Tag Archives: Fluff/Inspiration

RPGs

Where Do You Get Good Miniatures?

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Back when I was really big into RPGs, Ral Partha was the brand that we mostly turned to. I do not recall others off the top of my head.

Since then, Ral Partha and several contemporary companies that made miniatures for fantasy gaming have gone out of business.

Now, it seems that over sized (bigger than 25 mm), cartoon like figures are the standard. They are also expensive! The local comic/game store has some of these miniatures, and they are $3 or more each! In my day, I might pay $1 for a really good figure that was something I really wanted, but most were 75 cents or so. Packages of 6 of  the same figure, could be had for $3 or $4. Of course, you had to paint them, etc.

Now, in trying to Google up miniatures and to follow up on miniatures recommended on RPG related blogs and sites, I find pre-painted miniatures that are $5 or $6 or more each!

I can understand people wanting to have someone paint their miniatures if that is the thing they want.

I would like to find a reasonably priced source of “realistic”, well-done, and consistently sized miniatures. I think that finding a miniature to represent players, or a major NPC adds flavor to the game, and can be used to illustrate the position of encounters. Instead of making Jim be the red six-sider, when he wants to be the ruby d20, etc. can be avoided. Yes, we can use our imaginations to suspend disbelief and let any object be our placeholder, but with enough players in the mix, a table can have a lot of dice, etc. It is nice to have miniatures to represent the main players in a scene, especially for the more complex encounters with combat and magic in the mix.

I have played with and without miniatures, and with and without some object or mark on a page to represent characters.

For those of us who are visually oriented, having s physical representation on the table can eliminate confusion and arguing over position and who can see/hit what or be seen/hit by whom.

I am not interested in spending a fortune to re-enact Helm’s Deep, or any other large-scale action. While it does have a certain coolness factor to it, I just want a reliable source of miniatures at a reasonable price. Both for players to find representatives for their characters, and for the DM for major NPCs or a large gang of orc/goblins/zombies/etc. The one nice thing about a large gang of monsters, is that we can use 20 orc figures to be goblins, zombies, etc. In time, perhaps have 20 of each, but time, space, and finances all have to come together for the gradual acquisition of a large collection.

RPGs

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

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

Memorable Events

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There have been many memorable events in the various games I have played in over the years.

One that delights us to this day, is a situation where a high level party was fighting an orc tribe in their lair.

A dwarven fighter, Margus Greystone, entered a room with about 30 orcs in it. He turned around, closed the door and bolted it. This of course got the attention of the orcs. Margus had initiative and shocked the orcs by his behavior, so he had enough time to draw his weapon.

Randell, the player for Margus, then announced, “I hit the one on the left.” Margus is a right-handed dwarf and was about 9th level with a 18/xx style strength and maybe a magic weapon. The combination was that if he hit an orc of one hit die, it would die. So Margus continued to hit the orc on his left, which meant that he left his less well armored right side exposed, but of course, being a high level fighter, had plate mail, and the orcs had a hard time hitting him.

We all watched as the scene played out in a room full of orcs with a barred door blocked by a dwarven tank. It was after a few orcs fell, that the orcs realized that they were all going to die.

Several rounds later, Margus emerged from the room unscathed, but covered in orc blood.

This is my favorite example of hack and slash combined with roleplaying.

What favorite stories like this do you have from your gaming experience?

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”.

RPGs

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.

RPGs

Metamorphosis Alpha & Gamma World

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In our gaming group I GM’d for Metamorphosis Alpha [Affiliate Link]. I am not sure whatever happened to our game materials. I remember a big map for the starship, and that the rulebook had tables for the characters to determine if they figured out how stuff they found worked.

I remember one session where I had the party find an airlock and a hangar bay, and in the hangar bay was a Cylon fighter. I grew up when the original BattleStar Gallactica series was new. We often “stole” ideas from TV and movies and books. I think I even had some token Cylons for them to fight. The players got to the ship and figured out how to fly it and flew around the exterior of the Warden.

We cracked up at some of the ridiculous things we through into the game and were able to do. We did not play more than a few sessions, but we cracked up and had a lot of fun.

I do recall, although it has been a long time, that the rules had a lot of similarity to Gamma World. I did a little Googling, and am right, MA was before GW and had an influence on the rules, which were based on D&D.

Gamma World [Affiliate Link] was a game where we had a lot more sessions. I am not sure what happened to those materials over the years.

I see the Gamma World has been updated several times over the years, and that a company has licensed it from WoeC for the current incarnation.

I also found that Jim Wrad still controls MA and has a new version soon to be released. There are also MA materials on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. The first edition PDF is availabe, and there is a lot of information in the free 6 page preview PDF. It is amazing how well a single rulebook can encompass all one needs to know to play an RPG. I guess it helps if you have played one already, or have experienced players to show you the ropes.

I remember when the High School Science Fiction club was the focus of an article in our school paper. It had a hilarious typo in the list of games that we played, “Camel World” instead of Gamma World. Our group made a lot of references to mutant camels after that, and is an inside joke that still brings a chuckle to this day.

I am not having success finding a science fiction book that reads like an adventurer’s log of MA or GW. It was easy to tell how much that book influenced both MA and GW. It finally came to me and was able to Google it: “Hiero’s Journey” by Sterling E. Lanier. I have not read it since the 80’s.

One person in our group was fond of DMing modules from TSR, and one time we did play Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and encountered the ferocious Vegepygmies. That is about the only thing I remember from that module. I am not sure how much our DM stuck to the module, and how much he modified it. I did not have the cash to afford lots of modules, so I only purchased two for AD&D, Village of Hommelet and Ravenloft. I remember the ooh and ahh factor of the perspective maps in Raveloft. We never played those modules, but we loved the cool maps. I bought my copy of the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide this year, just for the information on how to do these maps.

We did do our own home-brew games. One was a space pirate combat game, that morphed to be a two planets in a solar system at war game. We did not play those more than a few times once we bought Imperium, and had a friend with the Star Treck game with ship to ship combat.

We did play Traveller a few times. It was unusual in that it relied solely on six-sided dice. The person who introduced us to it was not very skilled as a DM so his interest in the game did not translate well for the rest of us in the Science Fiction Club in high school.

We did come up with our own RPG, called Scout. Scouts were interstellar explorers who also were like a combination of marines and modern day Spartans. They were tough and could take you out hand-to-hand or with weapons. Although when we played we tended to focus on the use of weapons. We borrowed from other games to cover the situations that we needed. We played several sessions. My brother, Robert, was GM, and he wished that our characters would rely on martial arts before resorting to blasters and disintegration grenades. We just sort of stopped playing, but Robert started a couple of short stories, based on Scout, and his vision of what a scout was. We were all anxious for his next installment every few days. Robert is the kind of writer who can just sit down and write high quality stuff of the top of his head. Soon the bits of the story just stopped too.

I am sure we could probably resurrect Scout as either a module/add-on for another system, or update our home-brew rules. Robert may still have them, I will have to check. It would be fun to have our old materials as a PDF and used by other gamers around the world. Maybe even making a little money via RPGNow might be possible.

What games did you explore and play for awhile, but then settled on one game as “your game”? For me my game is AD&D.

Did you ever make up your own games? Board game or RPG?

RPGs

Two Interesting Posts at Sandbox of Doom

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I just discovered Sandbox of Doom. He has two interesting posts, one on open ended versus ongoing campaigns, the other on a comment on a review of old school gaming.

All the games I have played in have all been open ended campaigns, either with no stated objective, or no real plan/cohesion to the setting. My Brother, Robert, did run a campaign he called “Quest For The Dice of Destiny”, but it was short lived, and we never got to a level requisite with questing for artifacts. Robert’s current campaign, has been going on for about 25 years, and is one that continues to give enjoyment to his siblings, friends, and his wife and children.

I think the terminology is one where some approach it from a different perspective. Campaign in the historical sense refers to a series of battles in the larger war. For example, the Normandy Campaign lasted from D-Day until the Normandy breakout, several weeks later. In this sense the campaign ended. For gamers, we are routed in historical/military terminology, so for many campaign indicates a series of related events (adventures) that come to and end.

I found it odd that all of these bloggers would put so much into a campaign having an end. I can see their point, if there is a stated goal, like in LotR to destroy the One Ring. Once the ring is destroyed, the “campaign” is over. That does not mean that the same characters cannot continue to adventure in the same setting. If one views the story telling of the campaign as merely a book with a clear beginning, middle, and end, I can see how this would limit a campaign to a clear end.

However, one could argue that such an approach is railroading. What if the players want to keep playing their characters? A clear agreement on the outcome would have to be reached. To me, it makes more sense to have a series of events that may tie up some loose ends, but expose others for future adventures. Just as life is not clear cut/black and white, so too the life of an adventurer is not neatly bookended/compartmentalized. Some old foe that was not dispatched, could return.

Having a clear end to a campaign makes sense if the GM is not available after a certain point in time to continue the campaign. Some groups rotate the role of GMover the same setting, so that each GM’s “turn” constitutes a campaign, there can be many successive campaigns in the same setting.

Back to terminology, one thing we picked up from the books and/or Dragon Magazine, was milieu. We understood milieu to be the world setting for the game, such as Greyhawk. We understood that a milieu would support multiple campaigns. Over the years, we tended just to say, Robert’s Campaign, The Campaign, or Robert’s Game. These phrases all referred to the AD&D game setting developed by Robert as the DM and enjoyed by all of us players.The campaign will continue as long as Robert does not lose interest and there are players willing to play.

In the end, we might quibble over terminology, but the main point is to have fun, and both players and GM need to be in agreement whether the campaign is limited or open ended.

Back to the article referencing old school gaming, I think that Victor at Sandbox of Doom hits the nail on the head when he points out that the rule set one uses and the ability to add or remove that which does not work, is what makes old school (0eD&D/1eAD&D) gaming so versatile. We take out that which does not add to our enjoyment of the game.

Some argue over the limitations of magic-users and clerics only having so many spells in a day, but it is balanced. Those spells can drop hundreds of opponents in the right circumstances, and kill or slow the high level fighter from reaching them. There is balance there. Each class has their own strengths and weaknesses. One can try to be a multi-class demi-human, or a human the does one class for awhile and then adopts a second class. There are still limitations. multi-class characters have to earn two or three times as many experience points, and thus take a lot longer to get as powerful as single class characters. A human dual-class character has limitations on what they can do with their original class until they surpass their new class. It is also not just about the numbers. Players should use the numbers to help inform them how to play their characters.

Characters with higher range ability scores can make it easy to skip the roleplaying, as they are more like Superman without a weakness to Kryptonite. That is where a good back story comes in. Those players with more average ability scores can still be the great heroes of the game, if they live long enough to advance to greater skill levels. Again it is all about having fun, and how a group of players and GM can merge their collective knowledge, experience, and story telling into something new and entertaining.

RPGs

Creating Maps with Office Suite

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I found this article over at Grumbling Grognard, that describes how he made the map, using MS Office, for his take on Monte Cook’s Chordille Keep. GG started with Excel to create the squares, then drew the lines and squares. Then saved it as a bitmap and imported into PowerPoint to add numbers and color. GG says that he used a similar technique for his entry in the one-page dungeon contest.

I am sure one could use Open Office to do the same, Calc instead of Excel, Presenter instead of  PowerPoint, or possibly Draw. One could also use GIMP with its layer capability to do variations with and without a grid, such as for the player’s map.

While there are specialty tools to make maps and dungeons, I find it interesting how one can use tools that one is already familiar and avoid the learning curve and expense of a new tool. (Here expense is not just monetary cost, but cost in time, disk space, etc.)