Tag Archives: Game Design

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Tenkar’s Landing – OSR Crowdsourced Island

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I took the plunge and signed up for a hex in the Tenkar’s Landing Crowdsourced Island. There is a G+ community for the endeavor.

It will be interesting to see how this all comes together.

So far, it is decided to use 6 mile hexes, any flavor of the Swords & Wizardry Rules, but keeping it light on the “crunch” for easier use by any rules set.

Erik has given the general background of the island and will provide some other information.

One person has already done a map of their hex with fishing villages.

There are still several hexes left.

I claimed a swamp hex, so it will be interesting how the whole thing meshes with the rest of the island and map.

RPGs

What is the OSR?

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The perfect answer from Greyhawk Grognard, it even has a d20 table! He does mention that it could easily be a d100 table. It should at least be a d30 table so I can use the d30 I bought at GenCon.

Now everyone should be happy, or not, probably not for some that just can’t let it go. Sounds like a younger me who just couldn’t let go of a fine point of distinction lost on the majority of the world. Get over it, IT’S A GAME! If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong!

RPGs

Cursory Impressions of 5e Basic PDF

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It’s great that 5e has the basic rules for character creation available for free. As I understand it, the free PDF will be expanded to include more rules.

I paged through the PDF on my laptop at work and two things struck me:

  1. The print over a shaded background was a little hard to read. I think that they should have had input from player’s with “older” eyes, or less than “perfect” eyes give some input.
    I confirmed on my monitor at home that it is better, but still hard on the eyes. I am hoping my tablet is better.
    While it may look “cool” if it is harder to read, it will make it harder to comprehend. Am I the only almost 50 year old (in September) player with this issue?
  2. I need more time to read and digest rather than flip through, but the character generation process seems  complex. It give a point buy option for speediest generation. But there are still lots of other options. I think it will be less confusing when I have time to read it.

The experience progression for all classes appears to be the same for all classes. I read on another site that gold doesn’t count for x.p. It still seemed way too easy to level up. It also topped out at level 20, I did not see if beyond level 20 is possible. Ability scores top out at 30.

There are not as many spells as in 1e, and they call a lot of 1st level spells in 1e are now cantrips. Both clerics and wizards have 9 spell levels. There are a few new and some re-named spells. There are a few different things about spell casting and magic, but I did not completely follow with a skim.

There is the taking a level in different classes for multi-classing. I believe I read that that was a 3e thing.

I did see glimpses of a few things that I can at least adapt to my campaign, but I want to read it before I elaborate.

There may be some aspects of this that I can see using as it’s own game, but character generation was not clear to me from the play test materials what I now have in this PDF. I did not keep up with the play test, but have the final bundle and created a character for a D&D Next Roll 20 game. It took forever to figure out how to generate a character, and I missed out on understanding some things.

I was without power from about 2 AM Monday until sometime Wednesday afternoon due to a big storm. I am behind on household chores, so I’m not sure when I will get to read it.

RPGs

The Good Guys Are Not Stupid Wimps

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Rick Stump over at Don’t Split the Party has an excellent article:

Good Isn’t Stupid, or weak, or nice.

Paladins don’t have to be simple, weak minded, naive fools. They can have depth and edges to them that makes them both interesting and far from an easy kill.

They should be a threat to evil and a threat to anyone who stands in their way.

Just as the evil villain is a threat to the forces of good.

Any DM who allows paladins, and any player who has, is, or wants to play a paladin should read this.

RPGs

How Many Hours of Daylight?

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Recently in play, the question came up of when does it get dark?

I had to make up something.

It happened to be early summer in the game, so I could use the approximate times from this time of year.

However, time progresses quickly in the game, so it is now mid-Autumn, so there is less daylight. When the players are running around outside, the amount of light tends to be important. Rather than make something up on the fly and it be radically inconsistent with past rulings, I built a chart for use at the game table.

I have put together a sunrise/sunset and hours of daylight for each day on my game calendar – Calendar And Random Generation.

I use twelve months with twenty-eight days for simplicity of generating random date. This is a game, so it does no have to have total verisimilitude with reality, just enough to make sense.

Google is your friend for esoteric information, but I wanted a chart I could print out for the game table and have ready without having to have my tablet or laptop available.

I picked a location that was in a temperate zone analogous to the current area in use in my campaign. I looked for sunrise and sunset times for Spring and Autumnal Equinoxes and Winter and Summer Solstices. I then determined how many days were between each and the difference in times between each and determined the number of seconds sunrise and sunset was earlier or later depending on the season. In reality, there is not exactly 59 seconds earlier sunrise each day, but again, this isn’t reality.

Of course, closer to the poles have more light certain times of year. I don’t know the formula but each degree of latitude N/S is approximately 69 miles for an Earth-sized planet. You can add or subtract minutes to the rise and set times based on the formula. I am sure Google has it. Based on Sturgis, MI and Kansas City, MO being about 2.7 degrees apart, the Spring Equinox sunrise time in Kansas City, MO is about 24 minutes earlier than Sturgis, MI. Sunset the same day is thus also earlier in KC. It is close enough to a 24 minute difference on the Autumnal Equinox and the Solstices, that one can extrapolate about an 8 minute difference for every 69 miles north or south. If you want to get fancier with your own calculations that’s cool. If you want a table for a world that is messier and more like reality, that’s your choice. I made the choice to spend as little time on this as possible at the table.

I have shared a PDF of my efforts – Sunrise & Sunset Times.

RPGs

Play Time – June 1, 2014

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My son and his girlfriend came over and we played all day and until 10:30 pm.

Most of it was role playing as they managed to catch the baron in a gap in his schedule and they presented him a magic longsword, shield and silver circlet they recovered from one of the tombs they looted. It surprised me that they did not keep the magic items, since one of them is a half-elf fighter/magic user, she could have used the bonuses. They were thinking larger and wanting favor. They also gave a 5,000 s.p. (I use the silver standard) necklace for the baron’s bride to be. I determined that the sword and shield belonged to a long-dead knight, and named them “Foe-Bane” and “Defender”, which I determined before they decided to give them away. The captain of the guard would not allow a gift until either the town wizard or the town sage ruled on them, because security was so tight.

After they found out what they were, they go to see the baron, and get in to talk to the captain. The captain has heard of these items as a boy. He sends word and the baron is available. So now they get to meet the baron. I rolled and the baron was available. I rolled again and he invited them to the wedding, etc. The baron did advise them to get better clothes, since they were running around in their ratty battle worn and blood stained clothes.

It is funny how I determined the course of events, and how they decided to insert themselves into the narrative. The King and court, ambassadors, nobles, etc. all showed up because the bride is the king’s niece, and he was he guardian as she was orphaned young. The king elevated the baron to a marcher lord over the peninsula and the ancient city. The baron’s role of keeping the nasties from going north into the kingdom has expanded to subdue the nasties and expand the kingdom.

The PCs were able to watch the ceremony through the doors of the temple.

They managed to get to meet the baron and his new bride after the ceremony, and were then introduced to the king and queen by the baron, and spoke with a couple of other powerful NPCs.

There are now so many plot hooks and red herrings that they know about, that the players can’t do more than I am ready for without abandoning their plans and leaving the area for parts unknown. Since they have declared their plans, “To take over the world.” With their cleared kobold warren as their base, I don’t see them going outside the present boundaries of the sandbox.

This is great as it further limits my focus. I need to fill in a few things here and there, but it feels so much more manageable now that I know where they plan to go.

It is so cool and fun to know that they have enjoyed our sessions and want to do more.

I can’t wait to do more planning and preparation AND the next session!

RPGs

Text – Game On!

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My son texted me last night asking if I was up for another game session on Sunday. Like he had to ask? I think it was to make sure I didn’t have other plans.

I have been working on things slowly for the next session, because it will involve a lot of role playing, I am trying to make sure I don’t generate a lot of new hooks, which I tend to do when I really get into it.

I got in a couple hours of organizational stuff.

Today, I just need to fill in the gaps of things I left open ended and undefined.

What are the NPC’s up to that don’t have time for the players? (I think I really had them going that it was some big plot point. Who knows, it might be….)

What are the names of all the major NPCs that will be in town for the baron’s wedding? I know who they are, I just need names. For a few I need stats, age, and descriptions. For the ones that they won’t end up in combat, I think I can glide over the stats.

Oops. I just realized that for certain classed NPCs, I need to think about henchmen, which there will be some….

This is one way to flesh out a sandbox, have a big event with lots of powerful people.

Well, I better quit with the writing and get on with the planning.

RPGs

Handwritten vs. Typed Game Prep Notes

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I prefer to write out my game prep notes by hand, so I can make them just the way I like and can add information to them on the fly.

However, some types of notes, like from generating a long list of treasure maps and the information about what they are made of, skill of the cartographer, condition of the map, information about where it leads, etc. makes for a long list. I ended up with two full pages of notes with one line on each page for each map. 32 maps total. Some are not for this area, and some their target remains undefined. For the ones that have a treasure, I will put the treasure information in the dungeon/location where the treasure is found.

What I found is that having two pages was causing too much confusion trying to make sure that I had everything easily accessible. Part of the problem was the the first few notes on the first page were cramped as it took a few lines to perfect how I wanted to record the information. It would have taken a long time to re-write and revise all the existing information by hand, so I cranked up Libre Office Calc, a fork of the free and open source Open Office, and I built a table.

I was able to fit all the information from both tables on one line. I was able to format and abbreviate until I got all of them to fit on one legal sized sheet of landscape paper in preview. I then highlighted every other three lines, like the tables in the AD&D manuals and used the save to PDF feature. I then emailed it to myself both to preserve a copy and have it available on my tablet and save paper.

I used the second sheet of the spreadsheet to organize the orientation of landmarks as generated by Grim’s All the Dice Random Treasure Map table. The generator uses a 7 hex cluster of six hexes around a central hex. The central hex is the destination of the map and the surrounding hexes indicate different landmarks around it. The result of the d6 is use both for a list of 6 terrain features and to determine which of 6 directions is north. Also hexes 6 and 7 are filled based on the results of the d10. I had 6 columns with the results of the contents of each hex.

Since I could not get the formulas in my first “cluster” to copy correctly to successive cells, I used NoteTab to build a looping script to increment the cell numbers for each column to generate all 32 clusters. I then just had to copy and past the 32 groups of formulas, correct the hex 6/7, placement,  and determine placement of North. I then fiddled with preview until I got a paper size big enough so that I was not fiddling with a lot of page breaks so that no cluster was split.

Here is the representation of what I did in the map cluster of landmarks where N represents possible placement of North. Hex 6 or 7 is empty as per the result of the d10.

N Hex 2       N            Hex 3 N
Hex 4    Hex 1       Hex5
N Hex 6       N            Hex 7 N

I was able to type a spreadsheet and position a group of formulas to get the layout of each location faster or at least as fast as I could have done it by hand. The benefit is that I have it nice and neat in a PDF and I have a NoteTab script that I can use if I ever need another large collection of random treasure maps. I also tend to write very poorly when I write fast, and it is my default after lots of note taking in college and grad school. My muscle memory is for fast writing to be sloppy. Now I know why doctors have such lousy handwriting. Taking the time to re-do my muscle memory is difficult.

If I have a lot to write, it is easier to type it. I prefer to have stuff on paper during game play so that I can write on it with notes, etc. I rarely use my tablet during play.

I find when generating a lot of random information that it is easier for me to write out the results by hand, and type it up only if it is so complex that it solves a problem. In the long run, if I type it up, I will have a more enduring set of notes, and can use it to more easily incorporate more players, such as online.

If I were to DM online, I would want to have two monitors so I could have one screen with the goings on of Roll20 and another for my notes, etc. I could also do it using paper on my end, no danger of the players seeing anything, lol. That solves the need for a new computer. I just need to figure out how to set up to use a computer and my game notes at the same time. As a player, it is not too hard, I only need my character sheet and paper to take notes. As a DM, I need my notes, manuals, dice for DM rolls, and something for taking notes as play progresses. My computer desk is not big enough for all that stuff. I have a folding table that I could use, so it’s doable. I just have a lot more prep needed to run something online. You don’t want things to lag when playing online, essential information must be ready and easily accessible.

Now I have to go through the collections of the One Page Dungeon Contest to figure out which ones to use for treasure map destinations, so I am ready for whatever the players decide to do tomorrow.

RPGs

Game Prep Tools

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Some aspects of game prep just require using your imagination to come up with rumors and stories to tie things together, like dungeons, treasures, and monsters. The hard part is coming up with all the pieces that need to be tied together with a story.

That is why random tables are so popular with DMs & GMs.

I was doing sandbox game preparation, before I knew it had that name. However, it was not a well organized way of doing it. After getting online a few years ago and stumbling across a ton of sites dedicated to the OSR and reading about sandbox vs. railroad, did I know there could be a better way to do things.

I have taken my “grand scheme” model of planning everything on a western Europe sized scale and reduced the focus to a single peninsula with a walled town, Larenda, at the upper portion of the peninsula, and an ancient abandoned city at the tip, Karbana. Larenda is the base of operations. I have used NPCs to urge the players to avoid Karbana as it is too dangerous. It is, but I don’t have enough planned for the ruined city yet.

Instead, I have tombs and monsters and other things going on closer to Larenda.

I have slowly been adding things to stay ahead of the players. Long weekends like this, I am using to fill in all kinds of gaps, and random tables are the way to go.

I used the d30 A to Z Treasure Map Generator to generate the properties of a list of treasure maps that a treasure map vendor, named Condor, has. Condor has sold the party maps to some ancient tombs they discovered, proving that they were tombs not yet known, as the forest has grown over them since the ancient city fell. Condor has cautioned them that the maps are genuine, but he can’t guarantee that any treasure is still there. One of the party started a riot by going to the tavern Condor was known to frequent and offering a reward for anyone who knew where he was. This was one session. The next session the other players kept their heads down in the tavern they frequented and observed a man sneaking in and keeping to himself. They rightly surmised that this was Condor. He told them to meet him at his shop the next day once things calmed down. This resulted in great laughter when they realized the one player did not ask if he had a shop, and started looking for him in the middle of the day at his favorite tavern.

So Condor has a lot more maps. I rolled and determined the quality of the cartography, the type of material, its size, and its condition, the language, if the treasure was still there, etc. If the treasure was not there I rolled on the 1st Edition DMG treasure map table to determine if it was a genuine map or a false one. Next I used Grimm’s all the dice treasure map generator to determine where each map leads. I then used Dyson’s d12 treasure map generator to determine the location of treasures that were in dungeons or structures. One treasure that was not there on the d30 table I rolled was buried outside, so then I rolled up a new treasure using the DMG and I rolled that it was a monetary treasure and then rolled a 20. This means it is a hoard so huge that it automatically explains why it was buried outside. A previous, maybe ancient group of adventurers found it and buried what they could not transport for later. I did not take everything as rolled. I moved up or down the charts for something that made sense so that there was some variety to each piece and they all weren’t located next to a whirlpool in a marsh.

I was easily able to come of with stories for the provenance and so forth for the maps. The hard part is actually locating where the maps lead on my campaign map.

As far as dungeons, I can just use a dozen of the hundreds of One Page Dungeons created over the past few years. I just have to place them on the map.

I have also collected other PDFs and tables for all kinds of generators. The d30 Sandbox Companion is great. I have multiple tables from various sources for ruins generation and city generation to flesh out Larenda, and the ancient city of Karbana.

Megadungeon resources come in handy with huge ancient cities. I plan to make Karbana the surface area to a megadungeon. I don’t know if I will ever get enough play time to do more than develop it much. However, some of  the maps lead here. I had even generated a map that is hidden in a location on the peninsula the player’s have yet to find that leads to Karbana. I had not filled it in until last night when I was finishing the descriptions of Condor’s treasure maps. The key is can a masterful job of cartography with major holes and stains still lead the players to the treasure? The one problem with all this prep is will I just have a bunch of MacGuffins that will never be realized?

What is funny are players who go to ancient tombs without any tools other than a wagon to haul loot. They find one of the tombs and the entrance is blocked by a massive stone, and they don’t have shovels, picks, pry bars, or rope to try and move it, so they have to look for another tomb and come back later.

Another tomb had some piercers in it and it freaked out the party, so they left that tomb alone after one hireling nearly died from a small one near the entrance. After they messed around with some other tombs, when they were back in town they asked the sage and learned that they were just normal creatures. They were hoping to find an easy way to get rid of them, but the wizard in town is too busy to even talk to them, lowly first, second, and third level characters. So now they either come up with a plan to do something about them, or forget that tomb.

Now that they came back with a minotaur and treasure, others know about the tombs. Now to see what is going to happen.

A few tables to generate a structure, and a story to tie the structure together, then what happens when the players encounter it, it becomes a living breathing adventure full of fun and excitement.

There is something about this than you can’t learn without doing. Generate an adventure scenario and make up a story to tie it together, then unleash the players on it.

As a DM one must get used to the idea that some of the things that we think are so cool will be skipped over by the players, unless we railroad them.

My only railroading is strong hints or suggestions from NPCs to avoid certain areas so I can have more time to work on them. If I planned more of the basic adventure stuff and didn’t mention the grand idea stuff until it is ready, I could avoid railroads all together.

Now back to game prep! Monday’s session is going to be awesome!