Tankards & Broadswords

How About A Catapult?

2012-01-11T11:07:00.001-05:00

Quick post this morning to share a couple of .gifs that made me laugh out loud on an otherwise pretty dull Wednesday. This grooves nicely with the Lord of the Rings binge I've been on lately...

Part One...

and Part Two.

You have to view the pages one at a time because otherwise the .gifs start running on their own, and they need to be viewed sequentially.

Forget flying to Mordor on Giant Eagles...Boromir FTW!

Painted Miniature: Old School Ranger

2012-01-05T10:25:00.000-05:00

This miniature came to me from the same fellow who gave me the dwarf from the previous blog post. Unfortunately I completely forgot to take a "before" picture of the unpainted mini, but there wasn't much to get excited about except a somewhat battered lead figure.

Unlike the dwarf, I decided to paint this fellow in green shades, given his obvious ranger appearance. He's got a sword, a bow and arrows, and a very "Horn of Gondor"-like hunting horn. The clothes are all shades of Games Workshop greens, the horn is Bleached Bone (as are the arrows) banded with Dwarf Bronze. The hilt of the sword is also bronze. I gave the greens a wash of Thraka Green and his flesh tones and the horn a wash of Delvan Mud.

All in all I think he turned out...okay. Part of the problem with these old lead minis is it's SO easy for them to get dinged up, and this one spent about twenty years rattling around in the bottom of someone's painting case, and I don't think it was a terribly high-quality sculpt to begin with, but it does have a certain degree of homely character to it, and the model overall was fun to paint (I was listening to The Fellowship of the Ring audio dramatization while painting, so there was some good inspiration going on at the time.

Painted Miniature: Old School Dwarf Warrior

2011-12-14T09:43:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine was moving a couple of years ago, and in order to clear out some of his junk, he gave me a box of random miniatures and painting supplies. A lot of it was just junk that I wound up throwing away, but there were a few miniatures worth keeping. They sat in a drawer for a long while until recently, when I based them and decided I wanted to paint them up for the heck of it.

Here's the Dwarf Warrior. He's an old lead miniature, probably at least 20 years old. If someone recognizes the manufacturer, please let me know:

He's a gnarled, tired, battered old fellow, but his armor is in good repair, he's got a few good pouches, and his axe looks well used but still capable of chopping up goblin skulls. Here's the finished product:

I'm not a great painter, so bear with me here, but I really like how he turned out. I base coated him black, then painted his armor Boltgun Metal (I use Games Workshop paints...), making it look like chainmail. But I then gave it a black wash several times, darkening it to a blackened iron look, and brushed on a light coat of Dwarven Bronze. For the hair and beard, I layered on Shadow Grey, Fortress Grey, and finally a little highlighting with bleached bone. The leather items and the shield were all various layerings of Beastial Brown, Vermin Brown, and Snakebite Leather. The skin was Vermin Brown with Dwarf Flesh over that. Finally, I gave the whole miniature several good washes of Devlan Mud, which gives him a great dark, dirty, weathered look that, in my mind, brings the whole miniature together.

So there we are. I think this guy came out all right. I need to do a better job of basing him, covering up the gaps, probably adding a little rocky soil, but all in all I think the old fellow came out well.

Getting Back into the Gaming Groove

2011-10-14T10:09:00.000-04:00

Coming back to RPGs after a year or more of being on hiatus is weird, but I'm beginning to enjoy the process again. One of the things I've started working on is actual playtesting for the T&B RPG. I'm developing a magical "post-apocalyptic" mini-setting, which I'm calling "The Mad God's Sandbox". I'm populating it with a lot of less than bog-standard fantasy races; ratmen, lizardmen, birdmen, inscect-men, sentient undead and golems as non-human PC races. I'm trying to come up with some fun adventures and interesting ways in which I can play with the rules and see how they help or hinder gameplay.

The response I've gotten from the Delta Green adventure was very positive, and I hope to have a follow-up adventure in a few weeks. The players all seem to be attached to their pre-gens in one way or another, so at most I think there will be a little skill-tweaking and re-shuffling. Hopefully that game will continue on in a happy fashion.

I'm also trying to get back to working on my 40K miniatures. It has been over a year since I've played a game of 40K, but I've made some new gaming contacts and it'd be nice to get a game up and running soon. I recently went through and took stock of my models and what needed to be done to make some improvements, so I have my "work orders" planned out for the next few months.

Also, my old Castles & Crusades gaming group may be finally getting back together after more than a year and a half hiatus. That should be a lot of fun - if we all remember what we were doing when the game ended last time!

Anyhow, just wanted to pass along some updates and let the world know that the blog is still alive and kicking!

Finally Running a Delta Green Campaign!

2011-10-06T09:46:00.000-04:00

So after taking a long hiatus from RPGing in general, both development and gameplay, a friend of mine talked me into running a RPG campaign for a bunch of relatively new tabletop gamers. This crowd had varying levels of experience, from "a short D&D 3.5 campaign and that's it" for one player, to someone who'd basically made a Serenity RPG character...and that's about it. All of them had a good deal of board-game and miniatures gaming experience though, so they all understood things like using dice, how to process rules, and so forth.

I was worried when the subject of what kind of game to run came up, and I received the typical "I dunno, I don't really have a preference" responses. In my experience, when people give such an answer, what usually happens is that something is put together that about half the players don't like, and interest quickly flags after the first session or two. So I fired off a couple of e-mails detailing a few ideas, and the idea of a "modern conspiracy game akin to the X-Files" stuck. Hello, Delta Green!

I'd had the DG reprint (with the D20 rules, not that it really matters) for a couple of years, but my current gaming group hadn't really expressed any interest in running this game. On the other hand, I'd been itching to run a modern day occult/weird conspiracy game for ages, and now was my chance. I put together some writeups on the sort of world DG was set in, glossing over a lot of the Cthulhu-heavy aspects of the setting (most of the players are only passingly familiar with the Mythos anyhow). We decided to have a one-shot adventure with pre-generated characters, to see what people thought of the game play before diving into the conspiracy itself.

As a one-shot, I decided to hand the characters a "nautical adventure" and by that, I mean a "ghost ship" of sorts. A freighter drifting into the Boston harbor islands, boarded by the Coast Guard only to find the crew slaughtered. Of the six players, we had three FBI agents, two Boston Police Harbor Patrol, and one Coast Guard security specialist. The pre-generated characters were really only "half-gen"s; I rolled up the stats and assigned some points to skills, but then let players distribute the rest to their liking.

Quick back-up; I settled on Goblinoid Games' GORE RPG as the system of choice. I preferred BRP to the D20 system my edition of DG uses, but both the original CoC rules and the generic BRP rulebook I considered too involved for a bunch of almost complete RPG newbies. The GORE rules are simple, straightforward, easily tinkered with for any desirable results, and of course, mesh nicely with all the other CoC material I have on hand.

We played the adventure out in about three hours. There was some good investigation, and the players all immediately began asking good questions, falling into their respective roles, and everyone got along very well. As no one at the table knew any more than half of the other players, I was expecting at least one bad pairing, but overall the group chemistry seemed to flow smoothly. By the end of the game session, those people who didn't have to immediately run all went out for dinner and drinks, which is always a good sign.

As for the adventure, I think it went quite well. Turns out that three members of the ship's crew were exposed to a dangerous chemical being transported in one of the cargo holds. The tank of chemicals, along with a lot of high-tech scientific equipment, was being shipped from Europe to a research think-tank in the Boston area. Somehow, that tank was punctured (a strange, five-pointed puncture mark was found on the ruptured tank...) and the three crew members suffered the most direct exposure.

These members of the crew went psychotic, destroying the ship's propulsion controls, navigation, and communications gear, and then slaughtering the rest of the crew. Of the three, two were killed and one captured; the surviving crew member had barricaded himself in the chain room, huddled in a hastily drawn, pentagram-like circle, raving about the devil being trapped aboard the ship, and about preventing the ship from getting to shore. The game ended with the party dropping that crewman with a non-lethal beanbag round from a shotgun, and taking him off the ship. As for the "devil", the Coast Guard security team did find some strange scratch marks on the hull and railing of the ship...

From here on out, the game will have a mix of government conspiracy coupled with a heavy dose of the "weird". We'll only be meeting once a month, but I think this game is going to have some good promise.

On Sale Now: Rivalry - A Ghost Story

2011-08-11T15:12:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago, I had a dream about hunting ghosts in an old hotel. I occasionally have weird dreams like that, but this one was unusually creepy, and inspired me to come up with a short ghost story.

However, "Rivaly" isn't that story. Instead, what began as the main character's introduction and origin anecdote turned into a six-thousand word short story in and of itself. The story of "Rivalry" is based around, in part, a weird experience I had at a friend's house when I was in grade school. We kept thinking his house was haunted; it wasn't of course, but a couple of odd occurrences did spook our overactive imaginations.

It's rather amazing how little things that happen to you as a kid can have a strong impact on you decades later. And the bigger that trigger event is, the bigger the wallop can be later on in life. I'm no developmental psychologist, but I don't really buy into that whole "kids bounce back better" theory. Personally, I just think trauma at a young age buries the scars deeper and affects your life in the same way an underwater mountain can affect ocean currents, waves, and tides without anything being obvious on the surface of the water.

So with that in mind, I wrote "Rivalry". It is not a horror story, per se. Many classic "ghost stories" are not necessarily horrific. Most are creepy, unsettling, and by the end you give a shiver and find yourself a little less comfortable sitting alone at home late at night. Aficionados of the horror gaming genre may agree with my opinion that it is extremely hard to cause "horror" during a horror gaming session, but I have seen players become creeped out and unsettled. If you can give your players a case of the "heebie jeebies", then that's often reward enough for an evening's gaming. That was the objective I set out to meet with this story, and from all the feedback I've received, "Rivalry" comes pretty darn close to achieving that goal.

So if you enjoy a classic ghost story a la M.R. James or Sheridan Le Fanu, I invite you to give "Rivalry - A Ghost Story" a try. $0.99 at Amazon, approximately six thousand words. Perfect for a ten-minute read just before going to bed tonight, and who knows - with a little redesigning, maybe you can use it as inspiration for your next ghost-related horror gaming scenario?

Here's the description copy from the Amazon product page:

Owen is a kid fascinated by ghost stories, but he's never seen a ghost, or met anyone who has - until Doug moves into town. Owen soon learns that Doug's family is haunted by a ghost that follows them from town to town, an entity that can slam doors and throw coffee mugs, an entity that finds Doug's family no matter where they move.

Fascinated by his friend's haunting, Owen begs Doug to let him spend the night, hoping to have a ghostly encounter of his own. Doug reluctantly agrees to ask his parents' permission, but when Mike and Sharon say no, it's the ghost that throws the temper tantrum, forcing Doug's parents to agree to the sleepover.

Owen packs a "ghost hunting kit" and prepares for a weekend of thrilling supernatural encounters, but what he experiences will change his life forever...

Hatchet Force Journal Issue #1 On Sale Now

2011-06-20T18:27:00.003-04:00

Although I have been on a sort of T&B blogging hiatus for the last half year or so, I've been working on a lot of different projects. First among those is my thriller Killer Instincts, the first draft of which I have recently finished and am subjecting to its first critique. Beyond that, I've been working on research for a series of WW2 British Commando adventure stories, as well as doing a lot of blogging over at my Post Modern Pulps Blog.

However, the big news of the day is that I've just released my first e-journal, Hatchet Force Journal, on Amazon for the Kindle. It is a journal "celebrating stories of action and adventure", and I hope it will do for the serial action and adventure fiction fan community what periodicals like Fight On! did for the retro-gaming community. In fact, magazines like FO were the direct inspiration for HFJ, so I owe all of you a big thank you for showing me it can be done.

So I invite all of you who have any interest in action and adventure fiction to go out there and give Hatchet Force Journal a try. If you don't have a Kindle, most smart phones have Kindle apps, and you can install the Kindle Reader on both PCs and Macs for free. At $2,99, I think there is a lot of quality material in there (if I do say so myself).

Warhammer 40K: The Assault on Morkandy Beach

2011-06-06T11:40:00.001-04:00

In remembrance of D-Day, I present to my readers the battle report for a Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame scenario that my good friend Darkwing and I came up with a number of years ago.

We decided to play out a "Normandy Beach" scenario, with the Imperial Guard assaulting and the Orks defending. This became a rather massive undertaking, with an enormous 9' x 5' table and a "beachhead" terrain piece built by Darkwing just for this battle.

The most common "complaint" we've gotten about the battle report was that people thought it should be the Orks assaulting, with the Imperial Guard defending. This is one of the reasons we did not play it out that way - too stereotypical. In addition, this was a story about Normandy Beach, and the brave men who stormed the beach to win France back from the Nazis. We felt it was much more thematically appropriate to use the Guard as the attackers and the Orks as the defenders.

Here is the battle report's opening page. You can click through turn-by-turn using the links at the bottom of each page. Here's the Arcadia Prime Blog entry for the battle report, where you can read the comments and leave one of your own if you're so inclined.

Warhammer 40,000 Players, Brace Yourselves

2011-05-27T10:22:00.002-04:00

Amidst all the hand-wringing and groaning over the price hikes and switch to resin rather than metal for a lot of Games Workshop miniatures, I was sent this link and it makes me cackle with violence-loving glee.

Games Workshop's video game history was somewhat low-key until Dawn of War came out, and then things heated up in a BIG way. Dawn of War II came out a couple of years ago, and now we see that Space Marine is on it's way. Although this will be just essentially a "third person shooter", it's going to be, well, I'll let this video do the talking:

The saddest part is, my laptop is getting a little long in the tooth (over three years old) and although I bought it with a very nice graphics card at the time, those times they are a moving right along, and I may need another platform before I can run SM in all its glory.

But hey, that's what paychecks are for, right?

Best DnD Session That Never Actually Happened

2011-05-09T11:09:00.002-04:00

If Dungeons and Dragons was ever actually this fun, I think I'd quit my job and sell babies on the black market just so I could play D&D more often.

And for those of you who have no idea this is a parody, here's the original by the Far East Movement:

Book Review: THE DEAD MAN #3 Hell in Heaven

2011-05-04T14:17:00.002-04:00

Over at the Post-Modern Pulps Blog, my other home on the Web where I talk about all things pulp-fiction-y, I've just put up a review of the third DEAD MAN book. Rather than repeat it all, I'll just provide a link to the review:

Book Review: THE DEAD MAN #3 Hell in Heaven

I will however copy a bit of my review here, to show it's applicability for the Sword & Sorcery fans who typically read my blog:

By tapping into the sort of stories written by Howard and Leiber that I feel defined the 30's Sword & Sorcery pulps, and a generation later the post-modern pulps of such writers as Gardner Fox and Karl Wagner, Hell in Heaven further cements THE DEAD MAN series as a crossroads of pulp action, a storyline open and flexible enough to accommodate any niches or sub-genres. This means that as each new author comes in to write the next volume in the series, they have the artistic license to approach the story from the angle they find the most comfortable, ensuring a lot of variety and quality in these stories for a long time to come.

Swing by the PMP Blog and give the rest of the review a read...

Modern Horror Fans - You Need to Meet THE DEAD MAN

2011-04-05T12:59:00.002-04:00

I've had the great opportunity to read and review the first two installments of writer Lee Goldberg's new serial adventure series, THE DEAD MAN.

I've been asked to avoid any spoilers, so I'll just say that the plot involves a young man who suffers a traumatic event, and afterward, finds himself exposed to a mysterious secret he never knew existed. To quote the Amazon.com page for THE DEAD MAN - Face of Evil:

Matthew Cahill is an ordinary man leading a simple life...until a shocking accident changes everything. Now he can see a nightmarish netherworld of unspeakable evil and horrific violence that nobody else does...

For Cahill, each day is a journey into a dark world he knows nothing about...a quest for the answers to who he is and what he has become...and a fight to save us, and his soul, from the clutches of pure evil.

You can read the full review I wrote for Face of Evil here on the Post Modern Pulps Blog. This review was so well received that I was asked to read and review the second installment in the series, Ring of Knives. You can find my RoK review here.

And the review of Lee Goldberg's newly-republished 80's vigilante thriller JUDGMENT can be found here. Goldberg is putting out newly revised versions of the JURY series soon, in both single issues (including the fourth book, which never saw print) and an omnibus version. I can't wait to get my hands on them and get a review out - really fun stuff.

Since I know there are a lot of fans of action novels as well as modern horror / adventure / fantasy who read T&B, I figure some of you might find this new series interesting. As I stated in my review of RoK:

After having read the first two installments of DEAD MAN, I feel I can say with some confidence that this is the future of serial adventure fiction; short, snappy page-flippers that provide a solid hour (or two, or three) of exciting literary entertainment delivered right to you instantly through the Internet. As long as prices continue to stay low and quality continues to remain high, I see the DEAD MAN series having a long and successful publication run, the pioneer for what is sure to be many more serials to come. This is going to become, in more ways than one, a return to the era of the classic serial pulps, and I for one couldn't be happier.

For those of you who are interested in independent eBook publishing, but don't know if you can muster the fortitude to write a whole novel - here you go. This is going to be the tip of the spearhead movement towards serial adventure short novel fiction, monthly 15-25K adventures for a low price that you can buy, download, and read as soon as they are available.

I'll be keeping you posted as these events unfold.

Embracing Indie eBook Publishing

2011-01-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

As of this week, I've made the decision that when (not if) I finish the book I'm currently writing, I will publish it as an eBook through Amazon and B/N's self publishing portals.

I've come to this decision for four reasons.

1. I'm tiring out. Writing part-time while there are a million other things vying for my attention drags this process out to an intolerable degree, and once it's done, I simply don't have the stamina to then spend months - hell, years - finding an agent and a publisher who'll take my novel. I just can't wait that long. The way I see it, writing for publication is like gambling; you can play the short odds and be careful and amass a small but tidy sum cautiously, or you can keep throwing money on the long odds and hope that someday - someday! You will win it big. I see Indie ePublishing as the short odds, and traditional publishing as trying to win the lottery. And for the record, I don't play the lottery.

2. Electronic Self-Publishing is here to stay, and I want to ride the wave while it's still growing. What was considered a "vanity press" idea ten or fifteen years ago is now becoming a viable alternative to finding a publisher. This is something indie game publishers have know for a while now, but non-game book publishing is taking a while to catch onto the idea that someone being able to publish their own work != the downfall of the literary world. This was the case of all the Web 2.0 technologies as they came along, taking the ability to "publish to the world" out of the hands of certain gatekeeping individuals and giving that power to the masses. Yes, it's given us some stupid crap on the internet (okay, a LOT of stupid crap), but it's also created some truly amazing things as well. If you're one of those "All People Are Idiots!" folks, the ability for just anyone to write a novel and potentially have someone pay to read it is anathema to you. But on the other hand, five years ago, I thought "blogging" was stupid, and here I am. A year ago I thought Twitter was stupid, and yet, I'm on it, Tweeting away. People make money blogging and Tweeting, too. People even make a living teaching others how to blog and Tweet, shockingly enough. Journalism, Film (see: Youtube et al), and now Fiction publishing is all shifting to a Web 2.0 paradigm; it's Publishing 2.0, and it is only going to get bigger.

3. Indie ePublishing suits what I want to write. Quality aside, I honestly do not think there is a viable market for what I want to write in today's dead-tree publishing paradigm; the short serial action thriller as was popular back in the 60's - 80's in titles like The Executioner, The Death Merchant, Able Team, Longarm, The Ninja Master, The Survivalist, the Richard Blade series, Casca the Eternal Warrior, and so on. There have been dozens of these titles over the years, cheap "post-modern pulp" paperback novels out of those few decades selling for $2-3, averaging less than two hundred pages and 50-80K word lengths. These books were enormously popular at the time, and I think the sort of serial fiction they provided is still viable, but no one is going to see the profit in that kind of publishing in today's print fiction market, at least not outside of Young Adult fiction (which I don't write...yeah no). On the other hand, a short novel format would be perfectly acceptable - even preferable, on an eReader, and the price point hasn't changed much, either.

And finally, one last big reason. I want to be paid to write. I've been writing fiction since grade school. I might not be a great writer - I might not even be a "pretty good" writer, but I am a passable writer, and the more I write, the better I get. I've got ideas, I have some modicum of talent, and if properly motivated, I can produce copy quickly. But the motivation is the key, and my motivation right now, as I close in on my mid-30's, is income. I'm not satisfied with my current job, but it pays better than some, and that keeps me locked in. If I could supplement my income with a small but steady stream of royalty payments, it would be both encouraging and pleasing to the pocketbook, and I could consider a less stressful job even if it meant a pay cut, in order to put myself into a better frame of mind for writing. And Indie ePub money - that's money now, as in within a year, not fantasy dream lottery money that I might get if I'm one that one single writer out of every ten thousand potential new fiction writers that gets picked up for distribution by one of the Big Six, and then waits another year to eighteen months before my book hits the shelves. There are fiction writers out there in the hot genres - not a lot of writers, but a fair few - who have seen real, I-can-do-something-with-this amounts of money within just a few months of putting their eBooks up for sale, and we are talking rookie authors who are doing it all by the skin of their teeth and the sweat of their brows.

I'll conclude this little soapboxing session with the link to the blog that's turned me around on this idea: J.A. Konrath's "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing". I read an anthology of hitman stories edited by Konrath a few months ago, "These Guns For Hire", and having looked him up, I now see that he is a very big proponent of "Indie Publishing" as he likes to put it (sound familiar, gamers?), and his blog has become a rallying point for Indie authors who have started to make a living publishing their own eBooks. Anyone who's interested in self-publishing fiction - or anything, really - should read through his blog.

And with that, back to the typewriter...

Matt Forbeck is a Very Smart Guy

2010-12-13T20:30:00.003-05:00

Because a lot of what he says about gaming fiction and the art of the media tie-in novel falls into the realm of what I was trying to pass along during my "A Writer Writes" series of articles, which can be found here:

Part One.

Part Two.

Part Three.

Part Four.

Please read Forbeck's Escapist articles here:

Days of High Adventure: Gaming Fiction

and

Days of High Adventure: The Art of Writing Tie-In Fiction.

and

Days of High Adventure: How to Write a Tie-In Novel.

Back to our regularly-scheduled hiatus.

On Indefinite Hiatus, Writing A Novel

2010-12-08T21:10:00.002-05:00

Subject line pretty much says it all. I'm about halfway through a thriller / revenge / action novel that I've been working on for about six months now, and I'm at the point where, if I can get in roughly 500-1000 words a day for the next two months, I can finish the first draft.

Since I've pretty much been living and breathing action and pulp novels and movies this whole period of time, I have really set gaming aside and focused on the task at hand. Many apologies to my readers, but I've been able to spread my creative energy only so thin, and the T&B has had to take a back seat to the novel.

And for the record, it's not sci-fi, it's not fantasy, it's not horror, and it has no connection to any RPG or RPG setting I've ever come in contact with. Congratulations to me for not utterly ignoring my own advice regarding writing and RPGs!

I'll still resurface now and then, but for now, the Tavern is Closed for Renovations.

Commando RPG Not Dead, Just Reloading

2010-11-23T09:12:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to get out a quick morning post to say that work continues, slowly but surely, on my Commando RPG project. The player's documentation is more or less completed as a draft document, and the arms and equipment guide is perhaps a third complete.

Right now the focus is on preparing the operations manual, and for this I have purchased, and am slowly plowing through, a stack of Osprey titles covering the OSS, the SOE, British Commandos, the French Maquis, and more - it's quite the slushpile.

My movie viewings are also continuing; I've got The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far on deck right now, with more to take their place once the viewing is done. Sadly, once the fall came about, I lost a lot of my free time, and the RPG development cycle slowed to an almost-halt.

And that's pretty much it. Apologies to those whose blogs I usually read and comment on; haven't had a chance to do much blog-reading (or any leisure reading, period) lately, but I hope everyone out there is continuing to do good work.

How I View The Essence of Drama

2010-11-11T09:00:00.002-05:00

So, something I've been thinking about for some time now, but I finally put it together in my mind a few weeks ago. The idea stuck with me so strongly that I made it my first Tweet (sound of gagging, insert here).

"The essence of real drama is good people making bad choices. If a writer can make this work, they will never go wrong."

There's a reason I watch the television I watch. I like most of the original dramas on FX; The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, Sons of Anarchy, Damages, Justified. I also like Californication, Dexter, and Weeds. I'll leave the HBO historicals (Rome, Deadwood, Carnivale) for another time.

The common thread that runs through most of these shows is: Good People Making Bad Choices.

Firemen, doctors, lawyers, police officers, federal marshals - all "authority figures" who, in a better world, would be uniformly considered "pillars of the community". But in these shows, they are all flawed creatures who in one aspect of their personalities, are Good People, but because of their flaws, make Bad Choices. Even the darker characters in shows like Sons of Anarchy or Dexter are not necessarily Evil People, but rather people who have made Bad Choices in their lives and are dealing with the consequences and making the best of a bad situation. Even the troubled writer in Californication and the suffering soccer mom of Weeds are Good People at their cores who have made Bad Choices and trying to set their lives straight.

What is it about this concept that appeals to me? Well, the way I see it, you have four choices in writing. First is Good People Making Good Choices, which can work for a while, but then gets either unrealistic, tiresome, or both. Next you have Bad People Making Bad Choices, which, well, works for Bret Easton Ellis, but not for most other people. There's also Bad People Making Good Choices, but if you're not just constantly re-inventing the Redemption Story, eventually your Bad People become Good People and they need to start making Bad Choices in order to keep things interesting.

Which leaves Good People Making Bad Choices. In my mind, this combines two strong pulls for the reader / viewer. First off, most of us consider ourselves - or at least WANT to consider ourselves - Good People in some sense of the term. We might grumble about the cost of something in a store, but we don't just go and steal it. We squawk about "the crooks in government", but we still pay our taxes and vote. We shake our fists at the idiots on the road, but we're not welding armor plate on the front of our cars and bolting a .50 belt-fed to the roof.

Second, we all make Bad Choices. We tell lies from time to time that get us into trouble. We score some beer for our underage brother, we cut someone off on the freeway because we're having a bad day and cause a minor accident, we drink too much, or touch when we should just look, or any one of a hundred "Ooopsies!" that haunt us for the rest of our lives to one degree or another and for which we must constantly atone.

So yeah, maybe we're not a LA homicide detective who makes deals with the devil of urban crime in order to keep it spilling further into the streets, getting more and more entwined with the criminal activities until we don't know which way is up. But we've all had times where one bad choice leads to us needing to make another bad choice to keep the first choice from blowing up in our faces...and so it goes. It's not the actual characters and situations that draw us in, it's the dramatic friction that we can relate to in our own lives. Vic Mackey is, at his dramatic core, a good man who trades in lesser evils to prevent greater evils, and struggles to hold together a family while at the same time paying the emotional price for his secrets. Looked at in that light, his nature and circumstances become a lot more approachable to the average viewer.

At the end of the day, we all have our preferences for fiction and the kinds of conflict and drama found within. But for me, characters who are good at their core, but suffer for their transgressions and live with the consequences are the most interesting.

Whoring Myself on Twitter

2010-11-10T09:20:00.004-05:00

For the longest time, I was utterly adverse to the idea of Twitter. The concept of "micro-blogging" every aspect of my life - this coffee is too hot, my belt doesn't match my shoes, this line is soooo long - made me gag a little. Even when I began blogging here a couple of years ago, there was a bit of self-loathing at the thought that I had become a "blogger", with all the negative connotations of self-absorption and narcissism that came along with it. The thought of using Twitter just magnified those feelings tenfold.

But I've been "tweeting" now since just before Halloween, and I see the appeal. A lot of little things come to mind that, for one reason or another, I feel like sharing, but consider the ideas too trivial or off-topic to post on any of my blogs. I guess I'm one of those people who feels that writing a blog entry isn't just about throwing out a couple of sentences (as evidenced by the prattle above), but writing a coherent essay of sorts on the topic at hand.

With Twitter, however, if you've got an idea or comment you want to share (and can fit it into 140 characters or less), it only takes a moment and out it goes. There is of course the danger of over-sharing, and I dread the day I've got a phone smart enough to make tweeting on the go an easy proposition (my phone can do it, but it's not a simple matter). But for now, a handful of thoughts a day can be passed along to interested parties, to be ignored or read at their discretion.

So, if you want to be one of those interested parties, you can now follow me on Twitter. A word of warning; I don't really talk about gaming, but mostly books, movies, liquor, food, guns, writing, television - these days it seems like anything BUT gaming. I'm sure it'll come up, but I often find more interest in talking about those things tangential to gaming rather than the hobby itself.

Anyhow, you've been forewarned...

November is Writing Month For Me

2010-11-02T10:07:00.002-04:00

So many things to write, so little time.

I'm sure every other would-be novelist on the planet is aware that it's National Novel Writing Month right now. It's also apparently National Blog Posting Month, which I didn't know about until a friend of mine posted the first of her NaBloPoMo posts yesterday. Unfortunately for me, it's also the start of the real crunch time for my grad school term project, and since this class is firmly seated in the middle of that big round ceramic bowl we all know so well, pulling off an acceptable grade is going to take some real elbow grease.

In other news, I changed the format of this blog some, to make use of Blogger's templates and come more in line with the designs of my other two blogs. And, after two and a half years, I figured it was time for a change. I don't know if I'm 100% happy with the look of the blog right now - I might do another title graphic - but it'll do until I drum up something better.

Even though I've got schoolwork to attend to, I still want to write. I'm 20K words into a fictional work right now that I'm actually very happy about. I know that Novel Writing Month encourages people to get through 50K words, but since A) that's not going to happen, and B) I'm not officially participating anyhow, I think I'll simply make an effort to double what I have by the end of the month. Even if I don't achieve that goal, it'll help me get a lot more meat on those bones.

I also hope this month to get through some more blogging. I've sorely neglected both this blog and my other two outlets, and although I don't think much of what I'll be writing about is going to be gaming-related, I hope that it will still have some relevance. I hope to have another few posts, mostly on writing and fictional conflict, sometime in the next week or so.

Oh, and I took the plunge and opened a Twitter account. I'm not really a Tweeter, but now and then things come to mind I'd like to share that don't warrant a blog post. I've set myself up to follow a few RPGers and a few people I know, and eventually I may make the link more available. We shall see.

Until then, just remember: a writer writes, always.

Commando RPG Update

2010-10-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Between a new graduate class and working towards acquiring a new job, I haven't been able to get much accomplished in terms of RPG work over the last two weeks. I will provide some updates, though:

- I've been watching World War II movies like a madman. The Operations Manual is going to have a pretty extensive section on resource materials, and one of these is going to be a rather sizable filmography. I'm not going to focus on every single WW2 movie ever made; for the purposes of the core RPG, I'm focusing primarily on movies that take place in and around the European / North African theater, and involving mostly small unit, commando, or espionage actions. If / when I do supplements, I'll develop a separate section of reference materials for those.

- I've always thought of them mostly as "Books to get your Napoleonic Soldiers in the right uniform color schemes", but the Osprey military series of books have been an invaluable resource. I've been buying them just about as fast as I can read them right now. Also, apparently they are releasing a new series of books on individual weapons that had a great impact on military history - very cool.

- I recently downloaded and skimmed through the WW2 RPG "Behind Enemy Lines". I downloaded my PDF through DriveThruRPG, and it's a Mystique Enterprises reprint of a 1982 FASA RPG. Wow. At some point I'll have to write a more comprehensive review of this game, but it is a perfect example of those early 80's, high-realism, rule-for-everything, extremely over-engineered RPGs. I think it's a well-made RPG, but hopelessly complicated in terms of what I'd want to play. Still, contains a lot of good information.

- Although I only purchased and played through it once this summer, I went back and replayed most of Call of Duty 2 a week or so ago. It was good to play it again after doing so much work on Commando, because I could eye the game from the perspective of "How does this video game relate to what I'm creating"? As an example, take rifles. You've got the British Lee-Enfield, the Kar 98K, and the Springfield 1903 - all bolt action rifles of relatively similar size, caliber, and operation. If a soldier of any of the three main armies picked up any of these, within a few minutes he could fight with it without much confusion at all.

In a game as "big-grained" as mine is, the tiny little nuances that differentiated these three weapons from each other are pretty much meaningless. A full-powered bolt-action military rifle is pretty much going to do the same thing the same way as any other full-powered bolt-action military rifle. Much the same will go to the many various pistols and submachine guns that will be available; some will have slightly different stats one way or the other, but none of these weapons will be particularly ground breaking; the idea is that they are different because one is a German MP-40 and the other is a British Sten MK II, not because of some difference in damage ratings or combat ranges. Ultimately, this means that the sorts of weapons a character picks are based less on "which submachine gun does the most damage" but rather "which is the coolest / fits my character best".

- I have debated long and hard over just how to "package" this game. I will probably release it as a PDF, since that's simple and easy to do. The major debate in my mind is whether or not to design the PDF for printing or for use on a computer screen. And, if for printing, should it be 8.5" x 11", or done as a book fold? Questions questions. I'm thinking the initial release might be done as a computer-formatted PDF, complete with (at least some) internal and external hyperlinks. At the very least, it could be printed out in an awkward manner. And yes, I will avoid using Courier New as the body font. Instead, I'll probably use a neat typewriter font (like the teaser poster uses) for titles and headers and the like, and do the rest in some other more readable font.

What do people think? For the initial release (the "1.0" version), should it just be a computer-friendly PDF, a print-friendly PDF, or something else entirely? I did have an idea at one point to make a pure "Notepad-formatted" .txt file just for the fun of it (courier new whether you like it or not), but that might get me thrown out of the party...

Designing Commando the PHB / DMG Way

2010-09-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

I've always been fond of the PHB / DMG design idea. I think any game that is designed at least in part so that it is accessible to new or non-gamers should be broken down between "material that the player needs in order to make and use their character" and "everything else". This is not to say that the "DMG" needs to be a secret document only GMs should own, but rather that a player should have no need to read it in order to play the game, especially if they are a new player or a very casual gamer who isn't really interested in learning all the rules.

I decided to take my own advice when writing Commando. The game is broken down into two main documents; the Operative's Handbook and the Operations Manual. The Handbook is everything the player needs to:

A) Get a 35,000 foot overview of what the game is about.
B) Understand the basic mechanics behind the system and how to use them.
C) Create a character and prepare the character for adventures.

The Manual is, well, everything else; optional rules for characters, gameplay and combat, how to plan and create adventures that fit the sort of gameplay that Commando was created to achieve, reference materials such as books, movies, and even video games or other RPGs, and much more.

When considering my "PHB / DMG" method of design, I decided to take a look at those two books and see if I was actually making sense when I came up with my theory. Looking at the roughly 120 page PHB, I see right away that roughly half of it is spells, about 60 pages. If I cut that away, the game is about 40 pages of actual rules, roughly 3/4ths character creation and 1/4th "playing the game". The remaining 20 or so pages are appendices and reference sheets of questionable value.

Meaning that if you cut out magic spells and some of the tacked on appendices, the PHB is really just ~30 pages of how to make a character and ~10 pages of how to play the game. Thus far, I'm actually fairly on track (not in terms of page count, but rather in terms of subject matter).

Turning to the DMG, which is ~230 pages, I see that roughly 80 cover alternate, advanced, or expanded rules for characters and gameplay, then 80-ish pages dealing with campaigns and adventures, and roughly 70 pages of appendices covering various random pieces of information (including reference materials). Again, this seems to groove with what I'm creating; the Operations Manual is about one third expanded gameplay, one third adventure and campaign creation material, and one third appendices such as what will definitely be a rather large section on reference material.

There will be a third "core" document serving as a much expanded arms and equipment guide. The Handbook has very brief descriptions and statlines for a selection of common weapons, but the A/E Guide will be much more comprehensive and include vehicles as well. Not exactly a "monster manual"; all the bad guys are included in the campaign and adventure portion of the Operations Manual, so it's sort of a switcheroo. And, if you want, you could certainly consider an MG-42, 88mm Cannon, or a King Tiger tank as "monsters" if you really wanted.

So this little bit of investigation and comparison makes me feel...vindicated? I'm not sure about vindicated, but I do feel at least like I'm moving in the right direction. I've always favored the two book method of RPG design over one "big core book", half of which is unnecessary for the player. That the progression of my own two book method is following roughly in the footsteps of the original duo makes me happy.

Commando RPG Table of Contents

2010-09-12T14:13:00.005-04:00

I'm 10,000 words into this RPG as of today. I'm estimating another 1-2,000 in the Operative's Handbook, and another 5-8,000 in the Operations Manual. The Armory, Equipment, & Motor Pool Guide is going to be something I work on separate to the RPG itself; I'll only be working on it once the two-part Player / GM books are finished.

The Operative's Handbook is rather short - it's only going to contain the bare minimum of information needed to introduce the player to the setting, help them create a suitable character, and lay down the basics of mechanical gameplay and combat, as well as provide statlines for a handful of weapons.

The bulk of the RPG focuses on the Operations Manual, primarily expanding on rules that the players don't need to worry about when starting the game, as well as advice on how to plan and run the missions, statlines for the bad guys, and a listing of reference materials for both players and GMs. If you want a comparison, look at the 1st edition D&D PHB and DMG and compare the sizes of the two; then remove all the spells from the PHB, and compare them again.

Here is the 1 1/2 page table of contents as it now stands. I'm sure it will change and expand as time goes on, but I see there everything I think I need to include, at least in version 1.0 of this RPG. If people can think of something they feel is missing, please let me know. Also, keep in mind that the page counts are deceptive; I've filled out some sections completely, others only partially, while still others just have a header as a placeholder for the ToC.

Commando Will Be A Cinematic RPG

2010-09-02T10:38:00.003-04:00

I take issue with the way most people refer to the term "Cinematic" when talking about RPGs. The tendency is to call a game "Cinematic" because every other combat involves spinning helicopter kicks and gun kata-fu and people broad-jumping from the rooftop of one skyscraper to another, and other such monumentally over-the-top shenanigans.

I don't believe this is the correct use of the term, or at least, I don't feel it's being applied properly across the board. Using "the Internet", I dug around for a second or two and found what I think is a good definition of "Cinematic".

Definition of CINEMATIC
1
: of, relating to, suggestive of, or suitable for motion pictures or the filming of motion pictures (cinematic principles and techniques)

Now, this means something specific to me in terms of RPGs. I feel this suggests that "Cinematic" gaming means treating the tone, style, and overall flow of a game session, campaign, or adventure as you would the creation of a story as told through film.

Furthermore, I feel it means that the GM and players need to decide what sort of film genre, tone, and style to apply to their "movie", and act appropriately. Note that this doesn't mean an action/adventure RPG needs to automatically look like a John Woo movie; you could decide your game feels more like a Jason Bourne movie, or something Tarantino or Peckinpah might direct.

So in creating Commando, I decided that this game would be "Cinematic" in the same vein as all the classic war thrillers I'm using as inspirational material; Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, as well as newer movies such as Black Book and Valkyrie. These movies don't have guys diving across a room with a blazing SMG in each hand while there's an explosion in the background; they are taunt, dramatic war movies with good action and a tight plot, and some of it might be a little bit over the top (because the nature of some of these missions is pretty incredible), but not so far as to make you annoyed in its unbelievability. For example, when Gregory Peck scales the cliff in The Guns of Navarone, it doesn't look like something out of Cliffhanger.

So I'm curious to see what other people think of the term "Cinematic", and whether they agree with my interpretation, or avoid the term altogether because of the stigma it has acquired.

Thoughts?

My New RPG Project

2010-08-30T10:34:00.009-04:00

Many apologies for being absent from here for over a month. Work has been busy (training a new co-worker), and I've been working on doing some fiction writing over the last few weeks, as well as plunging headlong into a whole mess of Netflix rentals and going back to watch a few DVDs from off my shelves.

I've also been working on a new RPG project over the last couple of weeks. It sort of grew out of my current writing project, but it's really been in the back of my mind since I passed over my draft of the T&B RPG to Rob Lang at the Free RPG Blog. Rob's biggest criticism of the game was that, when all was said and done, there was very little to make it interesting or special, nothing to set it apart from all the dozens, nay hundreds, of "medium crunch generic fantasy / general purpose role-playing games".

I had to agree with Rob, and have been spending a lot of time pondering a suitable vehicle for the rules, ideas simmering on the back-burner of my creative stovetop. Something that hasn't been seen a lot, something that'd be fun to play, use some interesting rules, but not over-burden or over-complicate matters.

I think I've finally found that game.

More to come...

Where Has The Time Gone?

2010-07-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

I've got to apologize for a lack of traffic here this month. I've actually been spending a lot of time immersing myself in reading a lot of espionage and "men's adventure" fiction, and haven't been contemplating RPG or minis-related subjects. While I try not to box this blog in too much, I know most of the readers here aren't that interested in the Death Merchant or The Butcher or Nick Carter, Killmaster.

I've been doing quite a bit of posting over at my resurrected Post Modern Pulps Blog, and while I am certainly not abandoning this blog, I am taking some time to flesh out the other blog some more since it sat defunct for 2 1/2 years. I've also started a fun and not terribly serious mixology-related blog called The Manhattan Project, where I talk about mixing drinks and drinking and fine dining in and around the greater Boston area.

I ran another Castles & Crusades game a couple of weekends ago, and in another couple of weeks I'll have a followup game. A session every one to two months seems to be about the limit for my player base, and given a lot of other weekend projects and commitments, it's about the best I can expect in the foreseeable future.Sometime, hopefully soon, I'll have to bring my C&C binder in to work so I can scan in all the new session-notes-as-illustrations my newest player has provided me for the last half-dozen sessions. They are a lot of fun and the players all look forward to seeing his depictions of their shenanigans.

I've also fallen very far behind in my 40K miniatures painting, something I feel bad about. For whatever reason, I seem to enjoy assembling and converting my minis a lot more than painting them, so I have scads of assembled miniatures in desperate need of a paint job. Hopefully when the weather cools a little more I will be able to get into painting mode once again.

I'm coming off a week and a half of vacation, and I realize now that in the last two weeks, I've read six novels. I know I don't read as much as I used to, and while on vacation I made a special effort to dig in and find a lot of time to just sit back and enjoy a good book (or six). None of them are fantasy or sci-fi related, and over time I'll hopefully put up short reviews on my PMP blog.

Finally, while I still very much want to do a Mythic Greek playtest adventure for the T&B RPG, I think the first playtest adventure I run should be nothing but the basic rules and low-tech gear. I am considering a Roman-era adventure set after the building of Hadrian's wall, featuring a band of Roman soldiers (and possibly some native allies) "going north" to rescue a kidnapped Roman nobleman. Not sure when I'll have any time to run this, but it's something I'm going to be keeping in the back of my mind now.

A Time of Ancient Gods

2010-07-06T09:38:00.006-04:00

So I've solidified my idea regarding the playtest setting for my Tankards and Broadswords RPG. I want to use a "Mythic/Heroic Greek Era" setting based strongly on the more fantastical aspects of Greek Mythology.

Now, have no fears that this setting will be, in any way, historically accurate in the sense that you could pin it down on a real-world timeline. In my mind, a "mythic" setting like this, while set technically in the real world, is apart from our normal historical timeframe and therefore, in many ways, "floats" along the timeline.

In many ways, this is something I actually liked a lot about the Hercules and Xena TV series'. Over the course of all seasons, you see everyone from Jason (of Argonauts fame) and Odysseus right up through Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. Now, excluding "mythic" people like Jason (or Hercules himself), you're still talking a 1,200 year plus timeline between the fall of Troy and the fall of the Roman Republic.

But the folks at Renaissance Pictures didn't really care, and I don't really either. It's kind of silly to ask "where do you historically place Hercules?" when he's an entirely fictitious character in the first place. The idea was to have the main characters interact with all sorts of people and places throughout the ancient world, so that's what happened. If you want to argue historical accuracy...did you not watch the trailers for these shows? Gods, monsters, magic, giants...some how this is all okay, but having Xena meet both Cleopatra and Odysseus is a deal breaker?

Moving on, a few thoughts I have for the playtest campaign materials...

- Warriors, Rogues, and Scholars work as normal. Warriors are going to be pretty self-explanatory, and Rogues will also be pretty doable (although with probably a lot less lock-picking). Scholars will typically be magicians and priests, although a Scholar who doesn't use magic is perfectly doable as an herbalist healer or academically-inclined explorer.

- Armor will probably be confined to Light and Medium weights. Light armor will probably be some kind of linothorax or cured leather body armor, while Medium armor will be your classic Hoplite-style bronze back-and-breast, greaves, helmet, and armored leather loin-guard. I considered a Dendra Panoply style heavy armor, but in my mind that goes against the "Heroic" feel of the setting. Shields will of course be ubiquitous - almost every warrior who can use one, will have one.

- Weapons will be kept simple. Bow, Club (a big heavy bronze-bound "Hercules club" type weapon, not a simple cudgel), Dagger, Javelin, Sling, Spear, Staff, Sword. If players really want to incorporate another weapon we can work it out (perhaps a trident or an axe), but by and large these should take care of things.

- For half a character's starting Character Tokens, a character can be the child of one of the major Olympian gods. The bonuses will be, in total, greater than the cost of the bonuses if purchased on their own, packaged together based on the god or goddess in question. I probably won't do up a package for each deity, but could create them on request.

- I will keep magic fairly simple. A spell list for each of the four elements, one for divination, one for necromancy, one each for healing, weather, plants, and animals. I might come up with one or two more, but for the most part it will be a much more limited selection than what would be a stock fantasy roster of spell lists.

- A collection of Mythic Greek monsters. I already have a few similar creatures in my Monsters & Minions catalog, so porting them over will be easy. However, a number of classic monsters still need to be statted up.

So much to do, so little time to work on it all...

Tankards and Broadswords RPG Ready For Playtesting

2010-07-01T16:18:00.004-04:00

So after a lot of puttering around and poking at the thing, I think it's finally time to playtest the game. Most of the basic rules for character creation are finished, my weapons and armor rules are done, I have a fair amount of both monsters and magic to throw at any perspective playtest characters. It's now really just a matter of running a playtest game now. Here's what the cover currently looks like:

First, I need to convince my regular Castles & Crusades players to take time off from a session to run a T&B game. This will be difficult since most of them aren't really "gamers" who find new systems all that interesting - if you give them one method for clubbing goblins and taking their stuff, why do they need another method? This is a problem that's plagued casual gamers for decades now, and the answer can still be elusive.

Second, I need to come up with a good scenario. Something that will test the system but won't overly tax the players' ability to understand the rules. I'm considering a fantasy scenario, but honestly that might just take up time getting their head into what's going on rather than playing the adventure and learning the system. A historical or modern game might be fun, but then the magic can't really play into it unless it's a "fantastical history" game. One thought that has crossed my minds is a Heroic Greek era adventure similar to Jason & the Argonauts (and no, I haven't seen the remake, and yes, I'm sure I will at some point). Fight some monsters, sail the seas, take on a wizard or some crap like that.

Third, one thing I want to do to prepare for the playtest is to create a "cheat sheet" for the game that's short enough to go on the back of the character sheet. It'll have to fit on one 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, landscape layout. Here's the current version of the character sheet:

More to come as things progress. For now, gotta prepare for next weekend's C&C game...

My Post-Modern Pulps Blog Is Alive Again

2010-06-29T08:30:00.001-04:00

A wee bit of self promotion this morning. Before this blog, I had started up a blog entitled "Post-Modern Pulps", which was intended to take the place of a website in the same vein I had up and running for three years previously. Post-Modern Pulps dealt with the pulpy "men's adventure" fiction of the 60's into the 80's (and in some cases, beyond).

Well, my interest in working on that blog waned after a short while, and I began on working on this blog. However, something occurred recently that made me pick up interest in that blog again, and I've resurrected it, re-designed the layout, photoshopped up a new title graphic, and I've got some more content rolling along to post there.

So if you're a fan of the men's adventure genre, and the cheesy 60's - 80's era series of that time in particular, keep an eye on the following blog:

http://postmodernpulps.blogspot.com/

I hope to keep it updated at least every couple of weeks, posting material there that isn't really complimentary to Tankards & Broadswords. If something of interest to the T&B crowd finds it's way onto the PMP blog, I'll be sure to give a heads up over here.

So drop by and say hello if you're so inclined.

40K Friday: Deathwatch RPG Demo Adventure Available

2010-06-25T10:18:00.004-04:00

Anyone who is into both Warhammer 40K and role-playing games is probably aware by now that Fantasy Flight Games has two apparently very well-received RPGs out right now; Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy. While I haven't picked up either of these books yet, I've looked at both games and I think they look fabulous.

The last few months have seen the development of FFG's latest WH40K RPG, Deathwatch. The Deathwatch are hand-picked Space Marines tasked with the most dangerous and critical missions against alien menaces - taking on Genestealer cults, assassinating Ork or Eldar leaders, boarding and destroying Tyrannid hiveships - these guys are like the commandos from the movie Predator, just a foot taller and wider and wearing a 500 lb suit of powered battle armor, with everyone toting, at a minimum, the rough equivalent of a full-auto light armor piercing grenade launcher.

Personally, I am really excited about this game. The other 40K RPGs also look great, but I think they are better suited for long term linear campaigns that keep a good flowing narrative going for multiple sessions. Deathwatch, on the other hand, looks like it would be great for episodic gameplay, which suits me much better. This looks like the sort of RPG where if you're bored and want to game some day with your buds, you can break out the book and some character sheets and go kick some Xeno butt.

To see what has me so excited, go to the Deathwatch Support Page and download the PDF demo they released for this year's Free RPG Day - Final Sanction. There is a high quality PDF and a web version, as well as a short PDF with two extra pre-generated characters. Keep in mind that this is a game demo, so it's kinda hand-holding in terms of the adventure and the GMing advice, but serves, I think, as a good introduction to the "world" of Warhammer 40K.

Game Mechanics: Smoke Em If You Got Em

2010-06-22T08:30:00.003-04:00

Over this past week’s vacation from work, I broke down and picked up a first-person shooter for myself. I’m not much of a console gamer - there’s something about using console controllers that I just find awkward, and if one is using the TV to play a console game then no one else can use the TV for it’s more common purpose. So I tend to prefer computer games, especially for FPS-style games (I find the reaction time and precision afforded with a mouse and a keyboard way better than a console controller).

Anyhow, I picked up Rogue Warrior, a so-so computer game I bought mostly because I think Richard Marcinko is a hardcore throat-stomper who’s more or less made a second successful career out of being a well-marketed bona-fide badass after his first career as a Navy SEAL ended at the hands of a wrathful US government-delivered jail sentence. the FPS game would have been decent maybe ten years ago, around the era of Rainbow Six and the like, but these days is woefully outclassed. However, since I don’t play a lot of video games, the novelty of a new game, filled with ridiculous profanity and all sorts of gratuitously brutal “kill moves” kept me entertained for a handful of evenings.

And yes, I’m getting to a point...

One thing I noticed was that every level I played, there were opportunities for utilizing some of the little perks of the game. For example, the beginning of every mission, your enemies aren’t aware you’re there, and you have the option of taking out the first half dozen or so bad guys in hand-to-hand “kill moves” which are pretty entertaining. Most every mission also has at least one area where you could enjoy yourself sniping at the bad guys with a handily available sniper rifle. There’s also at least one close-quarters battle area where a shotgun or SMG can be very handy.

Now, the cool part is that you don’t HAVE to kill people quietly in the beginning of the mission, or snipe at them at another point in the game, etc. etc., but there is an option to use these features and while you don’t have to, it makes it fun to do so.

This got me thinking about role-playing game mechanics. While it is perfectly possible to play an all-human, no-spellcasters game of D&D where there is no magic and no magic items, and no one ever goes into a “dungeon”, you’d be hard pressed to give me a reason why this is a good idea. Similarly, playing a Traveller game where you never leave the low-tech planet you’re on, or a Shadowrun game where there’s no cybernetics, or an Ars Magica game where no one plays a mage. There’s nothing stopping you from ignoring the primary “draw” of a certain RPG, but it gives me pause to consider it because if you ignore what makes that game unique, I feel there’s little point in using that game in favor of another, far more generic and flavorless system.

Of course, this is different than “picking and choosing rules” or coming up with homebrew solutions. I’m talking more about ignoring whole reasons why the game was created. Using my own homebrew Tankards & Broadswords RPG as an example, I’ve designed the game from the beginning to facilitate episodic play. For someone to take the game and use it in a linear campaign wouldn’t be “doing it wrong”, but on the other hand, why pick my RPG out of all the hundreds out there and then not use that which helps set it apart a little from its peers?

So my question to the reader is, when would you or when have you taken a game system and then completely ignored or thrown out that which most strongly defines that system, and why would you or did you do this?

Old School 40K Crimson Fists Scout Squad

2010-06-16T11:20:00.005-04:00

First, apologies for not having posted anything in such a long while. I'm currently on vacation, and I am using some of this time to catch up on blogging as well as working on my miniatures, so hopefully this week and the following weeks, I'll have more content for you to read.

While my last post featured a ten-man Crimson Fists scout squad for Warhammer 40K, I had mentioned that five of those minis were from the Space Marine Land Speeder Storm boxed set. However, I felt that it was silly to put five boltgun-armed marines on a vehicle whose best purpose seems to be delivering a small squad up close and personal for an assault, something boltguns aren't well suited to allow.

So then, who do we put in the LSS? These cranky old cusses, that's who.

These are five very old Space Marine scouts given to me by my 40K buddy and fellow blogger Darkwing from over at Arcadia Prime. The three metal models (#'s 1, 4, and 5 from left to right) are as-is except for the addition of a couple grenade packs. The second model is plastic, and I gave him a modern bolt pistol because the original is just hideous looking (I actually think the metal scout bolt pistols don't look half bad, considering). The scout sergeant in the middle is, I think, a little more recent (and by that I mean still probably from the early 90's), but I got rid of his crappy-looking bolt pistol and his ugly chainsword and instead gave him one of the new pistols and a power fist, which was originally a Space Wolf 'fist that I converted by carefully removing the wolf's head emblem from the back of the hand.

And before anyone comments, I am an absolute crap painter. I'm especially bad at painting faces, and it's made all the worse by the fact that these supposedly near-juvenile scouts all look like mohawked clones of Ernest Borgnine. I suppose my mediocre painting skills are one of the reasons I was attracted to Necrons and Orks for so long - both races are pretty easy to paint, the first because they are fairly simple, the second because, well, they are supposed to look messy and ramshackle. Regardless, here they are - my first painted Crimson Fists.

I've heard tell that five close-combat scouts loaded in a LSS (which can be armed with a heavy flamer for close-in support) make for a nice disruption unit. Their Scout abilities, open-topped nature of the speeder, and the overall speed of the unit means that it can threaten most any enemy unit on the table, especially good for going after vehicles or fire support units that can be threatened by these boys in close combat. I highly doubt they'll survive the whole game, and probably won't perform all that well every game anyhow, but I'm looking for a unit that's interesting for me to play, not necessarily something that will win games every time.

My next miniatures-related post should feature some Space Wolves, so stay tuned.

40K Friday: New Crimson Fists Scout Squad

2010-05-28T08:30:00.003-04:00

Although it seems a little silly to do so, I've actually begun work over the last few months on not one, but two Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine armies: the Space Wolves and the Crimson Fists. I've always had an interest in the Space Wolves - their unorthodox fighting style, a great range of wild, unkempt models, and cool techno-barbarian flavor. I began buying their models as soon as their new codex came out, although I attempted to collect them years ago just before I began the Ork army I've focused on for the last five years or thereabouts.

But to flesh out the model range for my Space Wolves, I've bought a few boxes of standard marines, and with all the extra bits I began accumulating, I began thinking of a Codex: Space Marines force that I could build as a possible "beginner's army" to help new players learn how to play Warhammer 40K. Around this time, the Space Marine Battles novel Rynn's World came out, depicting the epic battle to save the Crimson Fists chapter after their world was invaded by orks and their Chapter-Monastery was destroyed, wiping out hundreds of marines and leaving alive only a fraction of the chapter's manpower to defend the world against the Ork invasion. I found myself really drawn to the fluff written about this chapter - an army fighting back from the brink of annihilation, a shadow of its former strength, and yet still committed not just to surviving and rebuilding, but to continuing the fight against the enemies of the Imperium.

Because of their vastly depleted numbers, one of the unit types you commonly find in a Crimson Fists army are Scout squads. Scouts are newly inducted Space Marines who have not been raised to full Battle-Brothers and serve as skirmishers and raiders, learning how to fight in the Astartes fashion from the flanks and rear of the battles rather than toe-to-toe with the enemy. As the Crimson Fists would be relying on these new recruits to do a lot of fighting until their main battle companies are brought into full strength, I decided to pick up some scouts as one of the first units of Crimson Fists I was to build.

With this in mind, I grabbed one box of standard scouts, and one Land Speeder Storm, a fast skimmer vehicle that transports a five-man squad of scouts into battle. While I have another unit of Scouts that I'll be using in the LSS, I did decide to use the scout models that come with the transport and mix them with the five-pack of scouts I had purchased to make one ten-man unit equipped with boltguns, a heavy bolter, and a Scout Sergeant who could be represented rules wise by Scout Sergeant Telion - I felt that having a grizzled, extremely competent scout sergeant leading my men makes sense for an army like the Crimson fists, who must now rely more than ever on these new Astartes to keep the chapter alive.

Here are the standard Scout models I've got assembled (but as yet unpainted). The heads for the heavy bolter scout and my Telion stand-in are actually Space Wolf Scout heads.

These five scouts are the models I converted from the Land Speeder Storm box. I always thought it a little silly that a rapid strike vehicle like the LSS, open-topped and perfect for rapid assault strikes, was modeled with boltgun-armed scouts, weapons that would prevent the scouts from charging from the LSS after firing. I guess the scouts just looked too cool with their bolters, like a bunch of Delta Force commandos about to hop out of their AH-58 Little Bird and kick some unsuspecting bad guys in the teeth.

The combat blades are left over from the other scouts box, the second model on the left and the rightmost model actually have standard SM bolters from the Tactical Marines box. The three marines on the right are standing on pieces of plaster "brick" that I broke up to give them something to stand on - their poses wouldn't have worked otherwise, but I think they look just fine here, and actually make the unit as a whole a lot more dynamic and more interesting than simply having ten guys standing around holding their guns in two hands and looking in various directions.

Comments and questions are welcome - hopefully next week I'll have some more 40K models to show off!

Rome Inspired RPG Settings?

2010-05-24T12:47:00.002-04:00

Following up on my Rome-inspired RPG columns of late, I'm looking for people to pass along any RPG settings, fantasy, sci-fi, or otherwise, that have a campaign setting based in some fairly strong measure on Rome at some point in its history. And I do mean "based", not actually featuring Rome (such as BRP's Rome, or GURPS Rome, or AD&D Supplement Glory of Rome).

One of my long-term who knows when goals for the Tankards & Broadswords RPG (whenever I get that bedraggled bird off the ground...) is to create a fantasy campaign setting strongly inspired on the city of Rome and especially how it affected/was affected by the world around it with regards to politics, warfare, and culture. I'd like to take a look at a few examples of what other RPG designers/writers have done in that same regard, and so I turn to my readers to help me find RPG settings out there with a strong Roman influence.

Any help would be immensely appreciated.

The Ram Has Touched The Wall

2010-05-12T08:30:00.001-04:00

Or, more specifically, the Ram of writing a short story for possible publication has touched the Wall of me having an externally imposed deadline.

Games Workshop's Black Library, which is the publishing arm that handles all of the Games Workshop fiction for Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000, is now in the beginning of it's 2010 fiction submissions window. BL does, in fact, accept unsolicited fiction submissions, and people do, in fact, get published and eventually go on to become regular BL authors. The deadline for submissions during the 2010 window is July 31st, and I've decided to submit a short story, come hell or high water.

Like I've mentioned before, I have very poor follow-through when it comes to self-imposed project deadlines. I tend to get all fired up about an idea, work fervently on that idea for a few weeks, and then as another idea comes into my mind, the first idea slowly falls by the wayside until it's finally forgotten. I might have ideas for deadlines, but since I'm the only one who cares about the deadlines, blowing through them doesn't affect anyone but my own sense of progress, which is notoriously poor to begin with.

On the plus side though, I've got what I think is a pretty good idea for a short story, and I've made some decent progress. I've decided that rather than just banging out 10K words, I'm going to approach this little project in a very concise manner, and I've begun writing short summaries of the major characters, as well as a breakdown of all the events that take place in the short story. By mapping everything out, I hope to encourage my writing by treating the short story not so much as creating the entire thing from whole cloth when I write it, but fleshing out the outline through prose, with actual narration and dialogue.

Other projects and such currently in the queue:

- I've got Pete Nash's BRP-centric gaming sourcebook Rome: The Life and Death of the Republic, on deck for reading and review. I picked it up on BN.com for a good price (Pete, sorry if that bites into your royalties...), and it's a great looking book that really is going to need a weekend of me curled up on the couch with a tumbler of something honey-colored and on the rocks to do it justice.

- In a similar vein, I just finished reading Caesar Against The Celts, and I intend to read Caesar's own memoirs on the campaigns in the next week or so.

- This is all wrapped up in me having just bought a bargain copy of Rome: Total War. I wasn't all that fond of Medieval: Total War, as I found moving and arranging units to be way too time-consuming. Moving units in R:TW seems to be a lot easier and not quite so complicated.

- I'm beginning to paint not one, but two Warhammer: 40,000 Space Marine chapters; Space Wolves and Crimson Fists. Right now I'm just beginning to work out the paint schemes, but I hope to have photos of some completed units at some point soon.

- I didn't want to jump on the Frazetta bandwagon like everyone else has over the last two days, since it would just be another "tribute post" in a sea of the same, so I'll just say I'm sorry to see the man pass on, but greatly appreciate everything he's done. I own two prints of his that hang in my home office, and it's always inspirational to look up and gander at them whenever I need suitable inspiration. Cheers to you, Frank.

All My Gaming Roads Lead to Rome

2010-04-22T08:30:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of the month I picked up the first season of HBO's amazing series ROME. I had seen this two-season wonder when it first came out ~5 years ago, but I never owned it until now, and so sitting down and watching all twelve episodes of season one over the course of three days was a real treat. I was once again blown away by how gorgeous the series is, even when what you're looking at is grimy or grotesque. I was also hugely impressed by the enormous talents involved in the acting, the writing, the set and costume design, and in the dramatic license applied, like a lever, to exert it influence in just the right areas to give you what you need, without totally throwing history out the window.

Actually, almost two years ago, I wrote about this show in another column. As you can see, I've felt for a while now that Rome, especially during the late Republic and early to mid Empire periods, is a far superior historical campaign setting compared to what many people think of when they think "pseudo-historical RPG setting", which is typically something dumped roughly in the Western European middle ages, circa 800-1400 AD. To me, this period of time is just two tightly bound up in the dual bureaucracies of the feudal system and the church to give a prototypical adventuring party the sort of wiggle room and diversity they'd want without the GM having to constantly bail their butts out of the fire.

Last month, I asked readers what would be their pick for a non-supernatural (but possibly "heroic") historical campaign setting. Out of the 20 replies I got, 40% stated that the classic Roman time period (late Republic / early Empire) would be at least on their radars. I think this period resonates with gamers for a lot of reasons, but here are a few I can at least guess at:

1. There's a lot of information on the subject. Roman history and culture is as well-known and as easily researched as the Middle Ages, and I think honestly it seems a lot more interesting. Flip to the History Channel and there's probably a couple of hours of programming every day that touches on Roman culture in some fashion. There's also all the movies and TV and fiction out there that can provide a lot of very visual and imaginative "in your face" inspiration.

2. Rome is a tolerant, polytheistic culture. In classic fantasy RPG style, there are lots of those "god of the..." floating around. There's pretty much a god or goddess for everything, and if it's not a Roman god, hey, feel free to borrow from any other culture Rome might have had contact with during this time. In addition, although Romans were of course a religious people and religion had a strong influence in their lives, your average Roman was pretty religiously tolerant. Rome is a culture of borrowing the best from everyone else, and finding a way to make it work within a Roman mindset. So if one's character wants to worship Wotan or earth spirits or the ghosts of one's ancestors, no one's going to immediately brand you a heretic and split your skull over it.

3. Rome is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural metropolis. In a classic Rome RPG setting, you could easily play a campaign without having a single actual Roman in the PC party. You could have Celts, Germans, Africans, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Macedonians, Egyptians...the list goes on. While in Rome you might not get cut the same amount of slack a Roman citizen might get, you could still certainly enjoy yourselves and get into all sorts of adventures without one's nationality becoming an issue. While Romans were a pretty racist and elitist people, they understood the value of working with other peoples to get what you want. As long as your PCs were willing to play essentially second-class citizens, this would be an entirely viable campaign premise.

4. Rome is the Las Vegas of the adventure RPG world. All bets are off. With the right connections and enough ballsiness, even the most dirt-poor adventuring party can be clothed in silk and drinking from gold if Fortune smiles on them at the right time. And if it's the wrong time? The rich and powerful can be running for their lives or grubbing for coins in the gutter by nightfall. Fortunes are won and lost all the time in Rome, and getting into the game should be child's play for a group of clever adventurers. This is a perfect setting for running one of those "Your PCs are working for a powerful patron who needs some unscrupulous associates..." campaigns.

5. Rome is filled with random (and not so random) acts of violence. If your gaming group likes to get in a good scrap most every session, Rome can oblige. There's murder and brawling aplenty, street thugs and city guards and armed gangs and, of course, the arenas. If your party wants some bloodshed, it will be child's play to find a way to give it to them in a way that fits in with what's going on in your campaign at the moment. C'mon, you know you want to get your party in an arena with some lions at least ONCE during the campaign, right?

6. Places to go, people to see. This is History in the making, people. History with a capital 'H'. Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Augustus, Cicero, Cleopatra, Vercingetorix, Boudicca, Herod. Events that have impact on the world not just centuries, but millennia, later can be incorporated into your campaign, and if you (or your PCs) so wish, history can be utterly and drastically changed by your character's actions. What if your PCs thwart the senatorial conspiracy to kill Caesar and he lives on for another twenty years? What if they slay Augustus when he's still Octavian? What if one of the PCs decides a crown of laurel leaves might suit them better, and makes a play for the Emperor's chair? Someone today might be eating a salad named after YOU.

This post is rapidly encroaching the thousand-word mark, so I'll leave things here. Needless to say, I think Rome is really a perfect campaign setting, and if you're willing to weave some of the supernatural into it, there's really not a whole lot it can't handle in terms of an adventuring party looking for some fun and profit.

TnB RPG: The Star Crusader and Xenoid

2010-04-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite "classic" Dungeons and Dragons products is AC9: The Creature Catalogue, a UK-published compendium of monsters that had first appeared in a number of adventure modules up to the publishing date in 1986. One of the reasons I'm down with the CC is that it's got a lot of weird entries, including various unusual constructs, undead, plant life, and even various humanoids. Truth be told, I actually like the Creature Catalogue more than the basic lot of monsters provided in the Rules Cyclopedia or other classic/basic D&D products.

Wikipedia Entry for AC9: The Creature Catalogue.

The reason this book springs to mind is that it is, in many ways, the inspiration for my T&B RPG Monsters & Minions book (and yes, that's what I've settled on for a name...). Pushing a little ways away from the classic D&D-style monsters helps, I think, reinforce the idea that the T&B RPG is an Adventure Role-Playing Game, not just another FRPG. The rules are just as easily implemented in a historical or science-fiction setting as they are in something more fantastical, and to emphasize this, I've included a number of sci-fi monsters. I wanted to present the following two entries as examples. Both of these are patterned (read: ripped off) from existing science fiction entities, although one might be a little easier to spot than the other (although I know I've got at least a few regular readers who should have no trouble figuring them both out).

And so, I present to you the Star Crusader and the Xenoid:

Star Crusader

Attack: +5M/+5R

Defense: +4

Reflexes: +4

Athletics: +6 (+8 Suited)

Detection: +3

Stealth: +0

Avoid: +0

Endure: +6 (+8 Suited)

Resist: +6

Health: 24

Armor: +12(A)

Damage: +4M(P)/+6R(P)

Appearance:

Star Crusaders are enormous, genetically-engineered humans vat-grown to fight against humanity's many enemies in the grim darkness of the far future. Star Crusaders are typically two meters tall and heroically proportioned. In addition, all Star Crusaders wear an advanced, heavily armored battle suit that enhances their already prodigious strength and stamina. These armored battle suits are often painted in garish, menacing heraldic color schemes to denote the various crusader orders to which the wearer belongs.

Behavior:

Vat-grown entirely for the purpose of protecting mankind from the horrors of the galaxy, a Star Crusader knows only battle. Their days are spent either engaged in battle or training for the next conflict, and they seek only service to mankind and a glorious end on the battlefield. While seemingly aloof and uncaring to mere mortals, the Star Crusaders are distant from humanity only because they must remain so in order to face the horrors they regularly confront and remain strong and resolute. Against mankind's enemies, however, the Star Crusader shows only hatred and offers nothing but death.

Combat:

The two main implements of war for a Star Crusader are the shredder sword and the blast-gun. Shredder swords are heavy, powered melee weapons that tear into their foes with a blade made from vicious shredding teeth that spin and rend anything they touch. The blast-guns of the Star Crusaders are heavy semi-automatic weapons that fire explosive, armor-piercing munitions out to 200 meters.

In battle, Star Crusaders typically advance into the teeth of an enemy's position, laying down a steady fire with their blast-guns to cut down on the enemy's numbers and weaken their morale. Once within reach of the enemy forces, the Star Crusaders set aside their blast-guns and draw their shredder swords, laying about and rending any foes within reach into a gory ruin.

(As an aside, the Star Crusader's Armor Value is marked as Type "A", which is Ablative, meaning it is an advanced armor type that grants full protection against Normal and Ballistic damage types, and half its value against Energy damage. The Crusader's melee and ranged damage is noted as Type "P", which is Piercing, meaning the Armor Value of Normal, Ballistic, and Ablative armors is halved vs. Piercing damage.)

Xenoid

Attack: +6M

Defense: +4

Reflexes: +6

Athletics: +6

Detection: +4

Stealth: +4

Avoid: +6

Endure: +6

Resist: +4

Health: 24

Armor: 4

Damage: +2M

Appearance:

Rumored to have been bio-engineered by some advanced alien race to be the perfect predator, the Xenoids normally stand slightly taller than an average human male, but if standing fully erect, are almost eight feet tall and at least fifteen feet long from teeth to tail. The Xenoid's body is armored in a jet black chitinous carapace covered in spikes and razor-sharp edges, with clawed appendages and extremely powerful jaws, Zenoids are amazingly fast and surprisingly stealthy for their size.

Behavior:

Based around a brood mentality, the Xenoids have a queen that embeds its young in the bodies of incapacitated prey, where the young gestate and grow until they are strong enough to survive on their own, at which point they burst from their host and devour the host's body over the period of the next 24 hours, as the young Xeniod grows with amazing speed. Within a week, given a steady stream of prey, the Xenoid will reach its full size. At this point, it serves as bodyguard for the Queen, as well as defender of the nest and hunter/gatherer of both food for itself and the Queen, as well as incapacitated hosts for further young.

Xenoids are extremely smart, but their totally alien minds allow no methods for reasoning or interacting with them. Although Xenoids have some form of communication amongst the members of their species, it doesn't appear to be a "language", or if it is, it is not verbal. However, they do cooperate together, have no real sense of self-preservation or individual identity, and are utterly without fear. And, unless wiped out, their only drive is to protect the Queen and facilitate the furthering of their species through capturing more hosts for the young to incubate in and feed on after hatching.

Combat:

Xenoids are unbelievably dangerous creatures. Extremely strong and fast, their very carapaces and even their tails are deadly weapons. All attacks made by Xenoids are made using Weighted Rolls, and they also typically use the Sneak Attack, Charge Attack, and Desperate Blow combat maneuvers whenever possible.

Even more distressing, anyone lucky enough to get within melee reach of a Xenoid and survive long enough to strike back risks being exposed to the creatures Toxic Blood. Anyone in Melee with a Xenoid when it takes damage must make a BP 8 Avoid Check or suffer 1d + Negative Balance points of Acid damage (P) from the creature's corrosive blood, which has a tendency to spray from any wounds or cracks in the Xenoid's carapace, probably as some kind of defense mechanism against attack.

I've got other sci-fi monster and minion listings available for later columns, and there will be more along the way as I continue to work on the supplement. Comments and Questions are always welcome.

TnB RPG: Monsters and Minions

2010-04-07T12:15:00.003-04:00

When I began creating monsters and minion-type bad guys for the RPG, I found myself facing something of a quandary. Most RPGs, especially those that at least in part cater to "fantasy role-playing game" genre conventions, have a stable of what you might call "stock monsters", and pretty much every FRPG or RPG that caters in some way to the fantasy genre has these monsters statted up. We're talking zombies, skeletons, orcs, goblins, ogres, trolls, vampires, werewolves, dragons, etc....very standard D&D-esque monsters that make it into pretty much every FRPG "monster book".

When it came time to start statting out monsters for the T&B RPG, I asked myself if I wanted to go down that road or not, and the answer was...kinda, but not really. On the one hand, using the same standard list of monsters allows one to "benchmark" against other systems. In system A, here's a goblin and it's power level as can be compared to starting characters. In system B, here's another goblin, and you could see that it's more or less dangerous to starting characters, so someone making a decision on the sort of game they want to run in terms of monster power levels has some comparisons they can work with to make that decision.

On the other hand, I feel that once you start including the usual suspects, you are implicitly pigeon-holing your game into a pseudo-D&D or D&D alternative. It becomes just another FRPG with dragons and orcs and ogres and trolls. At that point, why bother? A while ago, a bit of discussion on trying new games / systems came up in our gaming circle, and one of my neophyte players stated "I can chop the heads off goblins in this game, why would I want to do the same thing, but have to learn another system?". The way I see it, offering at least slightly more unconventional monsters than your usual go-to list allows your game a chance to offer something that is, if not unique, at least outside of the usual "do I kill ogres and dragons in System A or do I kill ogres and dragons in System B?".

But again, you don't want to create a creatures list of monsters so bizarre and off the wall that anything approaching a semi-traditional fantasy campaign setting is impossible. If your creatures are too unique and too eclectic, you're narrowing the potential player base almost too much. So, a balance has to be struck in your creature design; you need to offer up monsters that fulfill the roles of the old stand-bys, but with a twist to keep things from just being generic FRPG boilerplate.

Last summer I posted two columns containing examples of monsters and minions using my T&B monster/minion "template". I also had a "request for monsters" post a little before that, which got some good feedback.

Here's four non-human monsters I statted up, and here are several human "minion" types for consideration.

Right now, I've got about forty monsters and minions written up. I hope over the next few months to create some more, hopefully having around sixty entries in the monster book when it's all said and done.

I'm curious to see what people think; should one try to avoid most or all of the "usual suspects" when creating monsters and try to keep things more unique, or should one stick to the "tried and true" for the sake of comparison and familiarity?

TnB RPG: Rules for Campaign Intermissions

2010-04-05T11:02:00.002-04:00

Not a lot of time to chit-chat this morning, but I did want to continue posting Tankards and Broadswords RPG material this week, so I'm presenting you with the material for handling what I call Campaign Intermissions.

Since the TnB RPG is designed to be Episodic, meaning there can be some indeterminate amount of time in between adventures, I wanted there to be an opportunity for the GM to use this "Intermission" to the advantage of the campaign. After all, just what has your PC been up to in the month since the last adventure? Maybe they've just spent the time drinking and carousing, but perhaps they've been out and about getting into all sorts of shenanigans on their own, and this can provide fuel for the next adventure.

Of course, running Tankards & Broadswords as an Episodic campaign isn't a requirement; you could play a rolling narrative campaign using these rules just fine, and ignore these Intermission rules completely. But I think that, like Carousing and Brawling, they offer the chace for another "game within a game".

So here's the draft copy for the Campaign Intermission Rules:

Intermission Rolls

At the beginning of each session, each player has the option of making an Intermission Roll for their PC. This is not a mandatory roll, but players should be encouraged to do so - if not, the GM should feel free to make up whatever dull, dreary, and even embarrassing story they wish to cover the time between now and the last adventure.

Each player rolls 2d and adds the results, then consults the chart below. If the result isn't acceptable to the player, the player may pay out one Character Token from their PC's total in order to get a re-roll, but the re-roll result sticks even if it is less advantageous.

If the result is negative (noted with an asterisk), and the player elects to leave it and NOT re-roll the result, the PC gains a free Character Token as a reward for willingness to accept a little bit of misfortune in the name of adventure. Negative results that are the result of a re-roll do NOT provide a free CT - the negative result must be one the player could have refused (but didn't) in order to gain the Token; consider it a reward for being a "good sport".

Intermission Roll Results

02: Ally

03: Information

04: Renown

05: Plunder

06: Windfall

07: Proficiency

08: Bauble

09: Pauper*

10: Infamy*

11: Injury*

12: Nemesis*

Details for each of the above are as follows:

Ally
The PC begins the adventure with a stalwart henchman (or henchwoman). Perhaps this person is a comrade traveling with the PC, or a recently acquired apprentice or squire, or someone who feels they owe the PC a debt to be repaid through service. The henchman won't last beyond the current adventure – either fate and circumstance will draw the PC and their ally apart, or the allies' debt will be repaid, or any other reason the GM can think of. The ally will be drawn up by the GM, but in general the henchman will have skills that are of use to the PC, and the allies' motives and general personality will be compatible with the PC.

Information
The PC starts the adventure with some piece of interesting information - be it a mysterious letter, a map (possibly to treasure, or perhaps a floorplan), a strange book or scroll - the information can come in many forms. The GM will provide the information, but it's up to the player to decide what to do with it. The material might be beneficial or it might be hazardous to the PC's health, but it won't necessarily be apparent which is the case - perhaps not until the PCs act on the information.

Renown
At the beginning of a PC's character creation, all PCs have a Renown of 0 (there is more on the Renown rating in the character creation and campaign play rules). With this result, the PC will automatically acquire a Renown Status of 1 if their original Status was 0. Otherwise, the player will make a 1d/X+ roll, X = the possible new Renown Status. Success means the Renown increases by 1. This means the highest possible Renown achievable by this method is 6.

Plunder
With this result, the PC will automatically acquire a Wealth Status Value of 1 if the original Value was 0. Otherwise, the player will make a 1d/X+ roll, X = the possible new Wealth Value. Success means the PC's Wealth increases by 1. This means the highest possible Wealth Value achievable by this method is 6.

Proficiency
With this result, the PC will automatically acquire a skill rating of 1 in a randomly chosen skill if the original rating was 0 (unskilled). Otherwise, the player will make a 1d/X+ roll, X = the possible new Skill Rank. Success means the Skill increases by 1. This means the highest possible Skill Rank achievable by this method is 6. To determine which skill might be affected, roll 1d; If the result is a 1 or 2, it's a Warrior skill; 3 or 4 is a Rogue skill; 5 or 6 is a Scholar skill. Then roll another 1d and consult the skill list (i.e., a Warrior list result of 2 is the Command skill).

Bauble
The PC has acquired some item of great value, be it a gem or other piece of jewelry, a finely crafted ornamental weapon, a rare artifact, or some other “treasure object”, the nature of which is entirely up to the GM, as is the manner in which the PC acquired it (theft, luck, divine intervention, gambling winnings, etc.). The player is free to do what they like with the bauble, but there can be consequences depending on how it was acquired and who it originally belonged to. For example, if the PC stole the bauble, it's owner might be looking to get it back. If it was won through a game of chance, the PC might be accused of cheating and the owner could be seeking to “win it back” with a knife in the dark.

Pauper
Misfortune has struck the PC just before the adventure, and for any number of reasons, the PC has nothing but their Signature Gear, and cannot roll for starting Treasure Tokens at the beginning of the adventure (and gets nothing from their Wealth Status, either). If the other PCs are feeling generous (ha!) they can provide the pauper PC with some money, but otherwise the PC will have to make do with scrounging, theft, charity, or some other method of acquiring funds (if they feel the need - sometimes traveling light can be very freeing...).

Infamy
At the beginning of a PC's character creation, all PCs have an Infamy of 0 (there is more on the Infamy Status in the character creation and campaign play rules). With this result, the PC will automatically acquire an Infamy Status of 1 if their original rating was 0. Otherwise, the player will make a 1d/X+ roll, X = the possible new Infamy Status. Success means the Infamy increases by 1. This means the highest possible Infamy achievable by this method is 6.

Injury
The PC's life must have taken a turn for the dangerous before the current adventure, because they are still nursing a minor injury – either an older wound that's not quite healed yet, or a newly acquired injury suffered just before the adventure starts. Either way, the PC is down 1d Health at the start of the adventure. The PC can seek medical attention and/or attempt to treat the injury themselves (either through the Healing skill, purchased herbal medicines, or the use of the Meat and Drink! special rule), but until the wound is treated or heals naturally (if the adventure lasts that long), treat the Health loss as normal.

Nemesis
The PC starts the adventure with a hateful enemy close on his (or her) tail. This person could be pursuing the PC for a good reason, or they could be completely misguided (perhaps the PC was framed?), but the result is the same – the nemesis is after the PC and looking to either capture and “bring them to justice” (whatever that might entail), or simply to kill the PC outright (“Dead or alive, you're coming with me!”). The nemesis will usually be pretty competent – at least as capable as the PC, if not more so in some areas – and might have a small retinue of henchmen (usually a band of hired brutes, thugs, etc.). The motives behind all this are entirely up to the GM to decide, just as the solution is entirely up to the PC.

Optional Rule: Intermission Period Rolls

By default, the Intermission period between adventures is left purposely vague - it could be days, it could be weeks, it could even be months or longer. The GM doesn't need to define it if they don't want to, but some GMs and some players might want to have an idea of how much time has passed in order to better determine the seasons, or perhaps to sync with events the GM has running in the background. In any event, if the GM wants to keep the Intermission Period random but have some idea of its actual length, the chart below has been provided. At the beginning of each new adventure, the GM rolls 2d and determines the period of time that has passed since the last adventure.

2d Result

2 1d Days, 0 CT, Intermission Roll on a 1d/6+

3-4 2d Days, 0 CT, Intermission Roll on a 1d/4+

5-6 1d Weeks, 0 CT, Intermission Roll on a 1d/2+

7 2d Weeks, 0 CT, 1 Intermission Roll

8-9 1d Months, 1 CT, 1 Intermission Roll, 2nd on a 1d/6+

10-11 2d Months, 2 CT, 1 Intermission Roll, 2nd on a 1d/4+

12 1 Year +, 3 CT, 1 Intermission Roll, 2nd on a 1d/2+

As noted, the roll also provides a suggested number of Character Tokens and possible Intermission Rolls to represent the PC's experiences over that period of time. Even if the GM doesn't want to make rolls on the chart but determine their own time frame for the Intermission Periods, the chart can be used as a guideline to gauge the number of CTs and rolls the GM can give out to the PCs.

So, there you have them. Questions and comments are, as always, welcome.

I'm Actually Not Making This Up

2010-04-01T09:31:00.004-04:00

I've been pondering for a while now what I'd run as an introductory / first playtest adventure for my Tankards and Broadswords RPG. Something set in a historic period? Lots of people who responded to my Historical Settings post a little while ago really liked the idea of gaming during the Age of Rome. That jives with me, especially since one of the historical campaign primers I'd like to develop one day would focus on Rome.

But on the other hand, purely historical RPGs tend to not really catch anyone's eye. Sometimes, adding even a little tidbit of the supernatural is all it takes to pull people in and make them go "Hmmm".

And then I saw this, and it all came together:

Yes, this is real. No, it's not an April Fool's Day joke. Read about it here.

The Importance of Comments and Followers

2010-03-30T14:56:00.002-04:00

I realized i wanted to write this column a few weeks ago, but then decided to wait until I had hit 100 followers before I wrote it and posted it here. Since this afternoon I hit the "100" mark (and hopefully I'm still at least there when you read this), here it is.

It struck me one day that being a "columnist" sort of blogger, which is, I suppose, the way I fancy myself, is like writing an editorial column in a newspaper that you own. Yeah, you're now a "published columnist"...but who's going to stop you from publishing? Who's vetting what you write? You might get an editor to look over the column before it goes to press, and that person might tighten things up a little bit, but no one's going to tell you such and such an article isn't print-worthy. It's all the implicit permission, none of the earned privilege.

User-generated web content is the hallmark of the Web 2.0 revolution. You are no longer limited to being a passive commuter driving along the "information superhighway", you're also an architect. building roads and exits and cul-de-sacs, taking people places you want them to visit. If those places are your MySpace page or your Facebook profile, no big deal; those resources are largely there for the purposes of social networking, and self-expression there is informal at best.

Not so with blogging. Although the "blog" grew out of "online journal" services such as LiveJournal, it has become less and less an online diary (although many people use it for that purpose, and that's perfectly fine) and more as a semi-formal soapbox / democratic forum / editorial mouthpiece where any one person or group of people can put forth an idea to the entire world. Although a lot of people don't think this is a big deal, or feel much weight of responsibility, I think just the opposite - it means what you put out there in your blogs is actually very important, and whatever you write should be published with the understanding that, once the various search engines get their hands on it, anyone in the world doing a web search may come across what you've written if they use the right keywords.

All right, I'm beginning to ramble here about the qualitative obligations inherent to Web 2.0 publishing. Moving on...

The point I am trying to make is, we are all blogging. Some of us do it once a month, some of us do it every day, some of us even do it multiple times a day. We write whatever we want about whatever we want to talk about, and it gets "published" for the whole world to find and read. At the end of the day, without any feedback, constructive criticism, or support, many of us can feel that we're just talking to an empty room, so to speak. I'm fortunate enough that most of my columns get at least a couple of comments apiece, some more, and a few don't get anything but that's the exception to the rule.

I've been to other people's blogs, however, where there have been dozens - sometimes hundreds - of posts, and there is almost no commentary feedback and no one "Following" the blog, at least publicly. First, I am impressed that the authors of said blogs are able to keep up the posting for so long without substantial feedback. Second, I always wonder if THEY wonder if they're just talking to an empty room. I know that if I hadn't started getting comments posted to my blog within the first few weeks of writing, I might very well have let it die off, or at the very least, only posted something here once every couple of months.

At the end of the day, feedback is important. "Followers" and even more importantly, comments, are a tangible, quantifiable measure of the worth of what you have to say to the world, and believe me, they do matter to people. Every time I find a new blog and I like what the author has to say, I make sure to leave a few comments, just to let them know "Hey, someone else is reading this, and found it worthwhile". I make doubly sure to do this for new bloggers that don't have a lot of followers or comments - do unto others and all that jazz.

So after more than two years, one hundred followers, and a goodly number of comments (several hundred, surely, since I've got 168 posts counting this one, and each post averages at least 2-3 comments), I just want to thank everyone who's followed this blog or posted a comment here, positive or negative. it shows that I'm not just talking to an empty room, or writing a column for my own newspaper.

And last, but not least, I want to urge everyone who reads this to go out there, find a blog that's interesting to you but doesn't seem to get a lot of traffic, and post a few comments just to let the writer know that someone else finds value in what they are doing.

Here's to 168 posts down, hopefully hundreds more to go.

David Mamet Discusses Drama

2010-03-30T10:32:00.002-04:00

...and apparently loves writing in all caps. This morning I was fishing in my blog list and came across Dan Abnett's blog (if you have any interest in military sci-fi, or just sci-fi in general, Abnett is someone to check out). He's posted a link to a memo sent out by David Mamet (I hope I don't have to tell you who he is...) to the writers of that TV series The Unit. I saw much of this show's first season, and while the operational parts of the show were very cool, the "stateside drama" made me yawn and somewhat nauseated.

Regardless, the show had good potential (and Ex-Delta Operator Eric L. Haney was it's technical consultant - go Haney), and after re-watching the beyond awesome Mamet film Spartan this past weekend, I'm in the mood for Mamet. So this link came as a delightful surprise to me, and I figure I would pass it along to you good folks.

The link in question.

And although I've linked to it before, I'll put up another link to Dan Abnett's blog here.

I will beg Mr. Mamet's forgiveness and reproduce what I think is the crux of his argument (and yes, he wrote it in all caps...):

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?

THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE LITMUS PAPER. APPLY THEM, AND THEIR ANSWER WILL TELL YOU IF THE SCENE IS DRAMATIC OR NOT.

Happy reading.

TnB RPG: Sergeant McTeague

2010-03-26T15:41:00.007-04:00

It took me just about 10 minutes to draft up this character. About half of that was deciding where to spend all the Character Tokens. Eight of them went to increase his skills, while the remaining four went to raise two of his Peril Checks. I "cheated" a little bit and gave him all his gear for free; since he's a soldier, his equipment is largely issued to him, and I figured it made sense to not make him pay for that Signature Gear out of his Character Tokens.

McTeague was made just like a normal starting Player Character, but he'd also be fine as a major NPC for a Napoleonic-era campaign setting.

TnB RPG: Carousing, Brawling, and Feasting

2010-03-26T08:30:00.000-04:00

With a game sporting a title like "Tankards and Broadswords", I always envisioned there being at least some tankard-raising and tankard-emptying (or it's setting-appropriate equivalent) in every campaign run using the rules set. For my players and I, gaming has always been as much about the food, the drink, the laughter and the hijinks around the gaming table as it has been about the gameplay, and so I feel the same should be reflected in the actions of the player characters; they should partake of carousing and feasting and horseplay together as much as they go off and partake in grand adventures.

I'll take this moment to point out that, as I begin this column, I've cracked open a bottle of home-brewed beer given to me by one of my players. It's her first batch, but still eminently drinkable. A fitting libation for what I'm writing about here.

Carousing

When I created the skills set for the Rogue, the Carousing skill was foremost in my mind, and I consider it a critical component of adventure gaming. Allow me to cut-and-paste in the section on Carousing from the Gameplay section of the rules:

Carousing
Although the "Tavern Scene" in most adventure RPGs is simply a way to introduce the next adventure, a clever GM and / or clever players can put their PC's hard-partying skills to good use in order to dig up good gossip, pocket some gambling coinage, impress some potential henchmen, or earn some local goodwill by offering to by the next round or three and showing that the PCs can put it away with the best of 'em. As many businessmen can tell you, it's often not in the boardroom but in the barroom that business deals succeed or fail (that's what those expense accounts are for, after all...). Being able to out-drink or arm-wrestle a mercenary captain might mean the difference between having an ally or an enemy on the next adventure!

Because of the above, I whole-heartedly encourage T&B GMs to put some thought and creativity into their taverns or other drinking and carousing establishments. Populate them with interesting and useful characters, invest some effort into putting foods and beverages appropriate to the setting culture on the menu, and even, if your players are amenable to it, do a little research into period games of chance or other tavern games, and see about incorporating them into gameplay. You may even be able to go so far as to get the players to take the place of their characters "at the card table" so to speak, and play some games of chance for the benefit (or detriment) of their PCs. This gives the opportunity for the "game within a game" aspects that many folks like to see incorporated into their gaming.

Brawling

Nothing says having a good time at Ye Olde Tavern like a full-blown barroom brawl. It's the staple of many an adventure story, and it allows players (and their PCs) the chance to blow off a little steam while at the same time, not unduly endangering themselves or racking up an unfortunate body count with the locals. The following is an excerpt from the T&B Core Rules:

The Brawling Rules
Characters sometimes have the option of fighting using the Carousing skill - this is generally known as Brawling. "Brawling" in T&B represents not just fighting with fists and feet, but with a tankard, beef bone, wine bottle, rock, tavern bench - whatever makeshift clubbing / bashing / smashing implement happens to be at hand at the moment (note that just because it's part of the Carousing skill, that doesn't mean Brawling can't be done outside of a tavern...).
An unarmed character who uses the Carousing skill in a fight first makes a Chance roll to grab an impromptu weapon and augment their damage rolls. Normally, an unarmed character would roll 1d-1 for damage (because they lack even a Light weapon), but the PC can take the result of the following roll to see if they have acquired an impromptu brawling weapon:

1: No Suitable Weapon Available
2-3: Light Weapon (tankard, beef bone, rock)
4-5: Medium Weapon (chair, fire iron, table leg)
6: Heavy Weapon (bar bench, lit brazier, burning log)

There is one other important factor to consider with Brawling fights - because Brawling combat is made up of attacks with an odd assortment of makeshift weapons as well as unarmed attacks like headbutts, throws, kicks to the groin, etc., and a "brawl" is usually not meant to be a lethal combat, damage is not always of the slice-you-open, crush-your-skull variety. Because of this, any time a blow lands and damage is dealt, only on a 1d/5+, is the damage "real"; otherwise, the damage is considered Temporary.

It's important to note that while the Carousing skill can be used for Brawling, and Brawling attacks can do damage and eventually incapacitate foes, one does not "brawl" with a battle axe or broadsword; Brawling is barroom-style combat, where the object is to knock each other's heads together and give someone a few lumps. While it can come in handy in a pinch when your rogue PC finds themselves in a tight spot, I don't recommend letting characters substitute Brawling for real, serious do-or-die combat skills. If a character wants to make the attempt, I'd suggest the GM impose a -2 or -3 penalty on their Brawling rolls, as the character discovers that the same tactics they use to knock about a couple of drunk farmers at the local watering hole don't work so well against a mob of rampaging beastmen.

Feasting

It sounds a little silly to admit it, but one of my favorite parts of well-done swords-and sorcery adventure fiction is the food and the drink. Heaping platters of steaming meats, loaves of fresh-baked breads, finely aged and fragrant cheeses, delicate sweetmeats and exotic desserts, and of course a plethora of beverages; tankards of foaming ale, cool crisp hard ciders, sweet refreshing meads, delicate white wines and robust reds, glasses of port and snifters of brandy, along with more potent elixirs auch as schnapps, aquavit, sake, or kumis.

Determining what your characters eat and drink in different portions of the campaign world, and stocking the taverns and mead-halls accordingly, can lend an air of interesting immediacy to what is usually just a boilerplate bit of session-filler. Almost two years ago, I wrote an article on alcoholic beverages and how they can factor into your gaming experience. In a Tankards & Broadswords campaign, this attention to detail would be expected.

Now, I'm typically not a fan of drunkenness mechanics, although GMs are more than welcome to incorporate them into their campaigns. I did, instead, work in another sort of optional rule (and yes, all rules are optional; I mean "optional" in terms of appropriate to the system, but not an integral part of the core rules) that promotes the rejuvenative powers of good food and drink. Copied from the T&B Core Rules:

Optional Rule: Heroic Feasting!
Sometimes after a day (or week) of perilous adventuring, a PC just needs a good meal and some fine spirits in order to recover from the trials and hardships they have endured. Whenever the PC is injured and has found a suitable eating establishment (GM's discretion), the PC may spend the equivalent of one Treasure Token and have themselves a true hero's feast of the finest food and drink the establishment has to offer, gorging on enormous portions of meat and other exotic foods, and guzzling tankards of the finest ale, mead, or wine (whatever's the most setting appropriate).
In the morning, and only after a solid eight hours of sleep, the PC will wake up to find that they have recovered 2d Health (but might have a bit of a hangover - sometimes you take the bad with the good...).

Giving the players several good reasons to have their characters spend some of their hard-won treasure in the nearest tavern (and support small business owners in the process), should encourage colorful scenes of feasting and merriment, both in game and out (within reason, people - let's keep things from getting too out of hand around the gaming table!).

TnB RPG: Combat

2010-03-25T11:38:00.002-04:00

The Tankards and Broadswords RPG guidelines for combat are relatively straightforward, but I designed them to allow for a lot of "wiggle room", both on the part of the players and the GM. Combat in an adventure RPG should be exciting, fun, challenging but not exhaustive or demoralizing, and above all, it should never bog down gameplay with endless bickering and arguments over +1 to this or -1 to that. As I state at one point in the combat rules, the GM is advised to, when in doubt, "let the characters slide into home base".

Taking Action

- Combat is handled through a series of combat rounds, each round encompassing approximately six seconds of "in-game" time.

- At the beginning of a combat round, each player makes a Reflexes skill check. NPCs and monsters make checks as well, although the GM may choose to have opponents with the same Reflexes rating just make one roll in order to cut down on the bookkeeping.

- Combatants act in order of highest overall result to lowest, with ties settled by A) the highest Reflexes rating, or B) if necessary, a coin-flip.

Combat Movement

- When a combatant's turn to act in the combat round comes about, they can move and then act (fight, cast a spell, etc.), act and then move, or even move, act, and move again. The following strictures apply:

- A human-sized character can cover approximately six meters of ground in a combat round and still act normally.
- The same character can cover up to twelve meters of ground in a combat round, but any die rolls they make that round (except for Defense and Peril checks) suffer a -3 penalty.
- Finally, the character can move "flat out" and cover up to twenty-four meters of movement in the round, but they can't take any actions (except for Defense or Peril checks) for the remainder of the combat round.

- With regards to actions made during the combat round, a general rule of thumb is that the character can make one Skill check as their action for the round (except for Defense or Peril checks), plus any related minor actions agreed upon by the GM. For example, if the character wants to attack with a broadsword that's a Melee skill check, but the GM may allow them to draw or pick up the weapon and still attack normally.

Attacks and Damage

- Unless otherwise determined by the GM, an attack (Melee or Ranged skill check) is opposed by a Defense skill check made by the defender. If the attacker equals or exceeds the Defense skill check's total, the attack succeeds. If not, it fails.

- A successful attack always delivers 1d points of damage, plus the Balance of the attack roll, plus any damage modifier from the weapon. For example, a 1d roll of 4 combines with an attack Balance of +2, and a broadsword's damage modifier of +1, for a total of 7 points of damage.

- If the defender is wearing armor, the Armor Value is subtracted from the damage. For example, against the above damage result, a character wearing a coat of Heavy Mail (AV 4), would take 3 points of damage.

- Damage is subtracted from a target's Health rating. All PCs regardless of archetype have a base Health of 24. Monsters and NPCs will have varying Health ratings; non-combatant characters will usually have a Health of 6, while "minion" type NPCs (city guards, cultists, enemy footmen) will usually have a Health of 12. Fully statted-out NPCs (major villains or allies) will usually have a Health of 24, just like the PCs. Monsters can have any Health rating, but typically it is based on the size, mass, and toughness of the monster in question.

- If a PC or major NPC reaches 0 Health, they are incapacitated. If their Health becomes a negative value, the character will have to make an Endure Peril check in order to avoid death. The Break Point of the check is based on how far into the negative the character's Health has gone - the more badly wounded, the harder it will be to stay alive. Unless otherwise decreed by the GM, monsters and minor characters who reach 0 Health are simply killed.

Optional Combat Maneuvers

- At the discretion of the GM, the PC may attempt various combat maneuvers during the course of their combat actions. Any PC can attempt them (they are not bought as a kind of special ability), and players are encouraged to try and come up with their own combat maneuvers that will be adjudicated by the GM. Typically, there is a "give and take" with each maneuver; i.e., trading attack for defence, trading chance to hit for chance to do more damage, etc..

Here are a few sample combat maneuvers from the Core Rules. :

Two-Weapon Fighting
The character uses a one-handed weapon (melee or ranged) in each hand (or a double-ended weapon like a quarterstaff, at the GM's discretion). It is an unpredictable fighting style, but it is also difficult to master. When attacking with two weapons, the character uses Weighted Rolls for their attacks.

Web of Death
The character lashes out at encircling foes in all directions, weaving a web of death around themselves. The character makes one Melee attack roll applied against all their attackers' Defense checks, with a penalty of -1 for each opponent (i.e, against 3 opponents, make one attack roll at -3).

Charge Attack
The character rushes headlong into their target, using pure physicality to add power to the attack. The character and the target make opposed Athletics skill checks. If the character succeeds, the Balance is applied as a bonus to their attack roll. If the character fails, the defender's Balance is applied as a penalty. If the character is mounted, half the mount's Athletics skill (rounded up) is added to the character's Athletics roll.

Feint
The attacker makes a Reflexes roll vs. the defender's Detection skill, attempting to fool the defender with a clever ruse. If the attacker succeeds, the Balance of the roll is applied as a bonus to their attack roll that round. If the attacker fails, the Negative Balance is applied as a penalty.

There are, of course, more combat-related rules than this, but the above covers the basics of determining action order, movement, attack and defense, and doing damage. Again, nothing terribly original, but the rules are kept simple and fairly straightforward for a reason.

TnB RPG: Character Creation

2010-03-24T12:33:00.007-04:00

Here's the second part of my presentation of the (much abbreviated here) Tankards and Broadswords RPG core rules. Today's post covers creating player characters.

Character Archetypes

Characters in the Tankards and Broadswords RPG come in three archetypes; Warrior, Rogue, and Scholar. By and large, most "adventure story" characters can be fitted into one of these three archetypes. Mechanically, there is little difference between the three; however, a character's archetype does affect which skills list they have preferred access to, as well as (if the campaign setting involves magic) the costs involved in learning magic. Aside from this, it is entirely possible for you to have a Scholar character who is a master swordsman, or a Warrior who is fluent in every campaign language - it just won't be as easy to get the character to that degree of proficiency.

(As an aside, the core rules do contain two different suggestions for creating archetype-less characters, if the GM doesn't want to use the three default character archetypes).
Character Skills

Each archetype has a set of associated skills.

Warrior Skills:
Athletics - running, jumping, climbing, lifting, etc..
Command - battlefield tactics and strategy, leadership, and charisma.
Defense - warding off melee, or in some cases ranged, attacks.
Melee - combat unarmed or with hand-to-hand weapons.
Ranged - combat with missile weapons, either fired or thrown.Reflexes - speed, timing, and coordination.

Rogue Skills:
Carousing - gambling, drinking, rumor-mongering, and other recreations.
Detection - powers of observation, analytical thinking, and using one's senses.
Persuasion - etiquette, oratory, intimidation, fast-talking, and other methods.
Stealth - moving quietly and unseen, hiding, ambush, the art of camouflage.
Survival - staying alive without the comforts and support of civilization.
Thievery - picking pockets, opening locks, fencing goods, the art of deception.

Scholar Skills:
Arcana - knowledge of secret societies, practices, arts, and histories.
Crafting - skill at creating art objects, tools, weapons, or other devices.
Healing - tending to injuries, using herbs, curing diseases, understanding poisons.
History - knowledge of people, places, and things, both past and present.
Languages - fluency in languages and a general understanding of linguistics.
Naturalism - the science of the natural world; flora, fauna, geography, weather, etc..

(Note: it's recommended that in modern-day or sci-fi campaign settings, "Naturalism" can be replaced with a more appropriate skill name such as "Science". The same may be said for any skill the GM wishes to tweak to better fit the nature of the campaign.)

Every skill has the following rating structure:

0 = Unskilled
1 = Novice
2 = Amateur
3 = Professional4 = Veteran
5 = Expert
6 = Master

Characters can distribute twelve skill ranks into their Archetype's skills list, and six skill ranks into each of the other two skills lists. It is recommended that starting characters are limited to a rating of 4 or less in any one skill.

If a skill is given a rating of 3 or higher, the character may take a Skill Focus (the Focus costs nothing). A Focus is a +1 bonus to the skill roll whenever the skill is used in a certain fashion. For example, a character's Melee skill might have a Focus in Unarmed Combat, or Broadswords, while a character's Stealth skill might have a Focus in Stalking or Camouflage. A character with a skill rating of 6 can take a second Focus in that skill, but cannot "stack" the bonus on the first Focus.

Peril Checks

Characters are often faced with perilous hazards or challenges that aren't associated with any given skill. For example, a character may have to leap out of the way of an explosion, or suffer through the effects of a crippling toxin, or withstand the mind-bending powers of an enchantment. These situations are known as Perils, and every character has three Peril attributes: Avoid, Endure, and Resist. Perils are rated from 0 to 6 just like skills, and starting characters have six points they can distribute amongst the three Peril attributes. Like skills, it is recommended that starting characters put no more than four points into any one Peril attribute.

Status Values

As a character goes on adventures and interacts with the world around them, they will (one hopes) gain a reputation for themselves and (again, one hopes) accumulate a degree of wealth and other resources. This is represented by a character's three Status values: Infamy, Renown, and Wealth. Infamy represents the character's negative reputation, Renown represents their positive reputation, and Wealth represents the resources and holdings, financial and otherwise, that the character has access to, either as part of their own personal fortunes or as favors and alliances they can call upon. Starting characters have three points they can distribute between the three Status values.

Finishing Touches

After the above steps have been completed, each character has twelve Character Tokens they can spend to customize their character:

- Skills (1 Token per +1 increase)
- Perils (2 Tokens per +1 increase)
- Status (3 Tokens per +1 increase)

It is still recommended that, even with the use of Character Tokens, a starting character's Skills, Perils, and Status remain at a rating of four or less.

Signature Gear

The T&B RPG is designed to be episodic, with no continuous, rolling session-by-session timeline. Because of this, there may be days, weeks, months, or even years in between adventures. Character equipment may change over time, but as with many "adventure story" characters, a few pieces of equipment will probably always be in the character's possession, such as a favored type of weapon or armor, a set of lock-picks, or a certain magical charm.

If the player doesn't spend all their Character Tokens adjusting character attributes, the remaining Tokens can be used to purchase equipment at character creation time, and this equipment will become part of the character's Signature Gear. This is equipment the character automatically starts with at the beginning of each adventure, regardless of anything else they wish to purchase. The cost, in Character Tokens, for each piece of equipment is given in the campaign setting's equipment list.

That pretty much sums up character creation. You pick your archetype, dole out points to Skills, Perils, and Status values, and then divvy up your starting Character Tokens to raise various attributes or buy Signature Gear. After a little practice, a character can probably be written up within 10 minutes.

Edit: I thought I'd post an image of what the draft character sheet currently looks like. Nothing fancy, but actually, that's how I like character sheets - nice and simple.

TnB RPG: The Core Mechanics

2010-03-23T11:07:00.003-04:00

I've decided to start posting abbreviated portions of the rules for the Tankards and Broadswords RPG that I've been developing. I've come to the conclusion that this isn't something I really have any wish to "publish" like so many are doing, for the simple reason that so many others are, in fact, publishing their own RPGs. Rather, it's become more of an exercise in defining what I like in terms of RPG mechanics and building an RPG that's right for me and my own GMing style.

However, I do want some feedback on how others perceive the mechanics I'm working on, and with that goal in mind, I'll be posting portions of the rules here. This won't be the rules as written in my main rules document, but rather pared down to the basics to keep things brief.

To start off, we'll take a look at the core task resolution mechanics of the T&B RPG system.

The Standard Roll
Any time a character has to take an action that makes use of a Skill, Peril, or Status value, the player rolls two six-sided dice (2d), combines the results, and adds the relevant character related value (Melee, Endure, Infamy, etc.) plus any modifiers. This is compared to the situation's Break Point, a value determined either by the situation at hand (climbing a wall) or resistance on the part of another character or creature (avoiding detection while hiding).

The Break Point
Situational Break Points typically start at a base of 7 for tasks of mild difficulty, but increase in value for harder tasks, up to 12 and even beyond for truly Herculean tasks. Break Points determined by another character or creature are generated by using an opposing Skill or other special ability to generate the Break Point (for example, a Defense roll to oppose a Melee roll). In less than clear-cut situations (such as one character sneaking while another tries to detect), the GM will decide which character generates the Break Point (since a tie has to go to one party or the other).

The Balance
When the results of the character's roll are compared to the Break Point, if the character's roll is greater than or equal to the Break Point, the roll succeeds. If the result is lower, the roll fails. The degree to which the roll succeeded or failed is known as the Balance, and can have in-game consequences depending on how great the success is or how awful the failure (Balance involving failed rolls is known as "Negative Balance").

The Weighted Roll
In unusual circumstances, a character or creature may make a weighted roll. The player or GM rolls the dice as normal, but if the roll does not come up as a double (i.e., 2-2, 5-5, etc.), the lower of the two die values is re-rolled and added to the higher die. For example, if the player rolls and gets a 3 and a 5, the 3 is re-rolled, and whatever comes up (whether it is better or worse than the 3) is added to the 5. The total is then added to the character or creature's Skill or other value, just like the Standard Roll.

The Chance Roll
There are many times when a situation calls for a degree of chance to be involved, but it has little to do with a character's Skill, Peril, or Status values. Rather, it is simply a possibility of something happening that the GM is leaving up to chance, rather than a declaration. In these cases, a "1d/X+" roll, or Chance Roll, is made. The player or GM rolls one die (1d) and has to meet or beat the "X" value. For example, a Chance Roll of 1d/5+ means that something occurs on a roll of 5 or 6 on the six-sided die.

And that's pretty much it. Characters and Creatures use Standard and Weighted rolls for their Skill, Peril, Statue, and special ability checks, and the Chance roll handles, well, situations of pure chance or base probability. Standard and Weighted rolls are made against a Break Point, which is determined by a static value or the opposition of another character or creature. The degree of success or failure in a Standard or Weighted roll is known as the Balance, which can be positive or negative, and can have an in-game effect on how things turn out.

Truth be told, there is nothing revolutionary here, and that's actually how I like it. There's a reason certain task resolution mechanics keep cropping up in RPGs; some methods just work better in play than others. I figure if 2d6+Value vs. Difficulty was good enough for Traveller some 30+ years ago, it's good enough for me. There's very little math and most of the addition involves single-digit numbers, but at the same time it isn't so simple as to be a "heads I win" mechanic.

Thanks in advance for any feedback folks are willing to give. Next time, we'll talk about Character Archetypes and Character Creation.

A Writer Writes, Always - Part Four

2010-03-19T08:30:00.000-04:00

So after I've spent the last three of these columns lambasting folks for attempting to turn their beloved campaign settings into marketable works of fiction, what's my advice for those poor unfortunates who've volunteered to be part of the Forlorn Hope, to charge the editorial defenses set up by the publishers to fend off such attempts?

I offer up three basic suggestions:

1. Make some attempt at originality; if not in content, then in presentation.

2. If you just can't be original, do derivative fiction really, really well.

3. If you just can't do derivative fiction well, buckle the hell down and get better.

Let's tackle these one at a time.

First, let's get something out in the open right off. Coming up with anything really, truly, original is probably literally like winning the lottery. Now and then someone is able to come up with something no one has really ever seen before, but it is probably beyond a one-in-a-million kind of deal. This is compounded by the fact that the more you read and delve into your favored genre, the harder it's going to be to come upon an idea of your own you haven't seen somewhere else before. I can't count the number of times I've thought of something cool, and then a year or two later, find it cropping up online or in a novel I pick up.

So at the end of the day, the best you can reasonably hope for is to find an unusual or semi-original twist to a more traditional idea. How about creating a very Middle-Earth-ish world, but then writing very dark and terrifying horror stories set there? What about making a pseudo-Hyboria, and then using it as the setting for a series of humorous tales about a bumbling barbarian who, through sheer terror and survival instinct, makes it through his tales alive? There's nothing wrong with polishing off an old gem and giving it a new fitting, especially for a neophyte writer.

On the other hand, what if you find that you're just utter rubbish at coming up with new ideas, and whenever you try it, it just turns to poop? If you just find it easier to play in someone else's world than to create your own, you can always consider pastiche fiction or media tie-in novels (aka, "shared-world fiction"). There are plenty of writers who started out working for TSR, or writing Star Wars or Star Trek fiction, or even writing for Games Workshop's Black Library, who have made good careers out of working with someone else's material. These sorts of venues are the perfect places for a writer to learn the tools they need and build the confidence necessary to step out and begin writing their own original works. I'm also willing to bet it's a somewhat easier venue to break into as an amateur writer.

Don't believe me? Douglas Wojtowicz, one of the current top "stable writers" in Gold Eagle Books' 40+ year long Mack Bolan Executioner series, started out as a fan fiction writer whose works were well received in the Executioner fan community, and his success there paved the road for one of his manuscripts being accepted. Likewise, a lot of the folks who are currently publishing novels and writing game supplements for Games Workshop started off their GW careers in the pages of Inferno!, GW's fan-fiction short story magazine. Also consider someone like Robert Jordan (aka, James Oliver Rigney, Jr.)- not that many of his Wheel of Time fans knew (until they published a three-book omnibus a few years before his death) that he made a mark for himself under that pen name writing Conan pastiches long before he was writing about a certain shepherd from the Two Rivers. There's also the number of fantasy, horror, and weird fiction writers that have penned Lovecraft pastiches (or shall we call them "homages"?) early in their careers. British horror author Ramsey Campbell freely admits that his earlier short stories were mostly Lovecraft pastiches, and not very good ones to boot, but not only was he a published author before he hit 20, he's still writing decades later. Without a few "unoriginal works" under his belt, he might never have carried on to write his own material.

And as to the last of my suggestions, if you find yourself struggling to even write Conan fan fiction...get better. Write and write and write some more. Darkwing's comment on my previous column was spot on - very few authors pick up a pen and watch greatness pour forth. Becoming a good writer takes time and effort and working through a lot of frustrations. You've got to break down a lot of bad habits before you build some good ones, and the only way to do it is to write your damn heart out.

If you can learn to write well, and more importantly, keep a reader interested, you will be forgiven many literary sins. Gardner F. Fox's Kothar series might be pure derivative schlock, but Fox knew his audience, knew what they wanted to read, and gave them what they wanted and nothing more - something that served him well throughout his decades-long career writing thousands of comics and dozens of novels in varying genres. Lin Carter likewise was no literary giant, but he LOVED fantasy, especially sword & sorcery stories, and I find that the excitement and enthusiasm radiating from every page of his works outweighs (in my mind, at least) the shortcomings of these works.

A few other suggestions I think aspiring authors should take to heart...

- Keep your knives sharp. As my old classics professor would admonish before every paper was due, "...no sentence has a right to exist - it's a privilege based purely on merit". Don't become so enamored of your own ideas that you're not willing to excise something from your work that just doesn't fit. I believe this is often referred to as "be prepared to murder your children". On the other hand, don't let agonizing over whether or not every sentence you write is "perfect" bog you down and turn you into a hand-wringing literary impotent that can't get past "The night was...". First drafts are there to pour your ideas out onto the page, warts and all. Only when you know how it all ends will you know how it really should begin.

- Like the Inquisitors of old, seek out the heresy of gaming-based fixtures in your literary setting and snuff them out with extreme prejudice. Nothing reeks of D&D fan fiction like a world that has "arcane magic" and "divine magic", or characters that all neatly fall into barbarian/ranger/thief/paladin-style class archetypes. Nothing will make you look like an amateur GM-turned-author faster than a character pulling out a "curative draught" to restore themselves after a battle, no matter how cleverly you disguise said potion of healing. Like I said above about the difficulty in generating original ideas, so much is ingrained in our creative subconscious that this will be very, very hard to do - but if you can expunge the taint of game-ism from your works, you will be taken much more seriously.

- Trust no one. Don't ask your girlfriend or boyfriend to read your fantasy novel and give you good advice. You might get some pointers, but they aren't paying to read your work (well, except for the S.O. Tax), and they aren't going to want to turn you into a moping lump of crap for the next month, so they aren't going to tell you what you need to hear, even if they don't realize it. The same goes for the folks in your gaming group, your parents, your kids, even your co-workers. You need to find people who really do not care if they crush your soul, and let them have at it. This isn't just to build a thick skin, however; this is because you cannot bank on just one set of opinions to learn what works and what doesn't work. Some people might like D&D-isms in their fantasy novels because it just tingles their "wouldn't it be fun to game like this" vibe. Others hate it and stop reading the moment they detect it. You need to get the opinions of those who hate your writing and those who love it, and those who hate and love completely different parts, and why. Just like statistics and surveys, the only way to get anything close to an accurate data set is to pull from a deep pool.

- Just like swimming, hunting, rock-climbing, and screwing, have a partner that keeps you focused with your head in the game, ready to offer a word of encouragement when you're feeling like you want to give up. I still think you shouldn't necessarily trust everything your writing partner tells you about your work (see above), but writing is a lonely business and if you have another writer to turn to, someone who knows what it's like and can understand what you're going through, that loneliness can be mitigated, at least to a degree. If you don't already know a writer who can become your writing partner, a little cautious internet exploration might be in order. You might never meet face to face, but an internet pen pal / writing buddy might just mean the difference between soldiering on and giving up. And if that seems a little too 21st century to you, there's always adult ed creative writing classes and workshops - swing by your local bookstore or coffee shop and take a look on their bulletin board, or check your local Craigslist page. The usual "meeting complete strangers and talking about elves and wizards" cautionary warnings apply, of course, but meeting a writing partner for a pint of ale or a cup of coffee once a week might just carry you through the rough patches.

And, I'm spent. Three parts knocking your hopes and dreams down with a sledgehammer, one part offering a trowel and some wet cement, I hope this four-part series has, at the very least, led to some good soul-searching on the part of aspiring fantasy and sci-fi GMs/Future Writers.

A long road ahead, but hey, a writer writes - always.

Historical Settings - Most Appropriate System

2010-03-18T09:24:00.003-04:00

Good morning,

So after a ton of great comments posted yesterday about your favorite "when and where" for historical gaming (and keep 'em coming if you haven't thrown your vote in), the question then arises, what system would you use to play in your favorite time period? Extra points for answers that take into account any system's supplements that specifically deal with your favored historical setting, making use of that system that much easier and more fruitful.

I'll put one caveat in here - you can't pick D&D, or any one of it's descendants or retro-clones. D&D's a great family of systems and all, but so much of it's bulk is related to the fantastical - non-human races, supernatural abilities, magic-based classes, monsters, magical items, spells, etc. - that picking it for use in a purely historical, non-fantastical campaign setting seems inappropriate or, at best, inefficient to me.

However, I'll caveat the caveat and give some wiggle room for the AD&D2E-Era "green books"; the historical supplements for Glory of Rome, A Mighty Fortress, etc.. If you want to use D&D and figure in one of these supplements , I'll buy into it.

So, let's hear your top pairing of favorite historical time and place with the most appropriate RPG.

Historical Settings - Your Favorite When and Where

2010-03-17T12:50:00.002-04:00

So here's a nice mid-week "what-if" question to mull over.

If you had to pick a rough time and place - before the start of the 20th century - to set a historical campaign you'd either want to play in, GM, or both, where would it be? No elements of the supernatural, but I would allow wiggle room for "somewhat poetic interpretations" of the time and place concerned.

This question comes from me contemplating historical campaign settings, but realizing that the most commonly considered time and place that finds its way into most bastardized pseudo-historical RPGs like D&D and Harn and the like is the European Middle Ages, which in my mind is actually one of the crappier time periods to consider running around as a band of freebooting adventurers beholden to no one but their own sense of entitlement.

I mean, unless you just ignore the complete stranglehold the Church and the Feudal System has on anything and everything you do, a PC party that isn't beholden to one or the other is going to find itself on the wrong end of the "law" or an "enemy of the Church" really, really fast, and at that point, it's all over. Just seems to be too little middle ground between Dirt-Grubbing Famished Peasant and Bowing/Scraping/Forelock-Tugging Feudal Toady/Church Toady. I'm sure there are places to get away with such shenanigans, but I get the feeling the situations would always have to be contrived so that every time your PCs open their mouths, the local lord doesn't have them pin-cushioned with arrows or the closest priest doesn't have them slaughtered for heresy and blasphemy.

So, after I contemplated that, I started thinking of other places and times where a mostly accurate, non-fantastical campaign would be a lot of fun, and I decided to put the question out there for my readers.

So, any takers?

A Writer Writes, Always - Part Three

2010-03-16T08:30:00.001-04:00

And now, we come around (finally) to the heart of the matter - what happens when gamers turn their beloved campaign settings into fiction settings, with the goal of creating some kind of marketable material and earning the much coveted title "novelist".

In a word, tragedy.

As we discussed earlier, there are elements of fiction that don't translate well into RPGs. And it follows that there are elements of RPGs that don't translate well into fiction. This problem is compounded, furthermore, when you have a campaign setting, inspired by a fictional setting, that is then used as the basis for your fiction.

Lets take a look at a possible case study. Hank loves Tolkien. He thinks Middle-Earth is an amazing fictional world, and loves everything about it. Loves it so much, in fact, that he wouldn't ever consider sullying it by running a D&D campaign IN Middle-Earth. So, Hank settles for the next best thing - he creates is "own" Middle-Earth, calling it the Mydrealm. He populates Mydrealm with noble, immortal elves, stalwart dwarves, doughty "little people" of some fashion, and a whole host of human cultures that are basically Gondorians and Rohirim and Dunedain and Easterlings and whatnot with the serial numbers filed off, as well as Orcs and Goblins and Trolls and Dark Wizards and a few other nasties.

While it's in no way an "original" campaign setting, Hank's love of Tolkien and Middle-Earth drives him to put a lot of love into Mydrealm, and he writes volumes of campaign setting material, and creates histories and characters, and quests and battles, and eventually a world is born that Hank uses for his D&D campaign for the next ten years. Dozens of gamers play in Hank's campaigns over that decade, and the care and attention he had put into his game, resulting in hundreds of hours of happy, enjoyable gaming, prompts many of these players to suggest to Hank that he should try writing stories set in the world of Mydrealm. Most of these players know it's got a very "Tolkien-esque" feel, but because they enjoy that themselves and see all the little details in the game that ARE original, they feel the world is more "inspired" by Middle-Earth than anything else.

So Hank thinks to himself that there is something to this idea, and takes a break from gaming to dig through all his notes and read through all the adventures over the years, and finally he puts together what he thinks is a suitably epic plot and creates over the span of a year or so a fairly well-written mid-length fantasy novel. He farms out drafts to his players, who all read through the manuscript and enjoy it immensely because they've spent countless hours in this world, and love to see it rendered so prosaically. Bolstered by this positive reception, Hank takes some of the editing and constructive criticism and re-writes his draft, and asks his players to again read it over. The reception this time is even more glowing, and so, thinking that he's really touched on something great, he packages up his manuscript and ships it off to a handful of publishing houses, in the hopes that someone will like it and offer to publish it.

And then it all ends in tears.

Frank at Del Rey flips through the manuscript, sees only a thinly veiled Tolkien pastiche with some RPG influences, throws it out and sends his rejection letter. As does Scott at Baen, and Bill at Tor, etc. etc.. In the mind of Hank the writer, he's got a well-written story built around what he probably considers "traditional fantasy in the vein of Tolkien", while others just see a wannabee ripping off a more well-known author, just like the other fifteen Tolkien rip-offs they've had to reject in the last week. Of course, because it's based not only on Tolkien but D&D as well, there are "clerics" of various Tolkien-esque deities, who possess magical powers of a healing and divining nature, as well as other D&D-isms that have subtly creeped into the story. This only further damns the work in the minds of these professionals, since in their mind, they do not publish "gaming fiction".

So, where did it all go so horribly wrong for Hank?

I think the problem lies in two areas - proximity and objectivity, each of which plays off the other. Hank set out to create a very "Tolkien inspired" world, and while at the micro-level there are many differences from Middle-Earth, at the macro level, there is little to differentiate one from the other. However, having spent so long working at the micro level as a DM, creating NPCs and maps of villages and all these other things that have no direct relation to Middle-Earth, Hank has lost his objectivity because he's too close to the world; he's painting a portrait "inspired by" the Mona Lisa with a single-hair brush three inches from his nose and noting all the tiny differences, while anyone standing a few feet back behind him can't tell the two apart.

Unfortunately, Hank's reviewer base isn't any help either, since they suffer from the same problem. Playing in Hank's world for years and creating all their own stories and adventures, the players lose sight of the fact that the world they are playing in is really just Middle-Earth with the serial numbers filed off. They've seen all the little ways in which it is different, and forget all the ways in which it's the same, and as such when they read Hank's novel they aren't seeing a pseudo-Middle-Earth, they are seeing the home of their PCs for the last 10 years. Maybe their characters even make cameo appearances, which they'll love, and perhaps rumors and stories they helped create are mentioned here and there, just adding to their enjoyment - after all, who wouldn't want to feel like they actually helped in the creative process? Because all of them were involved in the project from before it even existed, their perspective was too warped to be of any use to Hank, and in the end, all they did was reinforce a bad course of action.

Now, you might think that what I've just written is a rather contrived example. Yes, it is contrived in that it is probably a very stereotyped example of what I'm talking about, but I think it is in no way an impossible, or even far-fetched, scenario. If people can write fan fiction about settings other people have created, thinking them publishable when (in most instances) they are clearly nothing but unimaginative drivel, they can certainly write "recursive fan fiction"; essentially fan fiction set in a world of their own creation. And I say that to differentiate it from, well, normal fiction set in a world of an author's own creation, because those worlds are created with the purpose of being written about, not gamed in and THEN written about.

Gaming worlds carry unnecessary baggage:

- They carry the baggage of the rules system the campaign used. Do your wizards wear armor? Do they wield swords? Is there a distinct difference between "magic of the arcane" and "magic of the divine", and do divine "mages" wear armor but the arcane do not? Can "clerics" use swords? Are there "spells of healing"? Does anyone ever cast a "fireball" or a "magic missile"? You can give these ideas different names, but anyone who's spent any time reading this stuff can spot a magic missile hidden in a "eldritch bolt of azure energy". Of course, some gaming systems are going to be more generic than others and have less of an impact on the world, but removing all traces is a difficult task. In fact, since these tropes have so saturated what it means to be "fantasy", they creep into novels written by people who've never played RPGs, but just feel it's part of what makes fantasy "fantastical".

- They carry the baggage of the campaign itself and the events that took place. The storyline of the PCs tends to have "deep footprints". If there's any hint of events caused by a "ragtag band of adventurers", anyone who knows what a role-playing game is will smell this out and not be terribly impressed by it, even if such references are tangential.

- They carry the baggage of major and minor NPCs as well as, of course, the player characters themselves. The action-adventure author Clive Cussler has a bad habit of putting some cameo appearance of himself in each of his novels, and since the man wrote nothing but a string of schlocky but spectacularly profitable NYT bestsellers for 30 years, he can get away with it. But sadly, a neophyte author can't, and someone reading the book with a jaded eye will spot certain characters as needlessly standing out - the spotlight a little too bright on a character who otherwise has little to no impact on the story. Thus, what appears to the author as "clever", appears to the reader as "trying too hard to be clever".

And, before anyone asks the inevitable question, I myself have not attempted to publish a work of fantasy or sci-fi fiction, much less gaming-inspired fantasy or sci-fi fiction. However, I've seen other people attempt it, and heard or read anecdotes for years now about people who've made the attempt. And if you don't believe that anyone would be so foolish as to actually try this, I remember one website in particular that admonishes perspective writers from submitting this sort of content.

I'm sure digging around the websites of other fantasy and sci-fi publishing houses, you'll find similar statements cautioning against submitting "game-based storytelling of any kind". Actually, most will simply tell you that they don't accept unsolicited works, period, but also specify what sort of fantasy they tend to publish.

So after all that, what do you do if you're a gamer and an aspiring author of fantasy and sci-fi fiction? We'll discuss that in Part Four.

A Writer Writes, Always - Part Two

2010-03-11T11:09:00.003-05:00

All right, so we've gotten past the hard part - ripping the bandage off the hairy leg, so to speak. Lots of gamers, especially GMs, are writers in disguise. Unfortunately, many of them decide to try and take off their mask during the middle of the ball, and rather than the prince falling in love, the music screeches to a halt and someone not-so-quietly upchucks their dinner into the nearest potted palm.

Yes, I know that's gross. It was my intention.

So why, you might ask, does this so often go so horribly wrong? A writer needs to be creative, and diligent, and well-read, and know their subject matter, and feel passionate about what they are writing. All of these qualities any half-decent GM possesses to some degree or another. So where's the problem?

I think the Number One Problem is that, just as you cannot easily translate a book into a movie with any degree of success, or a movie into a book, it is much harder than it might seem to successfully turn a book into an RPG campaign setting, and likewise a campaign setting into a book. Just as there are certain aspects of film that don't translate well into prose and vice versa, there are certain aspects of prose that don't make for good campaign settings, and there are certain aspects of good campaign settings that don't make for good prose.

To expand on this specifically with regards to RPGs and fiction, I am first reminded of an interview with the author China Mieville.

At one point fairly early on in that interview, he discusses the influences of role-playing games, particularly D&D, on his writing. The particular point which I want to draw one's attention to is where he talks about the RPG player's "fetish for systemization"; the idea that you can read H.P. Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu, and still think there's some way to boil down such an alien, unknowable entity into "game stats", as Mieville puts it.

Fellow gamers, please raise your hand if you've ever read a novel or watched a TV show or movie and pondered how to "stat out" a certain character, or how you'd handle a certain piece of technology, monster, or method of magic in terms of your favorite RPG system.

Okay, now raise your hand if you didn't raise your hand before, because you're a liar and not willing to admit the sad truth of the matter.

Of course, one may ask, where is the harm in "statting out" heroes and monsters and other facets of one's favorite fantasy or sci-fi series and building a campaign setting around these stats in order to game in that world?

Because, to paraphrase Dutch from Predator, if it's got hit points, we can kill it.

Frodo Baggins, despite being a three-foot tall potato dumpling who's probably never been in a real brawl his whole life, makes it across a thousand leagues of murderous war-scape, drops an evil magic ring into the heart of a volcano, and manages to get back home to brew another pot of tea in his hobbit hole, because he's the "hero" of a work of fiction, and doesn't die unless the author feels its appropriate for the character to die in order to suit the aims of the story.

Frodo Baggins the RPG character might very well die in the first session of the campaign when he fails his roll to leap from the Buckleberry Ferry dock and into the boat with Merry, Pippin, and Sam, and instead drowns in the Brandywine River. Whoops. Bad luck, that. Here's a new character sheet.

To look at it from another angle, Robert E. Howard's Conan is the ultimate pulp sword & sorcery badass and survives countless deadly situations, emerging victorious time and time again surrounded by windrows of dead enemies, bruised and bloodied, but nevertheless triumphant. On the other hand, Chuck's Rolemaster character Conan will die from a bad puncture critical to the groin.

Again, once you "stat it out", you're setting limits on your campaign setting that may not give you the results you've come to expect. Once you start giving gods and demons a statline, cheeky players WILL want to find a way to kill them, or die in the attempt. Looked at from the point of view of the players, once you give something a statline, you take away the mystery and the awe. If Cthulhu has hit points, then all you need to defeat it is a big enough gun and a few lucky die rolls. If Luke Skywalker has a Will Save stat, he's just one bad flub of a die roll from being the next Sith Lord.

The more I think about it, the WORST thing you can do to your favorite fictional setting is to turn it into an RPG campaign setting. In the harsh light of day (i.e., after "statting it up"), the love of your life...well...she probably ain't so pretty no more.

I was going to continue the argument here and discuss the problems with going in the other direction - turning RPGs into fiction - but as this column is already fairly long, I'm going to stop here and return to this issue in Part Three, so stay tuned...

A Writer Writes, Always - Part One

2010-03-10T08:30:00.004-05:00

Thus Spake Billy Crystal, in the 1987 dark comedy Throw Momma From The Train. Perhaps it says something of my much-beleagured struggle as a writer that this film for me, more than any other work I've come across except perhaps Showtime's Californication, defines what it truly means to be a writer; 99% exasperation and frustration while beating one's head solidly and repeatedly against the wall, 1% vomitous explosion of chaotic creative energy that can't get out of one's head fast enough.

I've noticed an interesting pattern in a lot of role-playing gamers. Maybe not so much in the dyed-in-the-wool "old school sandbox" variety who abhor any allusions of "plot" or "story" in their campaign settings, never mind their campaigns. But amongst the "sliver age" (I gag slightly as I type that term, but I suppose it fits the bill) gamers and later, those of us pulled into RPGs in the 80's and early 90's not so much by computer games, as I think is increasingly the case, but through genre fiction closely associated with RPGs.

Many of those folks, and I include myself within this category, found within RPGs a way to create "stories" as it were that, while a merest shadow of those which pulled them into the RPG hobby, nevertheless uncorked some creative bottle many of them knew existed, but were either unwilling or incapable of opening themselves. You see, we all know that "writing is hard"; every writer who has ever been successful can tell you that is a fact, and the untold legions of writers who have been unsuccessful may very well tell you it can be impossible. But cobbling together a crudely slapdashed, largely pastiched world based on your favorite fantasy or science-fiction stories, and putting your friends through some hackneyed, tortuous gameplay in order to somehow create similar stories on your own? Sadly (or perhaps not so sadly?), this is all too easy.

The unfortunate by-product of all this lackadaisical yarn-spinning is that some of these GMs (and even players, in rarer cases) get it into their heads that if creating their own original (hah!) campaign setting and running an entertaining and successful (double hah!) campaign was that easy (cackle!), why not turn their prodigious powers of world-building and story-telling in a more prosaic direction, and write fiction for fun and profit?

I imagine the entire painful process evolves as follows:

1. Read the works of numerous successful fantasy or science-fiction writers.

2. Allow said works to percolate in one's creative subconscious for a time.

3. Pour oneself a hot, steaming cup of supposed creative genius in the form of a RPG campaign and its attendant campaign setting.

4. Inhale the intense bouquet, savor the heady aromas, and savor that cup from first sip to last drop.

5. Assume that, because you like the taste and smell of your own blend so much, others will no doubt PAY to experience such genius themselves.

6. Go into the business of brewing up more of this creativity in the hopes of marketing it to the general public.

7. Fail miserably at the task, belatedly discovering that you have little to no actual marketable talent, or at the very least, lack what it takes to properly discipline one's genius and turn that talent into something tangible.

8. Suffer crushing emotional pain and suffering at the thought of your lifelong dream of becoming a successful fantasy or science fiction author falling apart like a poorly-engineered house of cards.

9. Begin blogging...

Now, shockingly enough, I'm not ACTUALLY laying all this out as some projection-of-self "I know this one guy who..." story. I won't deny that some of my own personal experiences color my commentary, but it's also true that I've known a number of gamers who have also wandered down the path of amateur fiction author, most of them unsuccesfully.

I'll continue this exploration of gamers who attempt to become writers in the next column. In the meantime, I leave you with this, which I think kinda sums up most gamers' attempts at writing fiction professionally.

Like A Bad Golfer, I Have Poor Follow-Through

2010-02-19T11:30:00.005-05:00

And no, that's not a Tiger Woods reference.

Following through on projects has always been my biggest failing. Most of my campaigns tend to end not because of a natural conclusion or because of some major Real Life unforeseen circumstance, but because my enthusiasm for them just...peters out. I haven't run a session in my Castles and Crusades campaign in months because of this. Once the characters all began to start slamming through the cannon fodder pretty easily, and once the party size hit eight players, I found that trying to keep track of all the combatants and spell effects and special abilities just became draining. I can see now why later editions of D&D specifically aim for something like a four-person group of PCs; running a group twice that size can be a daunting task.

Two weekends from now I'm actually going to be re-vitalizing my C&C game with what hopes to be a "mini-mega-dungeon" to cap off a major campaign arc. I hope the dungeon will last for at lest 4-6 sessions and see the players up a level (or maybe two, I tend to be generous with XP in the mid-levels) depending on how much fighting they do and what they are able to accomplish.

I've also not done any significant work on my T&B RPG in at least two months. The core rules sit at probably 95% completed, but I just can't work up the energy to do whatever it is I need to do in order to put it all together into a form that I can hand to someone and ask them to give it some serious thought. Never mind the fact that I'm already of the opinion that it's not really a game that's going to go anywhere with regards to a public release, so it's really just a hobby project of mine. Unfortunately, it must compete again all my other poorly followed-through projects, which means that none of them get the attention they deserve.

One thing I've considered is stepping away from the Core Rules and focusing instead on creating a setting-based RPG (Grapeshot & Grognards is currently leading that charge, no pun intended). I'll have to post some of the material I've worked on in that direction sometime soon. One area in which I've been placing a lot of thought is in working PCs into mass combat situations, especially the use of the Command skill and in handling mass casualties in units containing PCs.

One hobby that has been getting a lot of attention from me in the last couple of months is Warhammer 40K. Over at my buddy Darkwing's Arcadia Prime blog, he's posted some battle reports from our latest four-part campaign, featuring my "mostly done" Orks army taking on his Imperial Guard. I say "mostly done" because one never really finishes an army, you just get it to certain plateaus until you have the urge to buy a new model or add a new unit.

I've also been feverishly collecting and building models for my new Space Wolf army. While it's no coincidence that I'm building a Space Wolves force right after the new codex has been released, I don't consider myself a band-wagoner; my Orks are, for the large part, finally completed and painted, and before I even started collecting them years ago, I had considered building a Space Wolves army, but instead passed what minis I had purchased on to a friend who wanted to get into 40K. Thus, rather than have two of the same army being built within our little clique, I turned to Orks, and six years later, I'm turning back to Space Wolves.

So, more work to be done. I hope that posting here can pick up on my end over the next couple of months with my C&C campaign picking back up, and with more G&G work "on deck". I hope to also take some half-decent photos of my 40K miniatures and do a little blogging about wargaming.

RPG Designers - Easy Equals True

2010-02-04T11:10:00.003-05:00

My good friend Masakari forwarded on an interesting article about cognitive fluency and "dis-fluency" this morning. The idea behind this concept is that the easier and more intuitive something is for a person to process, the "truer" that person feels the idea is, and the more trust they have in that idea. This is one of the reasons a lot of axioms rhyme, such as "a stitch in time saves nine", or why a lot of the best advertising campaigns use very simple or rhyming jingles or catch-phrases. Something as basic and simple as the layout and font used in presenting an idea can influence the reader; the easier a font is to read and the cleaner and more accessible the layout, the more the reader will have faith in the content they are reading.

The full article can be read here, from the Boston Globe.

In terms of RPG writing and design, the applications of this principle are obvious. If you're working towards an RPG system that you want to be readily trusted and accepted by those who read it and whom you see as potential players, you are going to want to make the rules and the layout as clean, simple, and "easy" as you can. Now, you'd think this is a pretty obvious concept; no one wants to make an "entry-level" RPG into some kind of baroque labyrinth of convoluted text and imagery that befuddles and confuses the reader. However, writing and designing one's RPG with this concept in mind can be beneficial to you in several ways.

One thing that a lot of designers and writers have trouble with is distancing oneself from the work. You create your RPG and you think to yourself, "How could anyone not get how the rules for armor penetration work? They're so simple". Then you hand the rules off and the first thing people point out is how convoluted your logic is in that section of the rules. Because you understand how a rule works, it is familiar to you, and therefore you trust that the rule will make sense to others.

Another idea that you can really run with is that complex ideas should be given simple names. Rather than calling it a "Impact Damage Multiplier", call it "Wallop" or "Oomph". Hit Points in D&D have been discussed to death for decades now, and these discussions can get shockingly complicated (HP being a mystical amalgam of physiological heartiness, mental fatigue, luck, divine intervention, combat skill, reflexes, etc. etc. etc.), but the truth of the "hit point" mechanic has stood the test of time; you've got a number, it goes down the more hurt you are, and when it reaches 0, you're dead. In other words, if you can take a complicated mechanic in your RPG system and boil it's core meaning down to just a handful of words, or better yet, a little jingle or rhyme, your players will accept it far more readily than the paragraph-long explanation of how the mechanic functions in the game.

Also, if you make it through the whole article (which I urge you to do), you'll also note that if you want people to really pay attention and think hard about something, it is actually a better idea to use a more difficult font and layout, and make the wording a little less intuitive. This instills a sense of un-familiarity and distrust in the reader, meaning they will read over the material more carefully and not so quickly make an intuitive judgment or assumption that could be an incorrect interpretation of what you're trying to get across.

I realize that my columns here have dropped down to almost nil over the last few months. I've been working on a lot that isn't gaming related, but I do want to try and bounce back some from this lack of activity. Hopefully I'll have a few more posts for you all in the coming weeks.

Random Thought Bubbles...

2010-01-21T09:42:00.003-05:00

...in bullet-point format. It's kinda cheating.

- I finished Dan Abnett's Ravenor trilogy last week. After reading six of his interrelated novels in a row, my brain is kinda fried in terms of finding anything that awesome to read afterward. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again anyway; the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies are amazing. Especially from the perspective of dark science-fiction gaming inspirational material.

- Speaking of finding awesome stuff to read, Del Rey is putting out a new Robert E. Howard collection, centered around El Borak and featuring many of Howard's other "desert adventures". I've got most of the works that show up in this new collection, but the books are close to 40 years old and showing every minute of it, and having everything in a new volume would be wonderful. I'll definitely pick this up when it arrives in early February.

- I've slowly been making my way through Heroes via Netflix instant viewing. I'd seen the first season on DVD maybe a year ago, and had been warned that the later seasons weren't all that great. I'm beginning to agree, but I don't necessarily think they're awful, just kinda over-complicated and ridiculous. I've never been all that fascinated by superheroes or comic book culture; I collected some G.I. Joes back in my youth, followed later on by the Punisher, Conan, and Wolverine, but beyond that I'm just not that into the whole scene. I can certainly see how this is an attempt to, in a way, take the superhero genre into the "real world", but I just find that to be something of an oxymoron anyhow.

- Over at the blog of my good friend Darkwing, the Arcadia Prime Blog, there's a new post about what we call "The Law", or more precisely, The Inverse Law of Arguments Mattering. While we apply The Law most often to wargaming, it has equal application to RPGs, especially those with crunchy, fiddly systems with lots of tiny little modifiers. I've seen a great number of arguments about how "overbalanced" it is to give +1 this or -1 that in various edition of D&D. By and large, any +1 modifier to a D20 roll only comes into play, i.e., only matters for the purposes of success or failure, 1 out of every 20 throws of the dice. Yes, lots of +1's piling up can be troublesome, but really, getting bent out of shape because one version of D&D gives a +1 modifier at a certain stat level and another version gives a +2...well that means one in every twenty times you roll for that particular ability, it'll have an effect. I suppose some people can get worked up about this, but I'm just not one of them.

- Those of you who play Warhammer 40K, or at the very least have an interest in it, should keep an eye out for a couple of pretty cool battle reports that'll be going up on the Arcadia Prime blog. Darkwing and I recently wrapped up the second have of a four-battle campaign between the Imperial Guard and the Orks, and the reports (with plenty of photos and lots - I mean lots - of carnage) will be coming shortly.

- I have not forgotten RPGs, but between prepping for the 40K battles, work, vacation, and a myriad of other Real Life complications, I just haven't been focusing a lot on it lately. Rest assured, once I get back on track, I'll let you know. I actually hope to get some good photos of a number of my 40K units up here in the coming weeks, for those of you interested in miniatures and miniature wargaming.

TTFN, gentle readers.

Like Seinfeld, This Is A Column About Nothing

2010-01-05T14:38:00.004-05:00

I realized I haven't posted anything in nearly three weeks. A messy, horrible month in December combined with some frenzied Warhammer 40K miniatures work plus a total lack of motivation RPGs-wise has left me with pretty much nothing of substance to write about. However, as we learned from Throw Momma From the Train, a writer writes, always. Without further ado:

- I re-read Sci-Fi author Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy over the holidays. It is truly an amazing work. I read this book about a year and a half ago, and wrote a column about it back then, so I won't repeat myself much except to say that even if you're not a Warhammer 40,000 player, this trilogy is still an amazing piece of science fiction and great gaming food for thought. I'm currently re-reading Abnett's Ravenor trilogy, a sequel/spin-off/successor to Eisenhorn. While a great trilogy and excellent fiction, there is something about the more focused, prosaic style Abnett uses in the Eisenhorn books that appeals more to me.

- I got the new Star Trek movie on DVD for Christmas, and watched it again. I saw it several times in theaters, including once on an IMAX screen, and was very impressed with the film overall. While I prefer TOS to the later spin-offs, I am no Trek purist, and found this movie quite enjoyable. One of the comments on the extra features that I found especially thought-provoking was one of the producers talking about how they decided to look at the very vibrant, frenetic look and feel of Star Wars (the originals as well as the new movies), and tried to see what they could bring from those to the Star Trek universe while still remaining, at it's core, a "Star Trek" film. I leave it up to you to decide if they succeeded or failed in that regard, but I can see in the film (such as the fight on the space drill, or the shootout in the Romulan cargo bay) where those influences came into play.

- This re-viewing of the new movie has me once again thinking of a Star Trek, or Trek-esque, campaign, either using T&B rules (which would suit the freewheeling spirit of the Trek-verse nicely) or some other rather flexible rules set. However, utter lack of motivation has kept me from delving into this idea further.

- Grapeshot and Grognards has been on standby for several weeks now. It's not that I don't want to work on it, and I've typed up a fair amount of material on characters and have some good ideas relating to massed casualties and other rules additions, but getting it out onto the screen has been frustratingly difficult.

- Speaking of frustration in writing, over the break I watched the first season of David Duchovny's Showtime series Californication. I was surprisingly engrossed in the first season, and curse Netflix for not putting season two on instant viewing. I've always had a soft spot for shows or movies about struggling writers (Barton Fink, anyone?), and I saw in Duchovny's character that conflict that all writers face; the struggle between fanning the flames of creativity in one's spirit, and being able to channel that fire in some meaningful way to produce something substantive that can be handed to another and appreciated. I realize now that I wrote more in high school, in terms of content at least, fiction-wise than I have probably in the last five or six years. It's incredibly frustrating to know that you should just be able to sit down at a computer or a notebook and write consistently every day for a little while, but at the same time, just not being able to make oneself do it.

- I find it fascinating that I can go a week and a half without being in my office doing "work", and produce nothing in terms of personal writing or RPG work, but as soon as I'm back to work and have things work-related to do, I'm here writing this column when there's half a dozen other things I could be tending to (and a couple of things I'm multi-tasking on even now). I guess for me my greatest motivation to do actual personal writing work is to avoid doing real, professional labor. Go figure. What would happen if I was ever paid to write for a living? That's a scary thought, considering...

- My players are clamoring for another session of our Castles & Crusades campaign. I would love to run one, but again, trying to find the energy to figure out what sort of meat-grinder I want to put them through is difficult. I'm thinking I want them to suffer through a nice fat multi-session dungeon crawl; it's just a matter of putting pen to paper that's bogging me down. Maybe I need to dig through a few old Dungeon magazines again to find a few good ideas...

All right, that's that for now. Since I'm back at work after the holidays, I'm sure I'll be posting more often. Time to see if that writer's block will finally begin to break down in the face of Real Work.

What's Happened to December?

2009-12-18T09:40:00.004-05:00

I realized that it's been ten days since my last column, and it's been a busy week and a half. The odd thing about working academic IT is that there really is no down time. When students and faculty are around, you're spending all your time supporting them and their classes. When students and faculty leave, you spend all your time doing the things you couldn't do because the students and faculty were in the way. Suffice to say, I've been busier this past week and a half than I have (work-wise) the previous month, so I'm not getting a lot of gaming work done.

I have pecked away at Grapeshot & Grognards some, however. I've written sections on a number of appropriate character archetype definitions, and the sorts of adventures they might find suitable. I've also been contemplating rules for, if not resolving mass combat, at least how to handle probably the most problematic of Napoleonic-era combat mechanics; dealing with PCs in a massed combat with regards to resolving musketry and cannon casualties. When I posted my first G&G column back in the day, a pointed comment was to the effect that, in such huge, impersonal battles, how do you handle PCs and their heroics when a blast of grapeshot or a volley of musket-fire can wipe out whole files of men? PCs can hardly be expected to lead Aragorn-esque heroic charges against a line of cannons when the most likely outcome will be getting cut in half by an eight-pound cannonball. And yet, these sorts of heroic acts are the basis of countless tales of heroism in the gunpowder age, right up through into modern times, with soldiers weathering machinegun and mortar fire to win the day when others all around them are being cut down.

I'll have more to post about this as the time comes. In other news, I've got several other good ideas for campaign settings to develop for the T&B RPG, and another "in the works" post will have to come some time down the road. I'm also taking a hard look at revitalizing my Castles & Crusades campaign, which has been dormant since the summer. My spring course work doesn't start up until almost the end of January, so I've got plenty of time to focus on getting some good gaming work accomplished before grad school rears it's ugly head again (although with my third class under my belt right now, I'm sporting a 4.0 GPA in my graduate coursework).

Anyhow, not a lot in the last few paragraphs, but I hope to get some more work (and more columns) up as soon as possible.

To Be or Not To Be, Another Lite Generic RPG

2009-12-08T10:28:00.003-05:00

So, in last week's post (see below), I talked about the future of my own homebrew RPG system. As mentioned, after a conversation with Rob Lang (of Free RPG Blog infamy), I've come to face the inherent pitfalls and dangers in writing what is, in the end, Yet Another Generic Rules Lite Fantasy-esque RPG system.

This is a creature more common than your average cockroach, and just as underfoot if you spend any time digging around areas rife with DIY role-playing games. Rob's most astute and 100% true suggestion for finding some way to make one's creation more unique and noticeable is to forgo the generic-ness to a great degree and create a setting that will put the best elements of one's system on display.

There's just one problem with this.

I like the idea of creating a generic rules-lite fantasy-esque RPG system.

Such was the idea from the very get-go almost seven years ago, when I started writing a Sword & Sorcery homebrew as an alternative to the much crunchier RPG system I had written and used for a couple of years previously. And although the system went through numerous incarnations, the idea still remained the same, because light-to-mid crunch RPG systems are my gaming sweet spot, and the idea of having one system that I'm very familiar with, that I could apply to any genre that struck my fancy (historical, fantasy, light sci-fi) sounded great.

So now I find myself at a crossroads. On the one hand, I would find great utility and great satisfaction of writing for myself my own RPG system, and since this has been so long in the making, I'd like it to be finished some time this decade. On the other hand, I am aware of the fact that, as written, it is really just "another generic system" that really is nothing astounding or revolutionary; no one's going to stop playing their favorite system and leap to playing mine just because I publish it.

There is one middle ground that I have been considering for a while now, a sort of "eye of the needle" that I might be able to pass through and still make this work. I'd long considered releasing "campaign primers" for the game, essentially short supplements showing how to implement the RPG core rules into certain specific genres or settings. In one short column I had from last February I talk about the idea of creating a Napoleonic-Era RPG, and I've also had a number of other campaign ideas I'd like to explore.

The possible solution comes from a somewhat unlikely source: GURPS. While this pretty heavy-crunch RPG is almost the antithesis of what I'm trying to accomplish with my core rules, the GURPS Lite PDF is, I think, a marvel of RPG efficiency engineering. Every major element of GURPS that you'd need to run a basic campaign can be found in that one 32 page document. To boot, several of their product lines, such as GURPS WW2, GURPS Transhuman Space, and GURPS Prime Directive, are known as "Powered By GURPS" product lines. The idea being to make the product line less an addition to the GURPS core rules, and go the opposite direction - have the "core of the core" (GURPS Lite) be the additional material that powers the rest of the campaign setting.

So, here's what I'm thinking...

1. Take the Core Rules document that I've got currently in rough draft status. Polish it up, and perhaps remove a few of the more setting-specific optional rules (firearms, sci-fi weapons and armor, etc.).

2. Create one historical setting (probably Grapeshot & Grognards) as the test-bed for the validity of the campaign setting. I want to do a historical setting first, because it allows me to forego having to worry about magic or strange monsters or sci-fi elements, and focus on providing rules for real-world situations. Something set in or around the Napoleonic Wars also fits in well with the episodic campaign framework that the T&B RPG promotes.

3. If the first setting works out well enough, continue the trend with other "Powered by Tankards & Broadswords" settings. I've already got an idea for a fantasy setting rattling around my head, revisiting an old setting that I created a number of years ago that could use a face lift. After that, other settings in various genres can come along as they appeal to me (I list a few examples of genres or settings I'd like to look at in this post from back in July).

4. In conjunction with #3, work on expanding various semi-generic rules supplements such as the "magic book", the "monsters book", maybe even a "sci-fi book". Again, one of the big strengths of GURPS isn't, I think, their rules; it's the modularity of the system, the ability to cherry-pick from their sourcebooks and settings and rules additions to take what you want and leave the rest (and how many of us own GURPS sourcebooks while having never run a GURPS game?).

So, anyhow, that's the plan I've got rattling around in my head at the moment. Might work, might not. We shall have to see.

December is Back to Game Design Month

2009-12-04T09:57:00.006-05:00

So yeah, I pretty much disappeared in November. However, I knocked my final project out of the ball park - so much so that I was waived from having to take the final exam, which makes me very happy. So now I've got six weeks grad school free. Oddly enough, this coincides with me wrapping up the first draft of the Tankards & Broadswords RPG core rules document, and also with me having a lot of miniatures lined up to be painted, so I hope it's going to be a busy six weeks for me.

One thing that has spurred a lot of work on my gaming agenda is a conversation I had via Google Wave with Rob Lang, who writes the Free RPG Blog. Rob had agreed to review the first draft of the T&B core rules for me, not for his blog but as a general informal friendly read-through so I could get some constructive feedback. While Rob thought that it was conceptually a solidly-designed game, he also felt that it didn't contain anything "catchy"; ultimately, it was Just Another Free Generic Rules-Light (pseudo)-Fantasy RPG. And I write that capitalized because, let's face it, there are probably hundreds of Free Generic Rules-Light Fantasy RPGs out there today, and if mine doesn't have something that will really kick a reader in the teeth and make them take notice, it will just languish in a bland, pablum-esque mediocrity for all time.

So Rob and I discussed this issue at some length, and next week I'll have another post dedicated to how I'll be looking at turning the T&B RPG around into something a little more exciting. In the meantime, I present to you this post from Rob's Blog on Tuesday about just this issue. I'm also re-posting the link to a column I wrote way back when about (ironically enough) my case against generic systems, and Rob's argument against making free rules lite generics holds very true to my own arguments (i.e., the rules-lite generic requires so much work to get to a suitable weight of campaign-specific information that you might as well just find a dedicated rules set that meets your needs). Taking my own advice? What's that?

While at first I will admit that I was a little disheartened, three things made me feel a lot better. First, Rob was able to point this out to me, and legitimize a sneaking suspicion that I didn't want to acknowledge for a long time about what I was working on. Second, while this means I'll have to take the game in a new direction, I'm doing that now, while the game is still in the first draft stages, rather than when I've got it completely written and laid out and have accumulated all the artwork. And third, my plan for breathing a little new life into this project will involve a campaign setting I made some time ago that I have always thought some of my best work, and I can't wait to get back to it and polish it up again.

Jumping on the Google Wave Bandwagon

2009-11-24T15:02:00.002-05:00

I received a Wave invite to my personal e-mail address a couple of weeks ago, but I was finally given the ability to send invites myself yesterday, at which point I added my blogging e-mail account. So, Badelaire is officially "wave-able" at the following address:

j dawt e dawt badelaire aht googlewave dawt com (I think you can figure that out...).

I've found a couple of neat little gaming related devices to help things mechanically speaking. The first is a little "bot" called Random Lee Twenty. Add this little fellow to whatever wave you need dice rolling, and he'll re-edit your blip to give a result for any die code you enter (i.e., 1d20+2, 3d6, etc..).

A somewhat simpler widget is this little chunk of XML code that you can add to your blip as a "gadget via URL". You plug that URL in, it adds a little window to the blip. Type in your die code in the window and hit "Roll!" and it'll generate for you a result.

People have played RPGs long distance ever since RPGs were created. Play by post, PBEM, play via chat, skype, webcam...but I think Google Wave has a good shot for, at the very least, laying the foundation of convergent communications technologies that will combine elements of other communication forms (IM, e-mail, blogs, wikis, boards) into something more than the sum of its parts.

Anyhow, if anyone is interested in experimenting with Wave and gaming, please feel free to send a Wave my way.

RPG Designers: Learn Your Java

2009-11-20T10:54:00.003-05:00

So my first draft of the Tankards & Broadswords RPG is pretty much done. There are a couple of optional rules and a few little tidbits I still want to stick in there, but the core rules are pretty much set and written right now.

One of the rules that I've been mulling over for a while now is the special re-roll you get in certain situations, namely when using two weapons or when using automatic fire. Normally in T&B, you roll 2d6 and add your skill value (or whatever static mod you're using), and compare it to a Break Point. Under re-roll circumstances, you roll your 2d6, but if it's not a double result (2/2, 3/3, etc.), you re-roll the lower die and keep the new roll. So for example, say you roll a 2 and a 5. That's normally a seven. But with the re-roll, you roll the 2 again and keep whatever comes up, even if it's a 1 or a 2 again.

So my big question was...does it actually do anything for you? What I wanted was a mechanic that could give you a better result, and on average will give better results, but does not guarantee a better result.

This is where those ol' Java programming skills come in oh so handy. First, thanks to my good friend and Java guru Masakari for whipping up something on his own that proved my theory correct; on average the most common roll shifted from a 7 to 8, and there is a corresponding shift in the bell curve, with 12's showing up 2-3 times more frequently than 2's (2's averaged between 2.5 and 3%, while 12's were between 7.5 and 8%).

So this morning I whipped up my own little program, and ran some numbers. Here's a good representative spread from a cycle of 10,000 dice rolls:

Twos Rolled: 300.0, or 3.0%
Threes Rolled: 100.0, or 1.0%
Fours Rolled: 560.0, or 5.6%
Fives Rolled: 555.0, or 5.55%
Sixes Rolled: 1197.0, or 11.97%
Sevens Rolled: 1350.0, or 13.5%
Eights Rolled: 1702.0, or 17.02%
Nines Rolled: 1224.0, or 12.24%
Tens Rolled: 1415.0, or 14.15%
Elevens Rolled: 848.0, or 8.48%
Twelves Rolled: 749.0, or 7.49%

While on the other hand, here's a pretty representative spread of 10,000 rolls using a straight 2d6 die-throw:

Twos Rolled: 272.0, or 2.72%
Threes Rolled: 591.0, or 5.91%
Fours Rolled: 836.0, or 8.36%
Fives Rolled: 1072.0, or 10.72%
Sixes Rolled: 1334.0, or 13.34%
Sevens Rolled: 1740.0, or 17.4%
Eights Rolled: 1390.0, or 13.9%
Nines Rolled: 1101.0, or 11.01%
Tens Rolled: 837.0, or 8.37%
Elevens Rolled: 539.0, or 5.39%
Twelves Rolled: 288.0, or 2.88%

Of course, if you're good at math, you could have probably worked this out on your own. However, having a little skill at programming in something fairly simple like Java means you can whip up a little testing program in a few minutes and generate some good data that supports whatever theories you might have about the mechanics of your RPG.

I've also found it useful for feeding in character data and testing various theories about the progression of lethality as you add skill and / or better weapons to a character. For example, I learned that a PC with a Melee of 0 (unskilled), using a Light weapon (+0 damage modifier), rolling against a dead average unskilled defense roll of 7, will take about 10 combat rounds to kill another PC with a health of 24 (which all PCs start out with). On the other hand, a PC with maximum Melee skill plus skill focus bonus, wielding a Heavy weapon, can do the same job in 2-3 combat rounds.

Of course, this is no substitute for actual playtesting; putting the rules in the hands of real players is the only way to make sure your game "works". But being able to try out the mechanics of your rules and make sure that something does what you want it to do is very nice, and can solve a lot of headaches down the road.

Miniatures Month: Havard the Dwarf Warrior

2009-11-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

About two years ago, while playing a Traveller campaign with a new gaming group, I was invited to sit in and "guest star" playing an NPC in one of the players' very-long-running Harnmaster campaigns. I gave it a go and while there wasn't a lot going on that night, I decided to keep at it and start up a new PC. The GM and I discussed at length what sort of character I should play, and as it so happened, I was reading the first volume of Games Workshop's Black Library Omnibus of the Gotrek and Felix saga.

Now, I've always had a fondness for dwarves. Sturdy little buggers who never forgive a grudge, who like fighting and drinking and put their faith in good hard steel and stout stonework over fickle magic and uncertain enchantments. And while I've had a Warhammer Fantasy Battles Dwarf army for some time, and I've run dwarven NPCs in campaigns I've GMed over the years, I had to admit, much to my shame, that I'd never played a Dwarf PC before.

So, when I cautiously put forth the idea of playing a Harnic Dwarf (I had no what Dwarves were like in the Harnworld and Harnmaster system), the GM actually thought this was a good idea. He'd never had a Dwarf PC in his campaign (all 24 years of it) either, and since there was an Elf PC in the party, we all agreed the by-play would be a lot of fun. So, I rolled up Havard, my doughty little Dwarf fighter, making his way down out of the mountains accompanying the silver caravan, finding his way to the "big city".

Although the GM didn't use miniatures in his campaign, I thought it would be a nice way to commemorate the occasion of my first Dwarf PC by making my own mini. Here is the result (click on the pic for a much bigger version):

He is mostly stock Games Workshop WFB Dwarf Warrior parts (from the previous boxed set, not the one currently available). The only conversion work was swapping the axe head, since I created Havard to match an illustration I had found online of a Dwarf that the GM wanted to use as my PC's portrait (I cannot find the web page I first pulled this image from, so apologies to the owner, if you're out there):

Note the shape of the axe and the loop at the back, as well as the helmet (sorry, no spike) and especially the beard, which I was lucky I could reproduce with a stock head. I think all in all, the mini turned out pretty well, a heck of a lot better than the campaign did - I stuck around for six sessions and quit after a lot of frustration and confusion as to what I was expecting from the campaign versus what I was going to...be allowed by the other players, some of whom had been playing since the very beginning.

Anyhow, long story short, I came away with a fun little miniature. I like his beer stein and his pipe, and his no-nonsense, well-worn adventurer look. One of these days, Havard might even get himself into a brawl or two...

November is Miniatures Month

2009-11-06T13:00:00.002-05:00

So I have been thinking of what to do this month, now that Halloween's over and the contest is past. October was the highest post count of any month in the roughly year and a half I've been writing this blog, and I know this month is going to be slow for me, both because of work as well as graduate coursework.

I've mentioned it a few times in the past, but I am a pretty big fan of Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 Sci-Fantasy miniatures wargame. I know a lot of wargamers consider 40K to be the Burger King of wargaming - popular but kinda crappy when you get right down to it - but there's something about the game and it's ability to cherry pick a lot of really cool elements from just about anything you can imagine that hooks people and doesn't let go.

My original 40K army was the Necrons, essentially soulless robotic undead who have awakened from millions of years of slumber to stalk the stars once again harvesting the life forces of the living. A fun army to play, but eventually I got hooked by the Orks (that's right, Orcs in space...), a race that's a crazed mish-mash of Tolkien-ish orcs, post-apocalyptic biker/trucker gangs, madcap scientists, and celtic/gaulic barbarism. My Ork army has grown steadily for years now, and it's at the point where I've got more of pretty much any kind of unit than I can legally field in a battle. Lots of fun, great conversion work, and just a really characterful army in general.

But back when I was looking for a second army to play after the Necrons, one had caught my eye - the Space Wolves chapter of the Space Marines. These guys are, dare I say it, Vikings in Space. That pretty much sums it up. Blend in a little lycanthropy for good measure, and that's the Space Wolves. Great background fluff, good rules, great looking models - it has it all. And I had actually gone out and bought a box of minis for them as well, but a friend of mine at the time was looking to get into 40K, and I gave him my Space Wolf rulebook and he immediately took to them, so I sold him my minis box and abandoned them for Orks

That friend has since moved out of our gaming area, and with the release of the new rulebook for the Space Wolves and a new model range, and with my Ork army having achieved pretty much critical mass to the point where buying new models would just be for the sake of taking up shelf space, I decided to take the plunge and start a third army. So over the last few weeks, I've been buying models and assembling them, and planning out how I want my army to come together.

Which brings me back around (somewhat) to gaming in general. I've never been huge into using miniatures in RPGs. Some of this is because I'm always annoyed by using minis that don't properly represent the PCs, and also because there are so many D&D (or other RPG) monsters out there worth trying that you'd be spending all your time (and money) on miniatures for the table that there'd be little time for actual game preparation. But I do like making miniatures and painting them up, and I'd like to do this more beyond wargaming miniatures.

Therefore, this month, I want to try and make an effort towards talking about miniatures, both for use in games and modeling in general. I've got a few minis I'd like to share, and welcome any comments people have about their own miniature collections.

Halloween One-Shot Adventure: The Winner

2009-11-02T09:52:00.004-05:00

The weekend was a busy one and kept me off the computer most of the time, so I was unable to post the contest winner on Halloween. However, below you can find the winning adventure proposal, "Wolves in the Throne Room", by Zak Smith, author of the "Playing D&D With Porn Stars" blog. A violent, surreal, festival of horror in a terrorized castle overrun with demons, witches, and just whacked-out craziness.

And very many thanks to the other adventure submitters. While I didn't get enough submissions to warrant putting them all together and publishing them as some kind of supplement, their entries were greatly appreciated.

Thanks again everyone, and I hope you all had a great Halloween!

Wolves in the Throne Room

Three-Part-Summary:

Hook-

It is winter. The dead of night. The PCs return home after a battle, adventure, border skirmish, Goblin War, etc. As they approach, lights flicker on in dark windows all over town—the townspeople shout : “They have returned!”.

The PCs are received as heroes and carried on the shoulders of the townspeople to Castle Vornheim for a banquet with the lord of the city. (Possible variant—one of the PCs is the lord of the city, and when s/he returns home, the banquet celebrates his/her homecoming.) During the feast the PCs meet various noble-type NPCs, (high priestess, head chef, lord’s three comely daughters, advisor, jester, juggling dwarf—tiny human entertainer, not an actual Dwarf—minstrel,court painter, etc.) most of whom quickly beg off and go to bed before the banquet ends (it’s the middle of the night). There are rumors among the superstitious commoners about how The Hunter Has Come.

The PCs and the lord finish their meal surrounded by a handful of tedious sycophants. Then the lord and some of the PCs are poisoned (they don’t immediately die, they just get woozy and occasionally have hallucinations that one or other of the guests at the table has a wolf’s head. After a while, if the lord is an NPC s/he goes into a coma, if a PC, s/he is just saddled with disturbing hallucinations and occasional vomiting at inopportune moments.) Everyone seems shocked. However, after careful questioning, torture, or spell-induced confession, most of the sycophants will turn into wolf-headed demons and attack the PCs. (They’re immune to normal weapons but, luckily, the cutlery is silver.) The remainder are innocent and will cower in the corner.

Line-

Someone’s tried to poison the Lord. The various NPCs in the castle all act confused. Some actually are, some are magically disguised agents of The Hunter—who is, of course, responsible for the poison.

These agents include but are not necessarily limited to:

-a grey-haired witch named Thorn who controls evil creeping plants and wild animals (boars, stags, ravens, etc.) and is always accompanied by a wolf (or, when disguised as a daughter of the lord, an annoying lapdog).

-a blond witch named Frost who controls cold, wind, and ice and who is always accompanied by a snowy owl

-a black-haired witch named Dread who creates fearful illusions (her attacks, for instance, always appear to do much more damage than they actually do—players should be fooled “the dagger rips your arm off, lose 12 hit points”) and is always accompanied by a raven

-all the castle guards, who refuse to open the castle gates or let anyone out. They turn into wolf-headed demons under stress.

-a few random important-seeming NPCs who turn into Deceivers (Stag-head, snake-arms, goat-legged minor demons) when under stress. (When you hit a deceiver, save vs, spell or else you’ve been deceived and are hitting one of your own party members).

-various magic creepies who stalk the corridors spying for the witches and attack the PCs in their sleep if they try to rest while in the castle, such as (for example) Eyes of Fate: human hands with snake tails and eyeballs set into their palms which cause anyone who look into them to go temporarily blind or insane. When slain they turn into gloves—grey if they belong to Thorn, black if to Dread, white if to Frost. The glove will fit the offending witch, even if she is magically disguised, but no-one else (Likewise, any other foe appearing in the middle of the adventure should, when defeated, provide a clue to the identity of the witches and demons, a piece of information that will help the PCs in the "sinker" battle, or a magic item that will be useful at the "sinker" if used properly.).

Some of the NPC nobles will know legends about The Hunter, and the villains will confess some information under duress. They say things like “Horned is the Hunter”, “The Frost is his shield, Dread is his strength, The Thorn is his fist” and imply he is an avatar of the demon Belphegor, there to usurp the power of the city’s lord and overwhelm civilization with wild things. Also, some kind of ceremony is coming.

Sinker--

After the PCs have gathered some useful information, or killed some of the beasties and witches, or it’s starting to look like a player has to go home so they can feed the dog or get up early for work, a friendly NPC (I recommend the juggling dwarf or the jester) tells the PCs that “The ceremony is beginning, we must hurry!”

On the roof (or in front of the castle if they’ve already been on the roof), in the snow, the Hunter (10-foot tall human stripped to the waist in a mask with stag horns—looks just like the Master Of The Wild Hunt from the original “Deities and Demigods” book—strong, fast, scary, axe-wielding, massive AC, HP, damage), surrounded by the surviving witches and minor demons is performing a bloody pagan ceremony in a circle of candles mad from the fat of virgins in order to bring forth a major demon--Belphegor The Untamed. (If the PCs are high-level, have Belphegor himself already be there—three heads—stag head, wolf head, crow head--snakes for arms, goat legs, generally unpleasant.)

They fight the PCs. The Hunter is really just one of the NPC nobles artifically bolstered by the witches’ magic. Killing the witch named Frost lowers his armor class to reasonable levels, killing Dread lowers his hit points considerably, killing Thorn reduces the amount of damage he can deal. In turn, killing the witches’ respective animals blinds the witches.

For extra fun, have the snow on the roof slippery enough that PCs fall off the roof into the (ice-covered) moat and have to crawl out before getting back to the melee. For extra extra fun, have the (touchingly loyal) juggling dwarf and jester help out and follow the PC’s commands—the jester is actualy an apprentice low-level wizard with some cantrips (mostly useless but they might do some good against the witches’ birds).

When and if the Hunter is slain, he dwindles and changes and, if unmasked, is revealed to be one of the noble NPCs (probably an advisor but if someone else comes to the fore during the adventure, feel free to make it whoever the most interesting choice would be.) He may or may not mention that he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for “you meddling kids”.

System:

I’d use AD&D 1e to run it, but that’s mostly by default. First off, I wouldn’t necessarily want the players to know they were going to play a “scary” scenario from the beginning-running Wolves In The Throne Room in a horror system would make it less scary and the feast less surprising (since the PCs know to expect horror and rituals and poison), running it in Warhammer would be like running it in a horror system since the PCs would be expecting cultist-type activity from the beginning, later D&D systems—and other, more “modern” systems--might involve the DM in having to weight the adventure to balance out or route around a lot of skill checks (negotiate, interrogate, pagan lore, sense intention, climb, avoid-dropping-weapon-in-snow-after-witch-cast-a-spell-that-covered-it-in-ice, etc.).

I definitely prefer to just have the PCs question the villains and NPCs “manually”. The actual rules of AD&D don’t really privilege investigation-type problem solving over cold-steel-based problem-solving or vice-versa, so the players can basically try to figure out what’s going on however they want—by threat or by wit. If the system had a lot of rules governing character-interaction then the players might find talking to the NPCs to be mechanically determined and be forced into either talking to them or threatening them by rolls of the dice. Also, a more heavily skill-based system would require the DM to stat up every NPC’s mental stats and store of knowledge beforehand to anticipate questioning by the PCs, rather than just allowing the DM to role-play the castle cast in whatever way seems right at the time. Also, the way the adventure is written, the PCs might end up wanting to talk to any kind of person that might be in a castle, from head torturer to waitstaff, so it would suck to have to stat up everyone’s Bluff and Sense Motive scores in advance. All that having been said, I think it’s a fairly system-agnostic adventure and could actually see it being run in any fantasy system.

Characters:

First, it should be noted that the GM should probably decided in advance whether s/he wants to run with the whole “the-courtiers-think-maybe-one-of-the-PCs-did-it” angle. This is only recommended for role-playing heavy groups. Otherwise, this adventure is designed to be flexible and can be run with almost any number of players.

The most important thing to remember is that this adventure will only truly be scary if the players like their characters and get attached to them and so don’t want them to die. (Most of the encounters in the adventure should be dangerous enough that the PCs might die, but ominous enough that they’ll see it coming.) Therefore, the players should be given considerable latitude in making their PCs.

If this adventure is run as a one-shot, the characters can be anything, though one of the characters (someone who would enjoy the role) should be designated “the lord”. If you want to go all out and think the players would enjoy it and you have time to prepare, the players can actually be pre-generated members of the court—wizard/jester, juggling dwarf, high-priestess, etc. The middle road would be allowing the characters to be whatever class and race they wanted, then assigning them jobs in the castle. Another middle road would be to write up a few characteristics and abilities for the jester, dwarf, etc. and attach them to whatever character the PC who wants to have that job rolled up.

The only tricky parts are:

1-There should be a mechanism by which the players have forgotten the exact layout of the castle—it’s been remodelled since they were gone, spell-damage has taken its toll on his/her memory, there’s a creepy enchantment on the castle that makes it confusing, etc. This will explain why the players don’t already know where everything is even though they live there. (The actual layout of the castle needn’t be terribly complex, just big, it can be from an off-the-shelf module. The important thing is running into the villains and NPCs.)

2-The witches’ and monsters’ power levels should shift to scale with the original number and power level of the PCs.

3-If the players are members of the court then that’s x number of new NPCs you have to make up to replace them as possible suspects.

(Note: “Wolves In The Throne Room” can also actually easily be run in a pre-existing campaign: if so, the characters can just be whoever the players happen to already be running, as long as they are at a low enough level that they can’t cast some spell allowing them to easily escape the castle whenever they want or instantly find out who poisoned the lord. You can also, if it fits your campaign, tell a PC that his or her noble brother has just died and s/he was elevated to the throne his/her absence.

“Wolves In The Throne Room” can also be used to kick off a campaign—while the lord and the PCs were away, the Hunter was spreading his baleful influence and many of the city’s treasures were looted, someone needs to go get them back, etc. If so, the same rules as for the “one-shot” apply.)

Mood:

You will need very tall white candles. They should be the only light source.

You will need a picture of the Master of the Wild Hunt from Deities and Demigods—if you can’t find one, find something close in a Walt Simonson Thor comic.

You will need a throne. If one of the characters is the lord, s/he can sit in it, if not, you sit in it. Also, if one of the players is the lord, you should prepare for them a stupid and embarassing crown, preferably of cardboard and from Burger King.

When you start the game, you should actually serve a feast. (You can cook while the players generate characters.) When character generation is over, bring out the good silver, a roast beast, potatoes, wine, goblets, pumpkins, pheasants. Give slices of suckling pig to passing trick-or-treaters. Eat, drink, and be merry. Pick a certain dish on the table that you know not everyone will eat and that you know the “lord” player (if there is one) will eat, write down that it has been poisoned. Role-play all the way through the feast, then, when the players have finished eating, tell everyone who ate the cranberry sauce (or whatever) that they don’t feel so well.

When the wolf demons first appear, play the opening chords of “Raining Blood” by Slayer while telling everyone to roll initiative.

Thereafter, play “Winter” by Amebix, play anything by Wolves In The Throne Room or Burning Witch. If your players don’t like doom metal…well, this is a philosophical problem much too vast for me to properly address in a D&D adventure.

Why does this adventure represent Halloween?

Halloween is a day when we, in our technologized, rationalized modernity, recognize all that is fanciful, primal and irrational. Like the Hunter, it stands in opposition to civilization. Further, this adventure includes: pagan rituals, witches, darkness, demons, death, people in disguises, and tasty treats that are bad for you. Other than fighting The Great Pumpkin, I’m not sure how it could possibly be more Halloweeny.

Putting Some "Real Magic" in Your Gaming?

2009-10-30T10:18:00.002-04:00

And no, I don't mean "real magic" like the Viagra commercials claim they'll put "real magic" back in your marriage. I'm talking John Dee, Aleister Crowley, The True Art, Witchcraft, yadda yadda yadda. And I'm not talking about trying to actually practice magic while gaming, either. I'm talking about taking the proposed tenants and practices of "real magic" and applying them to your campaign setting's take on magic and the supernatural.

Magic in RPGs has mostly been about pzazz. Fireballs, invisibility, walking through walls, illusions, mind-control, fun stuff like that. Even in games that try to treat it a little more seriously, magic is something that can, in certain situations, create the 'big boom". It's Hollywood's version of magic, pulp fiction's version of magic; sorcerers casting spells and making Big Things Happen Right Now with relatively little preparation.

I've got a modest but decent collection of reference books on the subject of the occult and "modern magic". Some of them are pretty benign; back-country farmer's magic, magical herbs, that sort of thing. But some of them have really creepy stuff in there - rituals for conjuring demons and spirits and all the stereotypical trappings of "black magic". While I'm not a "believer" or a practitioner in any way with regards to this stuff, it does make for fascinating reading and being able to draw from some of it for the purposes of descriptions within games can be really helpful.

However, I know that RPGs, and especially D&D, have fought long and hard against the perception that they are somehow tied in to "devil worship" or the occult, and I can see the backlash any RPG might get if it actually tried to draw on "real" magical ritual and the like to build its rules and guidelines for magic. Also, as much as we don't want to admit it, many of us are still just a leeeeeetle bit superstitious, and the thought of "messing around" with "real" occult practices gives a lot of people the creeps.

Of course, taking the idea out of the realm of published RPGs and into the back room of real players gaming and creating on their own, I can completely see someone either writing their own home-brew or retro-fitting into another RPG rules that involve PCs practicing what would essentially be "real world" black magic or a more benign form of historical magic. It would actually put magic firmly in the hands of most any PC with some occult knowledge, because a lot of these little spells and charms and rituals would be something that anyone could do (since they originate from a lot of peasant beliefs and the wardings used to drive off witches and spirits and the like).

Furthermore, to put a much darker, edgier cast to it all, when we're talking about "scaring the PC by scaring the player", incorporating into your campaign setting rituals and practices that actually "creep out" the player, as long as they are ultimately comfortable with being creeped out, may add that element of edginess some players and GMs look for. I'm not advocating you bring occult practices to your gaming table and try to re-enact them live, but if you can work enough of "the real thing" into what happens in-game to make the hairs on the backs of your player's necks stand up a little bit...

So my day-before-Halloween question for all of you is, would this idea appeal to you as a player, or you as a GM, or does this concept totally weird you out? Even if you have no belief in the powers of the occult or real-world "magic", would it bother you if your in-game PCs were practicing what would in the real world be considered Crowley-an occult magic? What about more benign things like peasant spells and practices, real-world magical herbalism, alchemy, divination, and the like? During my aborted experience playing Harnmaster, my Dwarf PC did have some skill at divination and rune-reading (on paper) and to represent this, I actually went out and bought a set of runic stones and a guide to interpreting them, and I would actually "read the runes" during our sessions when my character made a roll. I thought it was fun and everyone liked the idea, but that's a far step from cracking open some real-world book on the occult and having my PC sorcerer go through the rituals within.

Comments, questions, protestations?

And happy early Halloween salutations, everybody! Some time tomorrow morning I'll announce the winner of the Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest. If you haven't submitted yet and still wish to, get it to me before midnight tonight and you can still enter the contest.

72 Hours Left in Halloween Adventure Contest

2009-10-28T10:56:00.003-04:00

Just a heads-up that there's three days left in the Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest. If you have an idea for a Halloween-themed adventure, or an adventure that you think fits your vision of the spirit of the season, check out the link to the upper left of this column and submit me an adventure pitch by the end of the day Friday. The winner gets a $31 online gift certificate to RPGnow or somesuch online RPG distributor.

Over the weekend I caught Night of the Demons. This is a "bad" 80's teenage-party-turned-bloodbath horror film, but it was completely and utterly watchable. A bunch of teenagers decide to hold their Halloween party in an old abandoned funeral parlor (site of a horrific bloodbath years ago) that happens to sit next to a cemetery and resides on land considered "tainted" by the Native Americans who used to live in the area. As you can imagine, this doesn't end well.

I've embedded the trailer for the movie below. This was obviously meant to be a theatrical trailer as it has some "adult content" (i.e., a couple of quick boob flashes). So just keep in mind that it's not "safe for work". I caught it on Comcast's On Demand under FearNet, so if you happen to have this as part of your cable network, I highly recommend it.

Edit: Looks like Youtube took the video down. Ah well - catch it if you can see it. There might be another clip out there somewhere.

Are You Scared? Maybe You Should Be...

2009-10-23T10:06:00.002-04:00

A quick note; I'm extending the deadline for the Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest until through next Friday, the 30th. Contest results will be posted Halloween morning. If anyone is still interested in submitting an adventure, please check out the Contest Link in the upper-left hand corner of the blog.

Although I've never seen a lot of it, I've always been a fan of the Sci-Fi Channel's (and yes, it will forever be the "Sci-Fi" Channel in my mind) show Scare Tactics. I know people have mixed feelings about these sort of candid-camera type shows, especially one where you're setting people up to think they're about to get ripped apart by serial killers or abducted by aliens or some other freakish encounter. However, I was watching a couple of episodes the other day, and I just wanted to share some observations.

First, it's interesting to see how people react to the first signs of "something's not right here". By and large, the response most common seems to be "freezing and staring". One thing that people tend not to do is "investigate the scary noise in the basement with a weak-bulbed flashlight". Our primitive animal instincts for staying still and quiet and paying attention to what's happening are still very much alive within us.

However, once the threat is blatant - the serial killer is screaming at them waving the chainsaw, the aliens are coming through the windows, bigfoot is shaking the camper, whatever - the most common reaction people seem to have is...curling up into a little ball of incandescent panic and screaming their lungs out. Now, I'm sure that no one sets up their friend the ex-Navy SEAL to be scared on the show, and I'm sure the producers interview the conspiratorial friend of the victim extensively to make sure the victim doesn't habitually carry around a knife, or mace, or a stun gun (or a real gun, for that matter), and doesn't have the sort of personality type that'll punch first and ask questions later.

But, on the other hand, it's kinda amazing (in an almost sad sort of way) to see how most of the victims simply "shut down" at the climax of the prank. Almost all of them are in a state of near-blind panic, almost none of them are actively looking for something to arm themselves with (of course, I'm sure the set designers are careful to not leave a lot of makeshift weapons lying around, but still...), and many of them don't even try to make a break for an exit, or even appear to be working themselves up for a fight. One of the victims I saw the other day was in such a state of mindless terror that it took a good 30 seconds or so for the stunt men to convince her that she was, in fact, in no danger, that it was just a prank, and that she was on a television show - her brain was literally not processing what they were saying to her.

Now, while watching the scenarios, I was also noting a few things about how the victims are "handled" in these situations. The "bad guys" always stay out of arm's reach, and in fact it seems like they never get within a certain distance that might trigger a panicked assault from the victim. They typically try to keep some object, either a desk, or a sofa, or the barrier of a locked car door, between them and the victim so that there is a psychological "line in the sand" that they are never crossing. Like I said, I'm sure the victims are vetted somehow to make sure they aren't going to flip out and suddenly start launching flying kung fu kicks at the actors, but I think the people creating the scenarios, and especially the actors portraying the antagonists, are really careful to never put the victim in such a situation where they think they must lash out physically to defend themselves.

To roll this around to gaming...

We gamers like to think of ourselves as a very jaded lot. We all joke about how we'd handle the Zombie Apocalypse, and when we watch horror movies we all like to make fun of the people who panic and can't defend themselves properly. But to be honest, most of us are really probably not prepared to act rationally and appropriately to a truly terrifying situation. I'm not talking about a street corner mugging or being accosted by a drunk - I'm talking about real stone-cold something right out of a horror movie is about to happen to you in the next ten seconds kind of situation.

I have seen a lot of debate back and forth about various mechanics for representing fear/panic in RPGs. From CoC's Sanity checks and SAN loss, to GURPS' fright checks, to various D&D-esque saves against fear-causing events (which are almost universally magically-induced, or part of a creature's magical attack forms). While I can understand that it depends on the nature and tone of the campaign and the sorts of characters involved, it always strikes me that when people pooh-pooh these sorts of rules with "my character would never panic like that", and, as with most use in D&D, these checks are relegated to magical effects so the player can't claim such, I think we're often losing sight of the fact that a lot of the things PCs in many campaigns are routinely faced with are really, truly, horrifying situations.

Of course, you might counter, my PC lives in a fantasy world where undead and magic and monsters really exist, so he's totally cool-headed when the ghoul mob shows up and isn't going to freak out. But if, like most D&D-type campaigns, your characters are starting off relatively inexperienced, even if such things exist in your world, that doesn't necessarily mean you're prepared to deal with them. After all, we all know people get murdered in real life, but that doesn't prevent some people from panicking and curling up into a fetal ball when faced with the threat of imminent death.

So my topic for discussion today is, how do you handle fear - real fear - in your games, and how do you think it should be handled in most gaming situations? Do you think PC reaction is the sole purview of the player (barring magical influence), or do you think it is perfectly appropriate to force a mechanical check of some sort when a PC is put in a fearful situation, even if the player says "my PC wouldn't act like that"?

Iconic Elements in Campaigns: Classes and Archetypes

2009-10-21T08:30:00.000-04:00

I have a few column topics I wanted to work on sitting on various back burners for the moment, but it being a Wednesday, I was looking for something a little more simple and easy for people to pitch in on. Originally my thought was going to be a simple little debate on which of the four core D&D classes was your personal favorite and why. A mind-blowingly unoriginal topic, of course, but one that I'm sure plenty of people could weigh in on.

But, since A) this isn't really a "D&D" blog and I have some readers who really don't give a crap about D&D, and B) it's always nice to be able to tie in previous columns in case some readers missed them the first time, I decided to shift the focus a little. Instead, I'd like to talk about Classes and Archetypes (or more specifically, Archetypal Characters) as they pertain to forming Iconic Elements in your campaign setting.

For all my earlier protesting, let's look at D&D for a moment. Basic D&D has seven classes in it's rules: Fighter, Cleric, Mage, and Thief, plus Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling. Pretty "basic", right? But think about it for a minute. Any campaign that includes all seven D&D classes (as written) is automatically making a number of assumptions.

1. The world has some measure of (potentially very powerful) magic in it that human beings are capable of controlling and using fairly safely.

2. There are not one, but two distinct forms of magic - clerical and wizardly - and the two do not inter-mingle in such a fashion that one can mix-and-match the two (you're either a cleric casting cleric spells or a wizard casting wizard spells).

3. The world has not one, but three different non-human but human-like species living on it, who have achieved some equilibrium with humans such that an adventuring party would not be unusual in having all four species intermingled within its ranks.

4. One of these three, Elves, can use wizardly magic (but not clerical magic). The other two cannot use any kind of magic as seen within the rules, although some extraordinary abilities are displayed.

These are just the assumptions that come to mind in the few minutes it took to write that - I'm sure there are a number of others out there (the written culture and behaviors of the demi-human races-as-classes, most notably). Now, having these assumptions in place can in many ways be a good thing; a GM's work in describing the Iconic Elements of their setting's PC Archetypes has been mostly done for them. But what if your world (or just your campaign) omits or significantly alters some of these base assumptions? Almost every setting is going to have Fighters and Thieves, but what if Clerics are removed? What if Magic-Users don't exist? What if you have no demi-humans? Suddenly the game changes in subtle but profound ways.

And that's just "basic" D&D. I play Castles & Crusades, and there are 13 "core" classes in that game; Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Monk, Knight, Paladin, Bard, Thief, Assassin, Druid, Cleric, Mage, and Illusionist. A Castle Keeper's first instinct might be to find some way in order to make their campaign setting such that all of these are worthwhile and appropriate PC class choices. But wait...there's also Race to consider; Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling, and Half-Orc. And by the rules, any Race can belong to any Class. That's 91 Race/Class combinations that the CK has to take into consideration when creating his campaign.

Now, one might say, "That's easy, just say "no" to the Gnome Monks or the Half-Orc Paladins". And it is easy to pick some of the more outlandish combinations and "just say no". But a GM's job isn't that easy. For every Race/Class combination (I'm not even touching Alignment), there should be some attempt at a justification for that combination in the campaign world. The rules allow a Barbarian Elf, but are there actually "barbaric" elves in the world? You could have a Ranger Halfling, but would Halflings ever become Rangers? The more thought that goes into this, the more you have to look at your setting and constantly make the decision (if you even care, of course, about it making sense) as to whether or not the campaign setting supports the player's choice. This isn't as trivial as you might think; the more complexity you bend to, the more complex and, dare I say it, less Iconic your campaign is becoming. If your goal is to have a campaign setting based around a handful of powerful, easily-graspable elements meant to instantly pull your players into the campaign, the more you muddy the waters, the less singular, the less memorable, your campaign might (and I say "might") become.

To illustrate my point a little, let's take the World of Darkness (the original one). In the first years of White Wolf's development of the World of Darkness setting, it was clear that there was going to be a trifecta of Iconic Elements with regards to characters; the Vampire, the Werewolf, and the Mage. If you were running a campaign involving one of these three core books and you didn't at least acknowledge the presence of the other two factions, you could certainly get away with it, but you weren't really playing "canon" WoD.

But as time went on and the need for new material / splatbooks grew, so did the character choices. Wraith and Changeling were considered the two other "core" books in the WoD canon, but they never really caught on like the original three. Playing "normal" PCs became possible, as well as "humans" who had minor abilities (hedge-magic, True Faith, psychic powers, etc.). Other Vampire clans were created, as well as a number of non-lupine shapeshifters. Mummies came into existence, as well as Demons, and there's always the infamous Highlander/Immortal web supplement that, while not WW published, fit so well into the WoD that it might as well have been.

Some players might have welcomed the addition of new races and powers and possibilities for PCs, but personally (and I don't think I'm alone in this belief), I think it actually weakened the setting. Soon you began to get the feeling that there were more supernaturals running around than humans, and the idea that somehow this was all going on "under the radar" and your average person was completely clueless to it all became somewhat laughable. You also started to have problems bringing all these secondary character types into a campaign setting that has always really been about playing from one core book, opposed by the other supernaturals in one manner or another. Having a "party" made up of a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Mage, a Were-Raven, a Mummy, a Psychic Detective, a Ghost, and a Redcap was suddenly a terrifying possibility for the Storyteller who was unprepared and ignorant of what such a trainwreck would do to their game. What were once Iconic Elements of the World of Darkness setting - the Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage - were now just character possibilities rolling around in the grab-bag of the WoD.

So, where am I going with all this rambling?

Simply put, when a GM begins to assemble the bones and joints that make up their campaign structure, and if you like the idea of couching your campaign and your setting in terms of Iconic Elements that stand out and pull your players in, carefully take a look at your campaign as it is forming in your mind and determine what the Iconic Characters should be. And if your answer to this is "I want my players to be able to play ANYBODY", you might want to start thinking about the implications of players playing "anybody", and how that will impact what you're trying to accomplish. Even GURPS, a game that allows you to play, literally, any character you can think of, has sections in all their setting books about characters and what sorts are most appropriate to the setting and the kind of campaign the GM wants to develop.

And who knows? Considering the "anybody" character might actually shift your focus in a positive direction. Think about Call of Cthulhu, for example. Typical CoC characters are, in fact, supposed to be "anybody", and that is, really, an Iconic Element of the setting used to sell the game to players; average, everyday individuals suddenly faced with the mind-blasting horrors of the unknown. Convenient, yes, but also not accidental; it was Lovecraft's drive in his writings to portray these kinds of characters, and the writers of the game were careful to implement this into their RPG in such a way that being able to play a librarian or artist or physics professor was just as feasible as playing a big game hunter or ex-marine.

So, when planning your campaign's Iconic Elements, think about how character archetypes fit into this equation.

Last Week of the Halloween One-Shot Contest!

2009-10-19T09:23:00.003-04:00

Good morning everyone. Just giving a heads-up that this is the last official week of the Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest. However, if I don't get in more entries, I may extend this contest until the last week of October in the hopes of getting a few more submissions.

So, if you're at all interested in submitting a proposal for what you think is the best kind of Halloween RPG adventure, please follow the contest link.

As a little mood-setting motivation, enjoy this clip from Disney's "Legend of Sleey Hollow". This part of the film was always my favorite; Ichabod's just come from a party where he's heard the tale of the Headless Horseman, and now, although he doesn't want to admit it, he's riding home scared out of his wits, jumping at every toad-croak and shadow. But there's nothing to be afraid of out there in the dark...is there?

Campaign Management For Luddite GMs: Part 1

2009-10-16T08:30:00.001-04:00

I became a member of the home-computing age the same year I became a member of the role-playing game community; 1993. My first computer, a very sprightly (at the time) x386, didn't have a modem, but I did have a decent graphical word processing program and a fairly good dot-matrix printer, and while I did write a lot of gaming material in notebooks at first, my gaming development quickly moved into the digital age. A year later, my father bought a laptop (I wonder where that 15-year old laptop is now...) and an AOL account, and I was able to connect to the "internet community" through the D&D portal that AOL had created.

Of course, by 1995, I was in college at a large metropolitan university, and I would spend hours a day digging through Usenet boards and joining e-mail lists, eager for contact with the wider gaming world. I was also writing my gaming files on both my home computer and via Emacs, and even building a small website on my university web account and posting game-related content for my players. This isn't to say I didn't put pen to paper; much of my gaming material was handwritten, scrawled in the corners of school notebooks or in a dedicated "gaming notes" notebook that I'd always have with me. But in 16 years of gaming, there has always been a digital component to my gaming work.

Of course, I realize I was one of the "new breed"; the generation that grew into the Computer Age. Even when I didn't have a computer at home, we had computers in school and a number of my friends had them before we got around to buying one. And of course, RPGs had existed for a good 20 years or so before I got into the hobby. While I'm sure using computers for gaming had been going on as long as there have been RPGs, the real utility of the computer as an aid to GMs developing campaigns, beyond simply being used as a word processor, has probably only really come into its own in the last 10-12 years, and probably most prominently in the last 5-6, with the advent of true "Web 2.0" functionality, increasingly more prevalent WiFi access, mobile devices, and broadband widely supplanting dial-up connections.

My column about maps and map-making yesterday definitely struck a nostalgic chord with me, and it had me thinking about pre-computer driven campaigns and the tools of the GMing trade before the age of the Internet. I realized I'd never developed and run a campaign completely sans-computer, and wondered what it would be like. I knew I had all the tools you needed, it was just a matter of bringing it all together.

What does the Luddite GM need?

- A notebook. A well-made, sturdy, spiral-bound notebook, preferably with an internal pocket and three-hole punched. This is the creative canvas upon which all your ideas are born. You may want to take this a step further and keep an added "travel notebook" that you could keep in pocket or purse or whatever, for those moments when you suddenly have an idea and need to write it down, to be transcribed to the main notebook later on.

- A sketch pad. Nice thick paper that will take pencil or pen. Anything that needs to be drawn freehand that you don't want cluttering up your notebook should go in here. Heraldry, weapon sketches, maps, drawings of monsters, and just whatever doodles you want wind up in the sketch pad.

- Graph paper. Four squares to the inch is pretty common, although some people prefer a finer grid. I like the kind that's also three-hole punched in case you want to put it in a binder. Here's where your more precise drawings live, the dungeon diagrams or the more exacting maps, the castle blueprints and tavern floorplans.

- A 3-ring binder. You can probably get away without using one for a while, but once the campaign starts coming together, you're going to want to start bringing your sketches and maps and written notes and character sheets together into one place, where you can order them and re-order them as needed. A good sturdy 3-ring binder, at least 1" in size, is going to become a necessity.

- A three-hole punch. For keeping sketches and other documents in your binder, you'll need one of these unless you use nothing but pre-punched paper. You will want to get a nice sturdy one, but another handy idea is to get one of the really minimalist punches that actually fits on the rings of your 3-ring binder, good for punching a page or two at a time and always at hand if you need it. In the same vein, a stapler might also be handy for keeping all of a player's paperwork together.

- Writing and drawing tools. Good pens and pencils, fine and broad-tipped, preferably in both black and a couple of other colors (usually red, green, and blue). A good drawing ruler, as well as a few other drafting tools like a compass and one of those nifty half-circle rulers whose name always escapes me. Scissors, tape, and glue if you're making bigger maps than your sketch pad or graph paper can provide. A sturdy stoppered document tube for keeping larger items safe is always a good idea.

- A calculator. Yes, it's "technology", but I'm willing to let a simple arithmetic calculator slip by here for systems like Rolemaster where you can have significant amounts of mid-double digit addition and subtraction going on. If you're using a simpler system, forget it - use your head, or at the very least, scratch paper!

- Dice. I know it's silly, but with laptops and mobile devices becoming more prevalent, computerized dice-rollers have taken the place of physical dice for a number of people. While most GMs probably don't trust these devices, they are probably, in all honesty, far more mathematically random (if the program is written right) than your average physical die. Still, dice are a must have for the Luddite GM.

- Reference books. A good set of classic Encyclopedia Britannica volumes would be the perfect GMing tool. Lacking these, a goodly selection of reference works appropriate to your campaign type is a requirement. Books on antique weapons and armor, histories of kingdoms and battles, books showing period clothing, art, architecture, and daily life are invaluable. An atlas or three is also important, especially something with good topographical maps, climate maps, ocean currents and resources, all the good stuff a world-building GM needs to be able to look at, even if creating a fantasy world, so a sense of at least pseudo-realism can be achieved. For reference books, the more pictures, the better; being able to show your players a picture of what you're trying in vain to describe is a priceless time-saver. In many respects, a library card is going to be, ounce for ounce, the most important item a GM could have in a pre-Internet world.

- Last but not least, a printed version of the RPG in question. While most of us still like to have a physical copy of the rules at hand, many of us who work for a living in front of a computer also enjoy having PDF copies of their rulebooks available for perusing, especially if, like me, you're able and willing to do a little campaign development in between work-related tasks. And, I'm sure there are people out there who have gone so digital that they no longer use print copies of their system of choice. For the Luddite GM, of course, this isn't an option, so a good, sturdy copy of the rules is invaluable. A smart GM keeps two copies - one for use while "on the road", and a shelf copy that doesn't get as much abuse.

After reading through that list, it's no wonder that computers and the internet have become so popular amongst gamers. Everything above can be handled, or at least simulated, with a laptop that takes up less space than that 3-ring binder, weighs less than a fair-sized hardcover reference book. It can serve as notebook, sketch pad, graph paper, 3-ring binder, and also has the informational recources of, well, pretty much the whole world at its disposal.

So at last, we come to the heart of the matter, and my question to you, gentle readers: how much of an RPG Luddite are you? And, more to the point, how many of you would be willing to set aside your technological aids and put in some old-fashioned "analog" GMing work in this day and age? I have to admit, as handy as the computer is (I'm writing this as a Google Doc, before uploading it to Blogger), there really are some days when I don't want to be "online" or working at a keyboard, and when push comes to shove, I find I can be my most creative in the least amount of time not in front of a screen, but with pen or pencil in hand, with a notebook in front of me. With this in consideration, a purely "low-tech" campaign experiement, as a GM, might be a refreshing change.

Anyone interested in taking the Luddite GMing Challenge? Anyone there already?

Campaigns Born From Maps

2009-10-15T09:36:00.003-04:00

If there's one thing I've found true over the years, it's that gamers, especially fantasy or historical setting gamers, are fascinated by maps. Old or new, abstract or incredibly detailed, the allure of a map we've never seen before is tangible and it fires the imagination almost immediately. One of the first things we as gamers (and especially those of us who leaned towards GMing early on) found ourselves doing once we got into the hobby was drawing maps of our own.

I remember back in grade school, years before I had even encountered D&D, making in my spare time "adventure mazes"; blueprints for secret bases or tunnel complexes or other creations, filled with acid pits, or flamethrowers, or machinegun nests, laid out to protect some sort of secret room like you'd find in a kind of arcade adventure game. Years later I'd recognize in these drawings what were essentially non-fantasy-based "dungeons" (they were always set with modern traps like guns and bombs and such) that I'd put intrepid adventurers through in my head while I was drawing. Since I did a lot of these in my spare time at school, lets just say I'm glad I'm not in grade school nowadays, as I'd probably be spending a lot of time suspended because of some "zero-tolerance" policy towards, I dunno, drawing cool stuff.

Anyhow, as time went on and I began to get involved with RPGs, my map-making evolved as well, from "adventure mazes" to dungeons and castles and kingdoms and eventually whole continents. I've always been a fair hand with a pencil, but never really considered myself that great - a skill I've always meant to work towards improving but never applied myself - so when I discovered Campaign Cartographer, I quickly picked myself up a copy. Now, this was back around 2001, so I've only got CC2, not the vastly more capable CC3. You can make some really impressive maps, but making it look...not cartoony...is difficult. They are certainly serviceable, and give you a lot of power over changing thmgs quickly and making your maps look very good, but they all have a similar look and feel to them. I know that the new CC3 changes this quite a bit, and I'll have to pick it up soon, but CC2 is still a powerful tool.

It had been a few years since I fooled around with Campaign Cartographer, so a few weeks ago while I was out sick, I installed it on my laptop and began playing around with it, creating simply a random campaign map. My goal wasn't to make a "realistic" map, but rather a map that was chock-full of adventuring possibilities. I have seen maps before that simply make me want to run a campaign "right there", and anyone who's flipped through the Atlas of Middle Earth, or pondered over maps of Conan's Hyborian Age, probably knows what I mean.

So, over the course of an afternoon, I created the following map. I'm not terribly fond of the default color scheme of CC2 maps, and wanted it to look a little more hand-drawn, so I ran it through Photoshops "poster edge" filter and came up with something a lot less artificial looking.

I'll give fair warning that this is a big map - it's 2400 x 1800, so be prepared for it to take up some serious real estate on your browser when you click on it.

I think this map would be a great starting-point for a campaign. I haven't given any place names, or labeled anything, or even provided a scale (although I was considering something around 320 by 240 miles). It's really just a blank "sandbox" ready for a GM to dig into.

So how about it, gentle readers? Do you have any maps out there that have inspired you to create a campaign just by looking at them? Do you have any maps of your own you want to share that you feel do a good job of giving inspiration?

Halloween One-Shot Adventure - 10 Days Left

2009-10-13T11:08:00.002-04:00

Just a note to everyone out there that there's ten days left for the Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest (note the link to the upper-left hand side of the blog). $31 in online gift certificates to RPGnow or another online RPG vendor to the person who writes me the best "Halloween Adventure". I've only gotten a couple of submissions so far, although I've received a couple notes telling me that they'll be sending in submissions.

Right now, it's looking like unless I get a deluge of submissions, I'll probably extend the submissions deadline beyond the 23rd. If I do, I'll definitely give a heads-up here. Also, I'm probably not going to get enough submissions for a PDF "book" of adventure Ideas, but I can certainly put together what I get as a PDF if people are interested.

So if anyone is still interested, or even if you haven't heard about it yet, take a look at the post and submission guidelines and have a go at it.

Review: Kothar and the Demon Queen

2009-10-08T08:30:00.002-04:00

Apologies for the delayed review of the third in the Kothar series, and further apologies for not seemingly being able to find an image out there of the cover of my printing of KDQ. There are a couple of other covers out there, not sure if these are later or earlier editions of the book, but their covers are different. As soon as I can get a decent scan of my cover, I'll be sure to amend this post.

In case you missed them the first time around, here's my posts on Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman, as well as Kothar of the Magic Sword. Also, my original post on Revisiting the Kothar Series.

Kothar and the Demon Queen is the first story in the Kothar series that is one full, continuous storyline. KBS was really three short stories, and KMS was really two stories with a thin plot point linking them together. KDQ just has one plot, and dare I say it, but I actually think it's a tad...complicated for this sort of novel.

The arch-wizard Mindos Omthol has lived many times the lifetime of a normal man, but even his incredibly powerful sorceries haven't kept him from the ravages of age. Ancient and decrepit, Mindos Omthol has finally acquired (what he thinks to be) a scroll detailing a spell that can make him young again. However, Omthol needs the aid of a "god" named Xixthur to assist him in the spell. Unfortunately, Xixthur is held captive by the Demon Queen Candara, who rules the city of Kor, and Omthol's demon advisor Abathon cannot steal the god from Candara, nor can even Omthol, with all his powerful spells. However, Abathon talks Omthol into getting the patron demon of rival city Urgal, one Azthamur, to steal Xixthur, because Azthamur is an old demon and may use Xixthur's regenerative powers to grow young again itself. From there, Omthol would need a man of great strength and skill (and incredible luck) to steal Xixthur from Azthamur and present it to Omthol. Spying out over the expanses of the Haunted Lands with his clairvoyant conjurings, Omthol and Abathon see Kothar, wandering in the direction of Kor. Could they find a better pidgeon? I think not.

Now, that isn't complicated enough for you, right?

Good, because it gets weirder. Omthol won't get Kothar to do the work for him. Instead, once Azthamur steals Xixthur from Candara, Candara herself finds Kothar hanging out in some Kor dive bar, hires him, promises him...well, you know what...and sends him off to Urgal to steal back Xixthur from Azthamur and the ruler of Urgal, one Tor Domnus. Turns out Candara is centuries old, and uses the powers of Xixthur to keep herself young, just as Tor Domnus wishes for himself. Seems like everyone wants this "god" as their very own personal fountain of youth. Candara, of course, doesn't realize that she's the unwitting pawn of Omthol, and when Kothar finally steals Xixthur and brings it to her, he brings along with him Azthamur, Tor Domnus, and the whole of the Urgal-ite army on his heels, and to the walls of Kor. This, of course, means that Candara needs to ally herself with a powerful wizard to fight against Azthamur...namely that crazy-powerful hermit living a ways off, one Mindos Omthol.

Confused yet?

In all fairness, as much as I'm poking fun of the plot, it's not all that bad. The book is actually pretty entertaining; there's plenty of demon fighting and trickery and magic and sword-play, feasting and drinking and wenching and daring escapes and avenging warriors from beyond the grave. The ending of the book is also very cool, in that it shows how even a non-magic using character like Kothar, who really knows next to nothing of the intricacies of demonic pacts or sorcery, can still out-think his way through a tough situation where even his powerful sword Frostfire can't gain him victory. Kothar might be have simple desires, but he's not a simpleton.

And, one more interseting footnote. The "god", Xixthur, is really no god at all (and this isn't really a spoiler, as Xixthur is really just a MacGuffin for the whole story); it is, actually, an artefact of ancient science, whose rays regenerate the flesh of any living thing that bathes in their radience. As mentioned in the beginning of the first Kothar book, the stories of Kothar and the world of Yarth are set not in some vague fantasy-land that has no connection to our own world. Rather, Kothar's world and his time is that of the unthinkably far future, billions of years from now, when the universe has expanded to its utmost and now begins to contract back in on itself, and mankind long, long eons ago migrated out to the stars and has since, at least on Yarth, lost almost all knowledge of these past ages.

I know this is little better than "long ago, in a galaxy far away" and all that, but I do think it is an important distinction to make, and one that fits with a lot of sword & sorcery settings; this idea that while the story happened some time in the far distant past, or some time in the far distant future...it did or will happen in "this reality", so to speak, and not on some generic fantasy world that has no connection to reality. For those of you thinking about the Iconic Elements from yesterday's column, this idea might be something you incorporate as one of your campaign's Elements.

I'll probably take a hiatus from reading Kothar until November. Right now, I'm leaning more towards horror fiction, as befits the approaching holiday, and will have to have some postings about that in the not-too-distant future.

And just a reminder: if you're interested, check out the Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest! There's a graphic link on the upper left hand side of the blog page.

Iconic Elements in Campaign Setting Design

2009-10-07T08:30:00.003-04:00

I just posted a comment over at the Savage Swords of Athanor Blog. The author is discussing what are the unique strengths of the Athanor setting and how he should always keep these strengths in the forefront of his mind while working on the setting material.

The article in question can be found here.

I'll repeat my comment below, as it is what spurred this column:

"What every setting designer needs to consider is; what are the Iconic Elements that define your setting? Boiling that down to a list of 8-12 elements that you always keep in the forefront of your mind while writing your setting material will help keep your setting clearly defined."

Actually, thinking about it, 8-12 might even be too many, or maybe it's not enough. Point being, when you design your campaign setting, there are two ways to go about it. The first is, building the world organically - how big is the planet, what's the population like, what are the continents, the climate, the flora and fauna, the creation myth, the history...essentially the task of what you might call Organic World-Building. I suppose from a business perspective, you might consider this a "Top-Down Process" because you're starting at a planetary or cosmic level and zooming in by degrees to the point where the villages start to populate themselves based on higher-level criteria.

However, something like building your campaign setting based around Iconic Setting Elements is much more of a "Bottom-Up Process" because you're starting from an adventurer's eye view of the world and moving up in scale from there. I say this because your Iconic Elements are going to be those features of the campaign setting that are what define, in a very direct way, the actions of the campaign at the level of the adventuring party. For example, a couple of Iconic Elements of Dragonlance are, of course, the presence of dragons in the setting - not just that, but battles between dragons, dragonarmies, the evil of the draconians, the dragon-likenesses of Takhisis and Paladine - and the epic struggle of Good vs. Evil. Playing a roguish bunch of amoral thugs who are just out for plunder, pleasure, and profit in the world of Dragonlance is possible, but it really goes against the whole point of the campaign setting, love it or hate it as you will.

On the other hand, what are a couple of the Iconic Elements of Dark Sun? There's the lack of any "Gods" and instead just the heartless rule of the immortal Sorcerer-Kings, meaning that most of the "divine mythology" that surrounds a lot of campaign worlds is non-existant with Athas, instead replaced with a harsh and unpleasant reality. Another Iconic Element is the environment itself; a hot, barren wasteland that can kill the unprepared in hours or even minutes as surely as any scimitar-wielding orc. The Sorcerer-Kings and the deadly environment are two elements of an Athasian campaign that any competent GM will never let a party ignore or forget, as they are what make Dark Sun "Dark Sun", just like dragons and the struggle of good vs. evil are what make Dragonlance "Dragonlance" and not just another generic fantasy setting with elves and dragons and wizards.

The idea of defining Iconic Elements during campaign design might seem obvious or an over-simplification to some, but I actually think it helps keep a GM's eye on the ball, so to speak. Your campaign world should be "about something", even if that something is nothing more than "plunder, pleasure, and profit". Even if that's the case though, then you've got three Iconic Elements right there:

1. Plunder: it is a world filled with limitless fortunes, many lost among the sands of time. Ruins and caverns and hoards are everywhere - but there's always a risk to every reward.

2. Pleasure: Those who work hard, play hard. There's lots of feasting and drinking and wenching and carousing to be had, among both the rich and the poor. Fortunes gained can be depleted just as quickly giving in to every lurid indulgence.

3. Profit: Characters can make themselves stupidly wealthy if they have what it takes, but sometimes wealth can be as dangerous as the path it took to get there.

So, past, present, and future campaign setting designers, what are your Iconic Elements? And, gentle readers, if you have no personal campaign setting Elements to share with us, what do you consider to be the Iconic Elements of your favorite established campaign setting?

PAX Comes to Boston, March 26-28th

2009-10-05T08:30:00.002-04:00

I'm not really a convention-attender. I've been to a couple of science fiction book conventions here in Boston over the years (although it's been a while) but the most I ever really do is wander around for a day or so and maybe sit in on a couple of discussions, and then wander out again vaguely disturbed. I've attended Boskone a couple of times, but I've never been to Arisia, although I might have to make an effort to attend both this year.

However, what I am pretty excited about is PAX East this March. I'm not a rabid fan of Penny Arcade, but they are pretty funny, and since the Hynes is dead easy for me to get to, I'm just a little too tempted. And, if I make the effort and attend all three conventions this year, it'll be interesting to see each in turn and note the similarities and differences between the three. Boskone is a pretty hardcore science-fiction and fantasy literature convention, although it'll pay some acknowledgement to movies and TV and fandom and gaming and whatnot. Arisia is apparently the "anti-Bokone" (and not just in name), and is much more the generic "sci-fi convention". PAX, I think, is going to be a much younger, more frenetic convention, and so seeing each in turn and experiencing what each of them has to offer will be a lot of fun.

Also, on a much more personal-agenda level, it gives me something of a deadline to work with. I'm seriously considering getting a "fast-play" or "intro" version of the T&B RPG done for the con season, printing up a bazillion copies, and distributing them, guerilla style, at each of the three conventions. I might also bring along with me finished and bound copies of the game, alone with (if I get REALLY ambitious) CDs of all the PDFs I'll have at the time, as well as T&B Blog business cards (yes, my dreams really do extend that far, it's a little sad).

Anyhow, Boston-area gamers and / or bloggers, mark your calenders. Con season is a few months away, and it's time to represent.

Turn Halloween Adventure Entries Into A Free PDF?

2009-10-02T10:06:00.003-04:00

So I was asked the question this morning, "What are you going to do with these adventures, other than shelve them indefinitely?".

I thought about it for a little while. I really wanted the contest to be more a celebration of the Halloween holiday than anything else, but if I (hopefully) get in a fair number of contest entries, I ought to do something with all of them, right?

So here's my thought. I'll take all the entries, bundle them together in a nicely formatted PDF, and make it available as a free download, either though one of the many "drop boxes" available online, or as a free RPG product from RPGnow or another vendor. It'll be a sourcebook of adventure ideas celebrating the Halloween season, something for a bunch of different systems and play styles but with a common thread running through them all.

Of course, I'll clear it with all the participants first, and as soon as I post this, I'm going to alter my previous post and request that if a participant wants their entry to go into this PDF, they need to give me permission. If not, no harm done.

Anyone out there have other possible ideas for what to do with the entries I recieve?

The Halloween One-Shot Adventure Contest!

2009-10-01T08:30:00.003-04:00

That's right, gentle readers. I'm giving in to this whole "hosting a contest on your blog" thing, and holding a contest to see who can create the basis for the best one-shot Halloween adventure!

The month of October, and Halloween in particular, has always been a special time of the year for me, and I thought that there is no better way to celebrate Halloween than to invite my readership to submit to me an adventure primer that epitomizes what you either enjoy most about Halloween or think is the most important aspect of the holiday.

Now, this isn't going to just be some "write me a bunch of meandering paragraphs of what you think makes for a great Halloween adventure", or "here is my adventure module" contest. No no no. I work in academia, and here in academia, we like criteria, percentages, and grading.

So here's your assignment:

Submit to me via e-mail (to be found under the profile link in the top-left hand corner of the blog), in an attached document (PDF preferred, .txt, .rtf, .doc, or .docx accepted), an adventure contest entry with the following:

1. Your preferred e-mail address (make sure this is in the attached file!).

2. A statement granting me (or denying me) permission to bundle your adventure together with all the other entries into a free Halloween Adventure Sourcebook PDF, to be released somewhere, somehow, after the contest is over.

3. The name of your blog (if you have one, of course. No points off if you don't).

4. The name of your adventure (points off if you don't have a name for the adventure!).

5. A three-part summary of the adventure. I want a broad-brushstrokes summary of the "hook, line, and sinker" of the one-shot. By this I mean, what hooks the player characters into the adventure, how does the adventure progress, and what "finishes off" (no pun intended) the adventure. Because this is a one-shot, and not simply a "sandbox module" plonked into the middle of your campaign, please consider some kind of beginning, middle, and end to the adventure (if it helps, picture your adventure as the basis for a horror movie). The end can be something as simple as "the PCs either all get wiped out by the Thing in the Woods, or they make it into town and find shelter in the sheriff's office", but I want the one-shot to have some kind of closure (although "sequel potential" is fine...). Percentage of your grade: 50%.

6. What system you would use to run the adventure. I don't care what system it is, I want to know why you would use it to run your adventure. Is it a horror system (Chill)? Something you're most familiar with (Swords & Wizardry)? Are you trying to say something ironic by using it (Bunnies & Burrows)? As with any good academic essay, it's not about right and wrong answers - it's about presenting a convincing argument. Percentage of your grade: 20%.

7. How you would handle characters for the adventure. Would you make pre-gens? Would you give specific character types you'd want people to create? Would you encourage people to make whatever character they want and just see how it plays out? Provide a reason for your argument, as well as a rough estimate of how many players/characters you'd want at the table. Percentage of your grade: 10%.

8. How you'd set the mood for the adventure. Would you make or provide props? Would there be an adventure soundtrack, and what would it contain? Would you serve food during gameplay? Before? After? Is there a particular place you'd want to hold the adventure (sky's the limit here)? Assume you're running the adventure on Halloween night, and go from there. Again, it's not what you'd do, it's why you'd do it that counts. Percentage of your grade: 10%.

9. Why this submission best represents, in your mind, "Halloween". If you feel Halloween is best represented by trick-or-treating, kids, candy, and fun, maybe your adventure is something of a kid's adventure. If your version of Halloween is dark and bloody and disturbing, maybe your adventure is a gruesome horror-fest. If you feel it's all about Pagan celebration and ritual, perhaps your adventure represents something cthonic and primal. As I keep stating, there is no right or wrong answer here, just well-justified and poorly-justified answers. Percentage of your grade: 10%.

Deadline: I want these submissions by no later than 11:59pm on Friday, October 23rd. I will penalize your final grade by one point for every 24 hours past the deadline you submit your adventure. I will be announcing the winner on the morning of Halloween, so if I don't get your submission by 11:59pm on Friday, October 30th, you're out of luck.

Contest Prize: I wouldn't expect you folks to do all this hard work for nothing. So, the winner of the contest will recieve a gift certificate (or e-mail, or whatever) for $31 from RPGnow.com. I'll also post the winner's submission on Halloween when I declare the winner.

All right, that's it! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave 'em. Also, if my fellow bloggers would like to be so kind, please put the word out and let's see what sorts of submissions we can get.

And, most importantly of all, Happy Halloween!

TnB RPG Photo Art Styles for Comments

2009-09-28T15:41:00.013-04:00

So I've been playing around with the idea of photographing some props I have and then doing some Photoshop processing on the pictures to provide some of the art for my RPG. I've done some sample picture-taking and ran a test photo through a number of different artistic filters. I'd like to get some feedback on the various styles I tried, and figured I'd post the photos here and see what people think. These photos are pretty big, so I'm keeping the thumbnails small - click on the image to see a more detailed version.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Color Pencil

2. Diffuse Glow

3. Paint Daubs

4. Palate Knife

5. Posterized

6. Smudge Stick

7. Watercolor

Thanks in advance for any comments or questions you have.

A Real-Life Treasure Hoard

2009-09-25T10:08:00.003-04:00

A little light posting this Friday morning...

So apparently un in Staffordshire, England someone this summer discovered and documented a massive hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold treasure. The quantity, as well as the quality, of the items is apparently remarkable and the likes of which have not been encountered before.

Here is a link to the Staffordshire Hoard Website.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia Article on the Hoard.

Here is a link to the first of 25 Photo Gallery Pages.

GMs, if you're running a historical or fantasy campaign and you'd like some examples of "ancient buried treasure", look no further than this site for some great inspiration. Some of these pieces are absolutely gorgeous looking.

Review: Kothar of the Magic Sword

2009-09-22T08:30:00.003-04:00

After reading the first of the Kothar novels over the period of three days, reading the second novel took even less time. At 154 swiftly-read pages, I was able to get through Kothar of the Magic Sword in just a couple of hours Monday. This review'll be a bit shorter than the previous column, as much of the feel of this book is the same as the previous novel.

Moving on...

Kothar of the Magic Sword, although a "novel", is two distinct stories, even though they are intertwined. The book begins with Kothar and the thief Rufflod swimming up to board the pleasure-galley of the Emperor Kyros of Avalonia in the city of Romm. The two are there to steal the Helix, a magical artefact of immense power. The Helix serves as both the gateway to a magical pleasure world, known as Nirvalla, as well as the nexus of Nirvalla's power. It serves both as the entrance way, and the key to the world's existence. He who controls the Helix, controls both travel to Nirvalla, as well as the fate of that world itself.

What follows is much trial and adventure, both mundane and magical. Kothar must chase Kyros into Nirvalla and gain back his sword Frostfire, taken from him when Kyros' guards captured him during the theft. Beyond this, Kothar must battle gladiatorial bears, giant eagles, Kyros' guards, and discover the rules and secrets of the enchanted pleasure-world, where breaking one of the rules can be as deadly as any sword thrust. Eventually, Kothar secures his sword, and of course, saves the girl, a lithe and lovely young Oasian dancer named Laella.

The second half of the book sees Kothar sending Laella away after Red Lori sends assassins after him. Soon after, Kothar becomes embroiled in a twisted plot of revenge Red Lori has sprung on him, involving an evil cult that practices human sacrifice, demonic possession, magic, and a horde of raiding Mongrols (yes, that's right - Mongrols). In this second half of the book, Kothar also acquires his powerful horn bow, once owned by the mighty Krangor of Abathor. Kothar will go on to use this bow in the rest of the series, along with Frostfire.

Without giving too much away, Kothar finds himself in the company of Red Lori once more, as they battle the Mongrol raiders and ally themselves with an ancient and vengeful god. I won't spoil the ending; suffice to say that it might be a little unexpected, and definitely leaves the reader with a few questions (in a good way). At the end of the novel, however, Kothar does once again find himself on his own again, without treasure but in search of more adventure.

One thing of particular note, is that this is the only Kothar novel that is illustrated. There are four one-page black and white illustrations in this book, which is pretty cool given that it is, to be honest, a trashy little pulp fantasy novel. Funnily enough, not a single one of these illustrations has anything to do with, not only what's going on around them, but anything at all to do with the book in its entirely.

Oh, and one other thing. Kothar gets lucky with not one, but two ladies in this book. All very PG depictions, of course, but they're not just kiss-and-cuddle relationships. I guess after all the coitus interruptus that went on in the previous novel, our boy needed a little play.

Interesting note: the cover image above shows the book as being published by Belmont, but mine is published by Modern. Same cover, however.

Review: Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman

2009-09-21T08:30:00.001-04:00

As stated on Friday, I've begun re-reading the Kothar series of fantasy novels by prolific comics and fantasy/sci-fi author Gardner F. Fox. I read a few pages Thursday night, about a third of the book Friday, another eighty pages or so yesterday, and I finished the book Sunday morning. At 153 pages of not terribly tightly-set text (say that five times fast...), someone with decent reading speed could easily get through the whole book in a lazy afternoon.

Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman is actually three short stories; The Sword of the Sorcerer, The Treasure in the Labyrinth, and The Woman in the Witch-Wood. Any of the three could easily be read in an hour or so, with Sword of the Sorcerer being the longest at 68 pages.

The Sword of the Sorcerer is Kothar's "origin" story. Fleeing a disasterous battle between the forces of Queen Elfa's Guards (led by Kothar as their Captain) and the army of King Markoth. Kothar is the only man on his side to flee the battle, and as he seeks to hide from his pursuers, he finds himself (or is somehow guided?) to the tomb of the ancient wizard Afgorkon, dead now some fifty thousand years. Afgorkon has arisen from his undead slumber to give Kothar his ancient sword Frostfire, a magic-forged blade that surpasses any sword in Kothar's day. Afgorkon gives the sword to Kothar so he may defeat Markoth and his sorceress, the wicked Red Lori, because Afgorkon was awoken to aid Queen Elfa, herself a sorceress of some power. Before handing off his blade, however, Afgorkon warns Kothar that the sword carries with it a curse; as long as he carries Frostfire, wealth will slip through his fingers no matter how hard he tries to hold onto it. Enthralled by the magnificence of the blade, Kothar takes the sword and risks living the life of a perpetual pauper as he goes forth to give battle to Elfa's enemies.

What follows is a pretty entertaining quest. After meeting up with Elfa in exile, she gives Kothar a warhorse and sends him out to save her court wizard, the only ally she has with the power to defeat Red Lori (Afgorkon is willing to dole out his broadsword, but apparently he's not willing to fling a few spells - go figure). Elfa's wizard, the sorcerer Kazazael, has been flayed alive by Markoth's torturers and kept alive and hung suspended in the air by Red Lori's magic. Kothar must fetch a magical cloak from the lair of the Sea Beast Iormungar, in order to save Kazazael and begin turning the tide against the power of Markoth and Red Lori.

I won't give away any more of the first story. Suffice to say, it's a fun little quest romp, Kothar travelling from challenge to challenge, becoming increasingly more annoyed that he's the plaything of wizards and warlocks, and constantly trying to score with the ladies. That's right, Kothar's a bit of a hound, but in true PG-13 fashion, all he ever manages to catch (at least that we see) is a kiss and a cuddle here and there before fate flings him into battle with some abyss-spawned hellbeast. Kothar's also a bit of a Foodie; he's always carrying on about jacks of cold Midlands Ale or a flagon of chilled Thosian red wine, savory cuts of meats and barley bread and hunks of sharp cheeses, bowls of seafood stew or fire-roasted rabbit. I actually start to get hungry reading these passages.

Anyhow, I digress. The second story in the book, The Treasure in the Labyrinth, involves a merchant buying penniless Kothar a feast and talking the poor fellow into diving headlong into the labyrinth of some powerful local, who keeps his supposedly jaw-dropping treasure in the center of this magical flytrap that's killed or otherwise dealt with every thief or adventurer who's ever gone into it. Kothar, happily fed and fueled by ale and wine and given a handful of silver just to hear the merchant's pitch, declares that he's afraid of no man or clever trap, and agrees to dive headlong into the labyrinth in search of this treasure.

A good GM could mine this story as the basis for a pretty neat dungeon. It's got a number of fiendish guards and magical traps, and Kothar battles or toughs it out through them all to get to the prize at the center of the labyrinth. However, Kothar is shocked to discover that treasure comes in many forms, and means more to some than to others (how clever!). Ah, go figure. Remember Frostfire's curse? Mhmmm, I thought so...

The third, and shortest, story in the book is The Woman in the Witch-Wood. Kothar, riding to find employ with the robber-barons of the nearby territories, comes across the campfire of a mysterious and beautiful woman, the lady Alaine, who feeds him (step one) and tells him that she once was the ruler of this land, but a powerful curse laid on her by the current ruler, the Baron Gorfroi, has banished and sequestered her in this dark and forbidding wood. She would be eternally and ever-so-grateful (wink wink, step two) if Kothar could break into Gorfroi's tower and steal back the single strand of her silver hair upon which Gorfroi has placed his enchantment, so she can free herself and "thank" Kothar properly. But she cautions Kothar that it is a VERY perilous undertaking, and if he finds it too dangerous, she will not hold it against him if he decides to forego the quest and ride on (step three...). Kothar, "afraid of no man" etc. etc., takes on the quest, and rides out to do battle with Gorfroi and his host of undead and demonic minions and allies. But is the mysterious Alaine all that she seems, or does she have another agenda? I'm sure the answer will shock (SHOCK!) you...

All in all, a pretty damn fun read. Although a lot of those cheesy 80's sword & sorcery movies are supposed to be "Conan-inspired", or that's what a lot of people feel (and they are probably right), Kothar is a much closer in spirit than anything Howard wrote. It's light, it's fun, it's filled with action and hot babes and magic and monsters and gold and jewels and drinking and feasting. As I mentioned in the previous post, much like Lin Carter, Gardner Fox obviously had a great deal of love for the genre he was writing in, and while he was no literary great, what he might have lacked in originality and prosaic skill, he makes up for with his infectious enthusiasm.

Now, to read the next book in the series. This is a little bit difficult, as not all the Kothar books I have are published by the same printing house, and the sources I find online differ as to the order in which the books are supposed to follow each other. For the purposes of these reviews, I'm going to follow the order laid out by the Fantastic Fiction Website. This means that Kothar and the Magic Sword is next in line. Time to start guzzling ale, fondling wenches, and slaying demons!

Revisiting Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman

2009-09-18T10:56:00.004-04:00

Back sometime around 2000 or early 2001, I came across a rumpled little paperback in a used bookstore here in Boston. The book was called "Kothar and the Magic Sword", and I almost gagged at the title and nearly passed it by. But, as I realized I was buying a lot of other crappy pulp fiction (and thus had little excuse to be snobbish), and the book would only cost me a buck or so, I picked it up and gave it a read a few months later.

I discovered that this was the third of a five-book series by Gardner F. Fox, who apparently made his real reputation writing and creating comic book characters. But Kothar was an entertaining creation, a B-grade Conan but different enough in both style and substance that it was its own creation, similar to Lin Carter's Thongor series; both appear to just be Conan rip-offs on the surface, and while Thongor does a better job of "falling further from the tree" so to speak, I can read both of them without feeling like I'm just reading a Conan pastiche.

I wound up buying all five Kothar books, reading them, and enjoying them so much that I started digging around the 'net to find more information about them. All I was able to find at the time (circa early 2002) was that the author was originally in comic books, but other than that, I found nothing. So, I am proud (in a weird way) to say that I created the first Kothar the Barbarian fan page off of my little University personal webspace account, and posted about the blonde barbarian and his whacky adventures. These days, with blogs and wikipedia and whatnot out there, that's no big deal, but pre-Web 2.0, that sort of information was a lot harder to come by.

Anyhow, long story short, I was digging through my pile of paperbacks last night after finishing my latest read, and the urge for some fluffy, non-serious fantasy fare came to me. Without thinking too much about it, I picked up Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman, in the plastic book sleeve I keep it in (the book is in a bit of a delicate state). In the sleeve was the packing slip from the used book store I ordered it from when I decided to pick up all the rest of the Kothar series, and lo and behold, I had ordered it on September 17th, 2001.

So, I began to read it again after (exactly!) eight years, and I have to say, it's pretty damn entertaining. It might not be the most eloquent prose, but it's a good measure better than a lot of media tie-in fiction that gets published these days, and certainly not bad for a paperback fantasy novel that sold for 60 cents in 1969. And, hey, how many pulp fantasy paperbacks at that time had an introduction from a Ph.D. (I have no idea who Donald MacIvers is, but apparently he wrote an introduction to the first Kothar book) about the need for super-heroic literary characters in mid-twentieth century fiction, jiving off of the writings of one Albert Kremnitz, an early 19th century German philosopher?

I'll definitely have a followup posting about Kothar again when I wrap up this first novel. All five of them are short reads, so it shouldn't take me all that long.

The Great Ziggurat of Ur

2009-09-17T10:55:00.004-04:00

In yesterday's post about bronze age cultures and campaign settings, one of the things I brought up that I consider a big point about such settings is the big, brooding, cyclopean architecture that I think of when I consider a "bronze age city" such as Akkad, Ur, Sippar, Uruk, or Babylon. So when I was digging around this morning looking at various links in wikipedia (yeah, so academic, I know...), I came across this link about the Great Ziggurat of Ur.

When I look at this bad boy, I don't think Greece or Rome or Paris or England; I think ancient, ancient empires and long-lost civilizations. In short, I think of the sorts of places that inspired a lot of the original fantasy RPG type adventures and dungeons - long lost temples buried in the sand for a thousand years, waiting to be explored by intrepid adventurers.

In doing some more digging I just now came across this web site on Sumerian culture that has some very cool and evocative pictures in their gallery. I'm not sure how accurate any of this is, but accurate or not, they look pretty damn impressive. Printed out and used judiciously in gameplay as visual aids, pictures like those would help players get into the "look and feel" of a bronze-age city-state setting.

Defining Bronze Age Settings (Aside From the Obvious)

2009-09-16T11:10:00.003-04:00

So this past weekend, my good gaming buddy Masakari and I decided to get in some historical wargaming. We haven't had much of a chance to do this in a while, and it was my first opportunity to play a game or two of straight-up DBA (as opposed to HotT). Although my Romans got kicked in the junk in both games by Masakari's Thracians (stupid hill...), it was a fun afternoon nonetheless.

As an aside, if you've never heard of DBA, here's a link for more information.

Later that evening, I was looking through Field of Glory's sourcebook Swifter Than Eagles, a supplement for Old Testament-era wargaming. Although not completely unfamiliar with Bronze Age and early Iron Age civilizations, just paging through the book and taking in the scope of thousands of years of empires and civilizations rising and falling got me really thinking about RPG campaigns in a Bronze Age setting. This mental process was only quickened by Mike D.'s recent post over at Sword +1.

Fantasy RPGs have struggled to escape the pseudo-medieval archtype they have long been stuck in, with varying degrees of success. The only really successful method of breaking free seems to be escaping any kind of historical precedent at all, the sort of "gonzo fantasy" or "punk fantasy" that shows up from time to time. Even "sword & sorcery" campaign settings, which habitually try to avoid many of the pseudo-medieval trappings of more traditional fantasy settings, lean more towards a medieval feel in terms of weapons, armor, and warfare than any other time period.

So in thinking of developing a fantasy campaign setting based in a Bronze Age culture, I began thinking of what major elements are, if not unique to this kind of setting, strong identifiers that help set things apart from a more traditional pseudo-medieval world. In no particular order...

- The use of bronze (duh) as the primary material for weapons, armor, and other metals-intensive items. Copper would probably be the metal of choice for anything that doesn't need a lot of strength, and wood / leather / ceramics / bone is going to be used a lot more than you might find in a medieval setting.

- Massive, cyclopean architecture. No gothic designs, no round towers, no complicated stonework, no slender arches. Buildings are largely thick square-ish stone structures built to last thousands of years, and seem to carry a lot of "weight" in their appearance.

- A hot, arid climate, made farmable largely through irrigation. Civilizations cling very closely to coasts and rivers and the land beyond is pretty uninhabitable by anyone but the most capable nomadic peoples.

- A whole host of dieties, small and large, most of whom aren't all about sweetness and light but rather demand worship and sacrifice (of all kinds) and obedience from their masses of followers. Most of these gods are ancient, fearsome if not downright sinister, and more than willing to visit a little wrath on their people when the mood strikes them.

- Warfare dominated by hordes of missile-based troops, such as archers, slingers, and javeliners. Armor is minimal or non-existant, and shields are the dominant form of protection. Cavalry is rare or doesn't exist, with chariots dominating mobile warfare. Many troop types are "skirmishers" or at best loose mobs of auxiliary spearmen, and big clashes of massed, disciplined, ranked forces are fairly rare, since such troop types are mostly reserved to "bodyguard" units.

There are a lot more, I'm sure, but that's what I came up with right of the top of my head.

At some point in the interminable future, once the T&B RPG is finally rolled out, I want the first "fantasy" setting I build for it to be a Bronze Age campaign setting; The Ancient and Venerable City-State of Aglos. I envision it as something like Ur or Babylon on crack, with a bad attitude to boot. Adventures would either take place within the city (and there'd be plenty to do, that's for sure), or on excursions out into the hinterlands, where remnants of older, long-dead civilizations can be found and plundered.

So, gentle readers, what other aspects do you think are important for representing a "Bronze Age" fantasy campaign setting? Note that I made no mention of magic; I can easily see a number of different magic types working in a setting like this, and that might become its own column.

Red Dawn as Available via Youtube

2009-09-15T14:41:00.005-04:00

Sorry, not a gaming related post here per se, although I do think Red Dawn is pretty much a textbook on running a Twilight 2000-esque campaign in 1980's North America. A band of young inexperienced mid-western high school kids who must fight a guerilla war against the Soviet War Machine as it invades their homeland? You can't get any better RPG campaign fodder than that. Growing up in Alaska in the early 80's, Red Dawn was a much talked about film, and as far as I can remember, one of the first, if not the first, movie I ever saw on VHS.

Scouring around Youtube during lunch, I managed to find the movie broken down into a number of segments. Here they are, for your viewing pleasure.

I will point out that whoever put the movie up had a lot of...fun...with the subtitles. Let's just say it adds to the experience...

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Wolverines!

Topless Robot Ranks TSR Games

2009-09-15T10:17:00.003-04:00

As the title says, prolific geek blog Topless Robot (to be found in my blogroll off to the left) ranks the 10 best (and 6 worst) non-D&D games (RPGs, card games, board games, or other) to come out of TSR. I'm a little surprised that Amazing Engine didn't make the list in either direction - I don't think the project really accomplished what it set out to do, but I did like the idea (and I had their Bughunters RPG along with the core rules back in high school).

Anyhow, here is the direct link to the TR article.

Ninja Movies - 'nuff said

2009-09-14T13:13:00.006-04:00

Over two nights last week I watched two "Ninja Movies". The first was a very little-known flick called "Ninja Vengeance". The second was a much more mainstream Sho Kosugi movie called "Rage of Honor". Neither was a "good" movie (is there such a thing as a "good" ninja movie?), but they were both entertaining in their own way. A few thoughts come to mind.

1. Ninja Vengeance isn't really a ninja movie. It's half a martial arts movie, half a promotional vehicle for Stephen K. Hayes, the pater familius of American Ninjutsu. Hayes shows up in this film in flashbacks as the protagonist's trainer and mentor, although I don't think his 'character' is actually named in the film. There's a lot of that spoon / no spoon martial arts talk, way of the warrior, yadda yadda yadda. But the protagonist doesn't fight other ninjas (only one other bad guy is a martial artist, and he was supposedly trained in unarmed combat by the Marines), and he's never in his ninja get-up, nor does he actually use any ninja paraphanalia, although at one point you know he has it with him.

2. Rage of Honor, on the other hand, has not only ninja-on-ninja fighting, but the ninjas are packing flamethrowers, rocket launchers, assault rifles, and a whole host of ninja weapons, including some really insane looking polearms and some really badass "fighting claws" which are like nekode on crack. There's only one cadre of ninjas that Kosugi fights, and it is late in the movie, but they are worth it. Oh, and they arrive in a Huey helicopter, and they are wearing camouflage ninja outfits like some sort of G.I. Joe action figure. Beyond this, Kosugi uses a bajillion (that's right, a BAJILLION) shuriken in this movie, and every time they hit someone, they kill instantly. Some of them even explode. That's right, exploding ninja stars. My day has come. He also uses guns, crossbows, ninja-to, and a whole host of other kickass weapons.

3. Ninja Vengeance has an extraordinarily low body count. Not only that, almost everyone in the movie who DOES die is killed, if not accidently, at least regretably. The protagonist mostly just beats up the bad guys until they are incapacitated - I don't believe he actually kills a SINGLE bad guy in the whole movie. Rage of Honor, on the other hand, has a monumental body count. I can't say for sure that Kosugi's character kills over a hundred bad guys, but he does kill scores of people - the body count is in the many multiples of dozens killed or at least badly wounded.

4. After watching both films, I came to the suprising conclusion that while Rage of Honor was the better "typical ninja movie", Ninja Vengeance, while a poor "ninja flick" and not a very good movie, was actually a far better story overall. Unsuspecting "American Ninja" (he's so ninja, he rides - you guessed it - a Kawasaki Ninja) has his motorcycle break down in a small southern town and becomes framed for the murder of a young black man (killed by local Klan members who count among their number several local law enforcement types) when he tries to intervene. The protagonist winds up joining forces with the deceased man's girlfriend, a white girl whose father (as well as most of the town) is against her dating outside her ethnicity (even though the young man in question seems to be the only open-minded, intelligent, and forward-thinking person in the entire town; guess that's why he had to die...). It's of course terribly hackneyed and very stereotypical, but shockingly enough, it's far more of an engaging plot than Rage of Honor, which is pretty much "Drug dealers are bad and killed ninja cop's partner, now they all have to die".

5. Tying it all back to gaming (somehow...). Even though Rage of Honor is more of what you'd think you'd want to see in an "action" movie, the volume and ridiculousness of the action was really the only thing holding it up. Ninja Vengeance might appear on the surface to be the weaker film, but it actually - amazingly - had more going for it. And thus it is with gaming; sometimes giving players what they THINK they want is less rewarding than giving them something they will appreciate more after the fact. A gaming session of instantly entertaining but immediately forgettable mindless violence is fun now and then, but without some pathos and a little character development to keep things rolling, sooner or later the bloom is going to come off the rose and the players (and especially the GM) are going to lose their interest.

Of course, this isn't going to prevent me from popping in my DVD of Revenge of the Ninja and enjoying Sho Kosugi kicking some more heads in.

Edit: I found the trailer for "Rage of Honor" and some non-official 'trailer' of "Ninja Vengeance" online. Note the camouflaged ninjas with the heavy weapons in RoH, and the ninja's sweet ride in NV.

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