The Vomorhin Experiment

A full-time job and an impending move to a new apartment haven't really left much time for idle pursuits, including Dungeons and Dragons. But all work and no play has often left Jack a dull boy, so I've been thinking about getting back in the saddle for a few weeks now. In my current situation, tabletop gaming has been a great way to both stay in touch with distant friends and make new ones in the greater Philadelphia area. In preparation for this eventual calming, I've been working on a little experiment.

The City of Vomorhin is a project that I've been planning since I put my ideas together for the Cheap Minis Project: a city setting that utilized many of the strange, common or otherwise minor parts of the Dungeons & Dragons experience in order to craft a campaign setting. There's a place in the Vomorhin universe for kenku, grimlocks, troglodytes, krenshar, chaos creatures and constructs of all shapes and sizes. Taking all of these disparate elements and making a coherent world out of them has been a blast.

As of now, I have two potential gaming groups lined up and only a limited amount of time each week to plan for a campaign. So my plan is to run two different campaigns, two different rules systems, one central setting.

My online group consists of close friends from college spread out across both coasts of the country. For rules, we're going to be using a modified Swords & Wizardry, incorporating ideas from Akrasia and the most recent D&D Gamma World into the basic S&W framework. My in-person group potentially consists of new players and a pair of local friends. That game will be run with 4th Edition rules.

I have never GMed either of these systems, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the implicit rules of each work in a big fantasy city setting. The S&W campaign is more likely to be in the 'Heist D&D' millieu, with caper planning and specialist hirelings needed to pull off huge scores, while the 4th Edition campaign will be more like hard-boiled fantasy fiction where the players unravel conspiracies, butt heads with prominent factions and change the face of the city.

The vast majority of my campaign preparation will be system-agnostic and, through Fistful of Coppers, available to readers for free. When I do stat up monsters, NPCs, magic items and the like, I will try to do so in both S&W and 4E terms. In terms of fleshing out the city, I'm starting with the overarching story of the city detailed in my most recent post and trying to fill in details as I go.

The next dispatch from Vomorhin will take a look at each of the scions of Creeshus and their place in the city. Stay tuned!

A Different Lens - 4E Alternate History Fantasy World War I

So apparently Edition Wars are still happening, which makes me very glad that all the blogs that I follow are full of creative and positive people who don't really truck with the whole "My Edition is better than yours and you should feel bad for liking the things you like" bull honkey. I just can't understand that kind of mentality.

What I can understand is "this edition of the game doesn't really fit my playstyle or what I imagine D&D to be like." One of the common sentiments around the blogosphere is that people's personal backlash against current editions of D&D would be lessened if the game was called something else or had a different focus other than dungeon bashing and exploration. So why not shift the focus, genre or style of games to offer a potentially more enjoyable alternative?

A Different Lens - 4E Alternate History Fantasy World War I

I've been reading a pretty fantastic young adult novel called Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, the author of the Uglies and Midnighters series. It's a rollicking adventure story set on the outbreak of World War I, where the war is not only fought between the Central and Allied powers, but between diesel-powered war machines and genetically modified beasts of war. The titular Leviathan refers to a British airship created from the genes of over 100 animals, built in the 'chassis' of a sperm whale. Keep in mind that all of these fantastic creations are illustrated by Keith Thompson, whose art you've probably seen if you like awesome gaming inspired work.

Badass.

The interesting thing about World War I as a potential adventure setting is its comparative ambiguity when compared with gaming in its sister conflict, where you can't really have a whole lot of PC sympathy for the Nazi war machine. Saying that Germany and Austria-Hungary are the "bad guys" of the piece isn't really a nuanced view of the war as a whole either? So who can serve as the antagonists for a ragtag player group of potentially mixed nationalities?

There's another World War I based fantasy RPG that I'm fairly fond of, but a console rather than pen-and-paper game. The Shadow Hearts series are Playstation 2 RPGs set in the early part of the 20th century that play fast, loose and goofy with actual history: Al Capone can be allied with a gangster cat who knows drunken boxing and your adventuring party in Revolutionary Russia can consist of a puppeteer who fights with a marionette of his dead daughter, a flamboyant vampire pro wrestler and a magical camera-wielding Anastasia Romanov. The combat system of Shadow Hearts - Covenant actually reminded me of 4E's area effects and strategic maneuvering, which put the game in my mind when I was reading Leviathan.

Regardless, the villains of the Shadow Hearts games are generally ruthless or driven individuals who want to take advantage of the misery and malice that the Great War generated and use it towards their own dark purposes, generally world-destroying chaos. As Chaosium has noticed before me, World War I is a great setting for investigating and battling mind-destroying horrors, both human and extraplanar, and the Shadow Hearts games feature plenty of Cthonic monstrosities and creatures brought into being from physical and spiritual trauma.

Cthonic monstrosities and creatures brought into being from physical and spiritual trauma that you are supposed to PUNCH IN THE GODDAMNED FACE. Though there may be doubts and introspective dread, none of that should prevent you from giving them a sound ass-kicking.

So yeah, that's my framework for a reimagining of 4E to take it out of the dungeon and into left field. Next time, I'll be working on character creation and how to make classes your own with the magic of reskinning.

Hey Kids!

Do you like the idea of a fun and expandable Adventure Deck in your 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game, but think that $8 for 4 cards is still pretty ridiculous?


Then check out these cool-ass Drama Cards, brought to us by this classy guy over at 1d4chan! Not only are they useful for a 4E game, but many of them could be used in whatever version of Dungeons and Dragons you care to run! Download them here from Megaupload!



Yeah, I know, I know. Magic: the Gathering is ruining the sanctity of the gaming table and trading cards are a blight on society, but I picked up a Magic deck long before I ever rolled any polyhedrons and I think stuff like this is pretty cool. I would love to integrate something like this into my game, to match my wonderful Deck of Stuff.

So here's a toast to not overreacting as well as finding creative solutions to problems!

I am weak and have poor impulse control

So here's my new Gamma World box set, purchased with a Black Friday Borders coupon and cracked open outside of the plastic. Clearly, Hermes is very excited.

Just for fun, I rolled up a series of Origins and tried to see what I could make of them.

Mind Coercer/Plant: A dryad-like plant woman with hypnotic pollen. Most likely named something like Rose, Tulip or Violet.
Gravity Controller/Speedster: A density-altering mutant
Mind Breaker/Telekinetic: A psychic Russian agent from a parallel earth where the USSR won the Cold War.
Giant/Electrokinetic: A Frankenstein's Monster-like conglomeration animated by a car battery embedded in its back.

And my personal favorite, Android/Doppleganger, which I decided represented an sentient vending machine wearing a cowboy hat a la The Tick's Eastern Bloc Robot Cowboy, who can vend smaller utility robots from a core base block.

I think this game is gonna be all right.

Uresia, One Piece and the importance of whimsical fantasy

I'm not the only blogger to have sung the praises of S John Ross's amazing Uresia: Grave of Heaven. Jeff Rients (do I say this guy's name enough or what?) has often doted on the setting in his early Gameblog posts and SirLarkins of The RPG Corner made an attempt at a mechanical conversion for Rules Cyclopedia D&D. It's a dynamite little book, lean on population-density data but chock full of plot hooks, adventure seeds and character ideas. Each continent and civilization has the important cultural details and maybe a few cities sketched out in the descriptions but the book gives GMs more or less free reign to make Uresia a setting of their own based on the building blocks set out by the author. It's a fantastic approach to a published setting that really inspires and if I ever get a group together with the right mindset, I'd love to give my Culinary Adventures campaign a try. Because really, there's gotta be groups of adventurers that have to go out and track down the secret ingredients for the Dreed fighting chefs, be it hunting for giant beasts on Trolllander islands or climbing the Laochrian mountain ranges for a chance to harvest the rare Winter Thyme.

But I think the thing that really sticks with me about Uresia is the whimsical, light-hearted nature of the setting. So much of the role-playing community, old-school or not, is obsessed with increasing doses of grittiness and dystopia in their gaming experiences. Now, I'm not saying that no one should play gritty games: after all, my favorite system of all time is still Unknown Armies and I've had great times playing Cyberpunk and Call of Cthulhu. But the games I really remember are the ones where everyone is having fun and the setting supports that fun.

I'm a huge fan of the shonen manga series One Piece for a multitude of different reasons. I've been reading for six years and over 600 chapters now and I can honestly say that I'm as interested in reading more now as I was when I first started, which I NEVER say about most lost-lasting shonen series (Naruto, Bleach et al.) Honestly, I think it's because the series has maintained a consistent tone of whimsical adventure since it started. Times have gotten dark, situations have felt hopeless and struggles have been overwhelming but at the end of the day, it's still a series about a young boy wanting to become the greatest pirate ever with the help of his friends. No matter how serious matters get, there's always hope and camaraderie to rely upon.

I know that I haven't done a great job of explaining how I feel about this 'style(?)' of gaming, but in the campaign idea that I'm working on for my potential library D&D game, I'm trying to capture this whimsical and hopeful feeling for a group of completely new roleplayers. There are a couple of established settings outside of Uresia that really hit that mark for me, chief among them Shane Lacy Hensley's 50 Fathoms for Savage Worlds and the core-books-only approach to Eberron, which is fortunately made much easier in its new 4th Edition format. But in all honesty, I think that I want to create something using the core assumptions of 4E and frame it in these whimsical ideals.

I want their characters to believe that they can change the world. And goddammit, they should be able to.

And here goes the ball...

Cross posting from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's Teensburg blog:

My name is Jamie Albrecht; I work at the Homewood Branch of the Carnegie Library, and I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was twelve years old.

I don’t know what it was that first got me interested in roleplaying. Growing up, I had always enjoyed reading fantasy novels, from JRR Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander to Brian Jacques and the Lone Wolf series of Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks. I loved the worlds they created: full of danger and wonder, monsters and magic. I even tried to write some myself, which turned out about how you’d expect. The first time I played D&D, I thought, “This is amazing. I created this character (a human paladin named Sir James, naturally), fought goblins and wererats and returned the stolen magic orb to the elven village! I feel like I’m in Middle Earth!”

Thus began a love affair with roleplaying games that still persists over ten years and dozens of systems. Through playing and running games, I’ve created fantastic worlds, made wonderful friends and done amazing things. I learned how to think critically, cooperate with other players and invent creative solutions to problems, not to mention a ton of mental math (quick, what’s 16 plus 8?) And now, I’m bringing all that adventure and excitement to a weekly Dungeons and Dragons game for teens at the Carnegie Library. This isn’t the first campaign to be run at the library. I fondly remember playing in a D&D summer program at the Main Branch before I went off to college (Hi Scott! Hi Joseph!) But it’s the library’s first ongoing campaign, with adventures every Wednesday afternoon at the Homewood branch of the Carnegie Library. We’ll be using the recent 4th Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons rule set and NO PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE IS REQUIRED! The library will be providing the materials, including rulebooks, dice, character sheets and token miniatures.

The program starts on September 8th and will run every Wednesday from 3:30p to 6:45p.

So there's the first barrage of program advertisements away. Now all I have to do is finish the poster, create 8 or so pregens and write the first adventure.

No pressure. :)

A poll to the public

Today while I was working, I asked Ty, one of the library's regular teen visitors, if he would be interested in a Dungeons and Dragons program. His response?

"What, that old thing from the 1970s?"

4th Edition, it is, then.

EDIT: I want to make this introduction to RPGs as fun and inspiring as possible and encourage them to try and play them in their own free time outside of the library. This is going to be a first step, hopefully towards a wider appreciation of different games that may include retro-clone or original D&D games. But in all honesty, I don't think that a game like Labyrinth Lord or Swords and Wizardry is going to spark these kid's imaginations. As I mentioned in my first Elesyian Fable post, kids these days aren't really interested in the material that inspired earlier editions of D&D. They want to be heroic from the get-go, shutting down coup attempts, diving Indiana Jones-like into tombs of forgotten gods and generally having a badass cinematic time of it. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS.

I'm still probably going to continue work on the Elesyian Fable game, and who knows? Maybe I'll get the chance to play it with some teens or younger kids in the future. I really would like to create a B/X derivative game that's angled towards kids who've never gamed before, but are familiar with whimsical fantasy like the Legend of Zelda and One Piece. But for this particular instance, I think 4e Eberron is going to be for the best.