Monthly Archives: June 2015

RPGs

May Mythoard Review

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I received my May Mythoard on Saturday, but have been very busy. My weekend was full of lawn care and gardening, and this week has been crazy busy with work. I got pictures when I opened it, but haven’t written it up until now.

Work greatly slowed down today, so my energy level and general enthusiasm to concentrate on anything is still here. My last post in my scheduled posts ran out yesterday, so the timing is perfect!

Group Shot
Group Shot

A monster token of a Lich, I think. These aren’t my thing, but the art is cool and it’s a magnet. You’re not supposed to be able to see the surface of your refrigerator, right?

Monster Token
Monster Token

The Wombat Notepad is tiny! It is two inches by two and a half inches, with 16 pages. I like the cool skull and crossbones graphic. I am not sure how practical such a small pad would be. It is well made but is just not my thing. If a tiny notebook is what you’re after, then this is it.

Wombat Notepad
Wombat Notepad
Wombat Notepad
Wombat Notepad

Ideas for doors. I don’t know that I would have bought this if I saw it at my FLGS. It has some interesting ideas. It has cards for doors, traps, and special. Of course, it says that it requires the Pathfinder RPG to use the cards. I take it that Pathfinder has very specific rules for doors. One can easily take the ideas in this deck and use it for any game. I’ll go through this in detail later, but I am sure it will add some variety to the doors placed in different location in my games.

How many doors can you describe?
How many doors can you describe?

How did they know I didn’t have enough dice! I like the color. My mom would approve, red was her favorite color. After the recent video about testing the balance of dice, I wonder….

Chessex Red Dice
Chessex Red Dice

The Blessed Alehouse Tavern is a continuation in the series of the Mythoard setting. This half-page stiff card stock has a description, 3 NPC’s and a d12 rumor table on one side and a map of the tavern on the other. Unlike the last two Mythoard’s this one is not hole punched. The tavern map would be marred if it were punched since the art goes all the way to the edges. Without the holes, one has to have a notebook with pockets or other means to carry it securely.

This is a cool tavern that would work in any small village, and is a good example for others to come up with ideas for their own taverns in other locations.

Tavern!
Tavern!

+Jame’s Spahn’s White Box Omnibus softcover. I won a PDF of this on an RPG podcast for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day.

I wrote a favorable review of the PDF and find that the book is well made and easily a handy resource for the table. Real old school is being able to game without electricity. 😉

White Box Omnibus
White Box Omnibus

I am really liking these old school magazines! This issue has 408 Elven names and their meanings from The Silmarillion. I like lists like this. My brother, Robert, made a handwritten list of his own from various books by Tolkien so players could make up their Elven and Helf-Elven character’s names. It was also used for him to generate NPC’s. I think I typed up a copy myself. If I can find that copy, I will compare it to this list.

Dungeoneer #18
Dungeoneer #18

This month’s Mythoard had more things that I am likely to use in a real game, or to give me ideas to use in a real game, than some of the stuff from last month.

RPGs

Old Characters As NPC’s

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You might be thinking of your characters get to a certain level in the game and retire to become famous NPC’s for future players and characters to encounter or hear tales of them.

However, what I want to think about for a bit, it using YOUR old characters as the NPC’s in YOUR campaign/world. How many of us have had perfectly good characters that you roll up and get to playing and maybe get to play in only 1 or two sessions before the group falls apart? Perhaps you manage to play in a lot of sessions and only gain a few levels. I have several of my more well-liked character’s sheets.

I have long thought of using them in my game. Some of them could make a cameo appearance, as their personalities would make for an interesting encounter in a town, dungeon, or other odd situation. Others might be NPC’s that have information the players can use, or might take advantage of or rob the characters.

Some of them could be thrown across the dimensions and just make a quick appearance as window dressing or a maguffin/red herring.

Some of my past characters did not have well-defined qualities, or only certain qualities that can still be useful for NPC’s. Why not take the creative energy you used to create those characters and use them to bring in whole cloth a new NPC, or borrow bits and pieces to make similar NPC’s. It can’t hurt to borrow NPC’s from all the DM’s you’ve ever experienced. I know I borrow the way my brother portrays hill giants. “Aw’rite, what ya got, we’e here ta loot ya.” As they menacingly tap a hug club in their hand.

Being a good DM/GM is taking ideas from all your experiences from TV, movies, books, and the rest of life to add a sense of life to the game. Why not include your past characters in the mix?

RPGs

Getting Ready To Play, Or Not

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I just get disgusted that I don’t get things where I can run a game. I started the process of getting my ducks in a row to run a campaign on Roll 20 about 16 months ago, but never got the campaign ready. Now that it is warm here in Michigan, I want to spend time outside, so I am not sure when I will make it ready. It doesn’t help that I have ideas for other genres of RPG’s in addition to my original plan of an online AD&D campaign.

I have my campaign world for AD&D that my sons and others play in.  My idea is to roll back the clock for the online game to use the scenarios I put my face to face players through. I require a certain level of preparation to make me comfortable for the players to go off the “rails”. I can ad lib quite well, so the issue for online play is that it is easier, in my mind to have some things defined that I don’t have to worry about with in person play.  As I write this, I find that my inability to describe what it is that I feel a need to do to get ready, makes me even wonder what I’m waiting for.

Part of the problem is that the map in my head has diverged in play from the map I started with and it gets confusing trying to mesh the two, so I need to re-do my map for the starting area. I have a lot of stuff defined, and plenty of ideas for other things, so the sandbox won’t need re-stocking for a long while. Re-setting the clock to the start of the original campaign gives me a lot of things to use, and I learned what worked and what didn’t from the first time through some things, that I could make them better. That is better in quality and my presentation to the players.

I think the only other thing I’m really waiting for is having the details of Roll20 ready to go, and decide how to proceed. Base on the weekly game I am in, the DM had an hour one on one with each player to generate two characters, a primary, and a backup for the inevitable death, so that it would not delay things to get back into play. I think I just need to decide to do it, clear the decks set a time, and advertise for players.

My other ideas for online games are for Metamorphosis Alpha, and now also White Star. I think I need to get one up and running and get all the kinks worked out on how using Roll 20 works best for me. I’m good at the player side of things with Roll 20, but I don’t use the DM tools regularly.  I have scripts for rolling all the dice to speed up my play, so I built those same scripts into my Roll 20 campaign.

So, I guess that I am out of excuses. Nice weather to be outside should be the only exception. If I end up getting stuck inside due to storms I will work to get my notes and map(s) revised.

It may not be the best time to start a game, but I will see what I can do to get one up and running by the end of the month. I think that Friday nights or sometime Saturday would be the best time for me. By that, I mean best so that I am not rushed and tired by the end of the session and am a zombie for work the next day. If I ran a game during the week, it would need to be done earlier than my Wednesday night game. I guess this is an announcement that I’ll have more fodder for posts. That’s a good thing! (I remind myself.)

RPGs

Online RPG’s vs. Tabletop RPG’s

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It is sort of like the imitation RPG feel I got from massive hours invested into LOTRO online. I rarely found a group that wanted to do some of the things I wanted to do, so I did a lot of stuff solo. The one reason I got into it is that I wanted to be able to satisfy the desire to play RPG’s, since I did not have a group. Since I got on Roll 20, I haven’t logged into Roll 20, so I don’t miss it. It is a worse time sink than tabletop RPG’s ever were, because it is so easy to lose track of time, and have lulls in the action. I had more unintentional all nighters with an online RPG or a video game than I did with a tabletop RPG. With a tabletop RPG the all nighter was usually determined before play began. It was only ever assumed because that’s the way the group liked it.

As gamers age, they go for fewer all nighters. I can still pull an all nighter, but it takes a lot longer to recover than it did a decade or two ago.

While it is possible to find a group and make friends in an online RPG, it has not been that easy. It requires so much time, that if you miss certain events, you fall behind and can’t keep up with the friends you have made. Some people spend so much time at it that they blow through regularly and have many multiples of characters in multiple accounts that have maxed out their levels. My way to play online RPG’s does not seem to fit with how most others in my experience like to do it. I like to figure things out and understand, and most players just want to blow through and get the next cool item. I want the item, but I like to have a chance to know the big picture. My desire to go at my own pace does not fit in with many others.

With tabletop RPG’s you have a more direct interaction that does not allow for one player to ignore the wishes of the others without any intervention by the DM and other players. In online games, I have seen some pretty crappy behavior, and that is not in the one on one area where you go up against other players. In a table top RPG, there are ways to keep things together. Unless the DM has no skill to keep the players on task. The awesome question of, “Are you sure?” is a good way for the DM to get the players’ attention, and the DM can easily impose consequences on unruly players that make their character feel the pain they are causing the other players. I don’t mean in a malicious or vengeful way.

The DM of my Roll 20 game does not let player thieves steal from party members, and encourages working together. This avoids hurt feelings and keeps the players moving forward.

My point is that while online RPGs can help fill a desire to game, it is not near as good as the collaboration of players interacting with the worlds designed by DM’s. Both the players and the DM learn about themselves and the world. A good DM will build things the players do into the world. The wild guesses and side chatter of the players is fertile soil.

 

RPGs

Thoughts on the OSR

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I have seen a lot of interesting ideas from various “members”
of the OSR. Some ideas I can potentially use, and some I know I will never use. Some just give me ideas to flesh out my own way of doing things. Some really cool ideas I would like to use, but can’t do it without a railroad to get current players into that situation or running a one-shot that specifically has that idea.

I suppose that really means that I need to DM more in the various ways of doing that, whether face to face or online.

The OSR is like a buffet, enough of everything to gorge on the stuff you like and ignore the things you don’t like.

It isn’t just the free stuff other share on blogs or in PDF’s, but it is buying PDFs and physical copies of modules, supplements, rules, new games. I have an abundance of stuff I keep grabbing because I might use it someday, or is an idea I want to remember.

I keep telling myself to slow down and quit adding to my accumulation of RPG materials. I have mostly done this, but finding the time to organize all the digital media so that I can truly find it when I want is the challenge. I do have a system that mostly works. But stuff I like so well that I think I would actually use it in play, I have dumped into one directory with minimal subfolders.

In some ways, just collecting ideas and imagining how they would be used in play is a fun exercise, but sometimes becomes the closest to roleplaying that I get.

I don’t think that I will ever stop gathering ideas and information, even if I never use it.

So, I guess it is about time to put this stuff to use.

RPGs

What Is The Most Impromptu Game You Have Ever Played?

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Way back in college, I don’t recall if it was over one of the breaks or over the summer. I was home at my parent’s, it was late in the evening. I was talking with my two younger brothers, when R showed up.

R was drunk, mad as Hell, and pissed at the world. He had been unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend, and got drunk before coming to our house. He had murder on his mind and in spite of his inebriation, had the idea that it was better to kill monsters in a game of D&D than actually kill someone. I think he was just looking to find someone to fight to help deal with the overwhelming feelings, and realized after he was drunk that wasn’t the way to deal with it. R’s exact words, when we opened the door were, “I need to kill something.” In a menacing tone as he swayed.

My brother, Robert was our DM, and is close enough to me in age that we were in the same grade through school. Robert is a big guy, about my height but broader. R was a year behind us in school. R is bigger than Robert. Once in high school, R said, “Hey, Robert, how’s it going?” Robert was having a bad day, and grabbed R and tossed him across the hall and R hit the lockers and slid down them landing upside down. Or so all the witnesses, include Robert and R later said. I was down the hall when this happened, so I missed the actual event. R is a pretty chill guy, and said something like, “So, having a bad day?” So it takes a lot to get R to the point of being ready for murder.

Robert acquiesced to R’s request and we set up in our usual spot in the basement/garage area. We had an old couch and some other things down there. I believe we were already there when R showed up, so my parents did not know anything about it. Our parents trusted us, new R and R would listen to them, if they had known he was there.

It was a good game as I recall, and got better as R sobered up. Robert was great at running stuff on the fly and he had a huge sandbox with lots of ideas and things planned out, and we sat down with three players, R, my youngest brother, Kent, and me. It was probably something we would have done anyway, so it fit in and worked well for the spirit of the campaign. The good guys, that’s us, were always killing orcs, and other baddies, so that’s what we did.

After it was over, Robert made clear to R not to do that again, i.e. show up drunk, pissed, and want to play. At the time, agreeing to the demand was the easiest way to keep him from getting back in his truck. (Our paternal grandfather was killed by a drunk driver when we were 6, 5, and 3, after he was almost home from driving out 3 or 400 miles to visit and meet our baby sister. So we have no tolerance for that. )

Other than the drunk part, if R had just shown up, we probably would have played anyway.

I guess there might be worse reasons to play RPG’s than as an excuse not to mangle someone. RPG’s can be therapeutic, in that sense, as you can mangle monsters and bad guys with the kind of payback you wanted to dish out to someone in real life.

That was the weirdest beginning to a session of D&D of my life. What about you?

RPGs

Finally Started Reading 5th Edition Player’s Handbook

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I finally started reading the 5th Edition Player’s Handbook I got a while back, that I first mentioned a couple days ago.

I Had a crazy buzy day following a day where I had to drive three hours, train a client all day, then drive three hours home. It was a beautiful, if a bit chilly day with sunshine. I set up my hammock and read for an hour or so after work. It was very relaxing.

I only made it to page 18, where the first race, dwarf, is discussed. I did not keep going. I was reading every word and soaking it in. there is no rush.

I was pleased that in natural light, the pages are not shiny like they are indoors in artificial light. This made the pages easier to read than  anticipated.  I found that I could read at most angles and distances that it was comfortable to hold.

So far, I like what I read. That was on Tuesday, and as I write this after my Wednesday night AD&D game, in the after midnight hours of Thursday morning, I have not read any more than the first 18 pages. There’s about 300 pages to go. This week is very busy with work, and the weekend will be busy with yard work and weeding my garden, if it isn’t raining. If it rains, I’ll definitely make time to read more. If I was not so tired I could read more. My plan is to read each page, not just blow through it. I want to read it with understanding, as I have a feeling I will play it.

RPGs

ConQuest in Kansas City

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I was going through some old game information and found a caricature of myself that I got at ConQuest 16. [I was looking for a science fiction book with information on different ships and ideas from science and TV shows and movies. I can see the cover in my mind, but don’t recall the name or author. I still can’t find it! I have moved and rearranged my home office several times over the years I have lived in this house, and didn’t find it in the box that I thought it HAD to be in…. The search continues….]

Me-ConQuest16
Me-ConQuest16

I did a search and ConQuest is still a thing and I just missed #46, so 30 years since I think was my last time there. I only went two, maybe three years in a row and that was it.

Ah, yes, from the About Page “annually on Memorial Day Weekend in Kansas City, MO.” Life happens and I forgot about the specifics, I even had trouble remembering the name of the con, until I stumbled upon this caricature. It’s on a clear sheet of plastic, like for an overhead projector. It even has a sheet of white “tissue” paper to make the image show up better.

I have family in the suburbs, where I grew up, so I might put this on the radar for next year. I might be able to go with some friends I went with back in high school/college.

In checking the site, it looks like there were no “official” OSR game slots. As I recall, gaming was not as big a deal for this con. They did have an AD&D tournament that I played in one year. I remember seeing a VHS bootleg showing the Enterprise being destroyed from The Search for Spock, before it was in theaters. It was just the explosion and not good quality. We went up to this one guy’s room who had it. He showed the first episode of Dr. Who, which was like 20 or 25 minutes, then shared this one bootleg. I remember being shocked by the destruction of the Enterprise, and thinking, they can’t do that, they wouldn’t destroy it? I don’t even remember how we found out about it, just striking up a conversation, I think. I always wondered how someone who knew a guy that knew a guy, who knew a guy with access to a guy who knew somebody or something. How many of these leaks were real leaks, and how many were pre-internet astroturfing? The world may never know….

RPGs

AD&D Manuals Online

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WotC has gone back and forth with the availability of the core manuals, and others, for AD&D since they re-released the PDFs after all the hullabaloo a few years ago when some people put the PDFs online for all to take without the copyright holders getting their cut. Many agree that WotC overreacted, but a year or two later, they relented.

When they re-released them, they made them available on a new site affiliated with OBS, D&D Classics. All the materials you buy at Drive Thru RPG, RPG Now, and D&D Classics all share a common library, and once you buy them, you can download them whenever you want, even if those titles are no longer for sale.

I like AD&D, it is my preferred, go-to RPG. I want to be able to get others interested in AD&D, or parts of it. Those involved in the OSR know about how great a resource the Dungeon Master’s Guide is. There are only so many hard bound copies available, so without a means to get a legal PDF, people do without, or break the law. While the DMG and the Monster Manual are not needed for players, it is difficult to have players that don’t have access to the Player’s Handbook.

OSRIC and other clones are close enough to AD&D that you can get by without the original rules, but there are differences to be aware of.

For in-person play, it is not an issue, as I have multiple copies of the Player’s Handbook. I also add to my collection by buying all the 1e PH’s I see when I visit my FLGS. With online play, one needs players with their own copy of the PH or OSRIC or pick another clone for the rules.

I understand that 5e is the current latest and greatest, but I would like to be able to run things in an online game and have legal access for my players. I’m not going to make available my copy of the Player’s Handbook, because it has my name and account number on it. Right now, 3e is available as PDFs, and the AD&D 1st Edition books other than the big three are available.  Until the Player’s Handbook is available, I will make do with OSRIC.

I also would like to get Chainmail and the OD&D PDF’s. I’d buy the OD&D wood box reprints, if I could find one priced at the level that it came out. WotC’s website is not a commerce site, you can’t buy direct from them, at least not that. I’ll just have to make do with clones, like Delving Deeper.

EDIT – As Requested, here are the links to the OBS sites for obtaining manuals and modules. Just search for the one you want.

DrivethruRPG – http://www.drivethrurpg.com/index.php

RPGNow – http://www.rpgnow.com/index.php

D&D Classics – http://www.dndclassics.com/

EDIT – in 2015 WotC released the PDFs for OD&D and Chainmail in 2016.

RPGs

Fate/Fudge Dice

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I had to run up to the big name hardware store just over a week ago to get some stuff for a home project. On my way, I had to pass my FLGS. I decided to stop in and picked up some new dice.

I really do mean to stop buying new dice, but Fate/Fudge dice are basically the only RPG related dice I did not have. [Just wait, someone will point out some other type of die I haven’t heard of….] They are easy enough to emulate with d6’s, but losing the need to think about what two numbers are what result, +/-/0, is a plus.

I’ve been watching Red Dice Diaries’s  Fate series on YouTube, where he explains various features of Fate, and it intrigues me. It removes the need for leveling and training, and your character already knows some cool stuff. I have a free PDF of the rules, but have yet to make time to read them.

I don’t know if I will ever play Fate. I know that Roll20 supports Fate dice, so it has a certain amount of popularity.

Fate dice can also be used in other RPG’s when you need to quickly generate three choices. For example, if you are chasing a goblin in a dungeon to stop him from alerting the other goblins. If there is an intersection, does the goblin go straight, or pick right or left?

Rather than a random encounter that appears out of nowhere, the DM could have a monster or group of goblins that are in room X in the dungeon when the characters arrive. Use the Fate dice to determine which way they go if and when they leave that room. It might be a bit more work for the DM, but it adds an interesting variation. There will only be an encounter with this monster or group, if the players are close enough to attract the attention of same.

If you are generating a random dungeon, city street map, or paths in a forest, this can help you decide which direction to continue generating first.

Very simple reaction rolls, positive, negative, or meh, no need for a chart. Roll one die if it should be a 33.333% chance of a given result, or roll more dice and determine possible variations on just how positive a positive reaction is. For example, roll the standard four Fate dice and get four pluses, and that’s an overwhelming positive reaction. Roll four blanks and it is the grandfather of all meh.

Using a single Fate die with another die roll can get more out of that roll. 1d6 could now be 0-7, if you use the + as adding one and the – as subtracting one, and the blank as zero. This gives two more options to any die. With the d6 example, there are 8 possibilities, 0-7, so a d6 can emulate a d8. With a d10, one can emulate either a d12 or a d30. With d% you can get 102 options, or use the Fate die as a modifier for 1-100, or add 100, or add 200.

The trinary options of yes, no, and maybe make an interesting option. How many syllables in an NPC’s name? How many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months until an NPC show up?

As with any other single die, you can come up with all kinds of uses, as many have come up with d8, d12, d20, and d30 tables, or all the dice tables, or dice drop generators.

I like the challenge of trying to figure out ways I could use various dice, and seeing the ideas of others. Whether or not I actually use the idea in a game, just having the exercise helps me to think of possibilities I might not have considered otherwise.