat. A standard sleep spell will generally get a save. Anyone using anything from Eldritch Weirdness will be considered totally badass.

-You can use any weapon or armor you've already got, but unless you're a fighter you can't just pick up any old new weapon or armor once the switch happens and expect to be good at using-/moving in- it.

-Racial bonuses will be 3.5. Gnomes will be treated as dwarves, only midwestern and possibly homosexual. Dark elves will not get a level-modifier for purposes of calculating x.p. because I forgot and accidentally levelled Frankie up early and, hey, considering how new she is to all this and how she almost ket the party get TPK'd twice due to having forgotten her Drow's once-per-day abilities, I think it's ok to handicap her a bit.

-All monsters and other foes will be custom-built to fit Type Mongrel stats.

-The top halves of Mariliths will look like hot chicks--as in AD&D, but will appear to be capable of ordinary movement and locomotion, as in Type 3.5.

-If you want to take a level in something, as in 3.5, I say ok.

-If you want to try to kill a god rather than some Mickey-Mouse "aspect" of the god, be my guest, just remember its HP and damage will be 3.5 scaled.

The Gigadungeon and Other Notes on the WotC Interview

-It is unexpurgated--nobody said "Hey, can you talk about D&D 4 please? 'Cause that's what we sell here." The cost-to-benefit ratio calculations here for their marketing people are complex ("D&D being associated with porn fights stereotypes about gamers" MINUS "D&D being associated with porn--and arson, and petty theft---may upset some parents" MINUS "This guy doesn't play anything we currently publish" = They did it anyway) but I can't complain with the end result. I appreciate it.

-Gigadungeon--the whole planet is a dungeon--My original notes were toward an even more complicated project: a dungeon the size of the universe. Actually, more of a dungeon instead of the universe:

Earth's cities grow.

Imagine they do not stop growing. Imagine an urbanized Earth, bulding by building building upon building built on mountaintops, K2, Everest, urbanized, with traffic, the frozen antarctic dense with pannelled bunkers, canyons filled and then so filled and all around filled so full that the canyon is only a vaguely-understood concept about what is underneath what we know--like the planet's mantle, crust and core, underneath the buildings is rock--what is rock? No-one remembers.

The rusting spires with a geology of their own--forgotten conduits leading to forgotten fuse boxes feeding old bulbs the fields of architecture and archaelology mesh. Skyscrapers marching over cliffs like tin soldiers, down into the sea under perspex domes and stainless walls and then growing there, and then up and out of it again. 80% of the vast city-planet has quaint, polluted venetian canals connecting the lowest levels, sixty storeys beneath where most people live. It grew.

The Gigastructure became the only place. An extending great place that took up all of space, almost all of space, all of space except where there were planets, or suns, or class-12 Massive Supraplantary Organisms.

Like this: There is a planet, then cities on it, then the cities grow larger and they do not stop. The whole planet is urbanized. Then the planet's nearest moon is urbanized, then the buildings on the planet and the moon grow taller and mesh upward and more labyrinthine until they connect in a woven spire of exotic steels and nation-sized gravity-mollifying mechanisms, the moon no longer in orbit, merely fixed to its mother by an inhabited corridor.

Then again with each nearby planet, moon, space station, to the Dyson shell of energy-absorbing machines smothering the sun, then all these spaces connected, and then all of the space in between, too, in every direction into a solid block the size and shape of the universe with all astronomical bodies entombed within it and all animals, monsters, cultures, phenomena linked into a monolithic skyless maze-city of panelled chambers, tubes, hallways, transoms, shafts, glass-walled terraces looking out into dark, long vertical gaps between barely-inhabited sideways, opposing cities, each forming the roof of the other, the spires interlocking like sharp teeth, wells, fusion engine-trams, endless escalators lined with concession stands, crawlspaces, staircases, niches, branching zero-gravity capillary tunnels, and with all known archtectures represented somewhere and integrated into the dizzying entirety.

And then it aged and got old and forgotten and dungeonized--so there's no space in space--just a big sci-fi dungeoncrawl in every direction forever.

-The pictures--I am guessing that's the only Medusa picture they had on hand--I suppose they weren't going to use that. (Warning: About as not-safe for work as a drawing can get)(Once in a while I gotta earn that "content warning".) It's interesting to note that their medusa is definitely a "medusa-as-playable-PC-race" type picture.

The flail snail is, as always, appreciated. Simon Tilbrook and Alan Hunter--we owe you so much.

-WotC contacted me independently about doing the interview, but if I had to guess I suspect the "I Hit It With My Axe" producers probably had a hand in tipping WotC off.

-Just got this from what appears to be a Christian gamer:

I've heard about your blog on various places before and had preformed a very negative opinion. I popped on over after seeing the Wizards interview, and frankly, its actually a great D&D blog, better written than most, and a nice variety of topics. I don't think I'll be a regular reader, as most of your views run counter to my own, I definitely think you are a gifted writer, a great DM, and your blogs bad reputation in some circles is total crap...[etc.]

So, that's nice. Though I will note that these "circles" do need to be rooted out and destroyed.

-They not only left the reference to Death Frost Doom in, they linked to it. If I'd known I would've mentioned the late AGP's 100 Street Vendors of the City State. And every other DIY D&D product I could think of.