Tag Archives: Flavor

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Pantheons in Roleplaying

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I do not like the idea of using the pantheons of real, yet dead religions, such as the gods of the Greeks, Vikings, Sumerians, etc.

There are several reasons for this. D&D already has a bad name and is wrongly associated with devil worship. Invoking the names of the gods of other religions, some of who are mentioned in the Bible, Apocrypha, and historical writings, just adds fuel to the fire. Both the Monster Manual and Dieties & Demigods/Legends and Lore, use these historical names. Tiamat, Mephistopheles, Zeus, etc. are all from historical religious writings.

While one could use a the structure of those historical pantheons, for their ready made stats in various game source books; change their names, to avoid continuing the stigma. It takes a lot of effort to come up with a religious structure from scratch. Yet, there has to be some framework of dieties if a player wants to be a cleric. For the humanoids, I go with the materials in the various source books. For the humans, I am torn between finding the time to develop my own, or just picking and choosing a few from the Greyhawk setting. After all, keeping prep time to a minimum, to maximize play is the key. A DM does want a life outside the game, right?

As a Christian, it does bother me to speak the names of historical deities while roleplaying. Roleplaying is not the same as having a literate discussion of the religion of the ancient Greeks.

That is one aspect of roleplaying where I think we should draw a line. Granted, we are all free to run the rules as we see fit for our own group. For my campaign in the works, I will avoid the use of any historical religious names, for both a clean conscience and to avoid the appearance of evil, for those who would judge our preferred game without all the facts.

Some may view this as a naive view of the world, but if we want our game of choice to be an option for the people of faith in our communities, or at least move them to a neutral and accepting frame of mind, we should keep such things in mind. Granted, there have not been a lot of movies about the dangers of D&D like in the 80s. However, I still do not feel comfortable discussing D&D with those who are more likely to look down on it.

While I have not run into outright anti-D&D sentiment in a long time, I have been an “in the closest” gamer for years. It was really bad when my wife questioned my beliefs when I mentioned that I like D&D. She like many from the 80s, bought the line of the movies and sensational headlines.I think I finally have her convinced it is not devil worship or evil, as she has not complained about having my books openly displayed on the shelves in our computer room. Yet she did state she did not want me spending hours wrapped up in those books. (She understands the time sink problem.)

How does your family, friends, and community react to D&D?

RPGs

How Do You Pronounce Paladin?

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When we first started playing AD&D and had the new character class of Paladin, we had never encountered that word, so we did not pronounce it correctly.

We said it “pAl – a – din”, like “Aladdin”. We said it the wrong way for a long time. I am not sure which of us found out the correct pronunciation.

We were too young to see the original “Have Gun Will Travel”, and it was never in re-runs when we were growing up. It might have been my mom who corrected us, because she remembered “Have Gun Will Travel.

I do not think there was any other terms that we mangled so badly. We were all well read, and had read “The Hobbit” and “LotR”, and many others, so words were something we knew.

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Magic Battle Standard

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Robert, my brother, and I were at a game store that had a huge miniature  collection. I believe it was one of the times we made it to Kings Crown in Overland Park, KS, which was about an hour drive from home. I was 16 or 17, so about 1980-81 time frame.

They had a large terrain map, that as I recall was at least four 4×8 sheets of plywood. This was the central focus with the counter and displays around it. There were several “old guys” probably in the 30+ age bracket.

They regaled us of stories with their battles and talked of Magic Battle Standards. They gave their bearer and units that fought under them additional bonuses and protections. The more victories a unit won, the more powerful the standards became, until they were intelligent and could actively participate in the battle.

I wrote up some description for battle standards in my game, but no real stats yet. One thing I came up with was Greater and Lesser Standards. A Lesser Standard is magic, but does not grow in power, and has limits to how much of a unit it can protect. A Greater Standard, grows in power, etc. Using a variation on the rules for intelligent swords would be useful. I envisage them having alignments, so that will affect the kinds of things they can do. Perhaps even “holy” standards dedicated to a particular deity or pantheon. Another feature I came up with for Greater Standards is a bag of the same fabric attached to the pole. This bag will magic a soldier’s insignia to expand the protection of the standard to that individual. Only one insignia per day can be magicked when the standard is not in battle.

I have this vague recollection that these “old timers” mentioned planting the standard as a way for the unit to rally around the standard when the fight was going poorly.

I can see lots of choices for making such standards. I took the easy way out for now, and have the art of making them lost in antiquity, so I do not have to flesh this out in my game, until it becomes necessary. Since I have yet, to start this campaign, I have plenty of time.

Robert said he has his own rules for battle standards, but I have not yet gotten that information from him.

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Mapping Hack with Index Cards and a Siege

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My main character, Griswald Stewart, has a small town at the center of his lands. Long story short, he is a duke who succeeded his father, but his father’s generation of the former rulers of the kingdom were kicked out. The line of false kings let these lands become overrun with orcs in the past 50 years. Griswald and his cousins re-took the kingdom, which is now in a civil war, but a giant earthquake affected most of the kingdom, and the areas of the former Stewart lands. Griswald took this opportunity to take back his patrimony, and managed to drive out the orcs. He then set up in the town abandoned by the orcs.

I used a sheet from a desk blotter that was a giant sheet of graph paper. Setting the scale to 40 feet squares, the entire town fits on the map. The town is roughly 1500 feet by 3000 feet. The grid is four squares to the inch. I lost that desk blotter in several moves. I have not had luck finding them locally at office supply stores. I do not recall which chain of office supply store I originally found it. Google is not helping. I must not have the right terminology to get the correct results.

A few years after he took the town, two of the largest orc tribes, The Blue Fang and The Vile Hand, have put aside their differences and decided to deal with “The Duke” or “The Wolf” (his personal shield device) as he is variously called, BEFORE he sets their sites on them. Griswald has wiped out several smaller orc tribes, and his success in that regard has come back to bite him.

Needless to say, there is a siege situation, and if you have ever seen the movie Zulu, you get the idea of how bad a spot he and the townspeople are in.

We needed to figure out ranges for weapons and spells, so we could get an accurate setting for ranges that were at an angle. I found that the blue lines on standard 3 x5 index cards are spaced at the same scale as 4 square to the inch graph paper. I was able to put together two cards by stapling them together to determine ranges weapons and spells. Of course the orcs are staying outside of these ranges until the orcs catapults can batter a hole in the wall.

It was interesting to see that insect plague has the greatest range of the spells that Griswald and his forces have at their disposal. That is perhaps the most powerful battle magic spell in AD&D for its range, area of effect, duration, and the effect it has on low level creatures. Its one turn (10 round) casting time give plenty of time for things to go wrong. It then takes 8 hours of rest and then the 15 min per level time to re-learn it, so it has a big cost associated with how often it can be use from a cleric’s memory, to offset the effect it can have on a battlefield.

The orcs have observed and taken note of the tales of Griswald, a half-elf Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User of 9th/9th/10th levels, and his henchmen, associates, and followers. They have arrayed themselves into smaller units of 20 to 30 that are spread far enough apart in a checkerboard formation, that a fireball will not affect more than a single group, or those on the edges of four groups (the  equivalent of one group). This is the price of fame for an adventurer, the bad guys learn from you the way you learn from them.

One thing Griswald did several times before a few survivors spread the word was to draw the warriors out of their stronghold with the bait of a small force taunting them. He would then  lob a few fireballs at them and take out the stragglers back in the fort. He knows better than to have his forces leave their fortifications, so they are bottled up until he can defeat or discourage the attackers, or last until help arrives.

It is not played out so I can’t tell you what happened yet.

RPGs

Quest For The Dice of Destiny

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Quest For The Dice of Destiny was supposed to involve these artifacts, The Dice of Destiny. The players never got to find these dice. My brother, Robert, was the DM

I do not know if it was because the players never lived up to the DM’s expectations, or if he was just ready for a different campaign.

The transition here was for the more well-rounded characters we had to travel by ocean to the area of the new campaign.

The situation ended with play frozen in time, as we never returned to finish the scenario we left off.

My character, Fasbold Torion, was a fighter with a charisma of 3. He had a henchman Flaessan Os, whom Fasbold had saved his life so many times, Flaessan was intensely loyal. In the ocean voyage, they had stopped at an island and found some sort of ruins and encountered a ghost. Both Fasbold and Flaessan were hit by the ghost and the game play stopped with Fasbold aged about 90 years, and Flaessan aged about 60 years.

Prior to the ocean voyage, Fasbold and the party were in the lair of an ettin and Fasbold had found a magic sword but not yet knew what it was. In combat the party was being slaughtered by the ettin. Fasbold managed to role a 20 and decapitated both heads of the ettin, and learned that he had a sword of sharpness. Fasbold sold the sword to make enough money to buy a share in the ship. If he had kept the sword, he might have kept the ghost from aging him and Flaessan.

During the ocean voyage at sea, prior to the island, they were attacked by sahuagin or some such, and the ship was boarded. Flaessan was about to be hit by one and Fasbold threw his dagger and hit it between the eyes for the kill, saving Flaessan one more time.

I still have the hand-drawn character sheets on notebook paper for Fasbold and Flaessan.

Robert and I often joke about Fasbold and Flaessan as old men reliving their adventures from their youth. This over 25 years ago! It is amazing the stories and fun one can reminisce over so many years later.

Robert’s next campaign, is his current campaign, he has run for over 20 years now. I do not know what he might call it. We all just refer to it as “The Fife” for the name of the country where all the action in his campaign started. The fun of this campaign is that each player has multiple characters in different places on the known map, and some are unlikely to ever meet in the game.

RPGs

Abdul’s

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My brother, Robert, is my favorite DM. He can improvise almost anything, and never seems to be surprised or disappointed with the actions a player has his character make. He has had what I would classify as four campaigns. The first campaign was the generic catch-all, different dungeons and modules.

His second campaign, was a desert campaign that centered around Abdul’s. Abdul’s was basically a giant shopping center for the adventurers. One could get anything at Abdul’s if you had the gold.

Abdul’s was inside  a giant mesa. If one looked up, they could see a Constellation class starship hanging from the ceiling.

I remember having to roleplay equipping our first level characters. I ran a thief, who foolishly asked for thieves picks and tools, and had to avoid the law.

Robert invented a couple of creatures, one was a mount called a quast. It was a fast-running desert creature that needed little water. It ran fast enough that a human rider could cross a large stretch of desert and not have to worry about dying of thirst. The other creature was a flying creature. I do not remember what he called it, but they came with a special saddle that had the commands on the saddle, and the word “avaunt” which meant to take flight.

One time two players had these new gizmos, basically Chinese repeating crossbows that could fire 10 bolts a round. They went to a cave and were trapped by a huge hoard of orcs, and rather than rely on our new weapons as Robert, the DM, thought we would. We instead drew our swords and died, a TPK becuase we did not rely on the tools the DM let us have.

Another incident we had in the desert was coming to an oasis and stumbling across a dimensional rift where a bunch of French Foreign Legionnaires were fighting desert tribesmen.

Abdul’s became a crutch for the players in this game and the DM had a great solution. Abdul had done something to offend some ghostly host that one night came and took away Abdul’s piece by piece, and we all watched it disappear. This was a transition to a new campaign Robert called “Quest For The Dice of Destiny”.

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Other RPGs

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Yesterday, I wrote about science fiction RPGs: Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World. Traveller, and Scout – a home-brew RPG.

Today, I will touch on the others that my old group from high school played.

GangBusters was based on the gangsters and FBI of the Roaring 20s & 30s, a la Al Capone and Eliot Ness. I do not remember playing that more than a few times. This was a TSR product.

Top Secret was a TSR RPG based on James Bond, and other spy movies. This is one RPG that our group got into and we played quite a lot. I still have my hand-written character sheet on notebook paper from the 80’s. We just sort of drifted away from this game. I think after high school graduation and the separation of our gaming group, we no longer had the large base to take turns GMing so that one GM would not get totally burnt out preparing all the time. It is hard to prepare one game, let alone attempt to GM multiple games in multiple systems.

Boot Hill, also by TSR, is a western based game. We also played this one quite a lot. I actually owned this game and was working on a campaign and preparing to GM, when for some reason it never happened. I don ot recall what happened to my game materials.

Game cross-over. One of the problems our group encountered was that when one person was a player in one game and a GM in another, that person could be vengeful on the players when their turn came to be GM. We played one scenario in AD&D where two good-aligned characters killed the evil Drow character of the guy who was our GM for Boot Hill. He was very unhappy and swore to kill our characters in Boot Hill. He did kill our characters in Boot Hill, but at least he made it a memorable “Alamo” scenario, and while we did not appreciate the vengeance angle, at least he made it enjoyable.

Another similar scenario occurred when another DMs campaign had a player whose character was extremely evil and high level. My brother, Robert, and I had two new players in this campaign, and our stated goal was to get powerful enough to top this evil. So here we were 1st or 2nd level and this powerful 10th or higher level bad-guy is allowed to hear about these two new upstart PCs and tracked us down. We were no match for him, but my first level M-U used magic missle to blind one eye before he was struck down. This same evil character was played by the same evil character in the other D&D campaign that we slew, and who was the Boot Hill GM.

These problems with cross-over and what I would consider poor DMing to allow a high level evil character to even hear about the minor threat two low level characters posed, helped lead to the shrinking of our base of players. The DM did not have to tell this other player what we had stated our purpose was out of character.

Have you faced similar cross-game problems? How have you handled them to avoid hurt feelings?

I think it is one thing to have a party of NPCs be the nemesis of the player party, but it is troublesome to me on how to handle to player parties in the same campaign to interact in a way that brings enjoyment to both groups. If there are of opposites with one evil and the other good, I see it as a recipe for disaster and a sure-fire way to shatter a group. If I had to GM such a situation, I would try to discourage one player or group of players from trying to kill another, no matter the motive, or at least explain to them that it needed to be in the purview of the game and to be careful not to break friendships over it. As DM, perhaps put obstacles that prevent such incidents, unless there was a stated shared mindset that such activity was acceptable and that no hard feelings would result.

Roleplaying, like acting, touches on our real emotions and can soon lead to conflict, if one is not careful to make boundaries and limits. This is why people with untreated mental illnesses should not role play, as it can lead to problems. Such things lead to the bad name D&D had in the 80s, and was the source of the real problems of that gamer played by Tom Hanks in that TV movie in the 80s. It is meant to be a game that is fund, not the source of anger that dissolves friendships or drives borderline nut jobs over the edge. No disrespect intended to those with mental or emotional issues. If we are well-adjusted and approach it as a game that is meant to be fun, there should be few disappointments.

It is all too easy to become emotionally attached to our characters, and to feel loss or pain when that character has a setback in the game or dies.

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First Is The Favorite

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All of the online discussion I have followed the last several months about Old School/4e/New School gaming got me to thinking.

My first exposure to Dr. Who was Tom Baker, Doctor number 4. As with most other fans of Doctor Who, my favorite is the one I first encountered.

With some exceptions, I think this informs a lot of the old/new debate. That to which we are introduced first, in a successful, and non-biased way, will tend to be our favorite. When a game or TV series is new, one tends to have a different perspective to those who come in on the middle.

For those of us who remember the enormous impact Star Wars (That’s episode IV to you young wippersnappers.) had upon our childhood/teenage years, that movie had a bigger impact than others, because it was first. Those of use who lived the movies in their historical order have a different perspective than our children who were toddlers & infants when the re-makes of the first three movies prepared the way for the final three movies. (Do you remember all the speculation in the 80’s about either a total of 6, 9, or 12 movies?) The special effects got better, and some argue are what carried the final three movies.

With D&D, my story begins with “Basic D&D”, a Blue box with a dragon on it. It had some funky dice in it. I still have the dice, they are chipped & worn. The d20 is nearly a sphere. the d4 is the only one I still use, but it is hard to read. It was an introduction to D&D and featured only up to level 3. The label of “Basic” led my brother and I and our eventual crowd of fellow players in our school to consider it old and poorly done. We were 13/14 years old in 1978, give us a break! When we got wind of Advanced D&D, that is where it was at. We were children of the space age, the children of the baby boomers, “Newer Is Better” was what we were all about.

The hardcover books, cool illustrations and better quality paper and type led us to feel that AD&D was the real deal. We bought all the books as they came out and read them with delight and quickly incorporated them into our games. At first $12.00 then $15.00 for a book, that was a lot of money for a teenager mowing lawns. At $10.00 a pop, and only 3 lawns, it took time to earn that money.

I think the more one has invested in time and expense also impacts which version one prefers.

I tend to favor the older rules since those are what I know so well, and have laid out a chunk of cash already. It is hard enough to get an opportunity to play, why shell out money for a new set of rules that change the way you have always done things?

I have never played 3e or 4e. I have not even taken the time to flip through the manuals at the local game shop. It does not grab my interest. Now, if I were 13 again, 4e, and possibly 3e, would be all I could easily find, and would probably think newer is better.

I have more of an emotional attachment to AD&D, but it is more than that. It is familiar, and I could play AD&D at a moment’s notice. When I hear all about feats, skills, multi-class, and other such terms, they are either new terms, or used differently than I learned them. There is a whole new jargon to learn.

I also played more than just D&D, but D&D is the one that capture my imagination, and the one that I think about the most. Rarely do I think of something and make a mental note, “Hey, that would be good to use in Boot Hill.” Partly, I think it is because the medieval style fantasy settings with their magic and other things that can never happen do more to capture my imagination. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big Science Fiction fan, but I am of a generation that has seen so many things become reality, such as a computer on every desk, and more than one computer in many homes. I remember when the year 2000 seemed a long way off and we wondered what it would be like. There are lots of neat gadgets, cable is common and relatively inexpensive, and via the net, one can communicate around the world in an instant. Those changes have taken the edge off the unknown of the future. While it is not yet reality, many things are not far from becoming reality. Although we still do not have a flying car in every garage.

This is similar to computer games. Sports games and things like The Sims and Second Life do not interest me. Why pretend to do and be something that I already do everyday? Well, sports games do not interest me because I don’t like some of those things in reality, and the ones I do like are more fun in reality. Now fighting the alien hordes, or exploring the depths of space are things I will never do. The same is what hold my interest with D&D — fighting an orc invasion, gaining a treasure, or casting spells to overcome a challenge.

The appeal of D&D is that we can be the hero and be admired by our fellow players for how we play our heroes and their exploits. We can do the things that only action heroes in big budget movies can do, all for a few dollars here and there.

The rules each of us choose are the ones that best suit our needs and the group(s) with which we play. For me it is AD&D, and all the OD&D and other retro-clones make more source material available for lots of ideas. More rules-neutral resources would have more traction for the broadest base of players. If you are a player/DM with a strong grasp of your chosen rules framework, you can take any resource and run with it.

I must be honest and label myself a grognard. I do not need lots of new monsters and magic, when I have not managed to run into all the creatures in the original Monster Manual during all the games I’ve played in over the years, let alone MMII, FF, etc. What I need are ideas to help me be a better gamer, either as a player or DM. The fight over old/new school is like the old vi/emacs debate. Everyone is right and everyone is wrong. Be honest about your ‘drothers, but get on with it and get to the common ground of tips, tricks, ideas, etc.

Those who point out that having fun is the most important part are right. We need to “man up” and not be like the dreaded little league coach or parent who thinks they know it all, and ruin it for the kids. It’s just a game after all! Kids have to pay to play, it’s not like they’re being paid millions of dollars just to play a game.

I must admit watching sports does not catch my interest, but RPGs and D&D in particular do. But I try not to be annoying with my interest of RPGs the way many sports fans I know who are annoying with their constant talk of stats and legendary feats. I’m just glad the gamers don’t get wrapped up in the numbers and the old war stories of games past. 😉

RPGs

Medieval Population Density

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This informative article about population density of medieval based worlds and number of cities, towns, and villages and numbers of a give occupation relative to population.

There are links to websites to run the formula and build a kingdom quickly. One can also use Excel to build the formula into a spreadsheet, of which there are links to some examples .

I recommend saving it as a PDF so that it is available for off line use.

[Edit] Corrected link to website to use current URL. 09 February 2014.

RPGs

Genealogy Programs To Generate Family Trees

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One of my non-RPG interests is genealogy. There are several free genealogy programs that can save off various styles of family trees to PDF. This could be used to generate a family tree for characters, or kings and other rulers.

Many of these can export to RTF or other formats, so that a background could be used if the PDF is only to be used online. Otherwise, get some parchment paper, and give it the rough treatment, if it is to be an ancient document. For example, tear off or burn a piece that the players will need to know for some reason.

For Windows PCs, Legacy Family Tree has a free version able to meet these needs. It also works on other OSes with Wine. For Linux, there is a GUI based program called GRAMPS, that can also run on other OSes. For those not afraid of the command line and an ncurses text interface, there is LifeLines. It was originally developed for Unix, but has been ported to Linux, Mac, Windows and others.

What programs and utilities do you use outside of your gaming life that could be used to add flavor?