The Hydra's Grotto

The 1e Re-release is a Census

2012-01-20T13:57:00.000-08:00

News that the 5th edition is in the pipe has arrived. On its heels is the news that Wizards of the Coast is releasing 1e with original interior art and new covers in a special direct to game store printing with a charitable donation to the EGG memorial fund for each copy bought.

There can be no doubt that this is absolutely directed at the OSR. Here are the reasons why:

1. There is a huge connection between the OSR and the GGMF. A quick surf around the OSR blogs will show that the GGMF is the generally the favored charity of the OSR. This can be seen in the 2011 GenCon announcement for the GGMF:

The Gygax Memorial Fund will be hanging out at the Old School Renaissance Group, booth 1541 in the exhibit hall. Gail Gygax, Gary's widow, will be there, and she will also be presenting the 2011 ENnie Awards on Friday night.

2. The sale of these things is being listed as a hobby channel exclusive.
Given this I am led to think they are tracking these sales with care. Number sold will not be simply the number sold into distribution, but the number sold to each game store.

3. Given that there is a donation attached to the sale it behooves Wizards to track sales more carefully.

4. The audience are people who would buy a 1e book. This indicates that it is someone who probably is not into the latest iteration of the game or at least would enjoy an older version of it.

5. The audience are people that actually keep up with what Wizards does, but still don't keep up with the current iteration of the game or at least enjoy an older version of it.

6. The audience is made up of people who want to patronize games stores.

I would wager this fits 90% of the OSR population.

For a long time we have had the ear of The Mearls, and at least the attention of Monte Cook. However we have not had the attention of sales and marketing. I think that this is an attempt to measure the probable size of the OSR. Its a census. The designers and developers will respect us because (generally) the OSR is kinda fun. But sales and marketing are only going to respect hard numbers that without a doubt translate to sales. The nature of this release is one that can be written off as a charity if it turns out that we are 1000 dudes with really loud keyboards. But if sales indicate that this segment is in the 10s of thousands, Wizards is going to rethink some things, I guarantee it.

I think we might be a whole lot bigger than we think we are, both in voice and in number.

How Much Adventure in One 6 Mile Hex?

2011-09-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

So last weekend wandering around PAX the one thing I would get excited about if I had the time would probably have been Elder Scrolls V. In my opinion the Elder Scrolls Series is the heir to whatever crown Ultima wore. Technologically it picked up where Ultima Underworld, UWII and Ultima's V, VI, and VII left off - with Ultima V being the Empire Strikes Back or the series (more on this later).

But this is not a review per se of Skyrim. Rather in reading and hearing about it I was struck with an interesting piece of info: The region of Skyrim is roughly the same size as the region covered in Oblivion, which is around 16 square miles in area. Really? 16 square miles is 4 miles on each side. My 6mi hexagon obsessed brain immediately replies: "You realise that's all on one hex." The game is supposed to be epic -and from what I can tell it is- but, the fact that the whole thing would fit in a single hex boggles my mind. So I went and got a map of Cyrodiil the land covered in Oblivion I saw once in my internet wanderings just to see how much adventure (by location) you could cram into less than 1 6mi hex. The map is below, and it is too small to see here, so I suggest looking at it here.

Places designated as cities on this map are actually more like citadels and walled towns- you can actually see their wall outline from the map. And a study of medieval settlement patterns indicates that the distances and frequencies of these in relation to each other is entirely believable. Counting each city area as a single location this map displays 89 caves, 50 forts, 15 Shrines, 16 Inns and Stables, 23 mines, 30 settlements, 31 camps, 12 cities/castles/walled towns, and 50 ruins for a total of 316 or more distinct locations. Granted many of these locations stack into way to lend verisimilitude to a quarter of a square mile. If you start walking and walk for 4 miles in the game it will take you about the same time as if you walked 4 miles in real life. Ad to it all that this is the area surrounding a major city. Also there is a representational telescopeing -a sort of illusion that tricks the video game player into feeling like there is a cast of thousands when there really is just several hundred- but my point is that when played the area seems realistic in the frequency of encounters and the amount of travel someone needs to do in an adventure.

My own stocking of a six mile hex pales in comparison. Granted I don't have buckets of money from a major video game studio and a team of people designing adventure locations- however the OPD contests and similar collaborative efforts in the OSR, not to mention the wealth of relocatable locations published in the tabletop gaming sphere (Dyson Logos alone give you a lot of maps) put similar levels of detail in the grasp of pretty much any DM.

Looking at things like google or bing mapping programs really shows how you could have several adventure locations in just one 5 or 6 mile hex and it be completely believable. This stats me wondering about the implications of a sandbox- perhaps the 1 mile hex might be more conductive. Additionally if a DM wanted to link several worlds in a setting that crosses time and space perhaps all they need do is detail the 6 mile hex around the entry point to that world. The complication arrives when the entry and exit are not in the same place. Certainly information like this makes me rethink the range that adventure needs to be epic and yet still a sandbox.

Insights from PAX

2011-09-02T17:30:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend I had the fortunate pleasure of attending PAX on Friday. I didn't do much. I saw David Jaffe's keynote which was interesting and full of colorful language. After that we failed to see Wil Wheaton and so wandered the exhibit hall, went to a panel on how to publish your table top PRG, an experience which would have made steam come out of RPGPundit's ears. This was followed by dinner and then off to see if we could get into some tabletop games (we couldn't), and then got bored by the VGO. We then went to the PC freeplay area and watched Starcraft 2 patch while actually playing Alien Swarm and Team Fortress 2.

While some con-goers might count my experience as a fail it was made fun because I was spending time with a local friend and some friends out of town that I don't get to see much of anymore. That being said I found as I wandered through "game land" that I couldn't help thinking that this is where all the D&D players went, and most likely will continue to go. Also it seems that one FPS is pretty much like another with slight variations- zombie games are the same. Sports, racing games, sidescrollers etc. etc. to do the same.

The two big takeaways though were:

1. That while people keep remaking D&D, they also seem to keep remaking the same video games... I saw digital versions of fantasy heart breakers, FPS heartbreakers, RTS heartbreakers, etc, etc... I felt like I was walking by the same game over and over.

2. The other was that D&D is pretty much everywhere in the video game world. This makes sense as computers lend to running a game that can get as complicated as D&D can, and that D&D was an early influence on the medium. It makes sense that many would be D&D players end up playing video RPGs rather than pen and paper ones.

Wandering through the convention center everywhere I looked I could see the fingerprints of D&D. In the art and concept for a fantasy side scroller, to Skyrim, to the first person shooters and their percent based armor. The D&D influence was pervasive and palpable for those who knew where and how to look for it. I have pretty much concluded that people stopped playing D&D in pen and paper form because weather they really know it or not they are playing it in video game form.

Eldritch Sagery!

2011-08-06T21:21:00.001-07:00

Never do with a class what you can do with an easily remembered house rule option. We see a lot of attempts to make a sage class. Often this is to provide a mechanic for providing information to the PCs in a game session.

Rather than having a sage class, I decided that it would be good to have an option players can take to in essence be a sage. Like my Berserker option.

This sets the bar for being a sage, and also give the character the sages curse. Basically a player can choose to do it but are not forced to, and if they forget about it, the character is not hampered in some way. The curse part is from an early supplement from Judges Guild or The strategic Review, but I can't remember. So here is my Sage option:

If you have a Magic-User with an Int of 15+ the player can opt for his character to be a sage. The character gains the "sagery" power. The sagery power allows a Magic-User to burn the highest level spell memorized for immediately relevant knowledge. Additionally, they gain the ability to cast a curse when they are close to death or dying because of assault, mayhem or murder as per the curse spell.

Here is a handy curse chart provided by (stolen from) Dyson Logos (cause its dang relevant):

(edited to take out the chart which is linked to - it made things too long and this is not its home)

Know What's Below! Call Before You Dig!

2011-08-06T21:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone notice that a 210' x 210' square covers just about a square acre? Never mind that acres really arn't square. Being an odd number also gives the map a center square, for what its worth.

Taken with my 880ft tactical hex, you can clearly fit 16 of those 21x21 square maps in the hex. Thus you start to have a means to which you can picture what the dungeon you are mapping is actually under!

When I saw the graphic it made me think of Moria which led to the thought about how the information of a square acre gridded out might be useful to dungeon masters and mithral grubbing dwarves who delved too deep. This also might help translating out to a battlefield map.

My Love for You is Like a Truck! Berserker!

2011-08-06T20:40:00.001-07:00

What is not fun about berzerkers? Jeff over at Jeff's Gameblog describes them as psycho-killers:

“Psychokillers” is my term for stock berserkers, by the way. When encountered in dungeons I tend to describe them as axe-wielding maniacs from slasher flicks, rather than as Vikings. “You open the door and waiting for you on the other side are two Jason Voorhees and three Leatherfaces. They attack.”

And I agree. I think the guys in the monster listing probably should be just "psycho-killers", but what about characters with a legitimate battle rage?

In the past numerous classes are have been written to allow player characters some kind of battle rage ability. White Dwarf and The Dragon both had Berserker classes back in the day; and the rage ability also appeared with various Barbarian class builds.

This house rule is based on the LBB and B/X monster entry for a Berserker. I figure that a +1 to hit points indicates that they have a Constitution bonus. The +2 to attack is clearly from the rage. And uncontrollable rage is not a trait of the the lawful, so... here's the rule:

If Chaotic or Neutral, Fighters with a Con bonus can be berserkers. They get +2 to attacks but loose the ability to separate friend from foe. The berserk character will attack the nearest entity that might pose a threat to anything. If they are attacking a friend or ally the berzerker's player rolls 1d20. If the roll is higher than the friendly target's Charisma they don't separate friend from foe and the friend is attacked. A Berserker can go berserk a number of times per day equal to their Constitution bonus.

The 880ft Hexagon Bowshot

2011-08-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

So I have been gone again for a while, busy with other more pressing issues- like work. Anyhow, I should appear again on a more regular basis now, but I wouldn't take my word for it. I wanted to post a little more about wilderness hexagons, mainly about being in bow-shot. My next hexagon related post will be a bit about mapping on 1 mile hexes using the old traditional hex symbols.

Anyhow, I wanted to make sure readers understood about being in bow-shot in my previous hexagon post. Dan Collins (aka Delta) over at Delta's D&D Hotspot has through his research become the undisputed master of D&D ballistic knowledge. He has numerous articles about D&D ballistics. Go see for yourself. However some of the best are the ones where he crunches the numbers and determines what the penalties and ranges really should be based on how things really work: here, here, and especially here. (Yes we both know its a game, yes we should relax, but stuff like this relaxes us. And what the heck, its fun!)

If you read the first one you find that the best of the best archers are only hitting a stationary, unarmored man sized target at 220 yards @ 16% of the time. Something at the edge of the hex might be a believable shot. So if you are a high level character and the target is unarmored and eating lunch on a rock, you might have a chance. Conversely, hitting an army in the next hex is 100%.

You Had Me At "...and I am content"

2011-06-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have posted last. It has been a busy time. In that time the new Conan ...no wait, CONAN movie is upon us. As far as I can tell when I watch the trailer this looks like Bob's Conan to me. Mamoa sounds the way Conan is described to sound and like I thought Conan would sound, he dresses the way Conan is described to dress- from just clothes to full armor.

James over at Grognardia laments an absence of brutal hyborian age combat in favor of this films brutal balletic fight scenes. The thing about that is Conan is consistently described as having a catlike grace and it is this grace combined with his brutal strength that gives him his advantage in combat. That's from 2 Gun himself. He is Amra- the lion, grace and brutality wrapped up into one. Things -DO- explode in the hyborian age. See the battle at the end of Black Collosus where an incendiary is used to take out a line of cavalry. I believe a greek fire is mentioned in the later stories (Hour of the Dragon maybe?). The explosion we see in the trailer looks more like a molotov cocktail going off than say gunpowder as the explosion looks to me to be more like flaming liquid.

But enough of Grognardia. I really was ok with the films when they had Conan stating the line form Queen of the Black Coast: "I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content." When I see movies or trailers for movies like this I often think about what Bob would think of them. My thoughts are that he would have eaten up films like Pathfinder, or Outlander. He would have praised LotR and Game of Thrones in cinematic and book form. Personally I think at the time he would have enjoyed the 1980's Conan on some level, but I think this one he would find fit his vision more closely.

Whadaya Mean I Can't Scribe a Scroll?

2011-03-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Magical writings. This is one of the great under served topics in old school role playing games. Jeff has been thinking about how players know what spells they start with and what that "min" on the table really means. ChicagoWiz looks at the other end of the gun with a quest to find the time and gp costs of copying a spell. Strangely I have been thinking about spell learning and scribing also. The way I interpret Jeff's table is the following:

1. You work through the level 1 spell list until you run out of spells or the number of spells known is equal to the max number.
2. If you have not hit your max but you are over your min, you are done.
3. If you have not hit your max and are still under your min, roll again for the spells you did not get last time until you are over the min. Repeat until you are over the min. Now you are done.

After that, when you get a new spell you roll to see if you understand it. When you level all the spells you have that you don't understand you can check again for. While a caster cannot understand a spell they can still discern the complexity of the spell (i.e. the level). Additionally a caster can take a week per spell level of uninterrupted study in an attempt to understand a spell. At the end of the time the player rolls to see if the caster learned the spell. A caster can try again as often as they like. Remember there are 52 weeks in a year.

Swords and Wizardry Complete adds a spell level cap to the Intelligence score. The reason I was looking into the understanding thing was because you need to understand the spell to put it in your spell book.

Now, the big question I have for AD&D is: Why can I copy spells into my spell book, and if I so choose cast those spells out of my spell book as if they were scrolls (where they disappear off the page) but cannot create a scroll itself? If you can copy a spell from a scroll into a spell book, why not be able to copy a spell from a spell book to a scroll? Why wait for 7th (or 11th) level? Holmes makes the most sense here. If you can understand a 1st level spell, and have it in your book then you can copy it to a scroll. ChicagoWiz makes the point that Holmes does not mention the cost of copying a spell into a spell book. I think the cost unilaterally (OD&D, AD&D, Holmes, B/X, 3e etc.) is that you no longer have a scroll. But I figure that copying is copying and costs the same in all directions.

The time to create is pretty much a DMs call depending on how much he thinks the characters should be scribing. Holmes' week per level of the spell is probably based on the time that it took for a medieval monk to write a page of an illuminated manuscript working 6 hours a day for a week. But if you want the game to be run on the pursuit of treasure so you can pursue more treasure then you need things that the characters can spend their money on (like carousing). Scrolls become empty when they are used. That's a good hole in the pocket if I ever saw one. So I am tempted to say that it should be a day per level rather than a week. You still get PCs wasting a lot of time and also get them wasting money too.

Though what I might be inclined to do is this: if you want to scribe a scroll you need to gather the materials and set up a work space. This takes a week for whatever spell. Once you have set up shop you can pop them out at the day/level rate. But if you want to change spells, you have to "retool" your workspace and that takes a week. But then you hit the math-you-thought-was-small wall.

Here is my house rule on magical writing basics:

Spells can be stored in one of two ways: spell books are a kind of "permanent spell library" and a scroll is a kind of "temporary spell library." You can make copies from a permanent spell library without loss. Copying from a temporary library causes the loss of the library. Casting from both causes loss on both. Spell libraries can come in all different forms but involve writing and the above stated loss on casting or transferring.

To transfer a spell between libraries it cost 100gp/level of the spell. The time it takes is either 1day/level of the spell or 1week/level of the spell at the DMs discretion.

Research costs 1000gp/spell level and takes 1month/level to complete.

If a permanent spell library is destroyed memorized spells can be replaced in a day. Unmemorized but known spells are replaced as per the transfer rules or research rules as per the DM's discretion.

*Images from "ah-art" and "bloodmoonequinox" from deviant art respectively

I'll Swallow Your Soul!

2011-03-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

Charisma has a lot to offer. While it often comes up as a person's charm or personality I think it should be more than the limitation on the meat-shield purchase plan. Charisma can also work well as a measure of your soul. Think about really charismatic musicians- they share a part of themselves in their art. Performers and speakers often are said to tap into their soul to convey their pain or idea. What is it that so inspires people to follow a particular leader? Why not have charisma measure how big that soul is? Getting more resistance against level draining monsters certainly will kick it out of the dump stat category.

Charisma indicates the maximum level for a character in any class. Monster powers that drain levels no longer drain levels- they drain Charisma. Charisma is now also a measure of your soul. When you run out of Charisma you die. Ignore Charisma damage when dealing with hirelings, followers and henchmen.

Addendum: I have just looked at the monsters that do level drain. Seems in LL and S&W level drain is the standard undead big bad power. Vampires drink blood and I would tie blood to Constitution rather than levels. Perhaps they also have a level drain? I would be hesitant to give them both. I am fond of stat damage as a measure of capacity for damage, but not a fan of recalculating things as the stats drop, hence the last line of the above rule. I should probably make my next post a treatise on how stat damage can be your friend.

Addendum addendum: Thinking about it I would remove the vampire's level drain and replace it with the ability to drain blood on an incapacitated or charmed or willing target, and say they can drain their attack damage points of Con per turn. This fits with the Dracula image better. As for the shadows I would say they drain life force so rather than Str, Dex, or Con I would have them drain just Con. If I did this I would not require a recalculation of hit points and abilities. And replacing level drain with Cha damage helps you avoid recalculating also.

The Ultimate Tomb of Horrors

2011-03-08T21:20:00.001-08:00

I like when stuff happens by accident. Over at Dragonsfoot there has been the discussion of false tombs of Acererak to go with the Tomb of Horrors. This has led Dragonsfoot to publish not one, but two false tombs in the last couple of months or so. They can be found here and here. But what is interesting is that as this happens, we also see Michael Curtis speculating about this. So there you go: Tomb of Horrors as a heist, but with two (or more) false tombs that you need to go through to find the real one... The idea of running as a whole campaign is pretty cool. And the false tombs make it even cooler. You don't do the heist once, you do it three times! Though the flaw in it all is that by the time you get to the real tomb, if you get there, you will be able to mop the floor with the demi-lich. Still it is one of the coolest accidental confluences of ideas I have ever seen.

A Wilderness Template and More On Hexes

2011-03-02T07:31:00.000-08:00

Back in December of 2009 (am I really that infrequent?) I posted about the 6 mile hex being the ideal hex for wilderness adventuring hex crawls over its other frequently appearing cousins the 4 and 5 mile hex. I still think that is true. But what I wanted to revisit is the third part of the post about how to break down the 6 mile hex into subhexes. In that article I was breaking everything down based on the number 12. 12 half mile subhexes and those breaking down into 12 1/24th mile subhexes. This had the cool effect of fitting in a space of 44x44 battle mat squares. But then I noticed some problems.

I was aiming to create a one page wilderness hex map that could be used no matter what subhex level you were on. When I tried to print out and use a map of a hex 12 subhexes across the hexes were too small to really draw a map in, especially when you were on a 1/2 mile scale. Sure I could use the old B/X or Mentzer wilderness symbols, but the other problem was I wanted to use hex numbers to track which subhex I was documenting and the hex numbers would not fit into the subhexes of a hex 12 accross when it was configured to fit on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Granted I could put numbers in there but they would be too small to easily read.

The change works quite well. If you have 6 one-mile subhexes across a hex you can get large enough hexes to hold hex numbers and more map detail within the hexes should you want it. One mile hexes are good also for determining how far someone can see based on the 3 miles to the horizon principle I talked about in my previous hexagon article. Each of these 1 mile hexes breaks down to 6 880ft hexes, giving a good tactical scope to the one mile hex. These 880ft hexes have some interesting stuff about them: The longer range of historical bow shot was 200 to 400 yards and the standard practice range as set down by Henry the VIII was 220yds, or 660ft. So if you are in the middle of an 880ft hex, anything else in the hex is about 150 yards away. You could even shoot well into the next hex with some accuracy. So useing this scale, a good rule of thumb is that if someone is in the same hex or the next one with you, they are within bow shot. Another benefit is that Judges Guild hex maps on the 42.24ft per subhex scale can easily be rescaled to be 35.2ft per subhex having 25 of those fit in an 880ft hex. Since the structures displayed in these maps actually would get smaller it does not stretch the imagination and may be more believable. Also, 880ft is still a number that works well with the imperial measurements of chains and furlongs and acres. Furthermore 880ft hexes divide into subhexes of ~146 feet across. That fits on a 30 x 35 battle mat.

Additionally using hexes with 6 subhexes across you can go upward too. I good area for starting a sandbox campaign would be a superhex of 6mi hexes. This is about the size of a typical county in Texas. (30mi x 30mi) Apply the same again and you might be nearing the ultimate scope of a campaign. So I have given all the different hex levels a different designation. See the measurements below for these.

So here I have up here for download my take on the one page wilderness template. I have included it in form filled PDF, lined PDF, unlined PDF, Word with lines, and Word without lines. The graphic of the large hex is about as big as I can make it on 8.5 x 11. The lines are a little funky so expect these to get cleaned up sometime soon (probably next year).

Here are the measurements of the hexes and subhexes:

HexType: Face to Face, Vertex to Vertex

Scope Hex: 216mi, 252mi
Campaign Hex: 36mi, 42mi
Adventure Hex: 6mi, 7mi
Terrain Hex: 1mi (5280ft), 1.154mi (6093.12ft)
Tactical Hex: 880ft, 1016ft
Combat Hex: ~146ft (30 squares), ~169ft (35 squares)
Judges Guild Maps: 35.2ft, ~40ft (40.3)

Remember that the center to face is half the Face to Face distance and center to vertex is half the Vertex to Vertex distance.

Here are the templates in PDF. There are three formats: blank, lined and form field:

HexMapTemplate.pdf
HexMapTemplateLines.pdf
HexMapTemplateForm.pdf

Happy wilderness mapping!

Monkey Scribe

2011-02-21T07:10:00.000-08:00

Monkey Scribe

Level: 1
Duration: Instant, until written work is completed
Range: Touch

It is known that monkey scribed scrolls are the most potent.* This spell allows a magic-user to use a monkey (specifically a non-human great ape) to scribe mundane and magical writings. For spell books, a monkey scribe will copy the spells from a spell book to another as if they were the magic-user themselves, freeing the magic user for other tasks. The monkey becomes capable of understanding and speaking to the caster (with the casters intelligence and 25% of the time the casters personality and memory) for the duration of the spell and will calmly and diligently pursue his duties until finished. For scribing scrolls the monkey counts as the caster by proxy. The caster must be able to make the scroll himself without the help of the monkey for the monkey to be able to scribe the scroll. Scribing the scroll in this way makes the scroll more powerful as they max out any variables and offer twice the volume, range, duration and area of the spell. A factor of the spell is not doubled if it is already maxed out (for example in the case of variable duration, the max duration is used, and is not doubled). Variant: A GM may decide that humans do count as great apes for this spell.

*This idea came from the comments over at this linked post over at Telecanter's Receding Rules.

As I submitted this to Raggi for his spell contest this sucker is OGL so feel free to read and distribute with credit due.

Yost the Boastmaster

2011-02-14T06:54:00.000-08:00

Yost is the god of bravery, drinking, and boasting. Often refered to as the "Yost the Boastmaster" or simply "The Boastmaster", he typically appears as a human or very tall dwarf in a horned helmet with a very large scraggly beard. His principle weapon is a battle axe but he has been known to show up with a sword or hammer. He is revered by all Dwarves and most humans who live in the north, have beards, and prefer to travel by long ship.

He is fond of valor and bravery, and most fond of the "heroic stupid" variety. Yost has been known to give a blessing to those that survive in situations where their worst enemy is their own bad judgment, for he believes that only the strongest can really overcome such a handicap. He is fonder of such attempts if a boast is first made about how they will overcome such odds, and even fonder if it is made while drunk. However, Yost is a god of action. In fairness he only blesses after the deed is done, in a degree to which the boast and brave deed were completed. To maintain the blessing the reciever must regularly boast about the deed that gained him the blessing at least once a day while drinking something; this is generally done as a toast to ones self and need not be an alcoholic drink. In the same fairness, Yost only permits one blessing at a time. Yost has a hate for the undead and his interests revolve around the riddle of steel, drinking, boasting, the number 7, the number 13 and the letter T.

The Blessings of Yost (1d12)
Check for blessing: When foolhardy bravery appears in your game roll a 13 on a d20, then roll a 7 on a d12, then roll d12 on the chart below.

Small chance of survival: +1
Outnumbered by 7+: +1
Outnumbered by 13+: +2
Boast made as to means: +1
Boast made while drunk: +2
Deed done while drunk: +3

1. "I can't bless that crap you carry!" 100gp appear on the person as a free gift
2. "So little to work with! Behaps it'll save ya..." +1 to all saving throws
3. "Waerin armor like that who needs enemies?!" Primary armor is now +1 magical
4. "Perhaps you should stand back more?" Primary missile weapon becomes +1 to hit
5. "You looked a little winded back there!" +5 to max hit points as long as blessing maintained
6. "Bah! Good weapons could be better!" Primary weapon is now a magic weapon +1
7. "Only a bad carpenter blames his tools..." 200gp appear on the person as a free gift.
8. "Ya got the tiniest nimble fingers!" +1 to all ranged attacks, counts as a magic weapon, +1 to AC treat any armor worn as magical
9. "Heh! Maybe this will help ya try somthin bigger!" +10 to max hit points as long as blessing maintained.
10. "What is steel compared to the hand that wields it!" +1 to all attacks and damage, counts as magic weapon
11. "Not gods... not giants... just men!" Increase Constitution to next bonus tier
12+. "This you can trust!" Increase Strength to next bonus tier

Yost is known for two magic items that appear from time to time:

The Toast of Yost (Tankard of Bravery)
Once per day when filled with a liquid and drunk with a boast or a toast to bravery, this old dusty tankard bestows upon the drinker the blessing of Yost, the god of bravery, drinking and boasting. The entire tankard must be drained for the blessing to take effect. The blessing is variable depending on what is put in the tankard. Mixing liquids randomizes the effect. Liquids not listed below have no effect. The effects last for 5 minutes:

Mead: +10 hp
Cow's Blood(and roast drippings): +2 to hit and damage
Ale/Beer: +5 more hirelings can be hired for that day while in effect
Water: +2 to turning level and all turning rolls
Milk(of any kind): AC treated as better by one armor type, +2 to ranged attacks
Wine: Speak fluently one additional language, only this ability maintained by drunken state; All checks increase by 1 in 6 or 20%; Thief skills gain by 20%;

If one drink is shared between several drinkers (many can drink but a sip) over a turn (up to 13 persons) then the effect is +1 to attacks, damage and saves. It affects all those whom drank from the tankard with the effects lasting 5 minutes.

Weight 1lb

The Host of Yost (Bread of Bravery)
The host of Yost is a slice of aromatic bread toasted to a golden brown and wrapped in a white cloth. While in the cloth the bread continues to radiate heat no matter how old it is. When the slice of bread is unwrapped and eaten it grants the eater +2 to attacks and saves, immunity to fear effects, and 10 temporary hit points for 10 minutes. When 1 slice is shared the effect is the same as the Toast of Yost but for 10 minutes.

The Host of Yost is generally made by valkyries in their free time when they are on speaking terms with Yost and it is rarely made by mortals. On the rare occasions when this bread is found, it is found in very dangerous or very odd places. Should a mortal make the bread they must make an entire loaf of 13 slices, or rolls. Additionally the white linen wrappers must be washed in holy water or the magic in the bread will dissipate after 3 days.

Riddles in the Dark

2010-11-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I stated that The Hobbit had a major revision in 1951. Tolkien altered "Riddles in the Dark" to be more in line with The Lord of the Rings. What I neglected to do was to note where one could find the original.

There is a website and two books that I would direct you to:

The website ringgame.net has a comparative layout with the original on one side and the revision on the other. So if you are simply curious you can see line by line how the chapter was changed.

The first book is The Annotated Hobbit. This is a pretty neat version and does contain the original chapter, albeit in a very long footnote. The size of the book makes it good for bedside/fireside reading and it contains a lot of little treasures.

The second book(s)is John D. Rateliff's History of The Hobbit. This magnum opus is a crowning work of scholarship. So much so that some of the footnotes have footnotes. Granted it does not reach a House of Leaves absurdity, but be warned.

Any of these will undoubtedly shed some light on the original vision of The Hobbit in 1937 should you desire it. However as things have changed, it is interesting that while The Hobbit can be viewed without The Lord of the Rings, the reverse is not true. As a work the prelude to The Lord of the Rings will always be The Hobbit.

The Hobbit 1937

2010-10-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think that if blogs in the OSR sphere were like rock bands GROGNARDIA would undoubtedly be the Led Zeppelin. It has staying power, and harkens back to older roots but presents them in a new way that is really approachable, and still rock and roll. If this is true then Jeff's Gameblog is the Jimi Hendrix of OSR blogs. This blog does things that other blogs would find difficult to pull off. Jeff plays with his tongue, pulls in weird riffs and techniques and influences no one thought of before, and then proceeds to light his gamebooks on fire. Other blogs take these ideas and run with them in a little tamer way, building out the lesser known band equivalents of blogdom. Perhaps I am the Whitesnake or Motorhead of OSR blogs, who knows.

Whats important is how I am ripping off Jeff today. Recently Jeff has been talking about the what if of Star Wars never having a sequel. What does the movie tell us about the star war world before it really got developed with contradictions and exposition in later movies. I want to ask a similar question of a just as influencial property: J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit.

As an intellectual property goes Middle Earth has a lot of similarities with Star Wars. The initial product was ground breaking and really changed the game. Both have estates that are very defensive of their IP. And both have creators that retconed their work stating that it was all part of the original vision.

The Hobbit had a major revision that did not get published until 1951, almost fourteen years after it was originally published that changed the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter to better align the story with the oncomming Lord of the Rings. So... set the Wayback Machine for late 1937. The Hobbit or There and Back Again is the only Middle Earth story. That's our primary source for today's exercise. There arn't any secondary sources. Given this material, what do we know about Middle Earth back then that no longer holds true under present concepts of Middle Earth canon? What is as-yet (for '37) undefined? What can we extrapolate? Here are a few initial thoughts:

Gandalf is just a wizard. Not an angel in disguise. Just a wizard. He has an enemy called the Necromancer who is also just a wizard. Anyone can be a wizard with enough practice. What about that Necromancer? He made the Greenwood into Mirkwood. That means that there is evil wizardry about.
Gollum is an honorable creature, and not obsessed with loosing his ring in a game of riddles. He is not obsessed with a ring that can turn him invisible. Man, thats character. Guyges and I certainly don't have character like that.
Elves are not always really nice. No Legolas means that the wood elves can be mean bastards. Elves make magic weapons.
Orcs don't exist. Never heard of em. All we got here are goblins.

This awesome panorama comes from David T. Wenzel at http://www.davidwenzel.com/

What is best in life?!

2010-08-27T14:49:00.000-07:00

Some say "Saving the princess, slaying the dragon, and stealing the treasure..."

No!!!

OSR says "Slay princeses, Save treasures, Steal dragons."

My Final Thoughts on 4e

2010-08-16T13:51:00.001-07:00

It has been long enough and I have played the game enough to really talk about it now. So here are my thoughts on 4e. As if all of you asked.

I think in some way the OSR is really just a big arrow pointing to the fact that the system's inherent flaw is the system's own modularity. Though I don't think that the OSR is self aware enough to really realise it. We (the OSR) keep coming back to how rules light/simple/free form/whatever the old school games are. But we don't see why we keep coming back there. When we look at the lineage of AD&D and its successors we see something that we don't see. Our minds pick up on it but in an intuitive way rather than a frontal lobe sort of way. Like the art experts in Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" with a glance we know something is wrong, but we can't really explain it.

4e is a marvel of mechanics in the tabletop rpg business. Each piece is simple, elegant, almost self explanatory, and modular. That is the beauty of the system. It really works well (in that all the parts work together) and lends itself to an "evergreen" marketing format. However I think the major flaw that everyone knows is there is that it is modular.

For comparison lets look at cells. These things are generally in a biological sense fairly simple. They do one job. Examined on their own they have their functions and have a purpose of working with other cells. Just a few cells working together make a simple system. This system can be documented and fairly well understood. But each time you add a cell you increase the complexity of the system until you have a very complex system like the human body. Though I would not say that 4e is as complex as the human body I think the idea here can be understood.

The more pieces you add, the slower the game must become because the system becomes more complex. The amount of information needed to play the game will easily exceed the body of knowledge known by the players. And I think this is what the OSR has discovered and not really articulated: when the amount of information exceeds the body of knowledge at the table the game will slow down because people need to look up or explain a rule or more importantly an exception to the rule. In 4e the rules at the table increase as the characters progress. This is because the abilities offer exceptions to the general body of rules and thus must be treated as rules in and of themselves.

The older format of RPGs embraced by the OSR is small and compact enough so that the information needed to play does not outstrip the body of knowledge sitting at the table. This is probably a result of necessity informing design as in its birth D&D had to be able to be sent in the mail. Now days page count is not really limited. Whereas OD&D simply had the rules of the game and spells to add complexity, 4e (along with 3e) has the rules of the game, character ability exceptions, skills, feats and spells. All of these interact together in different ways increasing complexity and outstripping player knowledge. Given that 4e has many more classes than its predecessors the explosion of rules interactions is mind boggling. This is what makes 4e so complex, slow and in the end at higher more invested levels harder to play. It is a beautiful, well made and very complex game. I think the OSR sees this and opts out to something that can carry the same story with less work.

I've Got Something to Say...

2010-08-16T13:43:00.001-07:00

Its better to burn out than to fade away!

But if you must burn out or leave "the scene" or the renaissance or the revolution or whatever please just leave your blog up. Just say, I am done, see yall, and leave it there. Turn off comments for all your posts and let us at least use it as a resource.

I posted this because I just noticed something-
Welcome back to the presses ChgoWiz - your blog was missed...

Thanks.

Live After Death!

2010-06-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

In my house rules for Labyrinth Lord I have created a new rule called "Live After Death." It was inspired by Heroes of Horror (and Iron Maiden, of course). Anyone looking at the previous post will see that I have finally found out where I saw the inspiration- in the sections called Balancing the Scales, Coming Back Wrong and the Resurrection Mishap table. I think the suggestions there are easily the best part of the book. I encourage people to track down a copy. The stipulations of extended time, the price of another life in exchange, special locations, provide great ideas for a campaign. But the one that has the best swords and sorcery feel is the idea that the magic is not perfect. The way I use it is that this can happen its a risk - always. So now when the spell is cast my players roll on the table below. I have not used the idea in balancing the scales yet, but the chance of coming back wrong just seemed, well... right. So here it is, a simple 2d6 chart that spices up those Labyrinth Lord Raise Dead spells (with a cool retro metal name to boot):

Live After Death
2 No, really, that’s not Bob: A demon possess the body- exorcism will return to dead state.
3 Better off Dead: Oops, such a fine line between raised and animated… character now undead of HD corresponding to current level.
4 Chains Attached: The character is back to achieve one thing as if under unbreakable quest or geas spell. When done the character dies, forever.
5 Alignment Change due to fear of death.
6 Normal
7 Normal
8 Normal
9 Alignment Change due to seeing and understanding the truth.
10 Strings Attached: As if under unbreakable geas/quest. Must complete.
11 Crossed Wires: DM switches 2 of INT CHA or WIS
12 Wait, that’s not Bob: wrong soul- re roll INT CHA and WIS

Scream for me Long Beach!

Need Help Finding an Alternate Raise Dead/Resurrection Table I lost track of

2010-03-16T22:25:00.001-07:00

A while ago- It must have been in the days of WFRP2 and Heroes of Horror- I found a really cool resurrection/raise dead chart that allowed for weirdness around said spells. That is it made them way more interesting. The gist was these spells could go wrong. I thought that the chart was the resurrection mishap table in Heroes of Horror, but now that I have had a good look a it I realise I must have been reading something else! One distinct feature that I remember about the chart was that it for sure had the entry where a completely different soul is returned to the new body. Another was that the guy was back yes, but he did not get to stay. Sort of a "the crow"scenario- what he is working on is important enough to allow him more life but when its done so is he.

Anyone remeber this thing?

The Five Foundations of Flavor

2009-12-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

Speculative adventure games (aka TTRPGs) are just that: games. When all of the world design, history writing, and character building is finished there are only really five different places where your players really feel and pay attention to the world you have created: the places they explore, the spells (cast on them and by them), the monsters and villians they fight, the kinds of treasure they find, and magic items they use. These are the places where a DM puts the description of the world because these are the places where the players pay attention and the rubber meets the road.

How the places they explore are presented and if they are memorable or not has a big effect on what your players will remember. The way the traps work, hazards, weirdnesses, and the general feel of the place all say something about the world you have created. How often do places like this show up? How deep do they go? How weird do they get? Who built it? Is there any indicator as to who lived and/or worked here? This is how you get the history and feel of your campaign setting in to the minds of the players.

The way magic works also says alot about the world. Do spells have the names of their creators attached to them? Are there unique spells or ways of casting spells that show something about the world? If it is rare to find magic and hard to cast spells, then it colors the world in a certain way. There may not be any good wizards in your world. How the magic works would be a great place to accentuate that. Changing how the system works just a little bit can say a lot about spells and the people who cast them.

China Mieville's Slake Moth really brings home the setting of Perdido Street Station. Your monsters and villians are the probably the most defining element of the flavor of your setting. Are monsters (and demi humans) rare? Perhaps the only real monsters in your world are men with the occasional tentacled horror, or giant snake. The presence, size, intelligence and behavior of dragons says a lot. What the characters encounter really impacts the flavor of the world probably more than anything else because these are the things they fight and most of the interaction of most games is the combat system. When you fight a monster in a location the chances are someone is going to cast a spell. You can begin to see how the colors start to come together.

Treasure. It all comes down to what a large haul is. Do you find that dragons hoarde thousands of coins or just hundreds? In some worlds 300 gold pieces is small reward. In worlds with a little different flavor 30 gold crowns sets you for life. How far does gold go? How much do you find? Is the treasure even stacks of gold or is it historical artifacts and information about the world? What you find burried may not just be wealth but flavor.

Frequency and function of magic items works hand in hand with the spells and treasure. These things are generally a way for characters to touch the history of the game world. How they work says somthing about magic and the metaphysics of the campaign. Do magic items only ever show up based on fire and ice? Is it really just misunderstood technology? What magic items you present and how many of them you present is one of the best ways of conveying the world to the players.

These are the things your players will really ever pay attention to. These are the sticky points. They will meet you at these places and these are the things that they will remember. So if you want them to remember all the work you put into writing out histories and whatnot, do it in these places. Designing spells, creating magic items, building castles that will someday make a new ruin to explore, learning secrets about monsters, and seeking wealth are the ways players connect with the world. Fostering this connection by alowing the player to get involved allows them to remember more of what you have made.

In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex

2009-12-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

It is good to be back in action. I have been away on personal business, but I should be posting a little more regularly now.

So just today I stopped by Chgowiz's page and noticed that he was talking about wilderness hexes. (and it looks like Bat in the Attic has been playing with hexes a little too here and here)(and Chgowiz got Stirgessuck thinking a bit). When I left I had actually just started to kick around the old hexagon myself on this blog. And so I have some thoughts about hexagons already to go. I hope they are helpful to Chgowiz and everybody else.

As you can tell from the title, I think that the 6 mile hex is the ideal hex for wilderness adventuring hexcrawls. I used to be a big fan of the 5 mile hex as published by Judges Guild. But someone over at the Necromancer Games (was it Rob S. Conley?) pointed out back in like 2005 that it was actually a lot easier to use 6 mile hexes. And then I learned some more things about hexagons. Check it out:

1. Navigation. Estimateing a party's route through a 6 mile hex is a lot easier than any other hex. No other hex size breaks down as cleanly as a 6 mile hex. Trust me, I did the math. The numbers above are accurate to the first decimal. Thats good enough for general overland travel. Take a look at the diagram above. Its six miles from face to face. Vertex to opposite vertex is 7 miles. From the center to any face is 3 miles (half of 6). From the center to any vertex is 3.5 miles. From a navigation standpoint pretty much any route through the hex in general is covered. Enter from the vertex and leave through a face? You can approximate it pretty easily. 5 mile hexes do not lend well to this. If you wing it go with a 6 mile hex, you'll be glad you did.

2. Horizon. Your average human in a flat area without any obstructions in view (think a becalmed sea) can see up to 3 miles. Thats the distance to the horizon best case scenario. So a party travelling straight through a 6 mile hex is not going to see out of it. Unless they climb a tree or find a high place with a view. But the idea is that a 6 mile hex with varied terrain covers the distance that the party can see. A good rule of thumb is that if they take the time to survey the surrounding land then a party should be able to be aware of the terrain of the next hex over. Some pushback might come with the idea that you can see a mountain quite a ways away. But mountains are tricky in that you really can't tell how far away they are until you are a few hexes away. Getting a good vantage point (like the top of a hill or mountain) could be the opportunity for adventure in itself and being aware of the lay of the land can be its own reward. If you want to be able to tell your players how far they can see when they climb up the hill or tree or tower a good rule of thumb is that the distance to the horizon is the square root of thirteen times the height they are viewing from (http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/horizon).

3. Sub hexes. The 6 mile hex can break down into half mile sub hexes. That is 12 hexes accross. (Mr. Chgowiz, this next bit is for you) If you put a dungeon or a settlement or some other important element in a hex, it is good to know where in the hex it is. Thus it makes sense to map out the hex in subhexes. Having these is good for distant encounters, chases, and well looking for that dungeon that is supposed to be around here somewhere. But wait, theres more. Each of these hexes can break down into sub hexes that are 1/24 of a mile accross. At this point your hexes can start measureing thing like furlongs, chains and all the other medieval land measurements. Thats really convenient when you want to figure out how many hexes should a farm take up. Also, 1/24th of a mile is a distance you can put on a battlemat. 5280ft/24 = 220 ft. 220 ft/5 = 44 battlemat squares. A Chessex Mondomat covers that area. Furthermore, if you are always using hexes that have 12 subhexes accross you only have to use one type of graph paper to keep track of all the projections. That is, the graph paper that you use for your sub hexes is the same as the graph paper you use for your subhexes of subhexes.

What this all comes down to is: The one-page wilderness template just got a lot cooler.

Merry Christmas Chgowiz!

*Graphic is soley my own this time... free to use and distribute...

Abandonware Precedence

2009-08-07T00:14:00.001-07:00

Lots of AD&D video games from the gold box era are considered abandonware. So the removal of old PDFs is not the first time that property with D&D trademarks has been abandoned. But now we enter the land of the DMCA. Don't copy that floppy! Now I want to go back to talking about hexagons.

Are Out of Print D&D Products Abandonware?

2009-04-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

Over at Chgowiz's old guy RPG site he is asking if he can keep moving forward with his Ultima RPG project without EA coming down on him in a legal fashion. The interesting thing is that Ultima has been considered Abandonware for several years now. EA does not seem to kick up a fuss about games that really don't play into the profit margin, and this is pretty much the definition of Abandonware:

Abandonware refers to computer software that
is no longer sold or supported, or whose copyright ownership may
be unclear for various reasons. While the term has been applied largely to
older games, other classes of software are sometimes described as such.

So the recent actions of Wizards of the Coast creates a situation very similar to Abandonware. They are no longer supporting those games and they no longer make a profit off of them (though they easily could). Ryan Dancy (whose brand manager energy and foresight made 3.x a very successful game) makes the following point in the comments over at RPG Pundits Blog:

PDF? Causes endless problems with hardcopy partners creating pressure on
sales team they could really do without, and revenues are so small as to be
non-strategic. Cut it.

The revenues from the PDFs of old titles are probably considered non-strategic and thus we may never see them again. However, googleing D&D torrent will show that they are all over the internet, abandoned never again to make significant income for the copyright holder. Abandonware.

Wizards, PDFs and Piracy

2009-04-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Recently WotC has announced that it was going to shut down its sales of PDFs due to piracy. I think there are two flaws in the logic they are basing their actions on.

The first it would seem is the assumption on the part of WotC is that the piracy occurs because they made the product available digitally. However my experience is that the product will become so no matter if WotC makes it digital or not. Given that I have pretty good evidence that piracy occurs way up their logistical train I think it is safe to say that PDFs or no PDFs WotC will get pirated.

I think the second flaw in the logic is that reducing piracy will increase sales. It only increases sales when the customer has a legitimate way to obtain the product in the new format. That is the problem that the recording industry faced. The record companies were so asleep at the wheel that they did not see the MP3 coming and it took them about 2 years to find out what happened to their CD sales. Essentially CDs had become obsolete and there was no way to obtain MP3s legally. Now there are outlets like i-tunes and this has given legitimate buyers a place to obtain music in the latest format. The paper world is just slower. CD to MP3 happened fast because it was digital to digital. Publishing is lagging a little because it still is largely paper to digital. Publishing has gone digital on the production side but not entirely on the distribution side. Thus it is easy for publishers to make a digital product but their logistics are such that they are still tied to paper for profit.

Though what I suspect has happened is that WotC has decided that they actually can do better at electronic sales if they are the sole source. After all they have the records of the sales and know the numbers and how much they a loosing to the middle men One Bookshelf and Paizo. Suing the people that distributed PHB II might be part of the same move for a different reason.

In conclusion I think that WotC will loose sales from this move until they have a way for people to obtain their content legitimately. Until then I suspect that electronic piracy of their products will undoubtedly increase.

Gloves of Transposition (aka Switchgloves)

2009-04-04T12:30:00.000-07:00

My 4e group ran into the common problem of actually having to end a session in the middle of a dungeon. Also I would not be present at the next session, and someone else was actually going to start playing with us and we needed a way to bring in the a DM PC that we have been using to fill out the party (don't worry, he is not an uberlevel locomotive). We needed an in game way to make this work and we might have to do it again. So after some thought I wrote out this magic item to help with the problem and not break the game. The gloves were made with 4e in mind but their use is so conditional that I could see them being used in games based on older rules, even stuff created by the Old School Renaissance.

Gloves of Transposition(Switchgloves) Level Any

Daily + Teleportation

These gloves look like a pair of ordinary black leather gauntlets. Each one has what looks like an obsidian jewel attached to the reverse side of the palm of the glove. Worn together the gloves are inert, they register as magical but have no ability whatsoever. The magic of the gloves only works when one glove is worn by two separate people. When worn this way the magic of the gloves enables the wearers to switch places as long as they are physically on the same plane. Each glove allows a limited telepathic link to the other user. With this link each user to do the following:

A. Open the link to the other wearer using their name.

B. Let the other user know they are ready.

C. Let the other user know they are not ready.

No other information can be sent down the link. It is not possible to don one glove and learn the name of the user with the other glove even if the other user is willing to share it.

For the magic to work several conditions must be met:

1. Each person wearing a glove must know the name of the person wearing the other glove.

2. The gloves will not allow someone to switch into immediate danger, including combat.

3. Both users must take a short rest to activate the gloves.

4. Each person wearing a glove must be willing to switch.

5. Each person wearing a glove must have communicated their readiness to switch.

When all these conditions are met a golden glow rises slowly up out of the depths of the jewel on each glove until the jewel is glowing with a very bright amber light. The users of the gloves, their clothing, equipment and everything they are touching then begin to glow until all are emmenating light, obscuring color and features. The light then begins to fade with the other user in the place of the user wearing a glove.

If the user is touching another person, then they are also transported if they are willing. Though passengers do not need to be part of the telepathic exchange that activates the gauntlets. Thus the gauntlets can switch out one for one, two for one or two for two.

The Hexagon: The Symbol of a Renaissance

2009-03-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

Why the Hexagon?
If there is one thing that best represents the Old School role playing movement/revolution/renaissance/zeitgeist/community/thing it would be the hexagon. D&D used hexes. So did Traveller. Role playing came out of wargaming and so it was the defacto way of representing the wilderness soldiers, explorers, and characters wandered through. All the early D&D campaigns used them: Greyhawk, The Known World, Blackmoor, and The Wilderlands to name a few. We can clearly say nothing says "Old School" like "hexagon" because "hexagon" says "war game." They work well for maps and breaking up an area to keep track of where stuff is, be it deep space or high mountains.

Where did it come from? Where did it go?
Pioneered for gaming by the RAND Corporation, the hexagon was picked up by Avalon Hill and found its way into the early days of role playing. Hexagons made gaming easier and made movement through trackless wilderness track able. My personal belief is that the removal of Demons and Devils from the game was not a reaction to the religious criticism of the era but rather an attempt to move D&D away from its wargame roots towards the storyteller railroad paradigm it had been drifting towards since the mid 80's. Get rid of Demons, Devils, Sandbox settings, "challenge the player", player-DM cooperative world development and hexagons and you could replace them with proficiencies/skills, railroading adventures, DM PCs, laundry quests imparted by Elminster, and sweet sweet pretentious drama.

What are their uses?
Hexagons are extremely useful for gaming. The right size of hex is great for judging distance. If you know the distance from face to face you can figure out the distance of each edge, the distance from the center and the distance from point to point. This allows you to figure out distance to a fairly decent ball park, especially if a DM uses a hex in hex system where hexes on one scale can be represented by hexes on another. The same system hexes in hex allows for cataloging the game world. If they are numbered a DM can keep a record of what is in each hex. This allows the DM to streamline his resources to develop only the places the players are going to go. The DM only has to provide detail when it is absolutely necessary but the players are not limited to a set path. If you use center to face and center to point you have twelve degrees of movement, not just six. Hexes help to generalize terrain. There are numerous other more subtle uses of the Hexagon.

Chim-Noamski the Talking Monkey; God of the Many Bowls

2009-03-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

Chim-Noamski is the talking monkey god of language and civilization. Often depicted as a monkey with a bowl; he is the ultimate arbiter of the rise, fall, and direction of a civilization. His temples are covered in decorative chimpanzees with live ones everywhere. The temples are filled with nick nacks, whatever the monkeys decide to bring in. Much of the priest's time is spent cleaning up the offal created by so many animals. When they are not cleaning they are usually debating the merits of the latest divination from Chim, or acting as arbitrators in assorted disputes. Evil priests of Chim have been known to operate investment schemes which are ussually based on a false prophecy of future wealth of the community. These are known as Kanzi Schemes.

In each temple there is a large jewel eyed (typically blue jewels of value based on wealth of the community) monkey statue with a bowl. When the monkeys put something in the bowl it is interpreted as (and at times actually may be) a divination about the community (roll on divination chart). Sometimes minor prophecies concerning individuals are uttered by a random chimp in a temple (1% chance for each individual on each visit).

The Avatar of Chim (when he appears) is a blue eyed talking chimpanzee who is carrying a bowl. His bowl always contains many items. The items found in the bowl correspond to the cards in a deck of many things but the effects apply to the whole settlement where the temple is located.

Should the avatar be treated well, then he may choose to give the blessing of Chim to the settlement. Chim's blessing allows everyone who enters the settlement to be understood no matter what language they are speaking. Should the avatar be treated poorly, he may choose to give the settlement the curse of Chim. Chim's curse makes it impossible for anyone in the settlement to understand spoken language, even their own.

Knocking or breaking the bowl off the idol will incite the rage of Chim and the murderous anger of 10d6 chimpanzees and 1d6 priests of Chim.

Random Divinations of Chim-Noamski:

The divinations must be interpreted based on what was in the bowl. Before rolling on this chart the DM should create a d12 chart of random objects that the chimpanzees have collected in their temple that could turn up in the bowl, leaving the 12 blank. When a twelve is rolled on this chart it is a legitimate prophecy. The DM then should roll again to determine the item in the bowl.

The DM should then roll twice on the following chart. The first is the real meaning of the prophecy, the second is the priest's interpretation of the prophecy.

1> There will be a plague of _________ in the settlement.
2> The settlement will be destroyed by _________ in ____ days.
3> An enemy will come to destroy the settlement unless __________ is done.
4> There will be a lack of _________ in the settlement.
5> The settlement is out of the favor of Chim and must atone by ___________
6> The settlement is cursed to slowly die off and be forgotten forever.
7> The settlement is blessed and will rise to be center of an empire.
8> The settlement is in the favor of Chim and must move forward with all plans involving ________ .
9> There will be plenty of _________ in the settlement.
10> The settlement must attack all enemy settlements that have ________ and spare no one.
11> The settlement is protected from _______ for another d100 years.
12> Health and long life will come to the settlement in the form of _________.

New Series: ODD Gods

2009-01-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

ODD Gods is a series of regular posts where I post a god that fits the old school style of OD&D but is also a little odd. I have retroactively changed the Raziel of the Sack post to reflect this.

The Ecology of the Megadungeon

2009-01-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

We have heard the names before: Castle Greyhawk, Undermountain, Night Below, Moria, Rappan Athuk, Castle Whiterock, The World's Largest Dungeon. The megadungeons. These are the engines that powered countless the Old School campaigns. Recently they have been called the tentpoles of the old school campaign and with good reason. But where is that crossing point between dungeon and megadungeon? Is it like that old definition of pornography- I know it when I see it?

Accross the old school blogs we have seen a lot of talk about megadungeons and even seen examples of new megadungeons appear. But what defines a megadungeon? Is it based on design principles? Capacity for character advancement? Is it a publishing threshold like a page or word count?

Melan on Dragonsfoot has stated that a megadungeon is "A dungeon expansive enough to accommodate an entire campaign of substantial length." At first glance this seems a throwaway definition. However as you unpack it, we begin to see that a dungeon fitting this definition must include a lot. Most dungeons do not survive to a second visit by the party. And most recorded megadungeons were not visitied multiple times by one party but multiple times by multiple parties. The key words here are ENTIRE, SUBSTANTIAL, LENGTH. The megadungeon must be multi faceted and different from part to part to keep a whole campaign going. This need to keep it interesting dictates that the "gaming terrain" of the megadungeon vary, sometimes wildly.

In this respect the megadungeon can have several functions. It is obviously the principle adventure location for a campaign. But it can also serve as an interface to the whole of the DM's creation. Portals and other means of transport allow a megadungeon to act as a sort of subway to other adventure locations. We see this with the demiplanes of Castle Greyhawk, and the portals undoutedly found in Undermountain. This allows the entirity of the campaign to tie back to the megadungeon. Not just in that the megadungeon is location 0 but rather that all of the gaming world is concievibly accessible through it.

While a campaign is a series of linked sessions and can be very short, the megadungeon in a DMs world can provide a constant and help it to persist from party to party and gaming group to gaming group. In this respect a megadungeon would probably have to be planar in nature and essentially limitless. I believe this is why Castle Greyhawk only came close to seeing the light of day as a summation of the spirit of the original. The original was too expansive. This reveals a seldom realised corollary to Melan's definition: The extent of a megadungeon is a function of the number of players, parties, groups and characters that have visited it. That is it grows by use. The megadungeon is a megadungeon only if the campaign is extensive enough to warrant its continued and constant growth.

Certainly you can create a megadungeon whole and complete as Athena from the get go. We have seen it done in a lot of products. But in the true megadungeon development is always just several steps ahead of the players, and those places that have been visited can be visited again. But curiously if you carry this out to its logical conclusion you realise that the megadungeon is really just the sandcastle at the center of the sandbox as that really is what a megadungeon is: The sandbox concept applied to the dungeon rather than the world.

This is an Awesome Post

2008-12-30T12:16:00.000-08:00

No not this post. THIS POST, by the great Sham, is awesome. First it shows somthing he is doing. Second it illustrates a principle of game design. Third you get a great how to that you can easily replicate yourself and last it calls attention to awesomeness that is not his own. I am posting about it here because it needs more links to it so more people can go and relish in its awesomeness. And if you want even more awesome awesomeness read his thoughts on OD&D books I-III (too many to link to). You will never look at the monsters, treasures, heros (and antiheros) the same way again.

1d20 Dreams for the Dying and Unconscious

2008-12-30T12:03:00.001-08:00

This table has taken a while to write. I have been coming up with the ideas sort of piecemeal on my lunch breaks over the past couple of months. The idea is that in a fight, when death is near and a character goes unconscious they might have a weird dream before they die or are revived. These are written in such a way that the DM can run with the idea and use it to describe to the player the character's movement towards or away from death rather than giving him a number.

Say if the player rolls a 1, and dreams of chains, the DM can describe the chains doing things that reflect the status of the character's current condition. It could be that they are the chains holding the soul to the body, or that they are a measure of how dead you are. Either way the DM can describe what is happening to the chains as the character improves or declines.

1) chains
2) dark forms
3) whispers
4) crawler in a pit
5) dancing cows
6) giant whirlpool
7) falling
8) drowning
9) fat man eating
10) spider web
11) giant black dog
12) tentacles
13) wings
14) maddening gibberish
15) body on fire
16) talking monkeys/apes
17) body freezing
18) thin man walking
19) fog
20) belching frog

More about my 4e Character

2008-12-28T15:25:00.000-08:00

Overall I like 4e. It is a fun game and allows for the options I want in a way. It has a lot of what I look for in a system but my only problem with it is that it is largely driven by component. It's like the dev team is a buch of guys in a box trying to dream up new rule legos.

Many have said it feels like a video game. I agree in spirit, but I disagree about the video game it feels like. Many think this:

I think this:

Movement is a big part of 4e, almost in the same way that it is a big part of Dragonslair. And that was what inspired me to base my first character on Dirk the Daring as I stated here.

But something weird happened as I played him. He looks like this guy:

But given the history and the mercenary attitude I gave him he feels and acts more like this guy:

So I have decided to roll with it and combine them. After all, cool + cool = 2cool right? I think the following picture best represents my 4e character:

Dirk is turning out to be one dangerous dude.

Currently Dreaming the Dream of the Black Lotus

2008-12-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

I have not posted for a while as I am away with other things. I still have a slew of ideas to share and as my black lotus dream continues I gain more. But I have been working a bit here and there on Codex which has a new name, and hashing out some fiction that as life would have it right now may never see the light of day.

Since I have entered my dream state, many things have passed in this world. Many of them political. Since such petty politics are below those of us who plumb the dreamlands for deeper mysteries in our lotus inspired sleep you will not see my opinion on this blog nor in your comments with a name that links to this blog. Though I may clearly agree or greatly disagree my opinion (on many things) is my own and I will not share. Also, in the end, politics is bad for business.

Nor will you hear about my personal life. Again me complaining about how my life sucked today or yesterday or how I think something is neat is not good for business. You will only get madness and dreams particular to fiction and gaming.

Till I post again with further madness...

ENWorld Flashback!: Ecologies of The Beholder

2008-10-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

(This entry was originally a post that I made to ENWorld. There were several that I was kind of proud of and so when I get the chance, I will post them here so they don't get lost as ENWorld evolves under the ENWorld Flashback! moniker. Obviously I will polish them a little more.)

Some speculations to the question of the diet of a beholder:

Beholders could be bags of devouring that have matured. They exist to devour and the bags are their larva. However this does not explain the eyes too well. Perhaps the bag of devouring as a larval form should be reserved for another monster...

There is the old standby that they feed off of fear and negative emotions. The mouth is just there to invoke fear and thus a snack. But this does not work too well either, as the creature has some very instantly destructive abilities. These don't generate fear, so while the form might fit that of a fear feeder, the abilities do not.

Here is the best I can come up with:

What if a beholder was not necessarily a devouring glutton or a fear eater but somthing more complex? A good way to go about demonstrating a good beholder diet is to say that they live off of seeing beauty. When they see beauty they are nourished by it. They grow stronger and live longer just by gazing on somthing regarded by others and itself as beautiful.

But because they are not beautiful themselves, beholders need a ton of it. And they are gluttons for "flavors" and thus seek out variety. This causes them to try to reach out in the world and gather as many beautiful things as they can. These things (and somtimes people) are stored in their lairs, and gazed upon by the beholder until they loose their luster or age too far. From maidens, to art, to poetry, to scenic views (astronomy included), they do things to gather beauty unto themselves, and when they see it (or less commonly hear it, as beholders are visual creatures) they grow in power and strength. They study the beauty and live under the illusion that because they have so much beauty they themselves must be beautiful.

When somthing is broken, injured, aged, or the beauty leaves it for some other reason, the beholder destroys it. If it finds even the smallest flaw in somthing the beholder will eventually destroy it after contemplating the beauty of the flaw if such is to be found. This is the number of days equal to the intellegence of the beholder. Basicly they are the worst of art critics and beauty pagent judges. Some are artists with tempers too. When a beholder views a living creature that it deem beautiful it will eventually petrify the creature so as to preserve the beauty should that beauty be only visual. In essense beholders are to beauty what dragons are to wealth.

This love of art and beauty makes them the natural kingpins for thieving organizations and the patrons of burglers, pirates, slave traders, etc. They cast far flung networks designed to gather beauty to themselves. However they are in some ways aware of their hideousness and this causes them to hide away, eschewing easily accessible places for places largely unseen by many. Some use economics and bargaining to gether their art collections, others are bullies. The means ussually match the individual beholder and each one is unique in appearance and disposition. Beholders are adept at fashioning great and powerful scrying devices to help watch over their networks and also take in the beauty of the outside world, and wage war against it should it become blemished.

Raziel of the Sack

2008-10-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

Raziel of the Sack (not to be confused with Bakshi of the Bag) is the patron god of Looters, Tomb Robbers, Burglers, Highwaymen, Pirates and senseless risk takers. Raziel appears as many different types of humanoid throughout the world. His symbol is a sack. Regardless of race he is traditionally depicted carrying a one-handed axe and a sack over his shoulder. Raziel is fickle. His avatars have been known to bless adventurers with the contents of his sack or curse them by adding an item of their to the sack.

Raziel always appears as a normal male of a humanoid race with a sack and axe. He typically wears armor and a helm or hood. While he may give or take from a person, he is not above bargaining. Though his price is high and he typically asks for women (esp a bargainers full grown daughter), wine, feasts, song, and other desires reflective of his worshipers of high and luxurious value.

Interactions are always random and are a 50/50 blessing/curse. Items from the sack are randomly determined and have twice the chance of being cursed.

If using an older game use the rules for a Storm Giant's bag.

In a newer game roll randomly.

The old school applicaitons of Raziel are obvious as are his 3e/4e magic item economy applications.

(Thanks to Jeff Reints for the ispiring image)

Joining The RPG Blogger's Network!

2008-10-14T23:13:00.000-07:00

Hydra's Grotto's feed was included in the RPG Bloggers network. One step closer to world domination. 53,234 left to go!

The network has really offered up some great thoughts and opinions on games and development and many of the blogs are quite useful for the beginning developer. Overall the info is solid and the articles are entertaining. But most people reading this through the network know this already.

I look forward to more great posts! Be sure to check out the past stuff here as it may get your goat or even make you say thanks.

And thanks to Dave and everyone else that makes this network possible!

Because Americans Don't Have Enough Maps!

2008-10-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Greyhawk Grognard has posted this article about another article on another blog about maps. The original article can be found here.The blog can be found here (Making Maps: DIY Cartography). It is really amazing the range of uses for maps that it shows.

And GG is right, the article he cites has a lot of applications to gaming, but also so does the whole site. I think I might track down that book that he mentioned if possible. Why am I just restating what he put here you ask? The Hydra's Grotto is a blog, but it is also an idea library and workspace. Also I have a huge love of cartography. In fact on numerous occasions I have paraphrased Dennis Leary when I have said "D&D doesn't lead to devil worship! It leads to cartography!" Indeed, people* comment on my ability to draw really coherent maps when I draw them for non-gaming use. I do not think I would have this skill (among others) if I did not play D&D.

*mainly my wife, but some others too.

How to Set Up a Sandbox Campaign

2008-10-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

I have heard a lot about the article by Calithena in the magazine called Fight On! that talks about how to set up a sandbox campaign. I have not seen the article as my income is greatly demanded elsewhere (house, children, food, bills, etc.) But I figure it probably has similar advice as to what is written here.

Recently a friend of mine named Joey, asked how you practiacally set up a Sandbox campaign without spending a year in prep. This is the answer I gave my group when they asked:

Sandbox is OLD SCHOOL. Really old school, if you thought you were old school, you probably were not if you sort of feel bad when a player character dies (DM or player).

First off, here are a couple of links to a guy that sums up “sandbox” much better than I can:
http://webamused.com/bumblers/?p=160
http://webamused.com/bumblers/?p=161
http://webamused.com/bumblers/?p=162

While theory is great Joey asked how it works out practically- which is where I am going to go. There is a lot of work on the front end, but not at much as you would think. The key I found when I did this in FR under 3.5 was to ABANDON ALL PLOT THREADS. The plot thread is the path that the PCs take as they move through the world. So you only really have one plot, the one that the players make out of the plot legos you have given them. That does not mean that the NPCs and the villains don’t have plans that they are work on. It simply means that their plans don’t become part of the plot until the players choose to make it part of the picture.

The random encounter works pretty well with this too. The key here is to keep in mind that there is no such thing as random encounter even if the encounter is randomly generated. They should always have something to do with the plot. So if you roll up orcs, they are not just random orcs, they are orcs that have a connection to something already going on. No connection is too unreasonable or tenuous. It just makes the plot thicker because the player’s minds will accept the clues you offer and build on it. Just use the ones from the nearby dungeon that has orc in it.

But we are still in the realm of theory. Let’s get practical.

Step 1. Get your map.
Draw your map on a hex sheet. 6 mile hexes work best (there is a whole math as to why this is the perfect hex size). You probably want to start with an area of about 65 hexes total or 7 hexes out in all directions from a center hex. Whichever way you go you need to set it up so that it will take about one session to get out of this starting area if the players decide that they are going to circumnavigate the globe. What really helps is if you have a product like
Points of Light or Wilderlands of High Fantasy or a copy of Fight On! #1.

Step 2, Get your adventures
You will probably want 5-8 adventures. Be careful in your selection. You want a lot of site based elements. So lets day you are running what we have set up- Aztecs in the pacific northwest. It probably wouldn’t hurt to grab right off the top of the classics pile and get Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Dwellers in the Forbidden City. That gives you two. Aztecs had pyramids so since we are 4e we go a grab Pyramid of Shadows, Its coastal so we grab the new Dungeon Adventure sea reavers of the shrouded crags and massacre at fort Dolor. There are a lot of lost cities in the whole Aztec thing so we grab Lost City of Barakus, and for the heck of it The Lost City Basic D&D module. No campaign is complete without 1) a mega dungeon of some kind and so we pick one that can adapt well to an Aztec feel – The Ruins of Castle Greyhawk and 2) a meat grinder or two so we throw in the frikken Tomb of Horrors, and what the heck Grimtooths Dungeon of Doom because both of these will be hard to access in any case, but its fun to have them around. Oh yeah and the adventure Rana Mor from Dungeon has a sort of Aztecish feel so lets put that on the map. And because we really want to have fun we throw in a truncated version of the Caverns of Thracia. It can have an Aztec feel to it if you want.

Step 3, Catalog your adventures.
I went a little overboard above. I picked 12. So I take all the settlements and home bases and towns and stuff and put them on the map somewhere. The weird thing is the Apophenia and Synchronicity will start to kick in here. These are the natural human capacities to find connections and patterns in senseless noise, they exist so you can find patterns and connections in things that are not senseless. As a DM in a sandbox these are your two favorite friends. If you want to know more, watch the wizard of oz while listening to Pink Floyds Dark Side of the moon (synchronicity) and read up on conspiracy theories, especially 9/11 (apophenia). In any case place the towns and such. Then place the “dungeon” parts. Next you will want to get something like the Ready Ref Sheets. These have really useful charts for really random things. A lot of these made it into the 1e DMG, but there are more that did not. One of the most useful is a series of charts that set up random stuff to find in hexes as players pass through. This really makes the world come alive.

Step 4, Get a Rules Light System
DO NOT TRY THIS WITH 3E. You will go insane and possibly get divorced. The monsters will kill your time. A rules light system is best. Retro Clones like Swords and Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord (using expanded classes), Basic Fantasy, OSRIC, Castles and Crusades, or Microlite 20 will probably be best. Also strangely enough, because of the contributions of Mike Mearls, 4e works with this style of game. It is pretty much all in how the monsters work. I would run with 4e or a Labyrinth Lord/OSRIC hybrid. Essentials are that you want to keep attachment to new characters to a minimum because the mummy’s tomb that the 2nd level characters decide to raid might actually have a mummy in it. 4e can work because it give the players enough stamina and tricks to get their asses handed to them by said mummy and then still live (barely) to fight it later when they have gained some experience and have learned how to kill a frikkin mummy. The system should allow for easy monster set up and modification. Like I said 3e does not have this and will eat your lunch in this regard. If the adventure says “mummy” and you know exactly what to put there, without any additional work, that is the system to use. On any modern game you will want to change the curve of experience. (except in 4e cause its alien technology) 10th – 14th level should be uber. To get the 4e equivalent divide by 2, a retro clone and 4e will play the same at equivalent levels.

Step 5, Extra Credit (Sandboxes within Sandboxes)
So that hex with the Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan in it? Its six miles across. That’s a lot of room to play. What you want to do is for each of the inhabited locations (towns/dungeons) set up things around them nearby to accentuate the location. This makes camping in the hex sort of interesting. And if you have to design a dungeon, make the dungeon a sort of smaller sandbox. This aspect of sandboxing is largely stolen from Mike Mearls at this post:
http://kotgl.blogspot.com/2008/09/borderlands-style-adventures.html

Supplementary reading:

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2008/10/tale-of-two-4th-editions.html
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/08/old-schoolin-how-to-get-started.html

Nuff Said. And I would love to see that article.

Sufficiently Advanced...

2008-09-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

Arthur C. Clarke penned what are called the three laws of prediction. While they are not somthing that is stated over and over in stories but rather over and over in conference rooms at science fiction/fantasy conventions you had to expect him to get his own three laws after Azimov came up with the three laws of robotics. While Azimov assured the fame of all three of his laws by making the second two dependant on the first Clarke's third law of prediction is a lot more famous than than the first or second:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This phrase has been a keystone in one of the major arches of the architechture of speculative fiction. In a way it is what anchors the science fiction to the fantasy. (Secret: Its all fantasy. Even Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum just make stuff up.) I have said that Swords and Sorcery is not a genre. In my mind its more of a color. I think saying you like Swords and Sorcery is a lot like saying you like red cars. Its just the color of the car and each car is vastly different than the next. But Clarke's quote has inspired things like Dying Earth literature, aspects of Sword and Planet, He-Man and lots of other fantasy paint jobs.

But I got to thinking about this statement. The first thing that occurs to me is that it is only really true in effect, not origin. That is to say a wizard with a lightening bolt spell and a guy with a lightening bolt gun have the same effect, but one guy is pointing and mumbling while the other is pointing and grunting. But even beyond that, we see that Clarke, for all his insight has not really looked at magic. Magic ignores rational cause and effect. Science, when you understand the natural principles it is based on does not. Anyone taking a look at the works of H.P. Lovecraft runs up against this whole debate. Is the spell that opens a gate to for the extradimensional horror just really alien technology or magic? Both?

Technology that appears to be magic is still just technology. Take for instance the D&D spell timestop. How are scientists spending billions of dollars to create a device to hold time static in a field indistinguishable from the witch doctor that waves a stick says some weird words and gets the same result for much cheeper?

Larry Nivin (and Mecedes Lacky) have tried to be cool and have come back with "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." But that is just it, big magic does not necessarily require big work and power, whereas big technology does require a bigness that magic just does not require.

Lets take the atom bomb as an example. Numerous scientists and millions of dollars of research went into developing the ability to blow up an entire city in one shot. Even now the bombs are expensive and labor intensive to produce and (hope not) deliver with accuracy. Yet they still require a team of people. Whereas with magic Waldorf can take out entire planets and campaign settings with a ceremony. What separates them is cause and effect. Technology has logical cause and effect based on the natural principles of the universe it occupies. Magic ignores this. Magic in its purest form is super-natural.

Clarke's law holds so long as your story is based on two things: The first is that there is no such thing as the supernatural. All the mumbo jumbo and abracadabra is simply the ability to tap into somthing that science does not understand yet. The second is that those who experience the effect interpret the event based on their experience and knowledge. The second is immutable. It is how humans operate. But the first is an assumption. What if magic operated outside of the physical world in all aspects- what if waving a rubber ball and a feather in the air while speaking latin backwards really did summon a Ferrari? There is no physical reason a Ferrari should appear. Its not even a quirk of the universe, it is beyond what is supposed to happen.

Also, the drawbacks to magic are ussually very personal. Rangeing from colds, to being swollowed by extradimensional horrors, technology is far more expensive, but much much safer. Technology allows you to settle vasts swaths of untamed land. When magic is really magic of the supernatural kind it is too fickle. Fickle magic can't hold back the monsters enough. I think this concept can be used to explain the whole points of light campaign setting. No magic is different from technology even if it is similar somtimes in effect.

Additional: The Great Hong Ooi has a great (probably more correct) corolary:

Any sufficiently widespread magic is indistinguishable from technology

Be My Frankenstien!

2008-09-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

Over at Jeff's Gameblog there is a discussion about how D&D has always been a sort of frankenstein of games. I was discussing this with my friend Sam, talking about using board games and such to illustrate aspects of the game world. Like using Catan elements to set up a region and play out how the region works. Or use Carcassonne to come up with a map of a city and it's outlying settlements.

I was quite taken with Jeff's idea (though I don't think he is conscious of it) that you can have completely different rules for players and DMs. Or even different types of characters that have different types of rules as Rob Conly points out in the comments.

Awesome! BYOR Roleplaying! (Bring Your Own Rules)

This begs further investigaiton. :)

Dirk's Background

2008-09-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

So game night is next weekend, and I needed to come up with a background for my character in a setting that is the pacific northwest but the "european" peoples have just discovered the west coast. From my DMs description, I envisioned somthing like Vikings and Conquistadors showing up in the Pacific Northwest to discover a place where the "Aztecs" had once made it all the way up past Vancouver, but then their civ fell back for some reason. In any case I have added the Mad Overlord and The Norskans. I hope he rolls with it.

If Dirk had gone to high school he would have been voted most likely to run into a burning building on the off chance that he could help someone, get rich, or get a woman.

And so we begin:

Throughout his life he has been a risk taker and thrill seeker so long as there was a chance for gain. That’s why travel to the new world never really appealed to him much, at first. The journey was too much risk for too little reward. The Norskans (Viking types from the lands north of Empire of the Mad Overlord) had been in and out of that land for centuries. It never seemed to come to any good. He heard about expeditions, but all the reports said one of three things: They never came back, only a few made it back, and everyone came back. While mad, the Overlord hedged his bets, and like Dirk wasn’t going to touch that place with a ten foot pole.

Then one day, Dirk heard about Ulric’s expedition. The Norskan had cut a deal. He called to Odin asking why their efforts in the new land had been for naught. The rune-casters of Odin read that the continent had been given to the Raven King Hugin and that all access to the continent was under his rule. Ulric then sought out Munin, the Raven Queen the consort of Hugin. He appealed to her with a great sacrifice. Then he set out to strike a deal with “The People Between the Forest and the Sea.” Traders and merchants were able to settle on what had once been called “The Bleak Shore.”

Dirk still thought that the risk was too high, besides, he had a good gig working in the Overlord’s ranks. But one day, he encountered a traveler, who showed him a coin from further south on the far continent.

“Gold,” said the traveler, “Cities of it, if you have the guts.” But that wasn’t all. There were other rumors. Magic. The likes of which rivaled even the greatest works of the Mad Overlord’s lands. “Magic and gold you say?” “More than you can dream! Seems the lands of the Raven King, and the People in between Forest and Sea have a lot to offer.”

This set dirk thinking. The risk barely even scratched the surface of the reward now. And Ulric’s expedition had been what 10 years ago? He began to make plans without even realizing it. After a winter, Dirk decided that it was too good. But where there was magic and gold there was sure to be death, and where there’s death there’s the thrill of adventure. This meant he needed some magic of his own. That’s when they brought in the girl. Seems she was a gypsy kid that had taken out an inquisitor that had killed her mother for unauthorized consort with a devil. The circumstances were strange said the reports. Had she not killed the inquisitor she would have been sent to “the school” to hone her talents. Getting the drop on an imperial inquisitor was no small feat.

The very night they brought her in Dirk sprung her from her cell and before the alarm was raised, they were on a ship headed out of the harbor. They would probably need some more backup. It seemed that having a god on your side was a requirement for survival in a place like the new world. Dirk started to look for an opportunity...

The Lost Genre Part I: Never Was

2008-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Swords and Sorcery. There has been some speculation as of late as to why this genre has almost disappeared from the fantasy landscape. Erik Mona editor of Paizo's fine Planet Stories line, Howard Andrew Jones, one of the editors of Black Gate and the folks over at The Cimmerian are all wondering why this has not been a viable genre. Among the speculation is what killed it, how things changed, etc. etc.

I propose this: There never was a Swords and Sorcery genre. Swords and Sorcery is a commercial phrase. It is made up to help us find stuff in the store and keep us buying more of what we like. If anything the quesiton we should be asking is "What happened to the Sub-Genre?"

We think of the golden age of the pulps as the 30's and 40's when that really was the beginning of the end of their time. Its like someone calling the days of Rome under Constantine a golden age and ignoring the days under Agustus. Pulp went back to the 1830's with the Penny Dreadfuls. Thats a whole 80 years before Howard wore the jeweled crown of Aquilonia on his troubled brow.

And looking at those stories we see that they were filled with swords and sorcerers just as much as any Howard or Leiber tale. Robin Hood as we know him largely came out of the same publishing tradition as Conan. And while Sherlock Holmes did have respectable dig on Baker Street and in a major publication, he was still serialised, a distant relative to Hood and the Cimmerian.

The genre I believe is not Swords and Sorcery, but the long tradition of Adventure Fiction of which Swords and Sorcery was a part of. And here were enter the debate of where genre starts and ends. Largely genre is driven by marketing. We see this with music all the time. Is it Techno, Trance, Ambient, Techstep, Hardcore, Jungle, Tribal, Breaks or whatever? Sword and Planet, Sword and Sorcery, Lost World, Weird Fiction, and a lot of Detective Stories all fall into this heading simply because if you change the tropes you don't really change the story.

I think that we would see more success in Swords and Sorcery if we focused not on Swords and Sorcery as a genre but as part of the larger and ailing Adventure Tales genre.

Hydra House Rules: Morphology Independant Critical Chart

2008-09-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

Hit location charts, critical hit location charts and in particular critical charts with hit locaitons have always been tricky things in gaming largely because they tend to revolve around humanoid morphology. Jeff Reints talks about (well, posts really) the legendary Ardruin critical chart here. And most everyone that has been around the gaming block has encountered an incarnation of the rolemaster crit chart at some point.(Latest one here.)

The consistant problem with these was simply that they would specify locations that only humanoids had. What happens when you crit on a dragon, or a displacer beast, or heck, even a beholder. Do you ignore foot? Is there a chance you can hit a wing?

In my games I created a hit locaiton chart based on the "trap mishaps" sidebar in the 3.5 DMG. This was still humanoid centric but I had created it more as a way to give my player's characters more well, character. Eye patches and peg legs and such. Strangely, no one got hurt after I started using it. But as I put more thought into it, it occured to me that a location chart, especially a critical one, should not operate on form, but on function.

Almost every creature that you can crit has appendages of some kind, and favored appendages. And when they don't, one is as good as the other. All organisms share certain features: The aforementioned appendages, sense organs, a nervous system of some sort, and a area of mass larger than the appendages ussually refered to as a body.

Appendages seem to come in 3 varieties: Locomotive, Manipulative, and Favored Manipulative. Few have more than 2 senses, and when they do you just work through them at random.

So here we have the Steamtunnel Press Non-Mophology based hit location table, aka The Function Based Crit Table:

Limb, Appendage, Psudopod or Tentacle (Locomotive)

Limb, Appendage, Psudopod or Tentacle (Manipulative)

End of Limb, Appendage, Psudopod or Tentacle (Locomotive)

End of Limb, Appendage, Psudopod or Tentacle (Manipulative)

Limb, Appendage, Psudopod or Tentacle (Manipulative)(Favored)

End of Limb, Appendage, Psudopod or Tentacle (Manipulative)(Favored)

Body

Sense Organ/Sensor (Type 1)

Sense Organ/Sensor (Type 2)

Nerve/Control/Processing Center

The cool thing about this is that it works on Giant Ants, Mind Flayers, Dragons, Beholders, Cthulhu, and Robots. Even GIANT ROBOT ANTS CONTROLLED BY BEHOLDERS. Imaginative groups can even use this chart to cut off Mind Flayer tentacles in a fight (Tentacle, Manipulative). Appendage (Locomotive) against a dragon? Depending on your DM, you may have just taken out its wing. End of Limb (Manipulative) (Favored) against Luke Skywalker? You just cut off his hand!

Another feature of it being 1-10 is that you can combine it with the to hit roll. Just use the second digit of your hit result to determine where you zinged that Shuggoth.

Since it is easier to hit the larger parts of a being, I am thinking of taking inspiration from the Battletech hit location chart and making it 2d6 with the smaller parts on the edges and the bigger parts in the center. But then that messes up the whole second digit built into the attack roll thing.

This is definately going into Codex, but I am going to put it here for community use. Enjoy.

The Final Design Goal

2008-09-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

In previous posts I have talked about the design goals for Codex. These aren't mechanical goals, but rather goals about what kind of game I want Codex to be. Largely a lot of these have to do with marketing and the desire to take an option rich game camping- and for it to operate easily in a sandbox setting.

But I think there is another goal I have not covered:

The game should make use of other great supplements.

There is a precedent for this, and sadly it has sort of started to die off. OD&D made use of Wilderness Survival to deal with overland travel. This is largely because OD&D was sort of a game cobbled together from other games. In our modern times we really don't see this- game designers don't say "Hey this is a great system for modeling ________, let's just use that!"

I was thinking about economics in Codex and what they should be like, and after some thought and development on RPG economic theory, I realised that I should just use Expeditous Retreat Press' A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe for population modeling and economics.

Because a silver piece could be a days wage in your campaign whereas in mine 30 silver might be a year's income. How much land does the City State of the Invincible Overlord need? This book helps answer all those questions. So rather than trying to create a system that emulates economics badly, why not just say in the book "Check out AMMS:WE by XRP and base your prices and treasure off of that."

Granted this was a supplement for roleplaying, but still, I think it would be awesome if we all started to shill for one another. So from here on out, AMMS:WE is part of Codex.

Whats with this retro gaming thing anyways?

2008-09-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

Retro gaming... it happens. One of the things that is an inspiriton to anyone who wants to play an older game or create a game based on older elements, or create a game that is pretty much like an older game except you use positive AC, or you use modern elements with a classic facade, or you use... well you get the idea, is the retro video game movement.

Using text characters as your graphics was cutting edge in 1980. But with today's rendering capabilies and GPUs and bazzillions of colors who would go back to games like Rogue?

Well plenty of people apparently. Check out ADOM. Its a "Roguelike" still being made (started in 1992) and has quite a following.

As computers go, you don't get more retro than this. And if text adventures like Zork are the OD&D/Holmes or Cook/Moldvay, the Roguelikes would definately be the 1e AD&D/BECMI of computer gaming. Ultima 4-5 are the 2e, but in a good way, with Ultima 6 and 7 definately come in as 3.0 and 3.5 respectively and respecfully: even black Isle picked up their form factor. But Ultima 4 and 5 are video games that just say "RETRO" to me. And even now we are starting to see the Ultima-likes in things like the Nazghul toolset and the game Haxima.

So it is in the spirit of these games that I am creating Codex. Codex is shaping up to tip its hat to the roguelikes and ultimalikes as well as Judges Guild, OD&D, Holmes, C/M, BECMI (without the CMI) and even certain mechanical aspects of 1-4e. Think of Codex as a modern game created with retro sensibilities and front end, kind of like using tools that were designed for an Apple2 on a modern high end gaming PC that is equivalent to about 1000 Apple2s.

By the way- has anyone seen any Wizardrylikes?

A couple of other design goals...

2008-08-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Today I made my first 4e character, based on Dirk the Daring from the DragonsLair laserdisc game:

The thing I noticed about 4e is that while the mechanics were a lot smoother, the arrangement of the information was not helping with the process. Making the character and writing it down on a blank piece of notebook paper took an hour and a half. Now that I know the process I will beable to make a character faster.

Thats all to say that while I was doing this I realised two more design goals for Codex:

All your character information should fit on an 4.25x5.5 inch piece of paper, front sided.*
The only changes that should be made from edition to edition of Codex are text corrections, correction to broken rules logic (ala polymorph in 3.x) and expansions worth adding.

So once we have the rules for Fighters in Codex the method to make a fighter should always be the same, unlike other RPGs where they are significantly different from edition to edition. This is to say that an edition change should not make you have to a) convert your character or b) reimagine your character. The stats with very minor tweaks should just work.

4e does rock on its own merits. One thing I really liked was that if you really wanted, you could have a fighter who is trained in Arcana. Perhaps my next character will be a ranger or fighter or paladin or warlord who hunts necromancers...

*Why such a specific size? Because I have decided that digest format rocks on toast! Everyone remember this:

Yeah, me too! Characters at first level used to fit onto this. On the back of the 1981 Red Box players guide you had one of these there. It was small. You could fold it in half and it contained a whole character. You can fit your character into the first half of this (the second was all money, and gold and equipment and stuff). How cool was that!? More about the digest format later!

A bit about Codex

2008-08-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

I was going to call it Sword & Spell. But then I thought about it- almost every retro effort calls itself something & something. While it is a D&D derivative, I find it to be different enough (almost alien in some respects) that I really don't think that it needs a name in any way similar to D&D. Here are some design goals each loaded with meaning:

1. Rules Lite but not limiting
2. Portable, not too many books, less than 10lbs.
3. A complete game in one purchase
4. Able to be easily expanded by those that play the game

Because it is so small and simplified, I have decided to make changes to MicroLite20 and expand on it to create a rules lite system. I suspect that only a vestige of the original will remain but it will make a good scaffolding.

Finally a beginning...

2008-08-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

At least for this blog. The project covered here had its beginning in 2004-2005 with the advent of D&D 3.5's Unearthed Arcana, Castles and Crusades, and WFRP2. UA was where I started tweaking the rules of d20 and as a result came up with a some new philosophies about game design (new to me at least). C&C and WFRP2 laid the ground for some other ideas that have been gestating for the last 3-4 years and with 4e D&D they are now building themselves inside my head into a game I have decided to call Codex.

But this blog won't be just about Codex development.

Some things I plan to discuss:

Ideas about Swords and Sorcery Fiction as a genre as it relates to game design
Problems in Gaming - specifically mechanical problems that don't seem to go away
The Good and Bad of 4e
Developments in the RPG Industry
Discussions of other Systems
"Old School" Gaming and related concepts
Any other thing that I want to comment on which will usually be gaming related or a comment on someone else's comments