Galactic Keep

Looks awesome.

Why have they not done this with 4e?

In fact, screw 4e.  I want to see this game with blue-map era megadungeons, using the blue-map cartography and red-box D&D rules.  I want APP ON THE BORDERLANDS!  I want SECRET APP OF BONE HILL.  I want RUINS OF APPMOUNTAIN.  I want CASTLE GREYAPP!

Seriously, why can I not play turn-based party dungeon-crawlers with D&D rules and awesome graphics like this RIGHT NOW?

If you know of any, put them in the comments.  Please bear in mind that I cannot afford cocaine or Apple products.  Derek Proud of Dungeon Mapp - are you taking notes?

Incidentally, one day left on the draw to win a free copy of Dungeon Mapp for the iPad.  Send me an email at kootenaymurph at gmail dot com if you want in!

The Wargame DNA of the RPG

A few years ago, I helped out a family friend, Craig Besinque, in designing and playtesting a block-based wargames, which ended up being called Hellenes: Campaigns of the Ancient World.

Craig is pretty well-know in a certain element of the wargaming community - which is like being well-known in the RPG community, except that wargamers tend to be a bit more community-oriented than most RPGer's.  He's designed games like WestFront and EastFront for Columbia Games, so it was really interesting to learn about board game/wargame design from him.

In brief, here are the things I learned working with Craig.

1) Designing wargames is unlikely to make you rich.  You are working in a niche market, with a fairly small customer base (as customer bases go).  They are a reliable base, though - willing to spend money on quality product.  This is presumably also true for RPG's - something anyone wanting to design RPG's should heed.

2) You had best be good at math.  Craig has a Masters Degree in Mathematics from (I believe) UCLA.  He can do fairly complex probability in his head.  I suspect that it's a good thing he's not into gambling, or he would be cleaning up on Pokerstars.net.

3) Game balance is all-important.  Moreso in this context than some others, since Hellenes was designed to be a fairly short 1v1 wargame.  Balance in this context is very similar to what balance means in chess - there should be no sure, or even preferred, route to victory.  If there is, the game is "broken" and considered by most people to be unworthy of being played.  Which will kill your sales (or even your chances of being published) - see point 1.

4) You can design whatever you want, but if you stick to certain material constraints, there is a much better chance that your game will be published.  In this case, Columbia games had certain pre-packaged numbers of blocks and decks of cards.  If you used a different number of blocks in your game, it meant the game cost more, which would be a factor in the publisher deciding to release it.  Likewise, if you use cards, try to stick with the same number of cards as a standard deck of cards, for the same reasons.

To further explain this point, we should examine a different game - Railroad Tycoon.  This game has a ton of different blocks, tiles, markers, plastic trains and whatnot with it.  It's a pretty good game, but now out of print.  I think that's probably because all the bells and whistles (hehe) cost more that it's worth to produce the thing.

5) You must playtest.  Then, playtest more.  Then put it out there and get others to playtest it.  That is the only way to get good game balance - see point 3.

6) If you want to design a historical boardgame, you must start with the historical part.

It's nice if the game can reflect historical realities, but you should pick what realities you reflect - they should be ones that create interesting possibilities and trade-offs.  Guns or butter decisions are what make wargames interesting.

Ideally, players should be making decisions that reflect those that the actual historical sides would have made - in the case of Hellenes, the Athenians need to decide how much of their fleet to take out of the city, whether to focus on attacking Spartan coastal provinces, how much effort to spend putting down revolts, and how many resources to apply to land armies vs the fleet.

7) Limiting resources is a good thing.  When you can't do everything, you have to make decisions about where to allocate a very limited pool of resources.  This makes each decision a difficult one, requiring much deliberation.  Combined with point 6 - it means you can never do everything you want, and you're always making interesting decisions about what you can do.

Many RPG's use one or more of these design principles.  Interestingly, older versions of games like D&D tend to use less of them, despite the fact that they are closer, genetically-speaking to those old wargames.  Specifically issues like game balance, playtesting and limiting resources don't seem to have been foremost in the minds of the designers of say, 1e Dungeons and Dragons.  It's a hybrid game system, and the designers seem to be focused more on the overall experience than applying the lessons of wargame design to the new system.

In more recent years, things have swung back around.  4e, for all it's flaws, pays much more attention to 2, 3 and 7.  It would have been nice if they spent more time on 5, though.  Curiously, it's frequently panned by fans of the older editions - which is kinda weird, since it owes much more to the initial inspiration for D&D than many of those old editions did.

Ultimately, helping to design a boardgame was a great experience - it's really changed how I look at both RPG's and computer games.  I feel like I have a much better view of the decisions that were probably made in the design phase that resulted in the game I'm playing, which makes it easier to mod games, and strangely, easier to like each system for it's own merits/flaws.  To understand something is to lose the fear of it, after all.

OD&D, Session 6

It's never a good idea to leave the person who plays the thief alone with the DM.  I'm just throwing that out there as a general RPG rule.  Never leave the thief alone.  With the GM.  Things will occur that most of the rest of the party probably don't want to occur.

As de-facto party leader, I suppose Fingolfin should have been surprised when we loaded up the cart for "Operation Get the Lazy Bitch Elves Their Magical Thingy Back" and found 2 large, unplanned barrels of wine in the back.

"I bought them", proudly announced Hanz, the resident thief (and ex-Black Eagle staffer).  "Why?"  I responded.  Then decided that I didn't really want to know, but figured we could work with it, and rolled.

Now, I'm not going to say that the decision for Alexi to pretend to be a prisoner was totally motivated by desire for revenge for his getting us involved in this merry cluster-frack, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a consideration.  So with a certain degree of relish, we had him strip down, inflicted a few cosmetic bruises, tied him up in the bottom of the cart, and headed south from Luln for Black Eagle Barony and sunny, friendly Fort Doom!

A travel video about Fort Doom would go something like this:

"Set like a festering sore in the reeking western marshes of Karameikos, the main industries of Fort Doom are fishing, slavery and incompetent plotting.  Tourist attractions include slums, hovels, and wretched masses cowering from their master's boot.  The friendly local inhabitants are mostly fisherfolk, who are kept roughly in line by hostages, held by the jackbooted thugs who make up the rest of the population.  If you're lucky, you'll see some of the exotic orcs, goblins or other horrendous monsters that the friendly and hospitable Baron uses to terrorize his subjects.  Truly, the holiday destination of the Duchy!"

So yeah - nice place.  We got into the city with no problems (guards at gate drunk, also apparently developmentally disabled), and approached the eponymous fort.  True to form, the sergeant of the guard proved to be fat and obnoxious, challenging us upon approaching the gates.  Some judicious display of the captured Iron Ring badge (a ring, made of... wait for it... iron.) and a properly arrogant attitude saw us through the gates.

Then operations really started.  We generously "donated" one of the wine barrels to the gate guards, which went over about how you'd expect - no drinking on duty issues here.  I informed the sergeant that we had magic items to put in the tower, and was told I needed a pass.  Apparently those are given out by a lieutenant Garand or somewhat.  So off we went, prisoner in tow, to see the Lt.

We'd also acquired a neat magic item, a Horn of Plenty - which makes... food.  Awesome.  But it looks magical, so into a sack it went.  Informing the Lt that we had a magical horn which "blows holes in walls" - which is what I wish we'd gotten, I expedited the pass process by offering to test it in his office.  Pass acquired, we headed to the tower.  Once inside the tower, we put the main evil cleric-guy (who lounges around in his boxers while on guard duty) to sleep, looted his stuff, then headed upstairs, where we encountered a complaining old man.

It quickly became apparent that the old fellow was an alchemist, and no fan of team Black Eagle, so we promised Nicholai that we'd help him escape, if he helped us find the magic whoosis.  He agreed fairly quickly and said that Lt. Demetrios (or something roman anyway, I wasn't taking notes) might have it in his office.  We burst into the Lt's office on the second floor, and discovered a bit of a scene.  The Lt and a fellow in tight black leather were sitting very close to each other - "discussing" something or other.  Whoops.

So we cast sleep on them.  Heheh.  I don't know how anyone makes any headway against the elves - that spell is pure murder in OD&D - 2d8 hd, area effect, no save.  Love it.  So they went to sleep, and we killed them, and discovered that the gem was already being moved - the mage Aurelius was planning on taking it out to the Baron, who is enroute here from someplace, and he's just waiting for an escort from the main keep.  This is just the gatehouse to the main keep - apparently.  Which explains that negligence, drunkeness and general slothful attitude.

There are 2 places this Aurelius might be - either the dungeon or the inner barbican, the entrance into the keep proper.  I figure it's easier to do a quick check of the barbican before we go to the dungeon, so we head off in that direction.  The barbican is closed, but there are guards up top on the wall, so I ask them if Aurelius is still waiting there for his escort.  They say "Yes, but it's a secret, so keep it quiet."  Smooth boys, smooth.  So I tell them to open up, as I have Aurelius' things.

They do - whoohoo!  Then we see that there are a lot of guards in here.  So we cast sleep on them.  Whoohoo!  Snoozing.  One of the other things that we found in the tower was an elven cloak, which Hanz the thief is now wearing.  This is an OD&D magic item, so none of this sissy, +5 to sneak rolls 3e crap.  This makes you totally invisible unless you roll a 1 on a d6.  So Hanz uses it to sneak into the barbican and finds Aurelius, some thief, the watch-commander and a bunch more mooks.  At this point, we're out of sleep spells, so we do it the old-fashioned way.

By backstabbing the wizard.  Who dies.  And then we burst into the room.  Didn't quite manage surprise, although I'd be pretty fucking surprised if the person I was having an argument with sprouted a spear point in mid-shout.  We carve down the guards, and after a few rounds of pretty rough rolling, get into the spirit of the thing and take out the watch-captain and the thief-guy.  We also find the gem, some magic rings and a few other nice things.

Then, downstairs and out the front.  At this point, we discover that an orc patrol has come in from the city, and is milling around the front gate.  We turn it into a party with the other barrel of wine, and I discover one of the reasons for the thief/dm rule.  Hanz poisoned the wine.  Not "keel over after drinking" poison.  No, giant ant venom apparently blisters the interior of the stomach/bowels, incapacitating the victims in a few hours.

Leaving everyone to their "party", we hurry out the gate.  But Hanz stays behind.  Once again, we log off and leave the thief alone with the DM...

I find out the next day that Hanz snuck into the dungeon, backstabbed the jailor, stole the keys, released and armed the prisoners, met a friendly ogre and gathered a handful of "followers", who all meet us just outside the city walls.

So, for our next session, I'll be figuring out how to get out the Black Eagle Barony with an ogre in tow.  Oh, and the magical geegaw lets us cast charm person, ESP and some other spells a few times a DAY.  That shouldn't be a game-breaker.

OD&D, Session 5

When a session starts off with a map of your campsite, and the DM casually mentions, "so you're sitting around the fire..."  NO GOOD CAN COME OF IT.  Things will be coming out of the bushes.  Horrible things.  With swords and teeth and biting and aaaayyyy.

And that is how our last session started.  Fortunately (I suppose) what came out of the darkness was a guy on horseback.   Shouting.  Shouting about "They're right behind me, they'll kill us all, AARRGH".  Upon reflection, it would have been smarter to just conk him over the head and give him to his pursuers, but instead we stupidly asked, "Who's after you?", like a bunch of dumbasses.

'Cause, it's obvious that whoever is after him is a Bad Person.  And will attack us.  So it was no surprise when he told us that he was pursued by agents of the Iron Ring, a bunch of slaver-assholes who would no doubt attempt to kill/enslave us just for being here at the same time he was.  He's pretty fucking lucky it was our camp he rode up to, and not, say, a travelling minstrel-show.  He'd have been screwed.

Immediately, aforementioned Bad Person and thugs showed up - surrounding our camp, conveniently.  The leader loudly instructing his men to "Kill them all".  Talk about lack of due diligence on his part.  Rule 1 for slaver/bandit: Identify potential threat level of target.

I won't say I didn't warn them though - my character, Fingolfin the elf, shouted loudly (at the darkness) "if you attack our camp, we'll put you all to sleep, and then I'll personally nail you to a tree."  It seemed like a reasonable threat.

So they did.  And we did.  I had a wooden mallet, and the thief had some iron spikes.  The slaver leader seemed... distressed when we woke him up by driving in the first spike.  He was also markedly uncooperative.  More so that I would expect someone to be when one is crucified, one's men have been hung, and a pair of wolves are sniffing hungrily around one's feet.  I'd be positively fucking loquacious at that point.  But he just cursed and spat and generally made an ass of himself.

Then somebody shot a crossbow at us from the bushes.  But the wolves ran him down pretty fast.  These guys aren't learning.  They're also not telling us WTF is happening, so we asked our "guest" Alexis why he was interrupting our evening with the shouting and the blood.

Apparently, the forces of the Black Eagle Barony, upon whose metaphorical doorstep we now trod, had stolen a magical gem doohickey from the elves in eastern Karameikos (presumably because the elves were busy snorting pixie-faerie dust off each other's naked backsides and having unprotected elf-sex - because really, what else is there to do when you're immortal).  The gem is REALLY important because you can do mind control with it - notwithstanding that Charm Person is basically mind control and a level 1 spell.

Alexis is part of a rescue mission sent to retrieve it before all manner of horror can befall the faire realme, but all his friends have been killed by the Iron Ring, and now he's on his own and wants OUR help.  There are apparently more slavers about, so we're "encouraged" to hurry along to Luln.  So we packed up the campsite and headed off down the road - we're all out of sleep spells, so no reason to push our luck.

Arriving in Luln in the morning, we hurry to a cobblers shop where Alexis has allies.  Walking in, we are immediately ambushed.  If I didn't know better, I'd say this nitwit was trying to get us killed.  2 ambushes in a row starts to stretch the bounds of credulity.  Fortunately, we'd had enough time to rest up, so most of the ambushers got unaccountably drowsy, and we didn't have much difficulty taking out the rest of them hand-to-hand.

There was a rough moment when a wizard popped out of a side room and cast magic missile, mainly because nobody in the party can survive a full-damage magic missile.  Luckily, he shot it at the NPC, who has a few more HP's, so everyone survived.  After some mourning over his friends, Alexis took us to yet another location, an inn.  There we meet another of his buddies, who explains more about the missing mcguffin, and gives a potential plan for retrieving it.

And boy, is the plan a doozy.  Amigo wants us to hide in a turnip cart, sneak into Fort Doom (great name - love that subtle, understated villainy), go through the dungeon, which they stock with monsters specifically to devour prisoners, and finally, break into a vault-tower where they store magical items.  Oh, and do it all in the middle of a garrison of soldiers and orcs.

A quick poll of the party reveals absolutely no interest in: a) the plan or b) retrieving the gem at all.  So we decide to go with our own plan.  Next time - breaking into Fort Doom.

OD&D, Session 4

With Castle Caldwell behind us, the merry band of adventurers now proceeds back to Guido's fort to receive our comparatively meager 100 gp each.  Regrettably, I forgot to charge the 100 gp fee for Zhanna, our lost cleric.  Have to remember that in the future.

Zhanna has since been replaced by another elf, we've brought on Earnest's mage, and the thief has returned from  wherever he disappeared to last session.  We've also picked up Ceeay, who has "heard about another really cool god, called Alphaks the Roarer" that she's going to worship since we told her Orcus was "kind of a dick".  This is going to be an ongoing thing, I feel.

We also still have Fritz driving/guarding the cart.  Which is handy because it contains many thousands of pieces of silver and a not-inconsiderable amount of gems and jewelry.  Pretty good start to our careers, actually.

After paying us off, Clifton tells us that he's had a message from a friend of his, who is himself possessed of an ancestral castle.  It has apparently been "lost" for a while, although how one loses a castle I have no idea.  Now that it's found (perhaps it was between the couch cushions, that happens to me with my castles a lot), he'd like somebody to clear it out.  Since we now have "credentials" on the castle-clearing front, we're offered the job.

And he's willing to pay 500 gp each, with half up front.  We get the money, and the thief immediately asks, "so what should we go do instead?" Which isn't a bad questions, since we just got a bag with 1000 gp in it.  After some discussion, we come to the conclusion that we "don't have fuck-all else to do, and look how well the last castle job turned out."  Well, except for Zhanna...  But whatever.

Of course, the downside is that the new-old castle is way over on the other side of Karameikos, close the to inventively-named "Black Eagle Barony".  Karameikos isn't really that big - it's about 200 miles across and maybe 100 miles north-south, and we're pretty much smack in the middle, so we only have about 150 miles or so to travel - first south to good 'ole Speculum-City, then across to Luln.

In planning the trip, we discovered some interesting things about overland travel in the Rules Cyclopedia world.

1) Horses are stupid-fast.  Apparently a riding horse on a standard trail can go 72 miles in a day.  That seems... excessive to me.  Some basic internet research shows that 100 miles in a day is about the most possible, and can generally only highly trained or exceptional riders can maintain that - the equivalent of modern marathoners.  I'd say 50 would be more reasonable, but I might be wrong, so I'll just deal with it.

2) You get a lot of encounters. Even in clear/settled terrain.  Standard is d6 during the day, and d12 at night, with encounters occurring on 1's (or more in rougher areas).  Also, in almost every environment, 1 chance in 8 is a "Dragon" type encounter.  That basically means that on average, every 48 days of travel, one encounters a Dragon.  Which explains why the roads seem so quiet.  How the fuck does Specularum feed itself?  I guess maybe farmers travel at night, very cautiously, and dragons don't eat turnips?

Anywhoo, we had several encounters on our trip south.  We ran into some orcs.  They attacked us so we cast Sleep on them (why have an AK-47 and not use it?). Luckily, they all went to sleep, so we killed them, and discovered that they had $5000 gp in a sack by the road.  Aren't random treasure tables wonderful?  I'm starting to see the attraction of treasure parcels.  But I'm also not complaining!

Then we encountered a couple of bodies with some trained war-wolves standing over them protectively.  Through some inspired animal-training, the thief of the party now has 2 loyal trained war-wolves. Which should come in handy!

Once we reached Specularum, we had some work done on the cart - added sidewalls for better defense, and hired 2 light footmen to assist in guarding it - Frizt's son and his wife - so it's a family affair now.  Plus, light footmen cost 2 gp/month, so we have enough just from the orcs to pay them for... 104 1/8 years.  Good job security, I say!

Further down the road we ran into some giant ants.  They gave us a nasty turn when 1 sleep spell only put 2 of them to sleep!  Luckily, we have 3 casters, and the second spell did the trick.  Ant-shell helmets for everyone!  And then I had to go to bed, so we called it a night.

I'm not sure I'm loving this game, but playing it as written is sure informative.  I see reasons why many changes were made to it over the years...

OD&D, Session 3

Onward, into the depths (the horizontal, well-lit depths) of Castle Caldwell!

We used a Sleep spell on the Pearl Necklace Gang in the last session, so the party took the cart back to Guido's Fort for a well-earned sleep and feed.  Love those 20 minute adventuring days!

My character has done maybe 40 minutes of real work in this place, and we've looted about 100 years worth of earnings for a hard-working carter.  Put down the tools!  Pick up the sword and adventure!  It's like the lottery but with poisonings and eviscerations!

The next day - sleep spells reloaded, we head back to Castle Caldwell.  A few people can't make it, so we bring in Jenny's husband Earnest as a ringer, and Jenny rolls up a new character.  A second elf!  Yaay!  And Earnest is a mage.  Now we have 3 sleep spells.  Monsters, beware!

Nobody is really sure where these other characters are coming from, but whatever - there are doors to open.  Cause that's pretty much all there is to do in 'ole C.C.  Lots of doors with stuff behind them.  Verrrry retro.

The next door we open - after checking the inevitably empty corner tower, contains a very attractive female in plate armor with a mace.  She is kneeling in front of a small altar.  As we enter, she turns and says "Greetings, are you here for service?"  "What god are we servicing to?" I inquire.  Politeness counts, people!

"Orcus" she says (we may retcon this to be Aphaks the Roarer).  So I cast a sleep spell on her.

Then we strip off the armor, tie her up and loot the room.  Man, this post devolved into fanfic pretty fast.

Once we've looted and oogled, we wake her up and ask some questions.  Turns out, her name is Ceeay (stands for C.A., which stands for Chaotic Acolyte).  She's been here about a week, just wandered in and set up a shrine.  She doesn't know very much about Orcus (or whoever) but she's keen to be an acolyte of something.  She proves sane and reasonable, albeit totally naive and inexperienced, so we get her to promise to help us out in exchange for 1/5th of the treasure, untie her and now we have a henchwoman/back-up character.

Then we check more empty rooms, find some stirges and a talking statue of a Herdsman which answers 3 questions - we can only think of 2, "what is the most dangerous monster in the castle?" and "how do we get into the magically locked room?"

Answers are: "Giant crab-spider that hangs from the ceiling" and "with the key that the owner of the castle has", accordingly.  So that's handy.

Then we find some sleeping merchants - well, ex-merchants - they left their mule, loaded with silver and pearl necklaces, outside, but it was stolen.  They agree that they are crappy merchants, and leave when we suggest it - citing the impending arrival of the owner of the castle, and the fact that we took away their weapons while they were asleep, as reasons why they should go.

More rooms - we find an internal grassy courtyard with some wolves in it.  Apparently the wolves were trapped here when the merchants shut the door.  Why they were in here instead of the FOREST remains a mystery that we will never solve.  We kill the wolves and find some kobolds - upon which time we cast sleep and initiate operation "Chunky Kobold Salsa".  Apparently the new elf doesn't like kobolds.  Fingolfin speaks Kobold, which suggests at least some affinity for the scaly little assholes.  But that doesn't stop him from finishing them off.

Finally, we encounter the spider-crab thing.  Sleep spell.  Splat.  During the fighting, the new wizard proves to be preternaturally accurate with his sling.  He hits 5 times in a row in a battle against the stirges, and Ceeay proves to be a loyal and a biddable meat shield.  So that's good.

Eventually, we get to the big payoff - a massive chest in the magically locked room.  It contains a scrap of paper which reads "thanks for the treasure - Bargle".  Like we needed more reason to hate that asshat.  I never did get to nail Aleena.  Maybe I'll have better luck with the current attractive female cleric (are henchman allowed to say "No"? - Discuss)?

We left the Castle and returned to the owner, blissfully unaware that we missed the incredibly sucky "Beneath Castle Caldwell" - the entrance was under the giant chest.  Presumably the new owner will find it, but we're off to do something better.  Like modules produced after 1981.

Also, I think we answered the question "why would you use a pseudonym when writing a module"?  The answer of course, is that you're shit at it, and don't want your name attached to it, or people will be coming up to you at Cons and kicking you right in the sack.

Rules Cyclopedia: Session 2

I've played Castle Caldwell for 3 hours, and I want to punch Ron Charulsky in the nut-sack.

Seriously.  This is not how you do things.  I have argued with Trollsmyth before about the steaming "theoretical framework" pile of D&D is always right.  I warn you - this does not display me at my best.  I'm irritated about this, and remain that way.  I cannot think of a better refutation of "D&D is always right", than Castle Caldwell.  I'll get into that in another post, though.

So far, we have encountered the following monsters:
3 goblins
1 spitting cobra (more on the cobra later)
2 fire beetles
1 giant shrew (apparently both ferocious and terrifying)
3 bandits.

We have also encountered one magically locked door and a poison gas trap.  We've found something like 10000 sp, and hundreds of gold worth of gems and jewelry.  Oh, and the cleric died - see spitting cobra.

After the last session, we had slept in the dubious comfort of Guido's fort, bought a 4-wheeled cart and 4 mules to pull it, and hired a drover named Fritz to drive said cart and feed/watch said mules.

Fritz was available for 5 sp/week.  Which means that we have found enough silver (mostly in bags under beds or piled on the floor) to pay Fritz for 40 years.  Not bad for 2 days work... and a cleric.

Returning to the keep, we used the age-old dungeoneering technique - always turn left.  We found a tower room (not really - this is a 1-level bungalow castle) with a tree growing through the window.  The tree was cut down and shaped into a 10' pole.

Then we found a room that used to be a kitchen.  It contained a leather (?) chest, which we opened by tying a rope to the lid and pulling open - which proved to be a good decision, as the chest was apparently used for poison gas storage.  Nothing else in it though.  What kind of asshole traps an empty chest and leaves it in the kitchen?  Someone with a psychotic hatred for scullions, that's who.

The next room contained a "pile of sacks and garbage" and a dead goblin with a swollen arm.  The voices of experience screamed "Rot Grubs", so we doused the goblin in lamp oil and lit him on fire - then retreated out of the room for a while.  I mistakenly assumed that the sacks and garbage would be in contact with the goblin, and that the flames would also drive out anything nasty lurking in them - I was in fact mistaken.

We re-entered the room, poked around a bit, and "disturbed" the spitting cobra who lived under the sacks and garbage.  It proceeded to spit at us vigorously, and Zhanna, the cleric, took a load in the face (I know, I'm a child sometimes).  The 4 damage was not too bad, the save vs poison was... worse.  She did not in fact save, and died instantly as a result.  Bugger.

Zhanna was a great character too.  She had excellent stats (so good that I asked the DM if he had watched them being rolled - the player is his sister...), the best armor possible, and was generally being played in a competent manner.  And now she is dead.  And that is why I hate save-or-die.  Oh, and the snake was worth 31 xp (or 8 apiece).

Jenny didn't have another character ready, so we grabbed Fritz from cart-duty, gave him a spear, shield and Zhanna's plate mail, and dubbed him "Sir New Character".  He did pretty well, actually.

There was, predictably, no treasure in the room.  Nor in the next room, although we found some nifty romance novels (no value, notwithstanding that books were very costly before the printing press), some fire beetle glands - which we detached from the beetles using swords (wtf do people do with those?).

In another room we found a bag full of thousands of silver pieces... Rational.  We also encountered a magically held door, and a room with 3 bandits and a mule in it.  I was fed up after the spitting cobra debacle, so I dropped the tactical nuke (or Fat Boy, if you will) of the OD&D world - sleep.  And then we hit them over the head and took their stuff.  I mean, I'm Lawful, but bandits are, well, bandits.

They were pretty good at banditing, though.  They had thousands more silver, as well as a box of gems.  Oh, and 2 of the bandits had "pearl necklaces".  But not the leader.  I think we can all figure out how that happened. Rank hath it's privileges, after all.

Weird Known World

Since we've started playing a Rules Compendium game every week, I've become more interested in what other people are doing with the old D&D rules.  So in the spirit of inquisitiveness, I downloaded the free rules for Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG.

I love Raggi, although I totally don't agree with him on a lot of scores.  Still, he is a passionate and talented advocate of gaming, which you can't really argue with.  I also thought about picking up the LOTFP boxed set, but I didn't get around to it - if he does it as a collected hardcover, that is a sure buy.

The sandbox-y setting that Raggi included is called "Weird New World".  It sounds interesting, and I'm looking forward to checking it out.  But a world doesn't have to be new to be weird.  I found that out recently when I started researching Karameikos and found... THE VAULTS OF PANDIUS!  http://www.pandius.com/index.html.

I typed that in CAPS because it really should be said in a really deep, impressive-sounding voice.  Because it is freaking insane how much information is on this site.  Hundreds of pages, maps, collected information about Mystara.  I don't know why people want WotC to re-release old D&D stuff - there's a fuck-ton of material out there on the internet for free (and I'm not talking about torrents, people).

Since we're running the new game in Karameikos, I've been doing some reading on the ole Grand Duchy, and have uncovered a number of curious things about it.

1) The original inhabitants of modern-day Karameikos were the "Traladarans"  or possibly "Tralaladarans".  Knapsacks and singing were apparently their most popular exports.

2) The capital of Traladara used to be called "Marilenev", but the name has since been changed to "Specularum". Sources appear to disagree as to whether this change was made by the Thyatians or by Duke Steve-O.  I've been operating under the assumption that it is Duke Stefan.  Hence my previous comment about "Duke Stev the Gynecologist".  (If you don't understand the reference, do a google search for "speculum".  Do NOT do an image search).

3) Steve, formerly of Machetos, is a HUGE DICK.  Really - he traded his ancestral lands to the Thyatian emperor in exchange for Karameikos (or Tralalalalalalaldara or whatever).  The emperor promptly strips the place of everything valuable, then hands it over to a crony to run.  So the people who have trusted and supported Steve's family for generations get the shaft, Steve gets a shiny new country to run, and the emperor gets richer and rewards one of his boys.  Serious dick move, there.

4) Duke Stev is retarded.  No, seriously - he's disabled.  Apparently he's unable to understand the motivations and actions of chaotic or evil people.  Which pretty much means he's high-functioning autistic, or at least Asbergers.  Which leads us to the next bit of "lore".

5) The Black Eagle Barony.  Where to start, here?  Run by Ludvig von Hendriks, some sort of relation of Steffo's.  Ludvig wears all black and silver.  He runs his fief like North Korea, plots constantly to take over the Duchy, changed the name of his city (formerly Mirov) to FORT DOOM.  Oh, and his main advisor is a dude named Bargle (my character was totally gonna nail Aleena, she was Elmore-hot) and somehow, Sir Steffeo the Smart doesn't notice.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, that Mystara is hella-weird.  But a good place to go on an adventure!

First Session

Well, the first session of our old-school game has come and gone, and it was generally pretty excellent.

It's been 20 years, roughly, since I played this particular game.  Yet I still seem to remember all the rules.  Like when to make morale checks, and listening at doors and business.  I forgot to pay my taxes one year, but I remember that the first time the monsters are damaged, they make a morale check.  WTF, gamer brain?

Anywhoo, we are playing this game using www.rptools.net and www.skype.com.  I've done 4e games online this way before, so I knew the drill, but we did have a few technical problems.  One player couldn't get on Skype (she could hear but not talk) and one couldn't get on Maptools, but generally, it was working.

Perry, the DM, set up tokens for our characters - mine was a gay little elf-boy in green tights with a bow.  Considering that Fingolfin is a plate-wearing, sword and javelin wielding veteran of Duke Stev the Gynecologist's (I will explain this later, I promise)  very inventively-named "Elfguard", this did not seem appropriate.  But I can deal with it, so we continued.

We found ourselves in the tavern of Guido's Fort, along the river a ways from the town of Threshold.  A prosperous-looking fellow entered, and began waving around a large bag and shouting.  Apparently, he had recently inherited a castle, but it was full of monsters, and he wanted to hire "Extermination specialists" to clear it out so he could, presumably, live in it.  Several of us raised our hands, and were promised 100 gp each to clear the place out.

Our party of 4 consisted of Fingolfin, the elf, Hanz Verboten, a scrawny thief, Zhanna Titova, an impressive-looking female Cleric of Petra, and Elric something or other, a weedy-looking Wizard.  We looked for henchmen, but apparently none were available - not even stupid farm kids to hold our torches and carry stuff. Disappointing.

Fingolfin and Elric immediately sat down and started copying each other's spellbooks.  Somebody muttered something about "secrecy of the magi", but both of them ignored it and promised never to tell!

Then we loaded up Fingolfin's mule (Bill - it's a tradition) and hiked the five miles to "Castle Caldwell". To say that the place is unimpressive is an understatement.  It's not very big, and appears to be 1 level - a rancher-style castle, as it were.  Leaving Bill outside, we head up the ramp to the main doors, unlocking them with the key provided by the owner, Harold "Harry" Nuckols.

We were then confronted by a hallway with doors on either side.  Starting on the left side, we instruct the thief to listen and see if anything is inside.  He listens carefully, and announced that he hears "Nothing - quiet as a tomb".  This is not terribly reassuring, or surprising - he apparently hears things about 30% of the time...

With the armored elf and cleric blocking the door, we open it, and check the room.  It appears to be an abandoned dining room - tables and chairs covered in cobwebs.  So we toss the place.  Harry did promise that we could keep everything we found!

And boy, do we find stuff.  There is a bag under one of the tables, full of silver coins.  Hundreds of them!  What an excellent start to the day.  Worked for five minutes and already we made more than most farmers do in their ENTIRE FILTHY LIVES!

So we drag the coins outside and bury them in the side of the dirt ramp for later retrieval.  Then, back to the 2nd door!  This time, the thief actually hears something - it's a loud argument in an unknown and unpleasant language.  He tries quietly opening the door, but he sucks at that too, so the short, ugly humanoids that are arguing inside stop arguing and look at the door.

4 of them, 4 of us, and they are standing in a room with literally piles of coins!  Like, BIG piles.  So Fingolfin shouts in Orcish (see ROTS #5) - "Surrender or Die!".  The goblins don't speak orc, don't like elves, and come up with option 3 - CHARGE!  Which they do.

They are met with arrow and sling fire from Elric and Hanz, and a javelin from Fingolfin, who decides not to use the "encounter ender", or sleep as it's otherwise known.  One goes down with an arrow in it, and the other 3 splash up against Zhanna and Fingolfin.

We learn a number of things about this version of DnD in this first combat.  Things like - there are no criticals. 20's are automatic hits, but that's all.  Goblins apparently have very high morale, that's another thing.  Oh, and ALL spells are Dailies - Perry and I got a good laugh about that one.  Also, weapon skills are ree-donculously overpowered.   I'll get into that in a totally separate post.  So we squish 2 more of the goblins, and seriously wound the last one, who promptly surrenders.

After a brief discussion, we decide that we can't trust the goblin, can't talk to him, and therefore elect to squash him.  Zhanna also decides that goblins remind her of "beastmen" who apparently Petra has issues with, so, towel-time (as in, you're going to need a towel to get all the goblin off your armor).

Then we check out what the goblins were arguing over.  Literally THOUSANDS of silver and copper coins.  After some discussion, we drag the table over from the other room, use the other table to build sidewalls and skids, load the coins onto it, and drag the whole mess back to town behind Bill the mule.

We then use the coins to buy, in no particular order, 1 cart, and 3 more mules - we would have got draft horses, but Guido didn't have any for sale. It's now midday, so we retire to the tavern, get some fresh towels and booze, and call it a day.  Ahh, the life of an adventurer!

More About the Slog

For those of you who aren't the sort of voracious fantasy novel readers that I am, the Rules of the Slog might be a somewhat obscure reference.  It's from the new R Scott Bakker novel, The Judging Eye, which is the first book of his second series, the Aspect-Emperor.

If you have not read R Scott Bakker, and are a fantasy fan, they're a very good read - the first 3 anyways.  The new one is a STUPENDOUS read, especially the portion about the dungeon-crawl into the Mansion of the Nonmen.  Really - this is Old-School at it's best.  A few high-level characters, Achamian, Kosoter, Cleric (actually an insane Nonmen wizard), a few mid-level henchmen, and a bunch of low-level grunts, the Skin Eaters, collectively.

The battle scenes in this book are fast-paced, gory and very, very fatal for most participants.  Enemies come out of the dark in shrieking waves, magic is brutally powerful, except when it fails totally, and high-level wizards are engines of destruction who are also terrifically fragile.  If you want to read pretty much exactly what OD&D dungeon-crawling is like, pick up this book!

The rules of the slog are the guidelines of the Skin Eaters, veterans of many trips into hostile territory, populated only by hordes of implacable enemies (aka, adventures).  They are fairly simple rules, enforced with a ruthless lack of compassion.  Rules like: No weepers on the slog.  Fail a morale check with these boys, and you don't get to go home...

For our new Rules Cyclopedia game, I'm working on our own set of "Rules of the Slog".  No, obviously we can't go killing the help - the orcs will take care of that for us, but I think I can come up with some excellent rules of thumb for those unfamiliar with this particular gaming genre.

1) HAVE A PLAN:  Pretty self-explanatory, you would think.  But actually put into place a lot less than you would expect.

2) DON'T PANIC:  If you run, you pretty much just die tired.  I'd rather have a TPK than get cut up piecemeal.

3) STAY IN FORMATION: That means you, thief!  I know you can backstab for tons of damage, but you wear leather and have 3 hp!  So stay the fuck behind the plate-mail and shield boys, OK?

4) IF IT LOOKS LIKE A TRAP, IT IS A TRAP:  The old neckbeards who wrote these modules were evil fucking bastards.

5)  TALK, THEN KILL:  This one is missed pretty often in the era of balanced encounters and milestones.  If you talk to them, you may not actually have to kill them, and better yet, they may not try to kill you.

6)  YOU ARE SQUISHY:  All character, the entire campaign long.  You never really get tough in a save-or-die environment.

I'm sure I'll think of more later.

The Myth of Causality

*Reposted from my comment on Whitehall Paraindustries*

A post I read recently on causality got me thinking about the "direction of causality" issue in gaming. I think that a lot of this discussion and disagreement comes down to people misunderstanding what the purpose of the "rules" in games actually do.

When we really boil down what game rules are for, it's very simple:

Something might happen in the narrative and you determine how likely/unlikely that is to happen. 

Factors that are commonly considered are the difficulty of the action and the skill of the people involved. Add randomization, and voila - you have determined an action.

Pretty much every game rule, in all systems addresses some part of this basic equation. Rules are just shortcuts to these basic questions, and different rules address or combine these questions in different ways.

As an example, lets look at AC (or any defense rating, really). It's a shortcut for "how difficult it is to attack something", and the shortcut includes factors like physical protection and agility and overall skill of the defender. 

Attack modifiers are similar - they are a shortcut that say "this is how good I am at striking aggressively".

Different systems use different shortcuts and probability structures to organize this stuff, but the basics are always the same.

It seems to me that the whole concept of "direction of causality" is mistaken - the only causality that exists is the consensual one that the players agree to. Different styles and rulesets imply causality, but they cannot create it.

Maybe an example will help, if only for myself. Let's take one action and look at the different ways that it can be handled, using different shortcuts. In game, a player says "I try to knock the monster into the pit".

You need to determine how difficult this is going to be - factoring in how tough the monster is to knock around, how skilled the player is at knocking things around, adding some randomization (if you like) and then determining the actual in-game effects.

For OD&D, this process is going to be largely up to the GM, with input from the players, and will be primarily based on AC, to hit bonus and a generous helping of "common sense", which really means deciding what you think might be realistic and then arguing about it. This is because OD&D doesn't use a lot of shortcuts.

In 4e, there are more shortcuts built into the game system. Rule of 42 gives mechanical guidelines for determining how difficult things are generally, and the player may have a power like "Tide of Iron", which is just a shortcut for saying "this character is hella-good at smashing things around by running at them".

The difficulty here is that the shortcuts are implying possibility - things like the rogue power that hits as a close burst on multiple targets, and can be done with a crossbow. Now... I've used a crossbow, brother, and there ain't no bursts with em. The power is a shortcut for saying "this character is really good at shooting a bunch of people in the face with missile weapons", but it asks you to agree that the possibility is there in the first place - which is where people who like OD&D have issues with 4e, it uses shortcuts that imply possibilities that they would rather not have.

I like 4e because it's made the mechanics of determining lots of this stuff more transparent and easier to use, but you need to be willing to use the shortcuts they built as well, and those don't sit well with everyone.