Monthly Archives: February 2015

RPGs

Quad Ruled Desk Pads

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Back in the mid to late 80’s I bought a quad ruled desk pad from an office supply store. That was back when desk pads and pen and paper were still the mainstay of business. I have only one sheet from that desk pad that holds the map to the town for Griswald, the longest running character I have played, who is now, essentially retired from play.

I don’t know what happened to the rest of the pad. I used it for mapping out a Boot Hill area, and such things. I think that pad may have been one of the things I lost in the water leak incident, but I don’t recall.

I have in the last few years tried to find such a pad in stock at an office supply store, but no go. I would have to special order or order online. If you search for quad ruled desk pad you will find them. They run a little under $20 each.

I like using them to map out large cities. I am a visual person and like to be able to see them. In my campaign, there are ten ancient cities of a fallen empire. I have taped together 8.5 x 11 quad ruled graph paper for a rough map of the one closest to the action of the current group of players. Having a bigger single sheet would simplify things and make it easier to fold up and get out of the way.

I also like he idea of using them for a megadungeon. Who doesn’t want to design a megadungeon? I think I started to do so way back in the day, but it is lost material.

This all comes to mind as I ran across Peter Regan’s most recent Kickstarter for a Dungeon Desk Pad, over at Oublette Magazine. It is an interesting idea. I am trying to avoid new Kickstarters for the financial responsibility end of it, but man is this one hard to resist. Personally, I prefer a full-size desk pad of grids, but this idea is interesting. My desk pad pages are 16 inches by 22 inches, slightly smaller than the A2 standard. The Dungeon Desk Pads are 16.53 inches by 11.69 inches, which is the A3 standard. The other issue is that Peter is UK based so overseas shipping adds to costs, etc. So far, I have only backed US-based Kickstarters, mainly because I have not had interest in others that were not based in the US. I know that Peter has a good track record, thus hitting the funding goal, and stretch goals are reasonable and fit with the base project.

I was also intrigued by an article that Peter shared that of Ian Livingstone of Games Workshop [former link: http://unpluggedgames.co.uk/2015/02/13/games-workshop-the-inside-story-part-one/] still has his first dungeon on a desk pad on his desk. You can save this photo and zoom in to be able to read the room descriptions. It would be easy to use this for a quick dungeon for your next session.

Ian Livingstone Deskpad Dungeon
Ian Livingstone Deskpad Dungeon

This motivated me to get the rough map of Helmsdale, Griswald’s town, and share it here. The quick story on this town. My brother, Robert,the DM determined that for Griswald to be a half-elf, it made sense for the human to come from a place near the Elven Kingdom. The hillsmen in his campaign are based on the Scottish clans. They live in a series of hills called Carbaen Moor. Griswald is a Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User and we rolled his age. I believe 45 years old, so the backstory is that the hillsmen had a civil war where the Buchanan Clan Kicked the Stewarts out of their territory and became king. They did not maintain control of the Stewart territory so it became infested with Orcs and worse.

Griswald’s father was a duke, and as far as Griswald knew, he was the true heir to the throne. He later learned that the grandson of the king and the grandsons of the dukes higher in precedence had their own band of outlaws called the Red Arrows. They had red fletchings (feathers) on their arrows. Griswald joined up with them, and through creative use of magic and bluff developed a reputation beyond their actual abilities. Tameus, the true king, decided it was time for war. Through lots of favors owed and other factors and army big enough to challenge the Buchanan’s was raised, and while outnumbered by the Buchanans, magic and Elven cavalry defeated them. After reclaiming the kingdom, there was a massive earthquake that devastated most of the kingdom and the old Stewart lands. Since the orc tribes in the Stewart lands bordering the former Buchanan lands were hurt as bad as the humans, Griswald decided to take back his ancestral lands. With the help of a small force of mercenaries and a PC wizard and his own henchmen – two fighters and three magic users, the orcs where driven out.

The town is in a valley of a ring of hills. It has a ditch 30 feet wide and 20 feet deep. The earthquake reduced the walls. Griswald rebuilt a smaller town with an Elven temple, the price of the Elven troops. This works for Griswald as he is a cleric of the Elven moon diety, Isil-nar. There is also the ducal palace and homes for troops and workers and farmers. Outside the walls is an inn, The Merchant’s Delight. The merchants like Griswald, since he does not tax them as heavily as the orcs. He also built a gatehouse at the only way across the ditch.

The two biggest orc tribes were not hurt by the earthquake, and were consolidating their control over the remnants of the orc tribes Griswald had not yet eliminated. These tribes did not like this upstart half elf moving in, so they moved to invade and take him out. Griswald has a crystal ball so he looked for the leaders of the invaders and took Alim, his highest level magic user henchman to teleport to these troops on the march to take them out. While the two most powerful magic users in town, Griswald 10th fighter/10th cleric/11th magic user and Alim, 10th level magic user were gone, the other orc tribe got past the wall across the valley to the south and surrounded the town. Griswald and Alim mangled the rear guard of the larger force and were gone until morning. This was put on hold for 15 years, until we made it work to finish the scenario. Robert wanted to resolve it so the other players would know what happened, as they are ten or more game years past this point in time.

The orcs surrounding the town set up a catapult and started battering the walls. They also attacked the gatehouse with 50 men that were the troops of Logan, a PC who was killed, but the men stayed with Griswald. The gatehouse was cut off from the rest of town and the 30 or so cavalry on hand tried to get through, but were routed and nearly all of them were killed. The archers on the walls of town made long range shots at the orcs around the gatehouse, and nearly exhausted all the available arrows. The gatehouse fell. The high priest of the temple cast insect plague in the area around the catapult to delay the battering. By the next morning the high priest rested and relearned insect plague and cast it again. Somewhere in here, we had a two year delay of getting together to wrap it up, but we finally finished it.

Finally when the time line in town caught up to them, Griswald and Alim read teleport from their travelling spell books and returned to the palace. Griswald and Alim had hardly any spells or scrolls left, but as a fighter with protection from normal missiles, Griswald could mount the walls and fight off the invaders. Finally enough orcs were killed that their morale broke. I don’t know if I ever got a full count of the number of dead orcs, but the image in my mind is of The Battle of Roake’s Drift from the movie Zulu. Thankfully, it was not The Battle of Islandawana.

On this map each square = 40 feet. I found that the width of the squares is the same as the distance between the lines on a standard 3 x 5 index card. Index cards were handy for measuring ranges in the battle. We used a few miniatures, but was mostly scribbles on the map.

Every time an orc was killed we yelled, “Oh no! They got Grignak!” The inspiration for Grignak comes from Galaxy Quest.

First the map of the “north” of my brother’s campaign. This is one half of a TSR hex mapping paper, with the Willingham cover. The other half is the “south”. Only one player has been off this map. It is 10 mile hexes. This is a photocopy. I did the coloring. Robert used the photocopier to enlarge and zoom in in the following images. These are pictures and not scans. You still get a hint of my brother’s artistic talent here.

The Stewart Lands shows the fiefs of the various Stewart Dukes.

The North
The North
Carbaen Moor
Carbaen Moor
Stewart Lands
Stewart Lands
Griswald's Hex
Griswald’s Hex

Below shows the ring of hills with an opening in the hills to the North West and South. The rectangle in the center is where the town goes.

Detail Griswald's Lands
Detail Griswald’s Lands

The post it note was added to complete the circle for the area of effect of insect plague. That spell is one of the ultimate battlefield spells if you can buy a high priest ten minutes (one turn) to cast it.

This is in pencil on 20+ year old paper with poor lighting.

Helmsdale
Helmsdale
Inner Town
Inner Town
Insect Plague
Insect Plague

I am curious if there are any other desk pad sized maps of towns, dungeons, space ships, etc. That would be an interesting gallery.

RPGs

Locks

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A Flickr post of a picture of the Darien Chest on the OSR Community Page got me to thinking about locks in FRPGs and I decided to write about them. My father was a locksmith, so I have some knowledge of this. Dad ran his shop out of the garage. I remember many cold and frozen nights going out to one of the truck stops out by the interstate to help some traveler who locked their keys in their car or broke their key in the ignition. Many locksmith tools require a fine touch or are small enough that gloves get in the way. Ice cold metal on bare skin in the middle of a snowstorm in January is not fun. I would have rather held too hot to touch metal in a hot and humid car in July with sweat in my eyes.

If you think weather doesn’t matter in a game, imagine a thief encountering a fancy lock that requires all his skill and his fingers are numb from the cold. Would you give the thief a negative modifier? Would you let the thief, if the player thought of it, warm his hands with a torch or lantern to negate the effect? What about a lingering Wall of Ice spell? It gives off a lot of cold and in AD&D a falling/breaking Wall of Ice causes damage like an Ice Storm. It would also cause a room and any metal, including locks, tools, and hands to be cold.

Locks prior to the industrial age, with its uniformity and interchangeable parts meant that no two locks were identical without a massive amount of effort on the part of the locksmith. Thus, picking locks is a new experience for each one encountered. Locks were of iron and perhaps brass. Iron locks tended to be bigger with less fine mechanisms. The use of brass in locks lead to smaller locks and keys, but it is only industrialization that makes the abundance of small and secure locks that we have with us today. Prior to industrialization, only the rich could afford locks. How many peasants have a lock other than a bar on the door? Locks could be made out of any material, wood, plastic, glass, metal, etc. I once made a crude lock with Legos, but it was far from secure.

Perhaps the same locksmith will use a similar design, but barring a lot of time to make them identical, there would still be some variation. Also as a locksmith becomes more skilled and refines that skill over time, the flaws and weaknesses in older designs will be addressed. Students of the same locksmith would show that influence, but the master would point out the most obvious flaws, perhaps reserving his best ideas to give him an edge. Students that exceed the master would have better locks.

Keys or means of opening the locks would be varied. There could be a combination of dials, like modern safes, or knobs, buttons, slides, or switches. Keys could look like we think of skeleton keys, or could have a variety of shapes and features to disguise their true nature and means of releasing a lock. That would be the strictly mechanical and technological means.  There could be traps incorporated into a mechanism on a chest, door, or other item to be secured. Traps could be merely mechanical and designed to frighten, draw attention, wound, or even kill. In addition to mechanisms, there could be various poisons to incapacitate/capture or flat out kill any thief, depending on the nature of the contents or anticipated contents to be secured.

In a fantasy setting, there would be magical means. A Wizard Lock spell is proof against all but magic or great force. Knock is a near universal key. Simply casting some spell that gives a hint of magic to confound wizards would be a neat trick, like Nystul’s Magic Aura. I’m an AD&D player/DM so I go with the names of spells that I am familiar with.

Keep in mind that a lock is used to keep others out and that lost keys are a big deal. In my online game our group found a simple small coffer with no lock, and one player went into overdrive looking for secret panels and a locking mechanism. This was a decorative item that a suspicious player latched onto the idea of more importance than necessary, and I am sure was of great entertainment to the DM. On the other hand, in AD&D, a thief can’t try to pick a lock he has failed to pick until he has gained a level. From the perspective of someone with locksmith training, that is not very realistic. A locksmith can keep at it until they have it. However, a thief usually does not have the luxury of trying. A thief operates by stealth and speed. Taking too long to get away with the goods is a no no. A prime example of this is stealing cars. I had my car stolen. I learned the hard way that GM cars of a certain era were easy to steal if one had the tools to bust the window and pry away the poor quality metal on the steering column. One then can use a screwdriver or even one’s finger to pull the mechanism that activates the starter. I started my car like that for a couple of years until I had the money to fix it. I had a Club, so it couldn’t be stolen. I still had an idiot try to steal it after I got the Club. They knocked out the window and then noticed the Club. SMH.

I helped my Dad with several bank jobs. Customers lost their safe deposit box keys, so we had to drill out the locks to get it open. With all the right tools and access to a safe, it is not that quick and easy as they do it in the movies. It always took us a couple of hours to drill out the locks get out the box and give it to a bank employee and then put in replacement locks.

One time, we even had to go to a nearby small airport to replace a lock for which they lost a key for a lock box built into it.

I always laugh at TV shows where the person has a single pick and picks a door. Nowadays it seems that they use a pick and a tension wrench, but I still laugh when they use them to pick a deadbolt. I’m not saying that you can’t pick a deadbolt, I’m saying you can’t pick and open one with a small spring steel tension wrench if the deadbolt is hard to turn.

Cars are not as easy to unlock as they make it appear on TV. Different model cars have different internal mechanisms and there are different variations on the tools used. Modern cars with power locks are beyond my knowledge. They were not too common when I was helping my Dad. He always said, if you can’t use the tool in a couple tries, stop so you don’t damage anything. I don’t know if that rule of thumb still applies.

Also a quick FYI – The points on your key should go up when opening the locks on your house doors. If the points/cuts on the key point down, then the lock is installed upside down and more likely to accumulate dust and dirt that fouls the pins and springs. For double-sided keys, like those for cars, it does not matter, those locks tend to have a dust cover.

I love the sign that my Dad used to have. It said lock work – $15, if you worked on it first – $50. I always got a kick out of the looks on people’s faces when they saw that sign and thought it was the real price. For some customers, it should have been.

But what does all this musing and reminiscing require? A Table! Better yet a series of related tables!

Material – 1d6 (Lock and key material are usually the same, but could be different to obscure their connection.)
1-Wood (Hard woods for strength, soft woods for decoration.)
2-Metal (copper, bronze, brass, iron, steel, mithril, adamantite, etc.)
3-Glass (clear, opaque, etc.)
4-Gems (Roll for type based on value.)
5-Mixed
6-Other (Plastic, bakelite, other high tech material in a low tech world.)

Size – 1d6
1-Tiny (Difficult for human to use, gnomes, halflings and smaller can use with ease)
2-Small
3-Medium/Average
4-Large (Difficult for gnomes, halflings and smaller to use.)
5-Huge (Difficult for humans and smaller to use. Very difficult for gnomes, halflings and smaller to use.)
6-Gigantic (Very difficult for humans and smaller to use. Without magical aid, nearly impossible for gnomes, halflings and smaller to use.)

Decoration – 1d8
1-Rough/No finish
2-Plain/Basic Finish
3-Fine/Highly Polished
4-Engraved
5-Inlaid with precious metals (brass, bronze, silver, electrum, gold, platinum, mithril)
6-Accented with gems (roll for type, or based on value)
7-Any two of 3, 4, 5, or 6
8-Any three of 3, 4, 5, or 6

Key – 1d6 (Can be same or different material from lock.
1-Skeleton Key
2-Hollow Tube
3-Rod
4-Sphere/Round
5-Standard Polygon
6-Mechanism (Turn/twist, press, slide, etc. to make some part available or more out of the way for key to function.)

Trap – 1d4
1-Noise/Alarm/Alert
2-Injure to leave a trail of blood or scent for tracking (Option to release the tracking beast, from a super friendly, but loud basset hound, to large and hungry something or other. d10 for severity)
3-Trap/Capture/Slow (Net, cage, rope, pit, sticky, stun, etc.)
4-Kill or Maim (Lethal mechanism or poison or both.)

Condition – 1d8
1-New/pristine/well oiled
2-Used but well maintained
3-Used but poorly maintained (rough, rusty, hard to turn, etc. Noisy when operating.)
4-Used but not maintained (Severe issues with normal use, in major need of expert to refurbish, chance to not lock or unlock when desired. Very noisy when operating. Chance to break or bend key.)
5-Disused but functional.
6-Disused but difficulty functioning.
7-Disused and very rusty/worn/corroded.
8-Broken (50% chance to be broken in the locked or unlocked position. What modifier is needed for a thief to unlock a broken lock in the locked position?)

Secret – 1d6 (Additional action required to enable/disable ability of key to lock or unlock. Could also be tied to disabling traps.)
1-Button
2-Lever
3-Switch
4-Knob/Twist
5-Slider
6-Combination of 1d4 of 1-5 above.

Magic – 1d6
1-Nystul’s Magic Aura
2-Magic Mouth with an obscure activation instruction, so it is likely to be in effect for decades or longer.
3-Magic Mouth designed to attract attention by giving the thief a severe talking to while waiting for the constable. (A wizard might want one to shout if someone used a Knock Spell.)
4-Wizard Lock at 3d6 level
5-Fire Trap at (For druids at 1st level plus 1d12 levels, and for magic users at 6th level plus 1d12 levels.)
6-Glyph of Warding – Typically to protect not destroy the protected item(s). Paralyzation, blinding, or draining a level. (4th level cleric plus 1d12 levels.)
7-Combination of the above. (Wizards with Magic Aura, Magic Mouth, Wizard Lock, and Fire Trap would tend to use all of them on something they wanted kept secure.)
8-Get creative. What is to stop a mad wizard from causing a Geas to be placed on the fool who dares mess with his stuff, or the high priest placing a Quest on a special object in the temple? Hold Person, Slow, Gate, Plane Shift, Teleportation, Conjure Elemental, Monster Summoning, etc. would all be ways to make it difficult for a thief or grave robber to get away with the goods.

Item – 1d6
1-Door/Gate/Cage
2-Coffer
3-Chest
4-Padlock
5-Cabinet
6-Special (What other kinds of items could be locked and how and why?)

[EDIT: You can hear this blog read on Episode 101 of Blogs on Tape.]

RPGs

Riffs On The Acronym D&D

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Here’s another alliteration post with a specific bent.

Dingoes & Didgeridoos

Ducks & Duckponds (That’s a daffy idea….)

Djinnis & Deserts (I wish there wasn’t so much sand!)

Debutantes & Desserts (Sweet topic, perhaps a bit salacious.)

Dithering & Digressing (This describes most parties trying to make a decision….)

Detectives & Deductions (As opposed to Investigators & Investigations.)

Dynamos & Dynamite (That’s a powerful combination. That’s a bad pun if you know the Greek root word….)

Dead & [Un]Dead (Yes, I cheated, it’s an exercise in creativity. How well can you do without a Thesaurus?)

Death & Damnation (Adventure in the afterlife? Sounds too hot for my taste.)

I got interrupted several times on one more that I thought would be cool, and the interruptions came just as I had the idea and before I could make a note of it. If I can remember what it was, I’ll add it. Since the string of interruptions won’t stop, I’ll call this enough….

 

RPGs

Follow Up On Jeff Perren’s GoFundMe Campaign

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I wrote about Jeff Perren’s daughter having a campaign [link broken: http://www.gofundme.com/l5d1qg] for a stair lift to move him out of assisted living and into her home back on January 31st.

In less than a week it met and exceeded the $6,000 goal.

There are still donations trickling in. I am sure with taxes, they will need at least 30% beyond the goal, unless they baked that into their estimate.

Good job gang!

RPGs

Details On The As-Needed Character Generation

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+Adam Muszkiewicz over at Dispatches From Kickassistan has his write up of what he calls “emergent characters” that I touched on in my write up of Marmalade Dog 20, and in more detail in my post about collaborative roll playing.

Adam goes into details about its origins and how it has worked in actual play from the GM side.

All I can say it, it is a blast and keeps one on their toes and revving up their off the wall ideas. After two sessions at Marmalade Dog, my character still doesn’t have hit points because he was never hit. I can imagine that it will be a nail biter if I play that character again and have to roll HP after being hit in combat.

I think that style of play works well for a con, and for the right group of regulars it could be a lot of fun. In a con game, it allows one to get up and running with a character quickly that one is more invested in than a pre-gen passed out by the GM.

As I mentioned before, Adam and I talked about this, and a GM with mastery of the rules, or a simple set of rules, like Delving Deeper, by +Simon Bull would best facilitate this style of play.

RPGs

Excellent Write Up On Marmalade Dog 20

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+Adam Muszkiewicz has a great write up over on Dispatches from Kickassistan about the OSR track at Marmalade Dog 20. Adam’s a graduate of WMU so he brings a much different perspective on this con.

Adam and some of his long time friends and others joined in on my first time as a DM for a con. They were nice and didn’t get too crazy. I am thankful that they restrained themselves, for I think I would have easily been in the deep end of the pool with concrete galoshes if that’s they way they wanted it. That would not have been a bad thing. My reactions to that would have been worth the price of admission to everyone else. I am sure that I would have eventually recovered.

We had a blast in Adam’s DCC sessions, and I was reminded of the no-holds-barred craziness of the way we played in high school, oh so many decades ago. That “What is a box?/We don’t need no stinkin’ boxes.” style of play is an eleven on the dial. It’s on par with firing off a full magazine of a Thompson or a Sten gun; fun, exciting, and over way too soon!

I would gladly play in Adam’s DCC Ur-Hadad and with that crew in any other RPG.

I am so looking forward to next year!

I can’t wait for UCon in November!

RPGs

Koplow Who Knew Dice

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Koplow is a company that only sells to retailers, so you have to order from your FLGS or online.

My FLGS only has Chessex dice, and last time I checked did not have any d30’s, so I won’t go looking for d3, d5, d7, d14, d16 or d24 from them. I did a Google search for “koplow who knew dice” and found some available on Amazon. I prefer to order locally, but I resorted to online for this.

I ordered a black [Amazon Affiliate link] and a red set [Amazon Affiliate link] of the Who Knew Dice and a body parts die to qualify for free shipping. I should get them well in advance of my next time at Roy Snyder’s every other Sunday DCC game.

I would like to see a full set of dice d4 to d30 and d% including 3d6 so they all look like they go together. If there’s anyone in the RPG industry, whether manuals, supplements, or dice – a full set of all such dice would be valuable. I know that I am not the only one who would buy them.

I really like Game Science dice and if they ever have a full set in stock, I would buy it.

Do I need to become an online dice retailer to sell full sets of dice? IF I could make enough to make it worth the hassle, I would consider it. Barring the finances needed up front to make that work, nearly anyone could do it. Perhaps there are others out there already doing that. I would prefer to support gamers serving gamers rather than a faceless corporation.

RPGs

My Wednesday Game

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I have been part of a weekly Wednesday night AD&D First Edition game via Roll20 and Google Hangouts since March, 2014. With the exception of the DM taking a two week vacation in the summer and two weeks off over Christmas and New Year’s we have met every week. I was late to one session because I was travelling for work and another session because I had to take something to my son at the hospital the day after my granddaughter was born. There are two other players that have been with the campaign since it started. Weather was a factor a few times with thunderstorms causing delays. A few times either Roll20 or Google Hangouts had technical issues, but we have kept at it.

Our session last week was the first time that one original player missed and only two of the current six players showed up. Several important decisions for group action were needed, so we decided not to play. That is an impressive track record for a weekly session to only have one session flop, and it was session 44.

The DM, John, just started a blog, Dwarven Automata, about his design process. He also wrote up one of the hexes in Tenkar’s Landing, featuring dwarven automata.

It is a true sandbox where the players can go and do whatever they want. There will be consequences and repercussions of actions that we can’t know. We just make what seems to be the best decision we can based on the limited information we have. A few times we have surprised John with some of our decisions, but he rolled with it. The party set off to go explore some ancient dwarven ruins, and keep getting ourselves sidetracked with other things. We keep getting involved in politics and being heroes, so we are our own worst enemies to getting to our main goal. We can’t do it all, but we sure try to do most of it. Actions taken in the first few sessions have had an impact on sessions numbered into the 30’s and 40’s. It is interesting to see it play out as the players get the information they need to tie it all together.

For example, my character, Thorfus Ironhand, a dwarven fighter, thought one NPC was behind some men hired to kill the party. It turned out to be a different NPC that the party did some work for, and was involved in a major plot in the city. Because of that misunderstanding, I had the party focused on the wrong person, when we should have been focused on something else. This is much like things are in real life. We see something and make assumptions based on what is before us. This has made the campaign that much more believable and immersive.

John uses theater of the mind, so the only maps are quick sketches using the Roll20 drawing tools. As with most AD&D DMs, John makes certain rolls like moving silently or checking for traps and secret doors. These rolls occur with the sound of dice rolling on his desk with our fate unknown. This is an ominous sound. The results are only revealed when a trap springs or surprise was not gained.

We also disable video so that we have the maximum bandwidth possible.

The ages of players range from a high school senior to me, and old grognard of 50, with various ages in between. We have been mostly male, with one female player for a few sessions who played a male character, making all the characters, so far, male. One player lives in England, so our 8:00 PM to Midnight EST sessions make it in the very wee hours for him. He is one of the three original players still going strong.

John gives us XP for session write-ups. These help him to know what happened, and gets the players more involved. We also get XP for writing up descriptions of NPCs and places. This helps expand our known universe and makes it easier for new players to come in and get up to speed.

We started off using weapon speeds and individual initiative rolls, but over time we dropped weapon speed and went to one roll for each side in initiative. John does it differently in that each “side” rolls for the other. That is, players roll for the monsters, and the DM rolls for the players. This is an interesting way to do it.

Other rules have changed or been clarified as we go involving a decision by John as the DM, or by discussion and mutual consensus. These changes tend towards streamlining of play.

Our two dwarven fighters are both fourth level and at the halfway point to reaching fifth level. We had one big treasure haul, but as per AD&D, we can’t go past the halfway point of the next level. We have managed to not find the big treasures that will give us more experience quickly, but are always just around the corner from a big haul, when we do something or miss something that will give us the prize and watch is fall through our fingers. The hook has been set and we are thoroughly enjoying our adventures and learning about this world. I look forward to many more sessions of play.

Here are the main points from a comment I posted to his blog:

I enjoy seeing a bit behind the curtain to explain how you reached your design decisions. I have enjoyed playing in this weekly campaign since it started.
We have narrowly avoided several TPKs and only had one character die. Your level of preparation shows as you make it all seem very seamless and manage to have things planned out for us when we take the bait for something that wasn’t bait.
I can’t wait to see more of your ideas.
Your random generators intrigue me. You explained a bit about the level of detail you have allowed yourself in one of our recent sessions. I had the impression you had these cities mapped out and NPCs detailed down to the last beggar, but you fooled us all. Well done!

RPGs

Every Other Sunday DCC Game

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I sat in on a DCC game ran by Roy Snyder. There were 3 players with existing characters and one other experienced player who was rolling up four zero level characters like I did.

We had fun and avoided any deaths so far, and had 4 combats. It is a module, the name I did not get, but so far it is off the wall and fun. I’m not used to such off the wall thinking, so it is a stretch to get up the that level of the others. It suits my sense of humor and quirkiness. I am not used to being plopped in with no clue of why we are there and winging it. This kind of role playing stretching is good for me and forces me to step it up a notch. Having four zero level characters to run made it more challenging to differentiate them, but in the 6 hours of play, I was just getting them sorted.

Two members of the party encountered two basilisk type creatures after managing excellent sneak rolls. One creature fell to a back stab, and the other got off two gaze attacks, and through a halfling being at the right place at the right time, was able to burn enough luck for them to make their saves. In our previous combats, we made some very close rolls to avoid falling off slick stairs in the side of a canyon.

I didn’t need to refer to the rules, other than a few pages in a handout from Roy, so I never referred to my tablet. I only needed a couple of dice I didn’t have, so I borrowed from other players for those few rolls. Roy mentioned some options for dice, so I will continue looking into those and try to get some ordered to arrive in time for the next session.

We had fun and I look forward to the next session in two weeks!

RPGs

My Sunday Game

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Sundays had been reserved for running my AD&D campaign with my oldest son and his girlfriend. We were playing almost every Sunday for over six months. It was a lot of fun and they both kept coming back for more.

At the end of September, they moved in with me to pay off some bills and save up for a nicer apartment because they had a baby on the way. One of the selling points my son made of their moving in with me, is that we would get to play more. We haven’t had one session since they moved in. I am OK with that, Now that my granddaughter is here, they would rather spend the time my son isn’t at work figuring out how to be a family and enjoying Nikola while she is at the tiny stage of life. This past Friday she was one month old. I don’t mind. I should have done more to flesh out my campaign.

I have thoughts of perhaps getting things ready where I can run my campaign on Roll20 with Google Hangouts. Perhaps someday I will.

Last weekend I played DCC for the first time and two of the players were Roy Snyder and Jared Randall. We had a blast playing together in Adam Muszkiewicz’s first session, and Roy and I were in Adam’s second session. Roy has a group that gets together every other Sunday, and he invited me. Since I am not gaming, I decided to join in. We meet this afternoon, so perhaps I will post a play report for tomorrow. It will be DCC, so their will be character generation. I don’t know if we are doing a funnel, or if we are starting at first level. It will definitely be interesting.

I have the DCC PDF that I got for free or low price in April of last year. I was proactive and put it on my tablet and put the Purple Sorcerer Crawler’s app on my tablet too. I also downloaded and printed the blank character sheet PDF, that has four character sheets on one page. I packed up my game bag and have it ready to walk out the door.

The only thing I don’t have are all the funky dice: d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, and D24. The d6, d10, d16, and d24 are easy to emulate with existing dice. D6/2 = d3, d10/2 = d5, d8 & d6 to emulate d16, and d12 & d6 to emulate d24. For example emulate a d16, roll a d6 and a d8. If the d6 is 1-3 add 0, if the d6 is 3-6 add 8. If I had either a d7 or a d14, I could easily emulate the other. I read online that one can use a d8 and ignore rolls of d8, but that leads to extra rolling that slows things down. I guess I can use my tablet, or borrow dice until I can snag some of my own.