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Thanks to Kelvin Green, and Forgive Us.
Friday, May 8, 2015
You see the following items...
Thanks to Kelvin Green, and Forgive Us.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Zak's Dungeon Roller
There are a lot of systems for randomly generating the map and rooms in a dungeon, but not many that really generate ideas to tie them together into a real dungeon.
I think this is mostly because it's hard, there's no such thing as a generator for original ideas. However, I like this widget I whipped up for a few reasons:
-I've found that, when running a sandbox, it's helpful to be able to take a basic hex-description-level idea of a dungeon, like "This ruin has been transformed into a testing ground which an anti-paladin uses to recruit lieutenants for his army. However, those who cleverly circumvent the tests are secretly recruited by a halfling spy working for another faction entirely" and graft that onto a sketchy or random dungeon, like, say, the dungeon Tony Dowler drew here and the rest writes itself-- this must be the arena and this must be a horsemanship test and this...
-Character generation systems which are just slow enough and just random enough that you get the feeling of coming to know the character as you roll, going "Ok, he's a barbarian and an aristocrat, how's that work…ok, he's also an orc…ok maybe he belongs to a sort of pseudo-Mongolian steppe-nobility…" are fun, so I figure doing a dungeon that way is fun, too.
-…and most systems I've seen to do it before haven't worked for me--they get caught up in details that make it harder rather than easier to integrate the material together into an organic whole. Central Casting: Dungeons is terrible, f'rinstance. You find out what kind of stone the chapel is made of after a few minutes rolling when what you need to know is why this fucking dungeon won't play just like the last one.
-I also think it just helps to have a typology of the things that matter in play, so a GM has all the options laid out as s/he begins to throw together ideas.
-Plus, in a sandbox, you need lots of dungeons. So you can roll up 5 or 10, grab 5 or 10 maps, and have some blanks to fill in at your leisure over the coming weeks.
So yeah, this generator does that. A surprising amount of the heavy-lifting is actually done by the villain generator link at the end.
Roll or pick for each category...
SIZE d4
1. One-shot
2. Small
3. A few sessions
4. Big
RATIONALE d12
Essentially this is the main answer to the question "Why is it dangerous?"
1. Sadistic Architect
Some dick made this place just to watch people die in bizarre ways.
(Jokes about how every dungeon is this because DMs are sadistic are dumb don't make them.)
For example: Tomb of Horrors, Grinding Gear, that movie Cube
2. Meritocratic Architect
Someone made it to test people. Whoever survives or does best is rewarded.
It's really hard to make a good one of these, by the way, so be careful.
For example: Danger room in X Men, that wizard cave complex under Vane in Lunar: Silver Star Story
3. Fuck You That's Why
This dungeon is a funhouse in not only form but in concept: things are just there and there's either no reason (mythic underworld) or a reason so thin it could explain anything (like all the "reality damage" in Red & Pleasant Land or the dream logic in the books that inspired it).
For example: Stonehell, any randomly generated dungeon that isn't "smoothed out" afterward
4. Active Institution
This place is a business, guild, temple, etc working pretty much how it's supposed to and it's dangerous because they don't want adventurers in here mucking shit up or stealing their stuff. You can roll up an institution here if you like:
Institutions, roll d20
1 Alchemist's lab
2 Armorer/Blacksmith
3 Museum
4 Asylum
5 Cathedral/Temple
6 Assassin's den
7 Monastery
8 Guild hall
9 Spymaster's headquarter's
10 Zoo
11 Livestock dealer/breeder
12 Market hall
13 Nest of criminals
14 Orphanage
15 Scholar
16 University
17 Library
18 Theater
19 Prison
20 Arena
For example: Library of Zorlac, Dark Tower, Zoo of Ping Feng, the thieves guild building in that Lankhmar story with the spider in it
5. Lair/Home
The simplest kind of dungeon--it's here because someone lives here. Almost identical to an active institution above except not as complicated--it doesn't have to have any particular product or service it manufactures for internal use or for the outside world.
For example: Caves of Chaos and The Keep from Keep on the Borderlands, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, House of the Medusa in Vornheim
Note:
While a small castle might be basically a lair/home, a true palace with extensive facilities or trade goods or administrative functions can be treated as both an active institution and a lair/home.
6. Caged Threat
This place's main function now is to keep the threat in rather than keep you out. In practice, keeping you out generally helps keep the threat in because you might inadvertently release the threat by looking for loot. A lot of tombs in games are basically this.
For example: Death Frost Doom, any prison.
7. Safe
The main purpose of this place is to protect the valuables inside. Nobody really lives here. (Thanks to Gus below for reminding me.) If a tomb has no undead in trapped inside, it might be this.
For example: That place at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark (note the spiders and bugs in there aren't actually the threat--just gross. If they were, it might count as…)
8. Abandoned Then Infested Place
The most common kind of large dungeon, this place started life as something, fell into ruin, then beasties (often more than one kind) crept in and took up residence.
For example: Caverns of Thracia, Dwimmermount, Mines of Moria, most megadungeons and ruined cities
9. Active Then Infested Place
This place wasn't dangerous until a second ago--but now it's a dungeon because things in it are trying to kill you. Unlike the active institution, it's possible nobody would mind you being here on a normal day.
For example: The Nostromo in Alien once the alien shows up, the area Forgive Us takes place in, most buildings in zombie movies
10. Not A Dungeon To Them
Nobody wants this place to be dangerous to you or even particularly wants to eat you, but this place is simply dangerous by dint of its natural function. The inhabitants may be too mindless or alien to realize they pose a threat to you.
For example: House of a giant so big he doesn't even know you're there, the inside of the patient's body in Fantastic Voyage
11. Roll d10 on this table twice, re-roll one if you get a duplicated result
Example of two rolls: Undermountain (Fuck you that's why, Sadistic architect), Castle Amber (Fuck you that's why, Lair/Home)
12. Roll d10 three times, if you get a duplicated result, roll twice more.
Example of three rolls: the two larger dungeons in Red & Pleasant Land (Fuck you that's why, Active institution, Lair/Home)
Example of four rolls: Ruins of Greyhawk (Sadistic architect, Pedagogical architect, Abandoned then infested, Caged threat)
Roll d8 if you like life complicated, roll d20 if you don't
The status quo has just been interrupted. This is kind of like a layer of "active then infested" above except this change may make the dungeon more accessible rather than less. For example: an earthquake opens an entrance into a buried pyramid-- but it might also render walkaways and ceilings unstable, or goblins may have recently invaded from the hills, battling the lizardman inhabitants in the halls.
2. Meta-weirdness
There's an over-arching "thing" or trick to the dungeon, some magic complexity that enforces a weird logic on events, structures or creatures inside. Like: all the rooms are spheres nested one in the next, or moving objects in one room alters physical laws in all the other rooms, or the monsters must be killed in a specific order or they auto-resurrect. The whole dungeon is, in a sense, a big trick room.
D100 ideas here.
3. No creatures
There's no monsters, only traps, puzzles and the like.
4. Universal rule
This is a simpler version of meta-weirdness--there's just one simple unusual thing. Divine magic doesn't work or it's too hot to wear metal armor or you can't hear anything or you can hear everything and every noise in the entire complex is audible in every room.
5. Mobile
The dungeon is itself mobile, or some of the rooms are. Why is on you.
6. Time constraint
If the PCs don't do something in time, some terrible change in the situation occurs. Players can be informed of this by an NPC, a visible timing mechanism, or in some other way.
7. Staged access
There are some rooms or areas that aren't accessible without finding some secret door, key, or like item that's elsewhere in the dungeon. The main thing for the GM to remember when designing the place is is: the players are probably going to have to go back through rooms they've already been through in order to search for the thingy.
8. Doubly unusual
Roll two results on a d8.
9+ None
Hey dungeons are tough enough as it is, right? Why complicate things?
FORM
Roll d8, or d6 for low-magic/low-weirdness areas
1. Tower
2. Compound (multiple buildings)
3. Typical large building for the area and function
4. Ruin or caves
5. Partially aboveground (roll d4), partially below
6. Traditional dungeon (below ground)
7. Magically disguised as an ordinary structure
8. Weird (floating, alive, magic hedgemaze etc.)
VILLAINS
This is the number of mastermind-type creatures in the dungeon. (If there are no creatures in the dungeon, this is about the architect or architects). Roll according to the size of the dungeon.
One-shot
D4-1
Small
D4
A few sessions
D4 exploding
Big
2d4
Roll villains here.
You can get a map here and stock it using these rooms or you can use a Madlibs dungeon like this or this or this.
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Tuesday, April 21, 2015
They Refuse To Just Die
It was a game I was running online and I was pretty sure everyone was going to die.
When the last session ended the players had just failed an assassination attempt on the Deep Janeen. They were trapped in a tunnel, surrounded by his army.
His army was dozens of older and younger temporal duplicates of all the PCs, including duplicates of the 10th level wizard, the 9th level monk, the 9th level roachman thieves and the 9th level assassin.
They players were in a tunnel. They had been discovered. They had just lost one fight and were about to roll initiative on another.
On paper, it looks very simple. All the PCs' badassness added together = X. Whatever was out there was at least 8X plus a genie.
The session began.
The wizard had a deadline, the monk had just been promoted. The roach thief showed up with the 6th level monk and a 4th level race-as-class elf. Versus an army.
The elf and roach surrendered, the monk hid in the shadows in the tunnel. They found her.
"Are they gone?" she said, pretending to be one of her own duplicates. She hadn't been here during any part of this adventure, they had no idea she was with the party. Also: 18 charisma.
"Let me kill them myself, alone" said the monk. Who would buy that? But 18 charisma prevailed.
They sent her to a dark room. But they weren't stupid: Unbeknownst to the party, the room was crawling with roachthieves hiding in the dark. This was just delaying the inevitable. As soon as they began faking their deaths, the roachthieves descended.
And then the real roach thief-- Fiddlin Joe--said "Oh I have that thing from the Insect God where I can control any insect with lower HD than me". And so he did.
I rolled to see how many were lower level than him. All but one. The roachmen revolted. A thri kreen PC showed up late and sent an indigo demonbat plunging into a Web.
A great battle ensued-- against dozens, almost every PC got knocked unconscious but their bodies were watched over by obedient roachmen. Then the assassin showed up.
"Hey guys"
"Ok, this'll take a second to explain..."
Two rounds later the PCs were tied up at the bottom of the mine, surrounded by other selves. 120 feet above, the Janeen mocked them and ordered their execution. But in the complex melee in the mines of the Janeen the assassin had made his Hide In Shadows roll.
He struck, knocking the Janeen 120 feet to the ground. The yielding stone kept the earth-spirit safe (half damage), but the roachthieves had just enough time to sleight-of-hand their hands free. In a round they had sprung onto the boss, pinning his hands and leaping on his face. The lackeys attacked, hitting hard.
And then the assassin said:
"Can I jump 120 feet, sword first."
"The only way you won't take 120 feet of falling damage is on a critical hit."
"......................I'll do it"
Natural 20.
And soon the empire of the Great Janeen was ended.
People say "Oh there are so many consequences more interesting than death" maybe. But as stakes in a game? When your heart skips beats on the edge of a die roll, that's amazing.
And unlike so many other thrills it gets more intense the more you play, because the characters get more established, more loved. 3 years of gaming and leveling and murdering were gambled on that roll.
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When the last session ended the players had just failed an assassination attempt on the Deep Janeen. They were trapped in a tunnel, surrounded by his army.
His army was dozens of older and younger temporal duplicates of all the PCs, including duplicates of the 10th level wizard, the 9th level monk, the 9th level roachman thieves and the 9th level assassin.
They players were in a tunnel. They had been discovered. They had just lost one fight and were about to roll initiative on another.
On paper, it looks very simple. All the PCs' badassness added together = X. Whatever was out there was at least 8X plus a genie.
The session began.
The wizard had a deadline, the monk had just been promoted. The roach thief showed up with the 6th level monk and a 4th level race-as-class elf. Versus an army.
The elf and roach surrendered, the monk hid in the shadows in the tunnel. They found her.
"Are they gone?" she said, pretending to be one of her own duplicates. She hadn't been here during any part of this adventure, they had no idea she was with the party. Also: 18 charisma.
"Let me kill them myself, alone" said the monk. Who would buy that? But 18 charisma prevailed.
They sent her to a dark room. But they weren't stupid: Unbeknownst to the party, the room was crawling with roachthieves hiding in the dark. This was just delaying the inevitable. As soon as they began faking their deaths, the roachthieves descended.
And then the real roach thief-- Fiddlin Joe--said "Oh I have that thing from the Insect God where I can control any insect with lower HD than me". And so he did.
I rolled to see how many were lower level than him. All but one. The roachmen revolted. A thri kreen PC showed up late and sent an indigo demonbat plunging into a Web.
A great battle ensued-- against dozens, almost every PC got knocked unconscious but their bodies were watched over by obedient roachmen. Then the assassin showed up.
"Hey guys"
"Ok, this'll take a second to explain..."
Two rounds later the PCs were tied up at the bottom of the mine, surrounded by other selves. 120 feet above, the Janeen mocked them and ordered their execution. But in the complex melee in the mines of the Janeen the assassin had made his Hide In Shadows roll.
He struck, knocking the Janeen 120 feet to the ground. The yielding stone kept the earth-spirit safe (half damage), but the roachthieves had just enough time to sleight-of-hand their hands free. In a round they had sprung onto the boss, pinning his hands and leaping on his face. The lackeys attacked, hitting hard.
And then the assassin said:
"Can I jump 120 feet, sword first."
"The only way you won't take 120 feet of falling damage is on a critical hit."
"......................I'll do it"
Natural 20.
And soon the empire of the Great Janeen was ended.
People say "Oh there are so many consequences more interesting than death" maybe. But as stakes in a game? When your heart skips beats on the edge of a die roll, that's amazing.
And unlike so many other thrills it gets more intense the more you play, because the characters get more established, more loved. 3 years of gaming and leveling and murdering were gambled on that roll.
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Monday, April 20, 2015
The D&Dability of Daredevil
One of the great questions that faces many RPG bloggers is: When do I get to talk about comic books?
Well with everyone talking about Daredevil on Netflix, I'm going to say right now.
So here's my window to talk about the best Daredevil comics and why they're gameable.
Daredevil is a comic of particular interest to RPG people for three reasons:
1) Daredevil is blind. He can't see the word he interacts with. Just like your players. In the comics, we only understand what he experiences through a verbal description. Just like your players. The best Daredevil stories have grounded themselves in this sensory reality, using heard, felt etc detail to express a sense of place and movement. In fact one could argue (ok, I specifically could- and have- argued) that the whole "grim and gritty" late 80s-90s sensibility in comics really took off because Daredevil's blindness and heightened senses demanded that Frank Miller create a language which placed the reader's sensory information very close to the characters' sensory information (what John Gardner called "close psychic distance") which later got ported to Batman and the other grim and gritty character with heightened senses, Wolverine. In short: Daredevil has some great, evocative moments of sensory description. So there's something to learn for GMs there. The man who wrote Batman thinking "The rain is a baptism on my chest" in Dark Knight Returns is someone who'd already spent years describing what Daredevil felt but couldn't see. Compare:
"Close your eyes, let the night touch you. Feel the cold, driving rain as it batters your face and soaks your clothes...hear the moan of a freight barge on the nearby east river: the haunting chimes of a solitary church bell as it tolls the midnight hour, taste air heavy with lingering fumes of rush-hour traffic long gone...smell, in maggot-ridden garbage, the stench of another day's misery in New York's Lower East Side...let the night touch you--and you will take in only a fraction of its total texture...a texture fully experienced by only one man -- a blind man--"
--First lines of the first Daredevil issue Frank Miller wrote and drew
"The unholy three have Matt! We've got to help him, somehow!"
"O-oh, no--! It never ends...never..."
2) Because of coincidence or something in the very character-centric nature of the book (the book isn't usually about villains or schemes, the villains are mundane compared to more high-powered heroes, the book isn't about exploration, it's about New York and other comics already are exploring both the imaginary (Spider Man) and the hidden (Punisher) New York more than Daredevil) all of the best and most well-known Daredevil stories have an easily RPGable structure.
3) Ninjas.
Alright:
The Best Daredevil Stories
Where Is A Good Place For Newbies To Start?
Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller and Dave Mazzuchelli
Why?
It's all collected in an easy-to-get-edition, it has a clear beginning and ending, the character's origin is mixed in there, you don't have to know anything that's not in the book and it's a fucking classic.
What happens?
Daredevil's archenemy, the Kingpin, finds out his secret identity and uses it to ruin his life. Daredevil goes a little crazy then sets out to ruin Kingpin's life right back.
Why is it great?
This is the gritty urban personal nightmare done exactly right. Flophouses, conflicted newsmen, corruption, henchmen with goofy speech patterns, subway car fights, bricks, burgers, beer bottles. This is the world of Scorcese's Mean Streets getting the closest superhero comics get to Miller's Crossing. And it's a Daredevil story so definitive every single run afterward has had to deal with it's influence, either running toward or away from the tone it set. Harold Bloom would be pleased.
In the early issues, Mazzuchelli is within a stone's throw of what you might reasonably call "normal bronze age comic art". Sometimes it doesn't look like much, especially if you're not into the sludgy, feathery inks characteristic of 70s comics...
...this stuff had a HUGE influence on David Aja and Matt Fraction's new Hawkeye series, which is the talk of the town these days.
Why is it so RPGable?
Basically, the set-up is so easy you could do this to your players tomorrow--in any genre. They get up and wherever they stay wants them out. Whatever job they have fires them. The wizard's guild kicks them out, the taxman comes with his dobermans (dobermans were specifically bred for tax collection--did you know that?). Their allies are hired, unknowingly, by their enemies.
Finding out all that alone could result in a session's worth of encounters and interactions even before you do anything. Then the characters have clear options: find out who did all this (it's someone immensely dangerous whose minions they've foiled in the past, ensconced in a tall tower, surrounded by assassins). Or hit the road, harried by assassins.
In the second act, the villain starts to make things worse, striking at whoever the PCs value through proxies. The problem is: the proxies are obviously horrible to everyone, and if they can be caught the connection to the foe will be obvious, turning great powers against the archenemy.
And there's more so seriously go get it. The seven issues of Born Again are a treasure trove of gameables, if only because--unlike other classic pop crime stories like the Big Sleep--who killed who when and why and how is actually pretty clear.
But What If Just Being Anywhere Near Frank Miller Gives Me Hives?
No doubt Frank Miller has said some crazy shit. Anne Nocenti, on the other hand, not only delivers the grim and the grit and the city lights but has absolutely impeccable lefty-feminist-activist-journalist credentials.
And her run on Daredevil with John Romita Jr is...ok, I won't say it's a classic--the run is way too long and regular comic book deadlines are way too short for the whole run to be a classic and Nocenti doesn't know narration and pacing like Miller used to (to be fair, nobody knows pacing like Miller used to), but the Nocenti/Romita run has some beautifully evocative moments, like Daredevil meeting the actual devil, both with beer...
...and it has a stubbly Daredevil beating the snot out of the main villain in the upcoming Avengers movie using only a pick-up truck and a stick:
...and just generally, a lot of John Romita JR at his absolute peak, with the sense of space and weight he picked up from traditional comics shading into the stylized dynamism of his later stuff:
Issues 275-276, the fight versus Ultron are a good place to start--then, if you're interested in seeing Daredevil in Hell, read forward, if you want the urban neo-noir, rewind to the beginning of the run with 250 (Nocenti's collaboration with Barry Windsor-Smith on 236 is also worth a look, despite the awful cover).
Why is it so RPGable?
Nocenti's unenviable job was to bridge the claustrophobic and moody world of Miller's run with the crossover-happy cosmic time-travelling megaverse 80s Marvel turned into. Basically, the same mid-level switcheroo every GM has to pull once the wizard learns Fireball. She leveled D&D up from orcs to demon princes and she did it with style--the overall plot in the Nocenti/ Romita issues is Daredevil does some Daredevil adventures, collects some bad guys, then they team up and run him out of the city. He then hexcrawls across the land running into bigger and bigger trouble until he meets Satan.
This is basically exactly where my Vornheim campaign is headed.
But What If I Hate Normal Comic Books And Want Something With That Classy Graphic Novel Feel?
Then this is what you want. Miller (on art and story this time) is here assisted by his then-wife Lynn Varley, best colorist in comics and the result is magnificent and very classy. Daredevil doesn't even appear in costume the whole time (just like TV!). In fact, he's naked--and nothing is more classy than naked men.
Though the plot is kind of a lot of set-pieces held together by spookiness (it's almost more of a Call of Cthulhu story than anything else), the fight choreography is magnificent (I've blogged these pages before...
...ninjas in a snowy graveyard, ninjas on rooftops, ninjas in a cathedral worshipping the Beast, ninjas leaping from morgue drawers, chains wrapping around things, chopsticks through eyes, and classy as all fuck. Enjoy.
The larger Daredevil-Elektra metastory is totally D&Dable: she loves him, she keeps getting hired to kill him. Then she is killed. Then she's resurrected to try to kill him again. Who hasn't been there?
If you want more of the backstory on that--or if you just want to see what Miller was like back when he was kind of a normal comic book artist--then you can read all the Miller Daredevils--he starts on art on 158 and takes over writing too at 168, finishing at 191 before coming back for the aforementioned Born Again. They're collected in volumes bearing the useful title The Complete Frank Miller Daredevil.
It would be dumb not to also mention the Sienkiewicz-pencilled Elektra: Assassin here because it's possibly the best comic book in the world, but Daredevil's not in it, so it technically falls outside the remit of this blog entry. Plus it's a total railroad.
But Modern Modern Modern I Want It Modern
Then what you want is the Brian Michael Bendis--Alex Maleev Daredevils.
Some people think they're overly talky and nothing ever happens and Maleevs sharp, photorealistic pencils are buried under and amid too many swiped backgrounds and computer filters. But then some people think Bendis' dialogue is modern wisecracky genius and Maleev is using the tools appropriate to the job.
Either way--their Daredevil is probably the closest to what you'll see on the Netflix series in both the look and the dialogue, so if you like it, you may like them:
Oh If Only It Were Not So Grim
You're in luck! The runner-up Daredevil stories are pretty much all people who've had a more light-hearted take on the handicapped alcoholic Catholic urban vigilante with the dead lover. Some highlights:
Mark Waid has done some impressive work lately with a platoon of retro-style artists including Marcos Martin and Paolo Rivera.
Karl Kesel and Cary Nord had some good chemistry--though issues with Cary Nord on art are spaced out so it's kind of hard to read, and he was uneven anyway--and the plot's kind of all over the place. Still: as the panel above clearly demonstrates, fun.
...and, of course, the original Silver Age Stan Lee Daredevil comics are, well, Silver Age Stan Lee comics.
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Well with everyone talking about Daredevil on Netflix, I'm going to say right now.
So here's my window to talk about the best Daredevil comics and why they're gameable.
Daredevil is a comic of particular interest to RPG people for three reasons:
1) Daredevil is blind. He can't see the word he interacts with. Just like your players. In the comics, we only understand what he experiences through a verbal description. Just like your players. The best Daredevil stories have grounded themselves in this sensory reality, using heard, felt etc detail to express a sense of place and movement. In fact one could argue (ok, I specifically could- and have- argued) that the whole "grim and gritty" late 80s-90s sensibility in comics really took off because Daredevil's blindness and heightened senses demanded that Frank Miller create a language which placed the reader's sensory information very close to the characters' sensory information (what John Gardner called "close psychic distance") which later got ported to Batman and the other grim and gritty character with heightened senses, Wolverine. In short: Daredevil has some great, evocative moments of sensory description. So there's something to learn for GMs there. The man who wrote Batman thinking "The rain is a baptism on my chest" in Dark Knight Returns is someone who'd already spent years describing what Daredevil felt but couldn't see. Compare:
"Close your eyes, let the night touch you. Feel the cold, driving rain as it batters your face and soaks your clothes...hear the moan of a freight barge on the nearby east river: the haunting chimes of a solitary church bell as it tolls the midnight hour, taste air heavy with lingering fumes of rush-hour traffic long gone...smell, in maggot-ridden garbage, the stench of another day's misery in New York's Lower East Side...let the night touch you--and you will take in only a fraction of its total texture...a texture fully experienced by only one man -- a blind man--"
--First lines of the first Daredevil issue Frank Miller wrote and drew
"The unholy three have Matt! We've got to help him, somehow!"
"O-oh, no--! It never ends...never..."
--First lines of the first issue Frank Miller drew, 10 issues earlier, written by Roger McKenzie
2) Because of coincidence or something in the very character-centric nature of the book (the book isn't usually about villains or schemes, the villains are mundane compared to more high-powered heroes, the book isn't about exploration, it's about New York and other comics already are exploring both the imaginary (Spider Man) and the hidden (Punisher) New York more than Daredevil) all of the best and most well-known Daredevil stories have an easily RPGable structure.
3) Ninjas.
Alright:
The Best Daredevil Stories
Where Is A Good Place For Newbies To Start?
Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller and Dave Mazzuchelli
Why?
It's all collected in an easy-to-get-edition, it has a clear beginning and ending, the character's origin is mixed in there, you don't have to know anything that's not in the book and it's a fucking classic.
What happens?
Daredevil's archenemy, the Kingpin, finds out his secret identity and uses it to ruin his life. Daredevil goes a little crazy then sets out to ruin Kingpin's life right back.
Why is it great?
This is the gritty urban personal nightmare done exactly right. Flophouses, conflicted newsmen, corruption, henchmen with goofy speech patterns, subway car fights, bricks, burgers, beer bottles. This is the world of Scorcese's Mean Streets getting the closest superhero comics get to Miller's Crossing. And it's a Daredevil story so definitive every single run afterward has had to deal with it's influence, either running toward or away from the tone it set. Harold Bloom would be pleased.
In the early issues, Mazzuchelli is within a stone's throw of what you might reasonably call "normal bronze age comic art". Sometimes it doesn't look like much, especially if you're not into the sludgy, feathery inks characteristic of 70s comics...
Don't worry, this gives way very quickly in later issues to a sharper, more modernist take:
Why is it so RPGable?
Basically, the set-up is so easy you could do this to your players tomorrow--in any genre. They get up and wherever they stay wants them out. Whatever job they have fires them. The wizard's guild kicks them out, the taxman comes with his dobermans (dobermans were specifically bred for tax collection--did you know that?). Their allies are hired, unknowingly, by their enemies.
Finding out all that alone could result in a session's worth of encounters and interactions even before you do anything. Then the characters have clear options: find out who did all this (it's someone immensely dangerous whose minions they've foiled in the past, ensconced in a tall tower, surrounded by assassins). Or hit the road, harried by assassins.
In the second act, the villain starts to make things worse, striking at whoever the PCs value through proxies. The problem is: the proxies are obviously horrible to everyone, and if they can be caught the connection to the foe will be obvious, turning great powers against the archenemy.
And there's more so seriously go get it. The seven issues of Born Again are a treasure trove of gameables, if only because--unlike other classic pop crime stories like the Big Sleep--who killed who when and why and how is actually pretty clear.
But What If Just Being Anywhere Near Frank Miller Gives Me Hives?
No doubt Frank Miller has said some crazy shit. Anne Nocenti, on the other hand, not only delivers the grim and the grit and the city lights but has absolutely impeccable lefty-feminist-activist-journalist credentials.
And her run on Daredevil with John Romita Jr is...ok, I won't say it's a classic--the run is way too long and regular comic book deadlines are way too short for the whole run to be a classic and Nocenti doesn't know narration and pacing like Miller used to (to be fair, nobody knows pacing like Miller used to), but the Nocenti/Romita run has some beautifully evocative moments, like Daredevil meeting the actual devil, both with beer...
...and without...
...and it has a stubbly Daredevil beating the snot out of the main villain in the upcoming Avengers movie using only a pick-up truck and a stick:
Why is it so RPGable?
Nocenti's unenviable job was to bridge the claustrophobic and moody world of Miller's run with the crossover-happy cosmic time-travelling megaverse 80s Marvel turned into. Basically, the same mid-level switcheroo every GM has to pull once the wizard learns Fireball. She leveled D&D up from orcs to demon princes and she did it with style--the overall plot in the Nocenti/ Romita issues is Daredevil does some Daredevil adventures, collects some bad guys, then they team up and run him out of the city. He then hexcrawls across the land running into bigger and bigger trouble until he meets Satan.
This is basically exactly where my Vornheim campaign is headed.
But What If I Hate Normal Comic Books And Want Something With That Classy Graphic Novel Feel?
Though the plot is kind of a lot of set-pieces held together by spookiness (it's almost more of a Call of Cthulhu story than anything else), the fight choreography is magnificent (I've blogged these pages before...
The larger Daredevil-Elektra metastory is totally D&Dable: she loves him, she keeps getting hired to kill him. Then she is killed. Then she's resurrected to try to kill him again. Who hasn't been there?
If you want more of the backstory on that--or if you just want to see what Miller was like back when he was kind of a normal comic book artist--then you can read all the Miller Daredevils--he starts on art on 158 and takes over writing too at 168, finishing at 191 before coming back for the aforementioned Born Again. They're collected in volumes bearing the useful title The Complete Frank Miller Daredevil.
It would be dumb not to also mention the Sienkiewicz-pencilled Elektra: Assassin here because it's possibly the best comic book in the world, but Daredevil's not in it, so it technically falls outside the remit of this blog entry. Plus it's a total railroad.
But Modern Modern Modern I Want It Modern
Then what you want is the Brian Michael Bendis--Alex Maleev Daredevils.
Some people think they're overly talky and nothing ever happens and Maleevs sharp, photorealistic pencils are buried under and amid too many swiped backgrounds and computer filters. But then some people think Bendis' dialogue is modern wisecracky genius and Maleev is using the tools appropriate to the job.
I actually think the Bendis/Maleev stuff is some of the hardest to directly convert to RPGs, relying as it does on slow pacing, snappy patter and Daredevil's internal (and lonely) turmoil. But it's a surprisingly long run, especially for a relatively recent comic (50 or so issues), so there's a lot there to mine.
Oh If Only It Were Not So Grim
You're in luck! The runner-up Daredevil stories are pretty much all people who've had a more light-hearted take on the handicapped alcoholic Catholic urban vigilante with the dead lover. Some highlights:
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Friday, April 17, 2015
Vornheim Costs 170 Bucks Now
That's more than ten times the cover price for a 64-page black-and-white book. So if you're still on the fence about buying a second (or, god forbid, first) copy of 200ish page, full color, gold trimmed, embossed Red & Pleasant Land, there's one more reason.
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Wednesday, April 15, 2015
The Puzzling And All His Friends
"You ever make your own comic books, Washington?"
"Yessir, I had one called 'The Puzzling And All His Friends;. No one but me could understand it"
"That's what always happens"
Some issue of Doom Patrol that Grant Morrison wrote and Steve Yeowell drew
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Oh no it's the black knight!
This particular black knight is a champion of the Black Wing of Tiamat. Meaning he is slated to compete with Laney (the Knight Viridian) in the coming Tourney of The Five Churches.
Is Laney ready?
Well, judging from this weekend's Ren Faire...
Maybe?
Anyway the Knight was at the top of a tower rather than patiently waiting 4 in-world days for his turn to kill people.
Why? Nobody figured that out yet so I won't spoil it. The girls were just looking for the Heart King's missing food taster to get into said King's good graces after breaking into his castle and fucking around for a session and almost TPKing themselves.
We had a new player -- Morgan playing Lunessa. Elf thief. Far right.
Ladies love playing elf thiefs. Or like a lot of them do.
Also ladies bring Cactus Cooler. Or at least Morgan did.
But also murder, so I was entertained.
There was also another Spinneskelle--a mechanized spellcasting statue which caused no end of trouble on account of it does something in reaction to whatever you do. The team had a good idea--they had these two small picture frames--putting something through one makes it come out of the other no matter how far they are from each other.
So Lunessa / Morgan managed to sneak up and hang that on the Spinneskelle's hand, thus separating the fiend from its wand. Rendering it harmless.
So rock on first-time girl. Always good when a new player gets to do something cool right off.
Now, weirdly or dumbly enough, the Black Knight had a sort of similar gimmick to the Spinneskelle because I rolled randomly and got the Hunter axe, which means he wouldn't die until he's separated from the axe.
This was an insane fight that took over an hour because there were like 7 or 8 players and we're playing high-level 5th edition including spellcasting firepower from a witch, two wizards and a druid and they managed to make pretty quick work of the henchgoats and would've iced the knight in a round or two (despite massive hit points) if it weren't for the axe. But he just kept coming back and nobody could figure out why. I probably would've killed someone if there weren't so many damn players that night, but I still think everyone started to hate me a little, and the Black Knight more-- but they mostly hated themselves, which is the important thing, really.
In actual real GMing advice: puzzle monsters are a thing I think you should do increasingly in high level D&D There are just not enough hit points or AC in the world to deal with all the lunacy players will have accumulated by 10th level. This is barely a puzzle, to be fair, but it was enough.
Eventually somebody's was like "Let's take his axe" but then you know that thing when you have seven players and one of them says what you need to do but then there's seven players so who's listening? That happened. It was a few rounds until someone was like "Yeah, let's take the axe again" and I think Twiggy actually did it.
"It was the axe all along. Boy are we dumb."
No, dumb would be if someone was dead.
Then the knight became dust. Now everybody has to figure out why he was hanging out with the king's food taster in the first place.
Then Laney used a lot of emoji and I sold a book to a publisher and a new Manson album came out so Twiggy went on tour and Stokely and Connie's had their nipples cut off for a photo but not really and then Alondra got hers pierced really and kept complaining about it and we went to Ren Faire and I had a scotch egg.
So yeah alright.
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| Black Knight you suck they owned you. |
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
More Dr Strange and An Opportunity for the Ladies
First up:
May 16th and 17th, the best online game con -- Contessa -- is inviting women to think up and run some games. (Anybody can play, if you didn't know.) Got your own game? You can run that too. Here's Stacy:
ConTessa is already gearing up for another game weekend. We've got this process down, and we're getting to the point where getting these weekends running is more of a science than a lot of cats running around trying to herd other cats. Or goats. Depends.
ANYWAY! If you'd like to GM something for us on air on either May 16th or 17th (you get to set the exact time), we'd love to have you! New or experienced, doesn't matter. All you need is a camera, a microphone, and the will to run a good game. :)
This time, we'll be ending registration a week early to make sure we have enough time to fill the games up with players. So, we will be closing registration one week prior to the convention on May 9th.
The earlier you get your game in, the more we can promote it!
To sign up to run a game:
Now for more D&Dables from Dr Strange:
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| Filth attracts filth spell |
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| This is just a good place for a fight courtesy P Craig Russell. The door leads to an ordinary hallway, pink things can be whatever you like. |
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| First: Purple lich rules. Second: Replace the confusing term spell 'level' with spell 'age'. Old spells are familiar to fewer protective deities & therefore hurt more. |
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| It's tough getting levels. |
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| There's..I can't even. |
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| For when Cthulhu is too classy for what you've got planned. |
Also, Zzarchov came up with some neat ideas based on last week's Dr Strange:
The Sun god is always the good guy who turns undead and is lawful, demons are far-away stars (based on LotFP's contact outer planes bit).
Each star is a sun in its own right.
Stars are lawful to those evolving on their planets, nurturing them to pick up science and civilization and shun magic and disruptive sorcery. Other stars meddle by granting power and sowing chaos, trying to get the local populace to abandon civilization and devolve to magic use.
Option A.) Each star hinders or helps civilization through religion to try and guide its populace towards advanced robotics prior to interstellar travel so the star can just shed off these corruptible biological entities and build itself a mobile Dyson sphere and eat the fuel of other stars.
Option B.) Each star is looking to turn its people into a star faring civilization to act as conduits to begin psychically enslaving other stars.
Not sure which option I like more. Leaving one as the story being told to the clerics and one as the story told by other stars is a good option as well, create doubt.
There are some other nice ideas in the comments threads Zzarchov started here and my repost of it here. Ask to be added to our G+ circles to read them.
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