There is a new Herakles movie, starring Dwayne Johnson. From the Trailer, it appears that it is following the standard labors of Herakles from Greek mythology.
NOTE: I spell the name Herakles because that is the closest English transliteration of the Greek.
Tenkar posted the descriptions of the first seven entries. All some very good ideas.
Instead of the 16 who made the cut to round two, Tenkar has posted the seven who appear on two of the judges’ lists of 16 for each judge. Thirty-four more entries will be listed later. I believe he means tonight.
I did not make the list of seven, but perhaps one of my three entries made it to the other thirty-four.
If I don’t make the list, I will post the three items I submitted, and the creature I designed in anticipation.
I will then focus on wrapping up my A to Z blog posts, and then work on a submission for the One Page Dungeon Contest.
We had the second session of play while my youngest son was here over his spring break on Friday. My oldest son’s girlfriend joined us.
There was a lot of delays, etc. but finally got underway. The boys’ characters had amassed some wealth and spent a lot to fortify the house they bought in town and buy iron bound chests with high quality locks and lots of supplies.
Finally, all that was done and they were on their way to check out a kobold warren they had cleared a couple months ago in game time. On their way out of town, they passed their favorite tavern and a woman rushed in to report her husband missing. They agreed to look for her husband, and artist, who went south of town, the same direction they were heading, to get his pigments and stuff to make his paints.
They ran into a couple of plains lions going to their stronghold. The lions messed them up, but they killed one and drove off the other.The hilarious thing is that my youngest son’s character, Fan the elven fighter/magic-user had a barrel of beer in the wagon of supplies. The other two jumped off to fight the lions. His first effort at helping was to throw his empty beer mug at a lion, he rolled a 19 and hit it in the head. You can’t make this stuff up. We all had a great laugh at that!
They got to the former kobold stronghold and the men they hired to guard it were gone, as they had not returned to pay or resupply them for a couple weeks past their expected pay date. Thankfully, nothing had moved in. They locked two of the doors and the druid cast fire trap on the third.
They then continued looking for the artist. They found his trail and managed to find him on top of a rock surrounded by kobolds. They killed all but one, and charmed one, so now they have two charmed kobolds.
They got almost back to town and had a random encounter with a bombardier beetle, but I rolled that it had a positive reaction so it was just going to walk on by, but the druid decided to do speak with animals. It was fun playing a creature with no intelligence talking about food. He tried to get the beetle to to understand marks on the ground to try and figure out how many beetles were back in its burrow. I had to say, “Me no understand differential equations….” before they got that the beetle was not smart enough to understand. We had a good laugh at that.
They finally made it back to town and returned the artist to his family.
They got healed up, etc.
The next day, my youngest’s character goes looking for a guy who sells treasure maps. He went to the bar he is known to frequent, but he went in the evening and then bright and early the next day. The next day, upon not finding him, he offered ten gold pieces to whoever could find the buy. That cleared out the tavern. Word soon spread that someone had a bounty on the map seller’s head and there was basically a riot in town. I had to give a very non-obvious hint that a lie that the map seller had been found and the bounty paid finally calmed the people.
We ended play on that note.
One can never tell what will happen once you mix in a few players. We may see about trying to play with Google+ Hangouts and Roll20 to keep this going. It is definitely a LOT of fun!
Picking a name for my characters, i.e. that I play when not a GM, seems to be tough. I have come up with a few good ones over the years, some I still remember without having to try to find old character sheets.
I start in a new Google+/Roll20 game tomorrow. We have a main character and a backup to use when the other is in training/unavailable/dead. I have a dwarf fighter and a human ranger. For the dwarf fighter, I used the name of my Lord of The Rings online dwarven champion, Thorfus Ironhand. As an aside, I started playing LOTRO so I could get a D&D feel on my own. It is not the same as D&D, and is far too repetitive. The dungeons, rescues, wars, and quests in D&D may have repetition, but the interaction of players and DM with the chaos of players running around the DM’s sandbox is rarely repetitive, except for some meme that develops among the players and recurring NPCs. There are few things that a single player can do on his own in D&D, unless working on things that below level. D&D is designed for team effort.
Yes, there are lots of random name generators online and I have some of my own, and lists of names. Sometimes, you just want to be creative, but often it is like only the sound of crickets is found….
I’m thinking of Rallan, rhymes with talon. Talon had come to mind, but if memory serves, there is some character in a book, TV series, or something that uses Talon. I don’t want to be accused of copying something I have not read/seen.
Now on to buying equipment and back stories….
Here is a link to an article about a name generator I made.
One of my son’s plays his character as if he is all that, and tries to hit on the daughter/barmaid or a powerful NPC who runs a tavern/inn. The characters know Olo’ (short for Ologran) is powerful, because they have seen him in a fight and other patrons of the tavern talk about him. He is a retired adventurer who got tired of the risks, but likes to help out other adventurers with good equipment and tries to steer them away from the dangers he knows about that green adventurers should avoid. Although the players are free to ignore his advice….
My son acts like his character is important and the rules of social convention don’t apply to him, so I throw it back in his face, and Olo’, charges him exorbitant prices or ignores him.
My son acts this way IRL, and my attempts to show him this is not right via his interactions with NPCs has caught his attention. Raising children is hard, but this is one way I can get through to him without him suspecting that I am trying to get through to him.
I have the wisdom of years and experience to know how to play the NPCs, in the character of the NPC, and not end up with a scene.
What is funny, is that since we play AD&D, there is training before claiming the skills and abilities of the next level. Olo’ trained him for 2nd level fighter and beat on him pretty good for a couple weeks. He made it to third level fighter and got beat on for three more weeks. He quit hitting on Olo’s daughter, but still tries to talk to Olo’ like he is his equal or his better. Olo’ believes in merit and honor, but is not above an tall tale, or embellishments of his exploits. Those who know him, are never quite sure when Olo’ is telling it straight, or stretching the truth, or just making it up.
I find playing with my sons to have a different quality than playing with my siblings and friends. I find that I am teaching them lessons about life, where the game parallels real life.
It is fun playing with my sons, and we still have moments of laughing at the silliness of some situations or things that happen with dice rolls. In our last session, if I made the initiative roll, I couldn’t hit, but if I lost initiative, I tended to hit.
I have read of other dad’d playing RPGs with their kids of different ages and there is a different aspect of teachable moments at different age levels. The youngest kids, it is about understanding the game, and making good choices about equipment, etc. From my experience, the teaching of teenagers and older, comes in the roleplaying and how they choose to have their characters interact with NPCs.
What sorts of teachable moments have you had with your kids, grandkids, nieces & nephews, etc?
I had an idea for a combination Trick/Trap.
It is a pit trap that is triggered by the first person to cross it. A combination of flash powder and a shaking thud from a huge stone going into place where the pit was. There is dust in the air and a small pile of dust where the former character stood.
To his companions, it appears that he was disintegrated. It would be funny to see them scoop up the “remains” for a burial or some small hope of resurrecting the deceased. Keep a straight face and go along with what they try to do.
To the character who sprung the trap, he is dropped down a chute and a 10′ x 10′ block goes into the area of the pit behind the character. The character then has to wait for rescue or figure out how to get back to the party.
At your discretion, the character can find a treasure and have an easy time of it, while his companions run into trouble.
Options:
This is my 100th post published on my RPG blog!
This is an exciting milestone.
I feel like a magic user who can cast a new level of spell!
I have to thank the D&D 40th Anniversary Blogging challenge for getting me back on track with my blog.
I find blogging about ideas and fleshing out concepts helps me to clarify and solidify them so that I can present them to players as a better DM.
Reading and commenting on so many other bloggers and G+ pages and Facebook RPG pages adds to the ideas.
I find that it is a banquet where there is so much to try or look at, there is no time to eat.
In other words, I am spending so much time gathering ideas and tables that I am not generating adventures and lists of pre-generated encounters. I like the idea of 3×5 cards with pre-generated encounters of whatever it is I have on my standard encounter tables, so it is ready to go. Don’t write on or destroy those cards. They can be re-used. I think one could have variations on an orc patrol. Have 6 variations of numbers, weapons, leaders and treasure. Roll 1d6 to see which one it is. Use pencil to check it off the players destroy it. For towns and cities and patrols on their frontiers, determine how much of the city guard is set aside for patrols and spec out one or more patrols. Instead of 3×5 cards, one can use a text file or spreadsheet to track the information.
My youngest is here to visit over his spring break and he, big brother, and I are wrapping up our last scenario and onto new things. I wish he was closer so we could do more. We had a lot of fun and hope to squeeze in another session before he has to go back to his mom’s.
This is an idea I am putting up so I can flesh it out. Many other RPG bloggers have said the same thing. Variations on the numbers of goblins, orcs, kobolds, ogres, etc. and their appearance and weapons only go so far to be interesting and avoid a slog.
Now throwing monsters into an odd situation, like a group of orcs with some stuck in quicksand, or kobolds climbing up or down a sheer cliff, can add some interesting spice to an encounter. Do the orcs help their comrades, do they stay and fight, or run away? Why are the kobolds climbing a sheer cliff? Did they find a cave with treasure, or are they fleeing something big and bad?
Encounter Tables don’t have to be just monsters. They can be natural phenomena, landscape features, special locations, etc.
If not an encounter table or tables, these things need to be kept in mind for wilderness, dungeon/underground, and town adventures.
Phenomena/Things/Locations
Pits/Traps/Deadfalls -> Monster or Fen or Special
Quicksand/Muck & Mire/etc.
Crevasse/Cliff/Landslide/Avalanche
Tangle of Vines/Dense Foliage
Patrols/Special/etc.
Megadungeons are something that interest me. As a player I may have played in a megadungeon, but did not know it.
I have read lot of articles and gather lots of notes.
As I think about my own campaign, that I touched on yesterday, and its ten great ancient cities with teleport chambers, I realize that the sewers and tunnels and caverns under each one is its own megadungeon, but each is connected to the other by the teleport chambers. The chambers have a mechanism to specify which destination, so players could end up on the far end of the empire, or on one of the islands they settled across the sea.
Obviously, I don’t want or need to map out all of this that would never be played, but the various megadungeon tables on different sites to help populate them would come in handy if players managed to jump from one ancient city to another.
I think that general areas of the city would be a natural for certain kinds of buildings, structures, events, and encounters. For example, the cemetery/necropolis would have plenty of undead from the time of chaos when the empire collapsed and troops were needed quickly to deal with the dead and defend the city. The nice people fled and the bad guys have set up shop. There would be a near limitless supply of skeletons and zombies. A high magic society would tend to have magical constructs like golems and homonculi. Perhaps trapped demons or elementals. Magic mouths to give directions around the city.
There would be places where treasure in the form of coins might be more likely, and treasure in the form of ancient weapons and other items that might not be magical, but a sage might pay for them. A collector of ancient relics might like a statue or a tapestry. There is more to treasure than just coin and magic.
If there were a zoological garden, would there be small groups of wild animals about the city? A pride or two of lions that fed off the goblins and orcs running around. Other types of creatures attracted by the niche they could fill in such a place.
Whether a city or dungeon, thinking in terms of areas and what was there originally and what is there now will help group what adventurers might find or encounter there.
An ancient cistern overgrown with vines would be a 30 foot or deeper pit, a deadly fall, unless it still held water, then it could still be a deadly fall. Ancient barrows of the early kings could be infested with wights, or other grave loving creatures. Different parts of an abandoned city could be controlled by different factions. Pirates could use the docks to trade goods to orcs or evil humans in the employ of a wizard seeking some powerful device he read about in an ancient tome. Intelligent monsters might control another area, perhaps a dragon of an appropriate size has claimed the ancient treasury. There could be turf wars by the various factions trying to control the city. There could be a big bad trying to consolidate his power and is working to sway other factions to his will and destroy those who don’t come along. Players getting in the midst of such a turf war could be in for a wild ride.
Lots of ideas present themselves, palace, barracks, temples and shrines, colleges of magic, palaces of nobles and the rich, merchants of all kinds, the old bazaar, docks, an abandoned thieve’s guild tower, homes of the populace.
Would each city be built on a similar plan, or would each be unique?
I like to think or areas or pigeon holes for parts of large areas, like a city. All you really need for a map is the rough distance from one “quarter” or section of the city and how long it will take. I just borrow maps for cities online for my use. Of course, to publish my own, if that were every to happen, would take new maps and a LOT more detail for others to be able to use it. There is a HUGE difference between enough notes for a DM to run a session, and enough description for someone new to the campaign to run it. For making your own cities or megadungeons, you just need enough information to keep play moving. You may even have to have some tables for quick random generation of buildings, their condition, and contents.
There needs to be something to break up the sameness. As I wrote this, I recalled a scenario when I GM’d Gamma World and the players found a high rise hotel and in every room were skeletons of people in sexual positions as they obviously were going to do it one last time before the end of the world. Ah the mind of an adolescent teenage boy. After a while I ran out of scenarios for number of people and positions. It was all on the fly. I did not do enough preparation to have more variety. The other guys laughed at what I came up with, so we had fun, but it had an aura of sameness to it. A list of some sort for 100 houses, 100 merchant shops, etc. like many other lists of 100 other bloggers have come up with can go a long way. If you have the spare coin to buy a PDF of a city, you can save Googling for lists, or making up your own.
I would suggest making a list of the different types of things you expect to find in a city, wells, cisterns, fountains, houses, shrines, temples, tombs, etc. and make a list of 100 of them. Use a spreadsheet like Open Office or Libre Office Calc and have a column for a present day, in-use item/building/object and a second column for what it is like in a ruined city or town. You can make your lists as detailed as you need to make it useful for working down the list or picking at random. For a more complex choice and variety, you could have columns for different descriptors to use when applying to the object or building. Obviously, more substantial buildings like temples, palaces, forts, and wizard towers would need more preparation, especially if there is anything there to find or find you. Again, there are lots of maps and free modules describing these very things.
Building your own lists has the power of giving it your own flavor. You don’t have to come up with everything from scratch, you can mix and match ideas and lists from others you find online or in your rulebooks. There is a lot you can do if you are a cash-strapped teen or an adult with other things you need your money for, like bills and trying to save for retirement. Or if you have a few dollars to spend there are a lot of good resources available on DriveThru RPG or RPGNow in the $5 or less range. The D30 DM Companion and the D30 Sandbox Companion are two great resources for the time strapped DM and give lots of ideas for how to organize one’s own tables.
I really appreciate all the other DMs and players who share all their ideas online and so much of it is free. Thank you all, fellow gamers!