Brainstorming Lite

I have a tendency to get hamstrung by the scope of my own settings. The only time I ever tried doing National Novel Writing Month, I got so wrapped up in the internal cosmology and character histories of my detective horror story that the novel itself barely got started in the 150 pages that I wrote.  In the past, I've tried to do Rob Conley-style sandbox development or trying to build a big ol' fantasy city and I always lose steam before I can even get started.  So, naturally, when I started work on this campaign, I went to the internet for help.

I'd never really heard of Stack Exchange before, but there is apparently an RPG board there that offers ranked advice on problems that people have.  On someone's question about 'How to create a D&D setting,' RPG blog mainstay Kelvin Green has some great advice to offer on the topic:

What I would not do:

Try to create a campaign setting.

What I would do:

Make a list of all the ideas and concepts I want to use in the setting. Put the list away and go and make a cup of tea. Go through the list and make connections between the items. Leave all the dangly bits, because I'll find ways to connect them later.

That's it. Really. You don't want to try to create the whole thing from scratch or, and this is important, it will never happen. Start small, start with a bunch of ideas, build outward as the game goes on. Ideas will occur in play which would never have done so beforehand, and best of all, the players will come up with ideas that you can pinch and include.

I like this.  I like this a lot.

I've never been able to craft sandbox rumors or the economy of a fantasy city because, ultimately, I really don't care about that stuff.  But what I do like are stupid ideas to make things fun.  I can make everything else in the world bog-standard default D&D for the sake of my sanity and free time, but throw in a handful of fun little tweaks to keep things fresh and unique.

So I've made a list and I've had a cup of tea.  Some of my list covers overarching campaign ideas, some cover new monsters and magic items and some are just fun little setting bits.  I'll start putting up posts on them today.

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.

WW12YOMD?

This week, I finally bit the bullet and cracked open my Mentzer Red Box to check out the goodies inside. Though I did notice some of the rules differences between it and my older Moldvay box set (Thieves knocked down again! Why?), I really liked the organization and especially the introduction. It reminded me of the old Lone Wolf books that I used to borrow from my best friend Conor when I was in middle school. I'd always loved Choose Your Own Adventure books ever since I was small and the addition of combat and roleplaying elements to the standard "if you want to go east, turn to page 26" formula gave them a lot of re-read value.

In my online searches for Lone Wolf books, I came across a website called Project Aon, where you can read and play all of the Lone Wolf books for free, legally and with the expressed permission of Joe Dever, the original author. Naturally, I started into the first one, which got me thinking: what would it have been like if I'd gotten this box set when I was 12? My influences at the time were the Lone Wolf books, Magic: the Gathering cards, games like the Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past and emulated copies of Chrono Trigger and Shining Force. Reading the Mentzer Red Box made me want to revisit all of those old sources and see if I could put together a whimsical kind of D&D campaign with them in mind.

I'm still a heroic kind of guy at heart. Saving an imaginary village from rampaging ogres is definitely more satisfying for me than acquiring imaginary loot. So whatever this campaign would be like, it would have plenty of danger, monsters and potential good to be done on top of the normal loads of treasure and magic items. I think 12 year old me would be satisfied.

(Note: Looking through my old Magic cards, I had no idea that Liz Danforth and Tony DiTerlizzi did so many illustrations for them. It's cool thinking back on how the worlds of RPG and CCG art intersected before Magic really took off.)

Has this happened to anyone else?

Have you ever dreamed a phenomenal dungeon?

It's been a day of registering for classes and the like, but I'm still remembering parts of the dream that I had last night and how they would make a great D&D dungeon. The start of the adventure was fairly mundane: I can recall giving the signal to my sister and a couple of my friends on the edge of a baseball field, where we all got into black burglar clothes and started making our way towards something.

Here's where it got pretty crazy. Apparently, the heist that we were meant to pull off was in this crazy dungeonesque castle which was really just a massive manned tank around a gigantic octopus. Like the size of a skyscraper. A series of rope bridges connected different parts of the castle aquarium, including some that went directly over the octopus. I was trying to get into the structure through one of these bridges, but the weight of me and my gear made it sway in the high air, so I had to crawl the rest of the bridge's length on my belly until I reached a small portal where I could enter. Inside, the stone walls were damp and had algae growing on them like the inside of a fish tank.

I really want to expand on this whole idea for a dungeon and hopefully I've gotten enough written down to remember the inspirational aspects of the dream. The thing that really stayed with me was "what happens if that octopus gets mad? Utter chaos, that's what."

This is something extremely well-planned and thought out

So, I'm going to be doing the April A to Z blogging challenge. Now that my hell week of hunkering down and churning out 6 heavy school projects is over and done with, I'm going to try and make more time to crank out blog posts like I promised. Having just gamed for seemingly the first time in years (more on that in a future post), the fires of creativity have definitely been rekindled. Hopefully having a schedule of what kind of stuff I'm going to post about will help out in the long term. I've got the first chunk of my entries worked out, so hopefully once I pick up steam, I'll get a better idea of what kinds of stuff I'm interested in writing about. In the meantime, here's a list of the posts I'm planning:

1. A is for Assholes in Space
2. B is for Buddies
3. C is for Convict Planet
   
4. D is for Duos
5. E is for Equipment
   
6. F is for Fun
   
7. G is for Gunslinger
   
8. H is for Hardboiled Hollywood
   
9. I is for Inspiration
   
10. J is for Jamie Time
    
11. K is for Karnival of Killers
    
12. L is for
13. M is for
14. N is for
15. O is for
16. P is for
17. Q is for
18. R is for
19. S is for
20. T is for
21. U is for
22. V is for
23. W is for
24. X is for
25. Y is for
26. Z is for

I'm really looking forward to the other posts that people are working on. Hopefully, some stuff from this blog will get people charged up.

Ogrim's Eleven: Or Bugbears and Bankvaults

I've been thinking about this post since Society of Torch, Pole and Rope talked about something similar with the Tomb of Horrors, so here goes...

In recent weeks, I've been trying to understand why the idea of the old-school dungeon crawl or megadungeon hasn't really inspired me that much. I seem to be able to comprehend the idea of the picaresque hero and the simple interpretable rules that seem so important to old-school games, but I really want to understand more of what's appealing about these places. I'm not really a big fantasy literature buff and the novels I do read tend to have very modern genre attitudes, like the Dresden Files and the Discworld series. The Tomb of Horrors post over at Society of Torch, Pole and Rope got me thinking hard on the subject. I love movies like The Sting, Ocean's Eleven and Snatch and television like Leverage and White Collar, which share a whole lot of elements with the dungeon crawl: assembling a crew, loading up on the requisite equipment, edging down corridors and disabling traps. So why couldn't I apply this love of a plan coming together to dungeons?

I think it's because they're not active enough for me.

Now before the entire D&D blogosphere jumps down my throat about their dungeons and experiences and whatever, note that I'm not saying that the megadungeon mode is a bad thing: it just may not be for me. Something about looting long abandoned temples just doesn't excite me that much. Sure, you may have just found the Eye of Hrumesh and taken it from its rightful temple, but where's the fallout from that? Who have you pissed off? Where are you going to lay low?

I think that I need to run old-school D&D like a Dortmunder novel: putting together a crew of quirky characters to do a job, whether it's trying to steal a magical artifact from a prominent guild leader or being hired by a scholar looking to retrieve significant findings in the field. A Magic-user casting Charm Person on the janitor to smuggle a pair of Thieves into the building while the Fighter looks on with a crossbow, ready to intervene if things get nasty (which they most likely will). Magical university buildings set up with Explosive Runes traps for nosy lockpicks or wizards trying to Knock their way into a fortune.

Stuff like that gets me fired up.

Assholes in Space: The Mixtape

Along with my initial concept of the Assholes in Space campaign, I made a mixtape of setting-appropriate soundtrack music that helped me visualize the setting. I tried to find as many of them as I could on YouTube, but there are definitely some important ones missing. It's a pretty potent blend of trad ska and reggae, hip hop, electronics and hardcore/noise.










Minutemen - This Ain't No Picnic (embedding disabled by request)

Assholes in Space: A Brief Introduction

Along with continuing my ideas for the Motherlode D&D campaign and adaptations of S John Ross's Uresia for use with Basic-style D&D, I want to use the month of March to talk about an old campaign idea that has been sitting on my mental backburner for a while now, known colloquially as Assholes in Space. The original idea for the game came from a very interesting combination of influences that created a very specific image of a campaign setting in my mind.

Most science fiction fans have read Neuromancer. It's the book that launched a thousand dark futures and is directly responsible for Cyberpunk 2020, Shadowrun, GURPS Cyberpunk and dozens of other less well known roleplaying games. In my senior year of college, I was listening to a BBC Radio 'play of the week' adaptation of Neuromancer before going to sleep and what really stuck out to me about the story in audio form was the Rastafarian Space Navy. I'd always liked Maelcum in the novel, but hearing the reggae thumping in the background of a slow motion deep space cruise just made me think, "There must be characters like this in every science-fiction setting." Somewhere in the Star Wars universe, there must be a guy who thinks that living in space is just the coolest and spends his days floating around smoking space-weed and listening to space-reggae (there are probably names for these in the Star Wars universe, but my EU knowledge is a bit rusty.) The combination of music with the silent background of space reminded me of Cowboy Bebop's fantastic eclectic soundtrack and the western twang of zero gravity in the Firefly universe.

The other major influence was actually a Wushu play-by-post game on RPGnet that I was involved in called A Million Billion Bastards (right here if you've got an account.) The setting was described as "Take Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Getbackers, Xenosaga, Ghost in the Shell, and a dozen other influences, toss 'em in a blender, and hit puree." It was a real melange of influences, all decidedly cinematic, and while it lasted, it was really fun. But what I really took away from it was the 'anything goes' idea of worldbuilding. Don't worry about whether or not something in an over-the-top cinematic galaxy is realistic or even plausible. Don't be afraid to just wing it. Cybernetics, psionics, rifles as long as some people are tall, four-armed aliens and genetically altered killing machines are all welcome in this universe. Fun is fun and if the campaign can accommodate everyone's idea of fun, so much the better.

Feng Shui: How to Savage an Archetype

Alongside writing up ideas for the super cool Gigacrawler project over at Playing D&D With Porn Stars, I've been working on translating Feng Shui's Archetypes to my weird hybrid system. Though the two systems are surprisingly similar (broad skills, Edges compared with Schticks, modular powers), I've been having one main issue with the process: how faithful should the Archetypes be to the originals? In the original Feng Shui, game balance was not a real issue between Archetypes. Somewhere on RPGnet, I remember someone who worked on Feng Shui saying that they basically assigned values that sounded good to each character type. As a result, some Archetypes were just better than others.

At first, I created each Archetype as a Novice level Savage Worlds character, complete with buying their items. This was all well and good, but the more I looked at them, the more they didn't seem right. I had always liked the abstract Wealth Levels and weapon choices that Feng Shui employed. It left all of the bookkeeping and gear crunching at the door and told you, "You're a Working Stiff. You've probably got a car and an apartment. You get three guns. Let's kick some ass." That was the first thing to be grafted on.

I also felt that the same Novice layout was making each Archetype look a little samey: not many Edges and too few Skill points to really make the character your own. So I decided to boost the level of each Archetype to Seasoned, which enabled for a lot more room for customization. Different Archetypes could put their Advances into Edges, Attributes or Skills as I saw fit. It gave me much more leeway in building these Savage Worlds characters like their Feng Shui counterparts. Take a look:

Everyman Hero

Agility d6
Smarts d6
Spirit d6
Strength d6
Vigor d6
+1 more

Charisma: 0
Speed: 30ft.
Parry: 5
Toughness: 5

Driving d6
Fighting d6
Knowledge (Classic Cars) d6
Knowledge (Sports) d6
Notice d6
Repair d4
Shooting d4
Streetwise d4
+3 more

Hindrances

• Heroic (Major): Character always helps those in need

Edges

• Combat Reflexes: +2 to recover from being Shaken
• Improvisational Fighter: +1 to hit and damage with improvisational weapons
• Lucky: +1 extra Bennie
• Quick: Discard draw of 5 or less for new card

Weapons: None. You're just going to have to find one somewhere.
Wealth Level: Working Stiff

Library D&D Campaign: Survey Says...

But seriously, folks...

As I mentioned before, I'm attempting to kick start the library Dungeons & Dragons program again for the Spring semester, with a more focused effort towards online and school outreach. So far, I have 3 potential teens interested in the program and hopefully more to come. Unfortunately, I haven't heard back from any of them in the month following Christmas Break, which was when I sent out my email reminder.

I've decided to devise a preliminary survey to send out to interested kids to not only gauge their interest in the Dungeons & Dragons program, but also to get a sense of their experiences with the fantasy genre and roleplaying. Here are my questions so far:

(1) Name, Age, School, etc...

(2) What are 5 of your favorite fantasy sources? Remember, this can be anything from books and comics to television and video games. Anything goes!

(3) Have you had any experience with roleplaying games before? Have you played console or computer RPGs? Online message board games?

(4) What kind of character are you interested in playing? Are they courageous? Cunning? Steadfast and loyal? How will they interact with the rest of the group?

Remember: I'm not interested in running a campaign with evil characters. Everyone should be more or less willing to do the right thing when it's necessary. That said, not everyone has to be a paragon of virtue. Mercenaries, scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells of all types are encouraged.

(5) Is there anything that you absolutely want to do in this Dungeons & Dragons campaign? Recover lost artifacts from dangerous subterranean temples? Repel a goblin invasion? Become king (or queen!) of an emerging nation? Let me know!
__________________________________________

That's what I have so far. Anyone else have any good ideas for questions that I should ask?

Feng Shui and Savage Worlds: Two great tastes, together at last!

Outside of my potential library game and old school brainstorming, I've been recently sitting down with my non-gaming friends and trying to determine a game that they would like to play. They all have assorted background with roleplaying, both in tabletop and video game format and are mostly looking to have some fun and kick some ass. My friend Harrison isn't a fan of fantasy fiction and D&D by extension, so I've been thinking about games in more modern, but still somewhat fantastical settings. We first tried making characters for a Deadlands game, which is one of my favorite settings and the home of my most successful campaign ever (4 sessions! Whoo boy!) But once characters were made, I had a hard time coming up with any adventure hooks. I guess it was one of those cases of being more excited about the idea of running Deadlands than the actual prep involved.

So, after a week or so of refocusing, I picked up a new line of inspiration. I had gone over to hang out with a big pile of DVDs after my finals were over and ended up putting on Big Trouble in Little China, which no one else had seen. Now, alongside Raiders of the Lost Ark, Silverado, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Desperado, Big Trouble in Little China is one of my favorite movies of all time, one that I could watch over and over again. Everyone else seemed to have a blast watching it, which got me thinking. Feng Shui is basically the Big Trouble in Little China RPG, right?

Compare and contrast

Like many people, I'm not a big fan of the auctioneer-style initiative system and the 2056 Juncture in the established core book, just because I don't really like the idea of magic bug carapace technology as a normal everyday thing, even in the future. But I wasn't comfortable enough with the system to modify the existing Arcanowave system or start making my own Archetypes and Schticks.

And so, I started working on a weird hybrid system, combining Feng Shui with my most comfortable system, Savage Worlds. The two actually share a fair amount of common ground, from the broad skills to the differentiation between major characters and mooks to the effects-based sorcery powers, so conversion wasn't a difficult step. But there were also a lot of elements from Feng Shui that I wanted to keep, as well as a fair amount of other changes to both of the systems (does it really make sense for a high-flying Hong Kong action game to keep meticulous track of ammunition?).

Hopefully, we'll be making characters tonight after watching The Rundown. So far, everyone seems super enthusiastic about it and it's given me a chance to revisit a bunch of my favorite Hong Kong and Hollywood action movies. Once I've gotten more of a handle on the individual parts, I'll start posting my conversion stuff.

New Years Revolution

My list of New Years gaming resolutions includes:

-Finish work on my library Dungeons and Dragons game (which will start being worked out on the blog shortly).
- Begin my Savage Worlds Feng Shui hybrid campaign with my non-gaming friends.
- Meet up and talk with more of my fellow game bloggers. I had a chance to talk face-to-face with Tavis Allison from The Mule Abides this Christmas break and it was a really great experience.
- Be on the playing side for once, damn it! I've been GMing for what seems like a decade without any real chance to take the other side of the screen. I'd like to have some adventures.
- Read more.
- Write more.
- Get fit.
- Succeed wonderfully at whatever I do.

Well, a man can dream, can't he?

Gamma World: The Road

There's only one Road. Only one good one, anyway. Chances are there was a whole network of Roads once, criss-crossing and connecting the entire West. But a lot of things have happened since then: wars, disasters, dimensional incursions, robot wars...

The Road we've got is probably pieced together from the good bits of a bunch of different ones, judging on how some stretches tend to go on beyond the turns. Most of them are either bombed out, booby trapped or overgrown enough that you couldn't get anywhere on 'em without rides built special for navigating the terrain. No way in hell that the Tankers could make their way over those cobbles. And that's why we have the Road, and the reason that it can't be broken.

Sure, you can drive your pick-up or dune buggy or hover-boat around wherever you please, but none of those things can haul worth a damn. If you really wanna get things from Point A to Point B, you gotta use something big, like one of the old tankers or a gravity barge, and if there's one thing that all those Big Rigs need, it's space and stability. But once you've got that, you need to keep it that way.

That's where the towns come in. Most of them sprung up Roadside as soon as the lines from the Coast to Vegas were being reconnoitered, but each of them soon learned the drill. If you keep your chunk of the Road free from raiding parties, burrowing sharks and giant robots, you get trading rights for the cargo coming down the Road. Depending on what Rigs are rolling, you could get anything from clothing to food to construction supplies to Dr. Goggles' Tank-Aged Frontier Whiskey. The promise of first dibs on these treasures is enough to keep the crossbows loaded and lasers charged most Roadside settlements.

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.

My first impressions of Mutant Future

In the past few weeks, I've been on a pretty serious post-apocalypse and western kick, so I've been trying to find a fun game to scratch that itch. From the posts that I've read about people's Mutant Future games, it seemed like a sure bet. Fun random mutations and lost technology in a gonzo post-apocalyptic wasteland. What's not to like?

Except there's this weird assumption in Mutant Future that the technology level of the post-apocalyptic society is going to go straight back to default D&D medieval level, with literally what seems like the entire Labyrinth Lord equipment list reprinted verbatim, manacles and spyglasses alike. The book is full of illustrations with weird, weapon-wielding mutants, but then tells you about hiring longbowmen and light cavalry. Does this strike anyone else as a little weird? Maybe 'post-apocalypse' is a bit like 'pulp fantasy' in the sense that it can mean radically different things to different people. For some it may mean Thundarr-esque wizardry, to others it's far-future dungeoncrawling for high tech artifacts. For me, it's always been a weird, far-flung western, with bandits, trains and six-shooters alongside mutants, killer robots and Mexican wrestlers.

I guess it's just hard for me to fathom a post-apocalyptic setting with no cars. Is Gamma World (any edition) better about emulating that kind of western post-apocalypse feel? Or should I run with Mutant Future and just add the elements that I want to it? I think that the system's probably pretty solid, I just feel like I'd have to rewrite the entire gear section until I like it.

There's a first time for everything

So, I'm starting the (hopefully) bi-weekly Swords & Wizardry based Old School mash-up campaign tomorrow. The situation is this:

The campaign will take place on the still-unnamed continent detailed in this cool map I drew.

Pictured: cool map

The PCs will be adventuring in the northwest portion of the map, the area tentatively called the Valley of Dead Gods. It's kind of a combination between California during the Gold Rush meets Egypt in Raiders of the Lost Ark. A few years ago, the Valley was devoid of civilization, only dotted with trading posts and caravansaries for travelers and merchants making the journey to the sea ports of the north. That all changed when an archaeological expedition from the City of the Cathedral discovered the ruins of Myrmidia, long thought to have been an ancient myth. When the ruins were discovered, it launched a massive pilgrimage of tomb robbers looking to loot a quick fortune, scholars and magicians looking to expand their knowledge of the ancient world and merchants looking to make some money off of both of them.

In the boomtown of Motherlode, prospectors, scholars and fortune hunters alike meet to buy supplies, rest after escaping from certain doom and drink themselves into oblivion after cashing in their ill-gotten gains. It's home to a dozen taverns; a temple of Antra, the goddess of the underdog; a claims office sponsored by the Cathedral College and a stretch of street called Looter's Row, where robbers and snake-oil salesmen alike sell artifacts of dubious quality.

Alongside this prep, I've got my Deck of Stuff, supplemented by the recent purchase of Fight On! #5 for Jeff's expanded Deck list and my own creations.

Quinne's Quartzcaster courtesy of Chris Lowrance. I told you I'd fit it in somewhere.

Now I've just got to create/find a handful of dungeons for them to explore. If anyone knows of any free dungeons that would fit a locale like the Valley of Dead Gods, let me know.

Wherein Jamie works on a random table for the first time ever

So, yeah.

I've been working on a pair of tables to be used by magic-users and clerics, respectively, when their spell slots run out. Lately, I've been thinking that the standard spell progression stuff covers what a magic-user or cleric can safely cast. Once their spell slots are expended, they can still attempt to tap into arcane forces or call on their god for aid, but what happens as a result is all up to fate.

I'm trying to make each table distinctive, representative of my take on each of these classes. For the magic-user, harnessing magical forces beyond their control is pretty much an all-or-nothing scenario. It either helps them or harms them; no matter how minor or major that effect is, it can never be neutral. On the other hand, my cleric table has a wide 8-12 space consisting of nothing but 'your god does not hear your prayers.' It's much more of a bell curve, with your god striking down great vengeance at the top and smiting your needy ass on the bottom.

Resulting product will be forthcoming for analysis and criticism as soon as I finish with 'em.

Homebrew for me and you

Right now, I'm balancing the prep work of two games: my library 4th edition game for new teen gamers and a potential old-school sandbox game for my college friends back in Ohio. None of us have ever played anything older than AD&D 2nd Edition, so this is going to be a learning experience for everyone involved.

The campaign world that I've been working on over the past few weeks is very much inspired by Jeff Rients' Cinder, Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Indiana Jones, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and other similarly pulpy adventure stories that don't take themselves too seriously. It's a little divergent from typical fantasy canon, but I'd like to think that it still has that 'D&D feel' to it. Just a little rougher. :)

Races

I'm kind of using a Basic Fantasy-esque approach to races. Basically, "the Dwarf here represents a dwarven fighter-type. If you want to be a dwarven thief or a dwarven cleric, let me know and I'll whip something up for you."

Humans: As per usual. The populous movers and shakers of the world. Can be any class (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, Thief)

Dwarves: Kind of like the Amish, really. Hard-working, closely knit communities, whether in the fields or in the cities. Encourage their young sons and daughters to experience the world before settling down, usually in the form of adventuring. Even if they don't return with riches and glory, returning alive is what matters most. Can be fighters, clerics and thieves.

Half-Elves: The elves of my setting are capricious and alien, heavily inspired by the 'Lords and Ladies' of the titular Discworld book. As a result, half-elves are often the product of a cruel sense of humor. Born to seduced or coerced parents, they retain the strange, magical nature and the fey features of their elven side. But almost everyone has heard stories of elves kidnapping children to serve as royal handmaidens or trapping hardworking people in Faustian bargains. Many of the older generation had friends and relatives in the kingdom of Bastian, before it was swallowed up by the woods one fateful day and claimed by the elves. Half-elves have to rely on their wits to survive, from the alleys of Shrapnel to the court intrigue of the City of Games. Half-elves use the same stats as standard S&W elves; they can choose between being a combination of fighter/magic-user, thief/magic-user or just a plain magic-user. Half-elves cannot choose to be non-magical. It's in their blood.

Goblins: There are, of course, two types of goblins. Your country goblins are the stereotypical 'let's kidnap all the village's livestock!' type. They're dangerous, unpredictable and often mindnumbingly stupid. But your city goblins are clever, efficient, blue-collar type guys who've gotten a lot of undue shit over the years. Occasionally, they can be really sneaky, mostly in shady cities like Shrapnel, where they've slowly but surely taken control of the city's underground utilities and many of its essential services. Country goblins can be clerics, fighters and thieves; city goblins can be fighters, magic-users (generally with a bent towards alchemy) and thieves.

Ogres: Just like people, some ogres are nice and some ogres want to destroy your village, set it ablaze and take everything of value back to their cave where they eat whatever didn't run away screaming. Most of society tends to judge the former by the latter's behavior. Which is a shame, as many ogres are actually quite affable, if a little thick. Most people tend not to point this out when you're 8 feet tall and have hands the size of hamhocks. Ogres can be fighters. Maybe clerics if you have a reeeally good backstory.

Dopplegangers: Inspired both appearance-wise and thematically by Eberron's Changelings and the 4th Edition version, as opposed to the Grey-looking earlier versions. Dopplegangers are natural spies and sneaks. Hell, if you can change your face to suit any occasion, you would be too. But oftentimes, the business of being other people will weigh heavy on the heart. Many dopplegangers in the big cities remain in their natural, pale-white and alien form, comfortable in the knowledge that even if people fear and mistrust them, they have an identity of their own. I haven't quite worked out the class restrictions on dopplegangers, but I know that I'll have to write up new experience tables regardless. Change Shape at-will is a doozy.

More to come...

My return to civilization, scenery included

Back to sweet home Pittsburgh after a week in the Adirondacks on vacation with my family, armed with a handful of Discworld books, a bunch of New York Times crosswords and the 1st and 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guides and Monster Manuals.

It'd been about 6 years since I last read any Terry Pratchett, but the City Watch books that I brought sparked a series of wonderful ideas in my head about a potential B/X-type D&D campaign, which percolated alongside Jeff Rients' Cinder campaign and the fantastic Sharn: City of Towers for Eberron and fired out something kind of remarkable. I have no idea what it's going to be called, but I really like where it's going. Tidbits include:

• Playable goblin, ogre and potentially doppleganger races.
• Losing halflings, gnomes (maybe) and orcs
  
• My first entries in a Rientsian Deck of Stuff, including a Dwarven Battle Stein.
• Shrapnel, where the guilds think they rule the city, the rich think they own the guilds and everybody else knows better.
• The City of the Cathedral, a walled city built around a massive cyclopean cathedral whose ancient origins remain unknown, even to its many occupants.
• A Catalog of Clockwork Creations, showcasing everything from alchemically-powered goblin robots to dwarven tomb guardians with intricately carved metal beards.

Once again, more to come...

Elesyian Fable

I work as a page at an inner-city library in Pittsburgh, mostly shelving books, helping people with computer issues and supervising the weekly Lego club. In the past week or so, I've been talking with my supervisor about potentially running a Dungeons and Dragons club for Teens in the early Fall once the school year has started again and the library needs programming. Naturally my mind first turns to the early editions of D&D that I've been discovering, but the more and more that I think about it, the more difficult I feel that it would be for modern teenagers to go head first and enjoy an unmodified game of B/X or AD&D. Kids today aren't inspired by cheap paperbacks, Star Wars, comic books or the art from Magic: the Gathering cards like I was when I first started role playing. If I asked one of my Lego club members what the fantasy genre means to them, I'd get answers that spread from video games to young adult novels to anime and manga.

NONE OF THIS IS A BAD THING. It just requires a different approach, one that I think a Basic D&D-inspired game could accomplish very well. A simple rule set, modular enough to allow every character from fighters to magicians to have something special up their sleeves, combined with a 'rulings, not rules' aesthetic, but incorporating elements from sources that kids would recognize and understand.

It's gonna have airships, quests to save the world, ridiculously named swords, the summoning of magical beasts and godly avatars, and hopefully, it'll be a great introduction to roleplaying for a group of kids who would probably never have come to it on their own.

And if that doesn't work, I'll use 4e Essentials. :)

(Picture from a cutscene in Final Fantasy IX)