I have not seen, nor tried very hard to find, a list that cross references creatures in all the add books by types. For example, all the insect or insect like creatures in MM, MM2, FF, OA, etc.
That is something I have worked on because if you have dinosaur island, you want all the dinos from all the books.
If you want an all insect dungeon with ants and thri-keen.
Slimes, molds, fungus, undead, etc.
My working lists have which book and page and hit dice. This way, I can develop areas, dungeons, and encounter tables that are level specific.
This type of index beats having to look through all the books trying to find what you want.
A Bullette can kill an entire 2nd level party in 3 rounds. I found this out because I was DM for our next session. We rotated DM and characters were played. It was my first time as DM. I REALLY wanted to have a bullette in play, so I forced an encounter and it annihilated the group. My intent was not a TPK. I was not fully aware of the power of the combat tables and how hard it was to hit and how easy it was for it to hit back. We all called a do over and I did not DM for a long time after that.
A TPK where I was a player. My brother, Robert, was the DM. Brett and I were the players. There were just the two of us. We were in a desert campaign and headed to a canyon with a cave that was ten or twenty feet off the ground. There was some sort of treasure there. Prior to setting out, we learned of a vendor at Abdul’s (Abdul’s is another story.), that had semi-automatic crossbows that could fire several shots a round. It was based on the Chinese crossbow. Some orcs were in the area and spotted us. We figured we would be OK in the cave, but there were like 20 orcs to the two of us. We became lunch because we used swords instead of the crossbows that could unload several shots per round.
I ran across this post today that reminded me that my brother, Robert, and I used the game board from Avalon Hill’s Waterloo as a star map for a science fiction space combat exploration game we made up in the 80’s.
My planet/system had the brilliant name of Erloowat, I don’t recall what Robert named his.
There were two or three games we made up back then. A Science Fiction/Space RPG we called Scout, and a space pirate game centered around ship capture/combat. I don’t recall now if our space combat game built on the rules from our space pirate game. The rules for all of them were pretty broad. The space/interplanetary war game was actually more like an RPG without a GM. We didn’t have enough rules to cover certain scenarios to make it truly playable the way we intended. I think we just played at it for an afternoon or two and it faded away.
The problem with making your own game is defining the parameters and limitations of it so that there is an agreed upon framework to make it playable without a GM or the creators on standby to deal with scenarios as they develop.
The benefit of RPGs is that you only need enough rules to build enough framework to be able to have fun, and as play develops, the players and GM work together to fill in the gaps, thus the prevalence of house rules and homebrew games that are a freankensteinian combination of multiple ideas from other RPGs and the experience of actual play and house rules. Our Scout game was just such a one. We took ideas from Traveller, Star Frontiers, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, and probably others I don’t recall to get mechanics/rules for things we had trouble fleshing out ourselves. Robert also wrote great short stories that tied into Scout. We passed them around in high school and kept asking for more. (I wish he would publish his writings, he could even do the artwork for the book covers.)
As I was writing this I recalled another RPG we had was based on Androids, I think that was more of what would be a LARP. However, we did not run around in costume, it was more a sit around and talk about things our characters did. We drew ships and different kinds of androids and robots and wrote little scenarios and stories. I don’t recall if this preceded our discovery of Blue Box Holmes Basic D&D or not. I know one guy involved moved away at some point, and I don’t recall what grade. It was spring of 7th grade we discovered D&D, I don’t recall when David moved away.
I’m not talking about characters or NPCs out for in-game revenge. This is personal, where one player does something another does not like and gets back at them in the same or a different game.
In high school, my brother, Robert, and I played in a game of AD&D. We were in the school library. A member of our group decided he wanted a Drow character, an evil Drow character, and the DM allowed it. The problem was that my brother and I had good elf characters. We did not handle it in a good way, but when our group traveled and made camp for the night, when the Drow was sleeping we killed him. Brett, the player vowed that he would kill our Boot Hill characters, because he was the GM for that. So a week or so later, at our house, when we next played Boot Hill, he made good on his word. This was the same guy who ran the high level character mentioned yesterday.
I don’t remember all the details, but the bad guy rode into town with a wagon, and whatever started the conflict,the villain won because under the tarp was a Gatling gun. It sprayed so much lead that we did not stand a chance.
As I look back on this, I see two places where this should have been handled differently.
One, the DM should have advised on an evil character running around with good characters. We were a brand new party and there was no thought to how we would work together.
Second, if we killed him in his sleep, was that really a good thing? An alignment deviation should have been in the mix.
One can argue if the morality of the good players is to kill all evil things on sight, or only after they do something harmful. The DM needs to set the tone.
I don’t recall who the DM was, but they were not very experienced.
Google+ Hangouts are a way to do group conference calls online. They can be just voice, or mix the use of video and voice.
Roll20 is a Virtual Table Top (VTT). It works in your web browser, so it can work on a computer, laptop, tablet, or even a phone. From my experience, I prefer a larger screen. The display has an area that is the “table-top”. It can hold fancy maps of terrain, buildings, dungeons, etc, or just a grid to keep track of marching order or positions of objects, players, and monsters. Roll20 has integration with Google+ Hangouts. You accept the invitation to the G+ Hangout and sign in when it starts. You also sign into Roll20 when it is time. I signed into Roll20 early, so I don’t know if joining the hangout would take me to Roll20 or not.
I have seen YouTube videos of past Google+ Hangouts, and have had invitations to them before, but never had the time to get involved in one. It does not require the use of video. That it only useful if you want to see the other players. If you don’t have a webcam or don’t want to be on video, you just need a microphone so others can hear you, and decent speakers so you can hear them. A headset with a microphone would work, as it appears some other players were using. The nice things about using G+ Hangouts is that it showed who was speaking, either by the video of the speaker going to the center of the screen, or showing the picture displayed by those not using video. Having the hangout window open covers part of the screen. It is not required for it to be open, but I found it helpful to have a window just big enough open to see who was speaking. That made it more like a face-to-face session. If you have two monitors, it would work better to have it on one screen and the VTT on the other.
I have a Roll20 account, it is free to use, but for a fee, you can get some more bells and whistles. Those are not necessary to run or join a game. I have the basic, free account. I have gone through the Roll20 tutorial about how to do things. You can display different maps, with a grid. You can use tokens for players, monsters, and items. There is a library of free tokens and maps, and you can upload your own. For a fee, you can get specialized tokens and maps that give you more options. It also features a dice roller that just says what dice was rolled, pus any modifiers and gives the result. It has an option to show 3-D dice that roll across the VTT, but it is slow and slows down the game. To roll, you either have to type a command in the chat window, or set up a macro with frequently used rolls. For example, “/r d20” rolls a d20. As a GM, you can have multiple Roll20 campaigns/games, and as a player, you can participate in multiple games. There are multiple layers that can be displayed and the GM can see things on the GM only layer
The game I participated was Vault of Time hosted by the founder of the Friday Night D&D: Next Google+ Community. As the name says, it is Friday night. The game was slated to start at 9:00 PM. To play, you roll up a 10th level character using the D&D Next beta play test rules. I had signed up to the D&D Next beta at Wizards of the Coast, so I had the latest rules. D&D Next is D&D 5.0 and is slated for release this summer. This was the more challenging part of the whole thing. I rolled up a character using real dice, then I had to read through a PDF on character creations, then classes, then races, then equipment. I started about 6:30 PM and was “done” with my character about 8:30. I am old school, so I know how to roll up a character and get started in short order. D&D Next can be played that way, but it has been influence by all version s of D&D. I have played D&D Basic and 1st Edition, and had minor exposure to 2nd edition. I have no exposure to D&D 3.0, 3.5, or 4.0. As I understand it, the later versions of D&D, i.e. 3.0 and later, have all the feats, skills, and abilities that are not part of D&D or AD&D. I did not have time to read and understand what choices to make for feats, etc. so I had as close to an AD&D dwarven fighter as imaginable.
Playing the game.
I signed in to Roll20 early and there were only two other players. One invited me to play poker. Roll20 can simulate a deck of cards for situations that require use of cards. The actual game session started about ten minutes late. The GM had been sick last week and cancelled last week’s session. For this week, he had not had time to get maps, etc. uploaded to Roll20, so we just used a grid over a graphic of a stone floor. We have tokens with the names of each player to show marching order, etc. The VTT has a whiteboard type feature, so the GM could draw the rooms and doors we encountered. This game is just a group of players who get together and play through the same dungeon, and my character was just there, no explanation, etc. (I don’t have a problem with this, as the idea was for me to learn and have fun.) The regulars in this game may have started at tenth level, but had over 100 hit points, I only had 71. They were like 20th level or something. The all male group of players were in the 30 to 50 age range, give or take. There were several wizards in the group, and they had all kinds of spells going all over the place. My understanding is that you can play D&D Next with a subset of the rules to be closer to D&D/AD&D, or have all the bells and whistles and make a first level character that is a demi-god. I definitely see why later versions of D&D have been described as emulating video games like WOW or LOTRO. As a basic fighter, my character was only good for taking up space, moving, and fighting. I ended up being the only character in the session to take a hit, and lost 16 hit points, but was healed at the end of the damage inducing encounter of 15 hit points.
I deferred to other players a lot as I was there to learn how this online role playing format worked. I found a group of guys that reminded me a lot of other groups of gamers I have played with over the years. There was a lot of non play related banter, and meta-gaming. The players spent a lot of time trying to decide what to do in some situations, sort of like my ex and I got into when we were trying to decide what restaurant to go to. I kept expecting the DM to have a random encounter come and give us trouble for dawdling. There were no random encounters. We could have done a lot more exploration of the dungeon/caverns we were in, but were caught up in lots of back and forth over what should have been quick decisions. There was no elected leader, and the DM did not enforce order or keep us focused on the game. There was very little role playing of people speaking as their characters. That’s ok, I can play either way. I did try to roll play my dwarf in a way to move things along.
Our first obstacle was a slow moving underground stream about five feet deep and twenty feet wide. We spent 20 or so minutes trying to decide/figure out what to do. The next obstacle was a magic archway with an ominous inscription that could be interpreted as something good or bad. No one wanted to go through it, but we spent 20+ minutes with the wizards arguing about how to dispel a permanent magic item they had no clue what it did. Finally, we went the other way and the next ominous sign only delayed us for about five minutes. We went to a room with a brass door and opened it to find a room with two doors on the north, east, and west walls, total 6 doors. We started working out way around the room and two rooms had two wights we easily slew in two or three rounds, two more rooms had four juju zombies that took a little longer. The DM said that he levelled up the zombies so they would challenge us. I was hit in the second of those rooms. The next to last door had a passage. We decided to check out the other room and it had a wight. We slew the wight and ended the session about 1:30 PM. The DM said we each got 28,775 experience points. That is enough to put me to 11th level. The DM said he did not divide the XP. In earlier rooms we did find a +1 sword and a ring of levitation and one pair of wights was guarding a potion of flying. Not dripping with magic or treasure, but XP wise seemed pretty easy. What is odd is that I needed less than 28,000 XP to go from 10th level to 11th level. All classes use the same experience point advancement chart. The DM rolled actual dice and was on video, so we saw him look down to roll. It reminded me of DMs rolling their dice behind the screen.
My Take:
I had fun learning about the online role playing tools and playing and laughing with a group of gamers. D&D Next is not my thing, at least not all the feats, etc. The players tell the DM what they can or can’t do and what they need to roll to do things. I think the DM should set the parameters. There are so many options for a simple fighter, that it felt like I was playing a spellcaster in AD&D. A fighter should not be so difficult to create or play, but that’s because I learned how over 30 years ago.
As for the tools of online roleplaying I like what I see. Google+ is just the means of gathering together, and Roll20 is the table where we gather round. Roll20 is flexible enough to allow just a blank grid to show marching order, terrain/dungeon, objects, and monsters. You don’t need miniatures or a fancy map to play, but if you want fancy, you can do it. For the harried DM who is short of preparation time, I can see the value of using it to show basic positions and for rolling dice.
I have an AD&D/OSRIC game I plan to participate in on Wednesday to see how another DM does it.
I will do a few more sessions to get familiar with things before I dip my toes in the water to run my own game(s).
Here is a picture of what we saw when fighting the wight in the last room before play ceased.I forgot to mention that one of the wizards created a zombie from the remains of one of the juju zombies. No one seemed to have an issue with that, so alignment did not make a big difference in this game.
Friday Night D&D Next
[EDIT] I forgot to mention sound. Roll20 has a feature to allow you to play background music and sounds. There is a collection of royalty free music, and you can upload your own. There are also other music/sounds available if you join their fee plan.
During our play another player was playing music. I don’t have a problem with music during play if it complements what is going on. I found that in the environment of a Google+ Hangout it was distracting from play. It was not my kind of music, I’m not sure what it was, and to me, did not fit. Also it was louder than it should have been at times. A way to put it in the background would have helped.
The other issue was on my end. I live across the street from the house next to the train tracks going through town. We have about five or six streets from one end of town to the other that cross the tracks. The Federal law requires the horn to be blown at each crossing. I am used to it and tune it out, so I was then conscious of it and muted the sound when there was a train. I will have to use a microphone that I can limit what it picks up so I don’t blast out the others and have to mute my microphone to avoid interfering with play. This is a drawback to running a game of my own.
Two new 1st level characters, one ran by my brother, Robert, the other I ran. All I recall is that my character was a magic-user. Robert posits to the DM that his character’s goal is to eventually go after this high level character.
The DM tells the player of the evil high level character about this. There is no way for the high level character to even know who we are. Let alone know that we want to set our long range goals on him.
Next session , the DM says that the high level bad guy shows up in town looking for us. He trashes us and the only thing my 1st level M-U can do is shoot a magic missile in his eye before he kills me.
I don’t recall now if the revenge story coming tomorrow was before or after this.
I don’t know which blog I ran across this. The way the blog that mentioned this described it was a new campaign in 24 hours.
As I look at the website it looks like it was only active for 2003, 2004, and 2005. I’m not sure why the owner of the domain would keep paying for the domain name and web hosting if it was not an active contest.
At one point their was a Yahoo Group, but it no longer exists.
Looking at the 2005 entries, it looks like people designed whole new games and rules instead of campaigns based around existing rules. Looking at their rules it is about designing a whole new RPG.
24 hours to design a new RPG? We need more RPGs? What niche does not have rules? The basic mechanics of dice for character stats and dice to do stuff and lists of equipment for the genre, and mechanics for how it all works can easily be done by taking what you like from existing games you have and make your own homebrew game. My brother and I and our gaming group did that in high school 30+ years ago.
Are any of these RPGs doing a new take for rules? Are stats different? If you have stats, can you come up with names that are not synonyms for stats in existing games?
For me, I don’t need another game. I wouldn’t put time to develop another game, unless I thought I had an idea I could market and sell.
Designing a campaign in 24 hours, I can see the value in that. Whether we do a 24 hour marathon, or 24 one-hour sprints, it could be a way to force oneself to focus on designing a new campaign, or new area of an existing campaign. I can see having different categories: 24 hour marathon, 24 1-hour sprints, 12 2-hour sprints. Set a timer for those sprints and an alarm for the marathon. There would be a total honor system.
I know that I have the ability to pull an all-nighter, but my thinking gets fuzzy after awhile and I would lose the ability to focus. It is not the same as running a game session that runs all night. There are notes to guide and ad-lib is not the same as designing a campaign that makes sense/fits together.
The idea of a 24 Hour Campaign Design sounds like a monumental contest to organize. I know I don’t have the time to run a contest. I know I wouldn’t pull an all-nighter for this. With one or two hour sprints it could still take a couple weeks to do this. Perhaps a 24 hour sandbox design using one of the sandbox design structures from Bat in The Attic or West Marches would be a way to structure it.
For all I know, there has already been some sort of 24 hour campaign or sandbox design blogathon or contest in the past.
Interesting ideas. Not sure any of them are my thing.
Pick a game–any old rules will do. Stick to one set though.
Dream up a campaign setting–it can’t be anything you’ve previously posted, published, or talked about before. It doesn’t have to be “new” per se, just new to the rest of us.
Create a new blog–yes a new URL and everything, but use your current account so we can tell it’s still yours. Name if after your campaign settting.
Write 30 posts in 60 days. (C’mon, that’s less than 1 a day!) You have just that long to outline the major key elements (setting, monsters, rule modifications, classes, races, etc.). This is straight-up worldbuilding using elements you’d normally talk about on your home blog. But here, you’ve got economize and decide what the most important elements are. Here’s some general guidelines:
30 POSTS TOTAL
13 on monsters or villains, one type or one specific individual per post (so “hobgoblins” is one, a “kaiju” is another, “Vader’s granny” another, etc.)
4 on special treasure, a lost artifact, weapons, vehicles, etc., however you choose to parse.
3 on setting, this is all aesthetic so you’ll want to focus on places, maps, NPCs, the way magic works, how the local ruling space authority, uh…rules the galaxy, etc.
3 on classes with each dedicated to a separate player class.
2 on house rules, specifically how your campaign either strays, modifies, or embellishes on your chosen rule set (posts can be as detailed as you like); carousing rules, etc. all apply here
3 on any topics you like, these help you round out the rough edges and could be additional classes, races, setting, etc.
1 intro post to set up your premise for your campaign (e.g., , declare your ruleset and acknowlege participation in the contest
1 report of actual play, which should include at least one picture, be it from the campaign or actual play; you can make this your final post with a big sign off or you can use it as a playtest, but you gotta play it at least once and record it for posterity
My Take:
I don’t like the idea of a whole new blog. A category on existing blog, yes. Whole new blog to manage/maintain, but only for two months. I don’t see the value. If you have to link it to your current blog, it can’t be to hide it from players.
I’m not sure I will be blogging on this topic. I know I won’t be any time soon. I can see the value of using the topic ideas and counts on certain topics to help build a framework for a campaign fast. I may use this for ideas, but use a NoteTab outline.
Looking at all the other entries, my attempt was hampered by three things for better quality.
I was under the effects of a confuse spell and thought the deadline for submissions was the same as that for the OSR Superstar contest. I was rushed in my error in the deadline, so I submitted a sub-par map. My only hope of winning is that the winner is picked randomly.
My printer was on the fritz so I could not print it out and work by hand. I have two scanners and multiple means of taking pictures, so that would not have been an issue.
I had trouble getting GIMP to cooperate and do what I wanted, so I went with MS-Paint. I was able to cut and past and rotate some lines, but Paint is not the quickest for that.
I started using the random dungeon generating tables in the 1st edition DMG, but ended up with lots of tunnels and small rooms, so I started just making stuff up. Those tables are weighted in such a way as to require a lot of time and input from a DM to get a workable dungeon.
So I learned a lot from this contest. Don’t get the submission date wrong, and don’t rush is you don’t have time or cooperating computer/printer/equipment to do a good job.
Three times a year, The Escapist encourages gamers to read an RPG book in public; any book from any RPG, as a way of educating the public that RPGs are fun.
The weeks are “during the weeks surrounding March 4th, July 27th, and October 1st (starting on the Sunday on or before, and ending on the Saturday on or after).”
The rationale for these three dates are: “March 4th was designated as GM’s Day in 2008, and was coincidentally the same day that E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away. July 27th is Gygax’s birthday, and October 1st is the birthday of Dave Arneson, the other co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons. It is also common for the American Library Association’s Banned Book Week to happen on or close to this week – and RPG books have been banned from some schools and libraries in the past due to many misunderstandings about their content and nature, which is the exact sort of thing that this event is hoping to clear up. ”
For 2014, this means March 2-8; July 27 – August 2; and September 28 – October 4.
