Some Awesome Tumblrs

Is Tumblrs even a word?  Ah well, it is now.

Tumblr is a microblogging site used primarily to post pictures.  It makes it very easy to add photos to your own stream, and its a great way to build a set of pictures to use in your game.

You can also easily check out other tumblrs, just by clicking on the link at the bottom-right of a picture that indicates the account it was linked from.

Here are several really interesting ones.  I particularly like using Norse/Celtic themes in my games, so these are inclined in that direction.

The Stolen Lands

Brynhild-Heathen

Fuck Yeah Vikings and Celts

The Deer and the Oak

Solgave

The Iron Canyons

Swords and Arrows

As always, happy gaming!

Fantasy Gothic Manor Generator

I got set up with an Abulafia account last night so that I could set up a new random generator.  If you know a bit about html coding then setting up a random generator is pretty easy. 

I created one called Gothic Manor, which is designed to build a fantasy-gothic manor house, along with inhabitants, surroundings and a dark secret.

I took English Lit in university, and I found the Romantic Poets and Gothic literature were my favorites, plus I've always liked Lovecraft and Mythos fiction.  Hopefully there are shades of all of that in this generator.

Here is a little taste of the sort of results you can get:

The Manor is a huge, squat keep, built in an ancient style, now crumbling and enveloped by ivy. It is filled with empty rooms, rotting furniture and dusty wall hangings.  If examined closely, the tapestries depict ancient crimes – murders, rapes and much worse – all the perpetrators and victims appear to be members of the same family.

The Master is an enormous, shambling wreck of a man, clad in worn and stained clothing and with a massive, shaggy beard. He communicates mostly in grunts and scowls, seeming to stare at nothing and mutter to himself constantly. Occasionally, glimpses of his limbs and torso reveal horrible, barely-healed scars and oddly precise tattoos in what appear to be arcane designs.

The Mistress is ancient but unnaturally spry, seeming to be aware of everything that happens within the manor. Her hunched, black-clad form can be seen bustling around at all hours. In fact, she sometimes seems to be in several places at once.

The Staff are oddly uniform in appearance, dress and features, moving about their duties with silent, mechanical precision.

The Heir(s) are an indistinct horde of grubby, wild and violent children. It’s impossible to distinguish gender or age under the grime, scabs and snot, but they seem to be everywhere within the keep, and see everything that happens.

The Hunt are a hyaena-like, humped and cackling pack with a hunched and hooded keeper.

The Demesne are a scattering of strongly-built farmsteads, all barred and defended night and day.

The Dungeons are built around a single shaft with a circular stairwell that drops straight down into the earth. The occasional archway leads to a network of old mining tunnels and drifts, scattered with ancient, rusted equipment.

The Secret is that the manor is the old lair of a necromancer and a warren of the undead. 

Middle Earth Quest and other Board Games

When I'm not playing RPG's or video games (damn you Torchlight 2), I like to play boardgames, and Middle Earth Quest looks really cool.

It's a co-operative/competitive board game based around the good ole Lord of the Rings.  This game would tie nicely into the start of a Lord of the Rings Roleplaying campaign, as I discussed earlier in Boardgames as a first RPG session.

I would want to play Sauron, personally.  I'm just like that.

If you want more information, PATV has a great show called Shut Up and Sit Down which reviews boardgames.  This week they did Middle Earth Quest.

Check it out here: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/middle-earth-quest

In addition to Shut Up and Sit Down we have Wil Wheaton's Tabletop.  Every week Wil and his guests review the rules of a different board game, then do a play-through video.  It's funny and a great way to check out board games to see if they would be entertaining.

Youtube is also a good place to look for video reviews/playthroughs of board games.  The first time we played Arkham Horror, we used Grudunza's very comprehensive videos to orient ourselves.

We also used the complete tutorial for the Game of Thrones board game the first time we played it.  That one is actually produced by Fantasy Flight Games.  Tutorials like this are a handy way to get acclimatized to a game without having to read through the entire manual while everyone else is sitting around waiting for you.

Gamer Presents!

This weekend was the occasion of my 37th trip around the sun, and we had a really good time.  I didn't get to role-play ALL DAY, which was what I used to do on my birthday when I was in High School, but I still had fun.

Among my presents were:  A new 25-inch monitor.  Torchlight 2, a This is How I Roll t-shirt and a bumper sticker for the new minivan - "Don't make me get out and roll initiative", which should go nicely with the firefighter licence plate!

Of course, the combination of the new monitor and Torchlight 2 made getting productive work on things like

Updated Chapter 2 of Blingdenstone Enhanced.

Secret Santacore Submission.

Or ANYTHING ELSE totally impossible.  This game is crack.  Explore.  Kill.  Loot.  Compare Numbers. Re-equip. Repeat ad infinitum.  I thought I had kicked this back in the Diablo 2 era.  I proudly didn't buy Diablo 3 because $60 + always-on-DRM = fuck NO!  I thought the monkey was off my back!  But it is on there firmly, clicking away.

My daughter even wanted to sit on my lap  and got excited when we found giant piles of gold or got into a big fight.  Although she did do a lot of  "what's happening?" when the action got too furious.  Of course - she's 3, so she ended up with nightmares last night.  Totally my bad, and I got up and cuddled her without complaint.  Guess I need to find a game that interests both of us and isn't that scary.

On a related note, I've had a bit of interest in the Dungeon Mapp Contest, but only a few people have entered the contest so far.  As a result, I'm going to extend it out to the end of this week to see if we can get some more people interested in a FREE TABLETOP GAMING APP!

Finally, Carl Bussler put up this interesting Cast Map over on G+ were there are a ton of interesting RPG conversations happening right now.  This is more designed for fiction - I'd modify it slightly to identify the party at the center and NPC's radiating outward.  The idea that the more removed an NPC is, the less characteristics they need to have is a good rule of thumb.  But a minimum of one is also a good rule.  Try to make all NPC's at least a tiny bit interesting.

As always, Happy Gaming.

Secret Santacore Teaser Trailer

I'm off to the races on the Secret Santacore project!

Not going to put the whole thing up yet, since a bunch of it is still on paper, but here's a teaser:

I was going to do d12 sets, a la Dungeon Dozen, but then I figured, hey 8 d8 random tables is like 160-million-odd combinations.  That will have to do.

The House

1.	Is a huge, squat keep, built in an ancient style, now crumbling and enveloped by ivy.  It is filled with empty rooms, rotting furniture and dusty wall hangings.  If examined closely, the tapestries depict ancient crimes – murders, rapes and much worse – all the perpetrators and victims appear to be members of the same family.
2.	Is a timber hunting lodge filled with stuffed, skinned and mounted trophies of animals and monsters, hanging alongside weapons, rusty traps and paintings of prized hounds and horses.  Everywhere you go within the hall, dozens of glittering eyes seem to track you from the mounted heads that cover every wall.  Occasionally, the faint sounds of a baying pack of hounds seem to echo through the rooms.
3.	Is a shining pleasure-palace, with high white walls, turreted towers and carefully landscaped ponds and gardens.  Its placid tranquility and languid calm are restful, but the gardens are full of unnaturally vital blood-red roses, the ponds are bottomless and are bitterly cold, and the high, ornate windows seem to glare menacingly when seen out of the corner of the eye.
4.	Is a tall manor on a point overlooking an isolated cove.  Built of the local white chalk, it has patios and stairwells that extend down the cliffs below it.  Seen from the day, it is an attractive structure, but the light of the moon bleaches the white walls to the color of unburied bone, and cause the building to shine with unnatural brightness.  The cove below constantly washes up old bones and the corpses of the drowned.
5.	Is a square, multi-floored brick house with a central courtyard that can be accessed by 4 arched entrances, one in each wall.  Walkways lined by arched windows face the interior courtyard on all floors.  At the center of the courtyard is a deep well with a rusted iron cover and a stout, new padlock.  When the wind blows through the house (which it frequently does) the arches of the courtyard seem to howl with unearthly voices, and the doors fly open and slam closed unpredictably.
6.	Is a fortified manor house with a solid gate, paved courtyard and solidly-build hall.  The courtyard is dominated by a stone statue of a seated man leaning on a great sword.  Time has eroded away most of his features, but the carved eyes remain intact, and glare down fiercely at anyone entering the yard.  The base of the statue is ringed by disturbing engravings in an unknown language.
7.	Is an old trading stockade that has been converted into a makeshift manor.  The log palisade is rotting, and weeds grow around the neglected stables and storage sheds.  Half-feral dogs wander about and the surrounding forest presses ominously close.  The place smells of mildew, dogshit and fear – all door are barred and lights doused as soon as night falls.
8.	Is a tall, moated round-house set on the edge of a deep swamp.  The interior of the keep is a deep shaft with a circular stair that goes all the way to the roof.  The place is infested with frogs, toad, newt and other, less pleasant things.  At night, the strange lights in the swamp are mirrored in the black water at the base of the central shaft, and the odd piping of the swamp inhabitants almost seems to form chittering voices.

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!

D&D Next Playtest 3 - Asking "Why?"

We played a 2 1/2 hour session of Reclaiming Blingdenstone last night.  There was one combat encounter.  It was a tough one, and I'll go into why in a bit - but it was also right at the beginning of the session and relatively short.  Maybe 30 minutes all-in.  The rest of the session was pretty much all role-playing.  Which was AWESOME.

The session started with a random event "ROUS" - giant rats invading the storage palisade.  The party led the charge down the stairs and were immediately ambushed by 12 cave rats and 2 dire rats.  This was BY FAR the toughest fight I've done in Next.  If you don't have area-effect spells, minions can be a real handful, and rats can reinforce each other, gaining bonuses to hit.  Additionally, most characters don't have multiple attack options, so missing can really hurt.

Fortunately, some solid healing, a brave charge to the front/burning hands combo by the mage and some skilled use of expertise dice by the fighters (both of them used expertise dice only for damage reduction, and it may have been a TPK if they hadn't), and the day was won.  Hordes of light baddies can be a real issue - far more so than in 4E due to a more limited economy of actions and Vancian spellcasting - plus the party hadn't rested up after clearing the Town Center, so they were low on spells and slightly dinged up.

After the initial fight, that the players spent most of the session exploring various parts of Blingdenstone and talking to a lot of NPC's.  There was one turning point moment in the session where Briddick, an NPC the characters have had some amusing conversations with, casually mentions to them "I heard you gave the crown of Blingdenstone to Kargien.  Why'd you do that?"

The silence was immediate.  I could hear a pin drop.  I couldn't see their faces, but I know they were all thinking the same thing... "Why DID we give him the crown?"  followed by, "wait - not giving him the crown was an option?" and, "he gave us the quest, didn't he?"

One of the players responded with, "Well, he asked us to get it for him, and we just thought..."  and then he trailed off.  Briddick shrugged and said "Oh well, maybe it won't turn out that badly.  We can't get it back from him now, anyways."

And from that point on, the party was off like a hound on a scent.  They started asking Briddick and the other NPC's they met questions. They asked about Kargien, about what the gnomes thought of him, about the history of the expedition. They mapped relationships and identified who supported Kargien and who didn't.  They asked questions about lore and elemental planes and went and learned a lot about the gnome political situation.

They role-played.  It was great.  I thing we all had a ton of fun, and my cheat-sheet really helped - giving me quick prompts about what each NPC was like and what they wanted.

By the end of the session, the party talked to the Pechs, found out about the Boon and the Bane and got a little political intrigue started.  Since Kargien is hostile to the Pechs, and the party wants their help, and the Pechs want the gnomes to let them continue to live in Blingdenstone, the party had to find a way around Kargien.  Fortunately, they now knew that Gurmadden and Henkalla generally opposed Kargien, so they put the plan to coexist with the Pechs to Gurmadden, who got Pingtu, a general supporter of Kargien, but practical and influential gnome onside.  The plan should push through, allowing the party to enlist the active help of the Pechs in getting rid of Ogremoch's Bane.

The next order of business seems to be to scout out Entemoch's Boon and clear out the kobolds in the Wormwindings, so I better get that part of the upgrade done, as that chapter has some serious problems as-presented.