Wow!
+Dyson Logos took up my map challenge from March, and has done an awesome job and released it for both personal and commercial use, with proper attribution.
This is beyond cool!
Now, in addition to my meager support on his Patreon page, I have to come up with an adventure to go with it….
YOLO – You Only Live Once, was a popular online meme a couple of years ago.
I remember someone posted their idea for that, “You Obviously Like Owls”
I couldn’t help but thinking, “You Obviously Like Owlbears.”
Yon Obstinate Large Owlbear
Yikes! Oooh! Large! Owlbear! (I am thinking of Bugs Bunny facing one of the many monsters he encountered.)
Yellowish Olive Liquid Oozes
Yucky Odorous Littered Oubliettes
Yard Of Living Oracles
Sometimes these acronym and alliteration exercises give me ideas for something to use in a game, or just a chuckle, or allow me to get these things out of my brain so I can focus on something else. Perhaps these random thoughts spur someone else to some great RPG idea.
There is an interesting discussion on White Star over on the G+ Community.
White Star is a basic framework. I agree that its presentation with a strong homage to Star Wars helps to understand how it works.
I also see that as a basic framework, it supports any variation on anything that can be considered Science Fiction. From the hardest of science fiction, to the softest and vaguest hint of SF.
I think it is the simplicity of White Star that opens up so many possibilities. With such a simple tool box, different GM’s can go in different directions and each come up with something cool, that others can also use. There is no limit.
If you are comfortable with that simplicity and like to fill in the “gaps” that you see, it is perfect.
One could easily add in comic book heroes, it would take some tweaks to abilities and more tech, but it could be done. Any book, short story, old radio serial, TV show, or movie setting can be done using White Star. Some may take more work by the GM to make it happen, barring a supplement, but it can be done. However, it won’t be long and you will have lots of material, based on the rate at which new classes and ships have hit the community.
RPG’s that try to define “everything” end up being more about the rules and having the right book or supplement, than about doing what you came to do – play.
I am a big fan of both history and maps. I have a B.A. in History.
The ancient world of Egypt, the Middle East, Greece, and Rome, and on up to the Renaissance fascinate me.
The map of Germany with over 1,000 different countries is just fascinating. At my university they had a big hardback map book with a multi-colored map of Germany in the middle ages, and it just fascinated me. My paperback Rand McNally Atlas of World History is a passable substitute for such high-end books of maps.
Just looking at all the colors delineating all the separate nations generates the seeds of ideas.
Whether one is using a campaign set in a historical period of the ancients, or medieval, or a western, or post apocalyptic, maps help set the tone and flavor. Do you need to share the map with players? If they are a post holocaust type setting, would they even know they are on a planet and would they recognize a continent or larger scale map for what it is? In other settings, will players be able to afford a map?
Even if the maps you draw are only to inform yourself as the DM, don’t you want to share your creation(s) with your players?
I don’t have many books of maps. A well-done map is a thing of beauty. I like all maps, real and imaginary.
I don’t have the skill I wish I did to make my own maps. My maps are just crude representations of things. Some are better than others. I really appreciate all the maps available for my use from the plethora of OSR map makers!
I had a package in the mail on Friday, May 8th. I had forgotten that I ordered the April Mythoard. However, I had a feeling that there was something that should be coming in.
I had not planned to get it, but when I saw that it contained the latest edition of Oubliette #9, I was curious. I had read other positive comments about it, and knew that I would get some other cool goodies along with it, so I took the plunge.
Along with Oubliette #9 are several other goodies from Squarehex. There is a book mark with large squares on one side and the other side contains large squares with dungeon map symbols. There are two business card sized items. One is blank on one side, and the other side had hexes with outdoor map symbols. The other small card has dungeon map symbols that are black and the other side has the same symbols in gray with labels to explain them. I am not sure if the purpose of these symbols is to give you an example of what such symbols “should” or might look like, or if you are supposed to put them under your hex paper to help you draw a very neat map.
There is a folded piece of graph paper the same size as the Oubliette issue with the grid on the outside. The inside of the graph paper has the OGL license. I wonder if it it the innermost page of the zine, and did not get stapled. Finally, there is a small pad of 7 mm hex paper. The pad it not as wide as a business card, and it is about as tall as two business cards top to bottom. It is so small that it is for a very small area and it well suited to a micro map.
I expected the Oubliette zine to be a full page folded over, instead it is about a half page folded over. The introduction indicates that this is not the usual size. It is a slick card stock cover with click heavy weight interior pages. It is 20 pages counting the back cover, which is a table for generating hit points of creatures from 1/2 HD to 2 HD using a roll of one or more d20’s. Six pages are a mini adventure, two pages with four new spells. two pages on a variation on familiars, four new magic boots, a new monster, and second mini adventure of three pages. While not every idea will be used by everyone, there is a lot in these few pages.
Awful Good Games has a booklet that is zine sized, i.e. half a page folded over. It is a module of 31 pages. It has a slick card stock cover and slick heavy paper for the pages. The text is black over light grey. It is legible as long as the slick paper does not have any glare. Older eyes with bifocals can have trouble with this. If you avoid glare on the page, unless your eyes are worse than mine, you will be able to read it.
Next is a mini setting, a half page top to bottom ready for a standard three ring binder on slick card stock. It is black ink on a lightly colored background. It looks great, and as long as there is no glare, it too is easy to read. It continues adding to the Mythoard setting. I like that they keep adding things to the existing setting. If you want to use this setting in whole or in part, it is easy to do with this. I was glad to see that past month’s offerings are available. I would like to have the complete series of materials, if I can.
Next is a Pathfinder compatible supplement from AAW Games. It is For Rent, Lease or Conquest. It is a module about obtaining a home base for the party. It is a 42 page adventure. It is in a slick cover and the pages give one the visual impression of newsprint, but are slick and heavier than newsprint. The print is black ink on a multi-colored background. Most of each page has a light background, and thankfully the slick pages are not shiny. However, lighting and the angle the page is held can make words over darker ink harder to read for older eyes with bifocals. In addition, the layout has the text on some pages running into the border decoration. I think the intent is to look cool, but since it is hard for me to make out the text in some areas, and not every page is crowded, I think it is a layout issue. When the young eyes of the layout people read this stuff in 20 or 30 years, they will curse their younger selves. It is worst in sections of the page where the background color transitions from lighter to darker. Some letters disappear. In the corners of some pages is a leaf motif that goes light, dark, light and the odd color transition takes more concentration to read. I find that prolonged reading of this starts the feelings of a headache. It reminds me of the original PDF of D&D 5 where it had a colored background and was very hard to read. It seems like the intent is to go after the younger crowd at the expense of the older crowd.
The premise of the module is buying/occupying a building for home base and the villain is the realtor. I do not find that entertaining. As a homeowner who got screwed in the housing collapse, it is too much like papers and paychecks. That plus the difficulty in reading it, I don’t know if there are any useful nuggets in here.
Finally, there are two Dragon’s Quest adventures from Judge’s Guild: Starsilver Trek, and Heroes and Villains. They are in clear sealed plastic. If this is the original plastic and still sealed, do I want to open them? While these were from Bad Mike’s Books and Games, are they worth more sealed? There are definitely from back in the day and the art is of the sort that did not draw me in back then. Some of the JG stuff is really good and I wish I had delved into it back then.
So there is a lot of stuff in here. Some of it is for younger/better eyes than mine. As with “grab bags” one cannot expect everything to hit the sweet spot.
I found some things to interest me, and some ideas for later.
I purchased the Goldenrod Guide to Combat for Swords & Wizardry for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day.
This supplement is 18 pages, including cover and OGL on the last page. There are several illustrations, charts, and tables. It deals with various aspects of combat, with suggested house rule changes to craft combat to your liking.
It begins with the combat round and moves on to mounted combat, unmounting a rider, fisticuffs, grappling, called shots, disarming opponents, permanent damage and maiming, parting shots, shield wall, ranged combat, critical hits, death and dying, weapon proficiencies, specialization, fighting styles, running competitive combats, such as jousts, tournaments, and archery,
Most of these rules are a paragraph or two. They can be used whole cloth, or a piece here and there, or server for ideas for your own rules.
The majority of these rules are more fiddly than I prefer in the combat system. The last section on jousts, tournaments, and archery would get the most use in my campaign.
If you are looking for house rules that are balanced and fit in with OD&D clones, such as Swords & Wizardry, this booklet will give you lots of ideas.
I planned to write a follow up on my A to Z experience this year, and a survey that arrive just before midnight alerted me to a Reflections Post, that needed to be done by May 8th. I am doing catch up on articles and clearing a backlog of things to review, on this rainy, thunderstorm laden weekend.
This was the second year that I participated in the A to Z Blogging Challenge to write a post every day, except Sundays, in April. As with last year, 26 blog posts is not difficult for me. I had most of them done and scheduled before April. Also, like last year, I only had time to keep up with the blogs in the (GA) category. This year, I read most of the posts.
For me, the hardest part of the challenge is a theme that I feel good about. This year, I wrote about different aspects of planning a city, whether it is a living city or an abandoned/lost city. Once I had a topic, I came up with 26 topics. I then scheduled each topic for the appropriate day and wrote on the topics that interested me.
I had most of my topics written with at least a few paragraphs or notes of things to be sure to mention. I dug in and wrote several posts in a marathon session, so that I only had to let them sit to do cleanup before they posted. A few topics seemed a bit harder to write, and I got a bit repetitive when some topics had overlap.
I did not come up with as many tables and generators as I had hoped. I did get some ideas for building them. Once those ideas have sat for awhile, I will gather them and see about making a more coherent PDF to share.
My goal of a system to randomly generate parts of a city did not materialize. I think because of the all the dice table in Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad #1, that +Adam Muszkiewicz showed me. It touched on most of what I was after. I don’t really need all the details I think I do, I just WANT them.
Since I scheduled each post, I had no problem posting on the correct day.
I am currently on the fence as to whether or not I will participate next year. I like that I used it to help me clarify and flesh out ideas for my own use. If I participate again, I will have to use it to do something helpful to my own needs and desires as a GM; whether it be a module, series of new creatures, a collection of maps, or NPC’s, it will have to be something that serves a dual purpose.
This year, there were twelve blogs with the (GA) tag for games. Of those, one was geared towards game books and not directly RPG related, that I could tell. Perhaps it was just not my thing.
Nemo’s Lounge gave up doing custom NPCs with a drawing after 16 posts. Both the drawings and NPC’s were great!
Wampus Country was doing a town a day and got up to E when it stopped. He had some interesting ideas, that I enjoyed while it lasted.
Others missed a beat here and there, but most of us managed all 26 postings for the month.
Tower of the Archmage had a great series of vignettes of a party of adventurers. He often included a map. He hiked the Appalachian trail and was gone for the whole challenge, so he wrote and scheduled all of his postings before he left. This series would make a neat short story and/or a module/dungeon.
Tim Brannon at The Other Side did vampires, as he promised he would last year, after doing witches. Who knew there were so many vampires in different cultures. He began with A for Aswang, which I not too long before learned about from watching Grimm. When White Star came out, he even did an A to Z special with a Space Vampire, modeled on the one from the 80’s Buck Rogers TV Show.
Mark Craddock of Cross Plains reviewed his favorite things about D&D.
Keith Davies of In My Campaign built several mythologies/pantheons and had a system to help him build them.
Sea of Stars had a series of NPC;s.
Spes Magna Games did a series on the “Boogie Knights Of the Round Table”. I have not seen the movie, Boogie Nights, but I got the reference. What if King Arthur and his knights where in the age of disco? He kept it going until the last few days, but did all 26 posts.
Another Caffeinated Day did a series of NPC’s,
The Dwarven Stronghold did NPC’s and magic items.
If you need NPC’s, items, maps, images, vampires, or city planning suggestions, there is a lot of good stuff collected in these posts, check them out.
I saw this article online about a 3000 room labyrinth in Egypt and the claim in the video is that they supposedly found it basically intact. If that were true, you’d think one could find an article about it on a major news site, and not just websites the specialize in outrageous claims.
I’d like it to be true.
Writers of the ancient world described it, so the question is, how much of what the ancients wrote about it is accurate? The size of the site seems to be accurate, but if the canal cut through it revealed the labyrinth, why don’t we know about it?
Still it is an interesting idea. It would be a pain to do a map with 3,000 rooms. Then you have to figure out how to populate them with information, decoration, emptiness, treasure, monsters, etc. Even if only a single level, 3,000 rooms is a megadungeon. How many rooms do the recently published megadungeons of he OSR have?
They have an FB page.
Robert Schoch the geologist who claims the Sphinx is 10,000 years old, or some such, has weighed in on it. The episode on the History Channel about a decade ago on this idea seemed somewhat reasonable that the Sphynx was a natural stone outcropping that had perhaps been worked prior to the rise of Egypt. (As I recall, that was the gist of his argument.) I don’t see why prehistoric humans couldn’t have done that.
The name of the site is Hawara.
The Labyrinth of Egypt website has a page on previous expeditions.
I won a copy of White Box Omnibus, by +James Spahn of Barrel Rider Games on the Happy Jacks Podcast for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day.
Things have kept me busy since then. After White Star came out and I reviewed it, I figured I better hurry up and read through the Omnibus and do my promised review.
James’ own introduction to the text explains it well:
White Box Omnibus is a compilation of six previously published
products: White Box Companion, White Box Bestiary, White Box Treasures, White Box Adventures: The Wererat’s Well, White Box Adventures: The Wizard’s Tower and White Box Adventures: The Dragon’s Hoard. But a few extras have been added. In addition to cleaning things up a bit, there are a few new things you’ll find.
The Monk has been added as a player character class. It is written in the spirit of Arneson’s Supplement II, but streamlined to fit WhiteBox. You’ll find simple, easy to implement rules for introducing powerful magical artifacts into your campaign along with new monsters in the bestiary.
The three adventures featured in White Box Omnibus have now been augmented by an appendix – The Willow Valley Gazetteer. It’s a mini-campaign setting which can be used to tie the three adventures together, or even continue having adventures in that region.
Section 1 – Class options – Contains variations on standard classes that give bonuses in one area, but limitations in another. Such as the “sub-class” of cleric, the healer, who can use a healing touch once per day but has a -1 on to hit rolls.
Bard Class – This is a simple class designed to work within Swords & Wizardry and other D&D clones, instead of the kludge of AD&D.
Druid Class – A version of a cleric with a Forestry ability that allows tracking, passing without trace, or dealing with wild animals.
Monk Class – Similar to the class in AD&D, with house rules suggestions to make it more like the AD&D monk.
Paladin Class – With the exception of leaving out the warhorse, this is the paladin we recognize.
Ranger Class – With the Forestry ability, like the Druid.
Thief Class – Single skill called Thievery using a 1d6 mechanic based on level. This covers all the thief skills in a big separate table in AD&D. There is a house rule for climbing that add a bonus to the roll.
Section 2 Magic Items – A list of very interesting armor and shields.
potions, scrolls, rings, staves, wands, weapons, and three pages dedicated to miscellaneous magic items. The miscellaneous items has a house rule about “purposed magic items”, i.e. Artifacts.
Section 3 – Bestiary – This includes many creatures that are well-known from other versions of OD&D & AD&D.
For example, Brain Lord – Squid headed humanoids p. 39-40.
Section 4 – Adventure – Wererat’s Well 15 pages including the introductory illustration and map by Matt Jackson [G+ account deleted before archived.].
Section 5 – Adventure – The Wizard’s Tower – 20 pages including the introductory illustration and map by Dyson Logos.
Section 6 – Adventure – The Dragon’s Hoard – 18 pages including the introductory illustration and map by Matt Jackson
[G+ account deleted before archived.] .
Appendix – The Willow Valley Gazetteer – 22 pages including the village map by Matt Jackson
[G+ account deleted before archived.] , and an area map done in Hexographer. There is a d20 rumor table for the village and a couple of pages on communities of halflings, dwarves, and elves. This mini-campaign setting has a detailed village, and the area map ties it all together into the three adventures and several of the new creatures and items.
I am a big fan of AD&D. Mostly because it is what I knew and played for so long. I am growing to be a major fan of simple. Less rules and less “fiddly bits” that get in the way.
This large collection of material that supplements Swords & Wizardry White Box to give it many of the things I like about AD&D, or supplemental material from the later LBB’s. It also streamlines them and makes them easy to use, like the bard. In AD&D, the bard class is a mess. I don’t know anyone who started as a fighter, changed to a thief prior to getting the benefits of a 9th level fighter, etc.
The simple bard class presented here, plus the simplified single skill abilities for druids, rangers, and thieves make it easy to avoid paper shuffling and digging through the manual.
The magic items are new and interesting. They have given me many ideas.
I also like how James separates out ideas for house rules in grey highlighted text.
The simplicity of what is presented here is also modular, so that one can pick and choose what you want to use, and easily house rule things that you feel are missing or “not your way of doing things.”
I only skimmed the three adventures. They are clearly presented and to the point. There is enough detail to help out the DM and enough openness to easily supplement the material or drop it in to an existing campaign.
The gazetteer is a village with a map of the village and an area map that ties the three adventures together with the setting. This could easily be the start of one’s own sandbox campaign, or be dropped in as a new area to explore. It is a good model of one way to build a sandbox.
The layout is well done and the whole thing is easy on the eyes and easy to read on a screen.
Just as with the recent White Star, I recommend the White Box Omnibus!
Interesting Science Fiction turned reality, bad for freedom of speech.
“Gun” that prevents people from speaking.
I can see despots and those who don’t truly believe in freedom of speech using this.
It would be great if during a true debate that the moderator could silence one party while the other party completed their statement, to enforce civility, but that’s a whole can of worms right there. We only seem to have true debates in structured settings that will never fly in the world of politics.
There’s a few people I know that won’t let you get a word in edgewise. This would be good for the DM to keep each player quiet while the one who had the turn to speak had their say.
However, this is yet another invention that excuses bad behavior, and instead of teaching people to share the floor and let others have their say, someone will get to decide who gets to have their say. Who gets to decide who can or can’t use this device?
While I think the world would run smoother if everyone else did certain things my way, I am smart enough to know that that would not be a viable solution. There are certain things on which I disagree with others, and definitely things I don’t want to hear from others, but that is a selfish and isolating way to live. Many things that I like, I can’t do or create on my own, so I need people who are different from me.
If no one had the chance to say, ‘No.’; or to point out problems, or make suggestions, how soon might we regret that?
If you really don’t want to deal with the rest of the world, move to the wilderness, and unplug from all media.
Personally, I think this technology should only be used in the realm of science fiction and RPG’s. People should be held accountable for their words and actions, not denied the freedom to use their words and actions as they see fit. People will find a way to be a jerk, if that’s what they really want to do.
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