Appendix N

Nostalgia

2012-01-21T22:54:00.000-06:00

I get to kill two birds with today's posting. As I've noted on a few spots, I'm trying to work less this year and enjoy life more. We'll see how long that last as my work situation could change or any number of factors outside my control can smash my plans. But until that happens...

So today was clean house day. This may not sound interesting, but if you're a gamer who has played and collected for a long time, it can lead to some interesting times. While due to space constrains I've lost, sold, traded or otherwise lost much of my collection, I still have a lot of things like my old Polyhedron magazines that I stumbled across or some maps by one of my friends.'

Jason is a great artist and a good guy and I haven't talked to him for years but hell, that's part his fault and part my fault.

I also came across some photos of my friends and I when I used to live on Mozart playing some second edition. Good times.

But on another front, nostalgia hits from a completely unexpected source; Wizards of the Coast is going to reprint the first three Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books with new covers and provide some of the cash for the Gary fund.

I noted over on RPG.net that I'm of two minds. The first is the cynical aspect that looks at this as a ploy by WoTC to sell some books at an inflated cost and notes that they completely ignore Dave, the other founder of Dungeons & Dragons. There are other bits that go clink clink in my head, but really, I'm trying to be the gamer who goes, "Wow."

WoTC probably isn't going to make much money off this. It's a limited print run that is going through local gaming stores only and no chains. They'll also be donating some money. I think that its a good move because it allows those who want the 'shinny' but also the old, to get a look at it. Mind you, if anyone really wants to get those books e-bay and used book stores probably have them at a much cheaper price. It also allows some good will to shine through thanks to the nature of the product.

There are those who see it as a money grab and as an excuse for Wizards of the Coast to strike out as games like OSIRIC and it is possible. Me? I'm hoping that its an experiment that goes well and that Wizards of the Coast does something like this for Dave and that they keep building what could be good will be doing things fans want as opposed to being a corporation.

We'll see.

Game on folks.

The Company by K. J. Parker

2012-01-20T17:26:00.000-06:00

I continue to make my reading of K. J. Parker based on the findings at Half Priced books. I would love to purchase the ebooks and provide some direct support for the author, but when I can get the hardcover at half the price of the ebook, and that hardcover is in near mind condition, its not contest. The next book I read I'll have to decide if it's going to be something by this author, whose work I've run out of, but haven't read it all, or some of the other material I have siting dormant on my Toshiba Thrive via Kindle or in one of the many piles around the house.

Anyway, K. J. Parker continues to impress, but honestly, this book would be book three were I to rank them. I'm torn between the Hammer and the Folding Knife, although I think I like the former just a touch more and the Company has its moments but tends to fall a little short in my enjoyment level.

The Company is about a group of 'linebreakers'. This is a term used here to describe the specialist warriors who charge a pike line and break through them so that those ranks can be decimated by the opposing side. I forget what they were called in the various mercenary companies but they were generally paid a lot of money because they were often the first to engage the enemy and the first to die.

The thing that makes A Company unique is that outside of their last fight, they have as a unit, survived every engagement they've been in. This gives them a bit of a legend, an aura of invicibility that provides a lot of backing to whatever they say.

In a role playing game, allowing the character to develop a reputation and allowing that reputation to have an impact on others is something the GM should keep track of. Mind you, that reputation may vary a bit depending on what the players are doing, but if the players are known to have overcome the Temple of Elemental Evil and helped the towns and been generally awesome in their display of prowess, the people should give them their props. It's not a reward that necessarily comes with any mechanic benefits, but clever players will be able to use those props for their own rewards.

Another bit is that when the novel starts, almost all of the characters are broke. In many games, the spending of cash isn't necessarily a big deal. Some games don't even really cover it, instead relying on a vague 'level' of wealth, like Hero of FASERIP, the old Marvel Super Heroes game, does. Others like Dungeons and Dragons have a pretty detail intensive level and various methods of removing said cash from the characters.

In earlier editions, characters might have to pay various maintenance fees to maintain their lifestyle. In 3rd and 4th edition, those funds are assumed to go almost exclusively to the purchasing of magic items.

In The Company, I'd say its more of the former than the later. The characters and wealth are not connected. Wealth in and of itself is something nice to have for them, but isn't their main goal. Their main goal seems to be to stay 'The Company' due to their experiences in 'the war'.

This is an important issue though when looking at games like Dungeons and Dragons. What role do you want wealth to play in your campaign? If you engage the players and allow them to hunt down items they want or allow them to make items they want using various rituals and rites, then in later editions, gold in and of itself can be used for other purposes as it used to be. This is a campaign decision that should be made before the start of the game, and it is one that the players should be informed of.

If for example, you are playing with people you don't know and have it at the back of your mind that you'll allow them do pretty much build their items, or give them quests when they let you know what the items they're looking for are, they might not be expecting it and can grow frustrated if you cut back on the funds, thinking that they will need that gold for magic items.

In another aspect of the book, some of the characters have secrets. Some games are build around bringing out the role playing aspect of such party conflict. In my experience, especially with the older editions, blows might have come out over magic items, especially those high powered ones that might not ever come around again like a Girdle of Storm Giant Strength. In other games like Burning Wheel, probably not, but the fact that you killed someones favored cousin or something along those lines might be an issue that has to be resolved in play.

Depending on the maturity level of your group, and their interactions with each other and you, allowing players to have such 'dirty' secrets can be fun. This is something that you have to be careful with though as some people take their gaming very seriously and things done in the game transfer over to the real world in terms of real anger or disappointment.

The Company is also great for showcasing how large government may think. There are several individuals brought out and quickly brought out of the story, just to showcase how slow things may move. The end conflict is actually about something that has been under investigation for years, showcasing yet again, the inefficiencies of the government.

It is ironically enough in a position that like where individuals can shine. Player characters may have opportunities to gather fame and fortune if they are able to outmaneuver and outhink and outperform those who are in competition with them and the GM should allow it when appropriate.

The Hammer by K. J. Parker

2012-01-17T18:34:00.000-06:00

While I found the Hammer didn't involve a lot of material in terms of fighting, combat, or other standards of fantasy role playing games, there is still plenty of rich material to mine.

The first thing to review, is base campaign assumptions. In this setting, Gig, the third son of the noble exiled family, has no expectations on him that are standard. If the family was not exiled, he would have been sent off to the priesthood because the eldest stands to inherit, the second is a back up so to speak, and the third... well, he's extra and even historically, they were often sent off to the church. What happens in noble families in the setting you're using? Are they given command of legions that they are no qualified for? Are they made heads of guilds through marriage? Do they form unique organizations like Pathfinders?

In that vein though, what happens with other people? Teuccer, a young lady from the mainland, fresh to the colony island, wants to be a doctor. Back on the mainland, that would never happen because it wasn't a woman's place. In her new home though, while some may consider her eccentric, they trust her abilities and treat her like the specialist she is. In some ways though, this is part of what Dungeons and Dragons has suffered a little from.

I don't want to say that the game is politically correct, but when looking at most eras of history, things are hard for the common man. Slavery is a common occurrence. Strength of law is enforced by actual strength. Women in many instances, are limited in what jobs they can take. They face real social barriers and have real hindrances.

By being so modern in its outlook, Dungeons and Dragons takes away some of that potential struggle. Now if your game is all about going into the dungeons and collecting the loot, that is appropriate. After all, you don't want to make it more difficult for one player than you do another in terms of buying equipment and getting solutions that the other players have.

But if its about role playing struggles and every one is the same and everyone has the same benefits and the same flexibility, then you might want to look at some of the old social limits. This includes something like looking at the wearing of certain colors, the use of weaponry outside of the nobility. One of the ideas that the old d20 Excaliber book mentioned as a role playing bit was that only knights could use swords. This didn't prevent other social status characters from making fighters, but they would be known by others weapons. Indeed, some weapons are distinctively peasant in nature or not meant for the higher ranking soldiers.

Another aspect of the colony life, is whose paying for it? Is there a single organization that pays for the people to move there? To pay for the people to live there? what are the obligations of the people who live there? In The Hammer, the colonist are expected to turn off a certain amount of beef in exchange for the necessary tools for living like nails, hammers, hoes, clothing and other farming tools. The isolation of the setting means that often the characters have to make due with what they have. In this book, there is 'the Company', but we don't find out too much about them in this book. Considering I'm reading another book by the same author called, 'The Company', it wouldn't surprise me if that some how all tied in together.

The Hammer is a book that is filled with characters breaking their standard background roles and fighting against the limitations imposed on them from society. It is worth reading to see how island life might cause innovation among the least likely people.

The Hammer by K. J. Parker or more blathering about 5h Editio

2012-01-16T13:08:00.000-06:00

The Hammer, by K. J. Parker, is another done in one book that I found well written and entertaining. While it takes place in some psuedo-historical context and doesn't necessarily involve any magic or fantasy elements, it is engaging reading.

In terms of pricing, well, I bought it during one of the Borders Bookstore closings with others at something like 4 books for ten dollars so say, $2.50. Which is a shame because I see the ebook is something like $10 in and of itself. A further shame because my local Half Price has numerous books by the author, and while I'd love to directly support the author, as Cage the Elephant would say, "Ain't no rest for the wicked, money don't grow on trees' so instead of paying $9.99 for an ebook, I'll pay $3.49 for a paperback that the author gets zero of. Not what I want to do but hey, the publisher has right now four books on sale for $2.99 so they are fully aware of the pros and cons of various models of pricing.

Anyway, onto gaming thoughts.

Like The Folding Knife, I initially didn't see a lot of room where the material could be considered inspiring outside of getting the reader thinking and engaged with the book and working on the readers own thoughts and awareness.

But as I continued to read, and this might, in part, be caused by all the talk of 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, I came to some interesting observations about what one might look at in terms of making the new edition more playable, that takes its pages from some of what 4th edition did.

In the Hammer, Gignomai or Gig, is a member of the met'Oc, a family of nobles in exile on an island colony. This island colony pays dues to 'The Company'.

Gig though, hates his family. They are not good people. Having been out of contact with the mainland for so long, they have grown decadent and survival is a daily struggle in the overall reach of things. The implications of such struggle are showcased through a variety of methods but...

Looking at 4th edition, there was a bit of a setting called a 'Points of Light' setting. It was supposed to be where things were dark and dangerous and could be problematic.

The problem was that actual game play didn't necessarily feel like that in the games I played or those I've heard of. This is for the most part mind you. In older editions, there were tons of random encounters and these random encounters didn't necessarily rely on the player character's level, they relied on where they were at. Only 3rd level and going to the old dwarf ruins some two weeks travel out of the city? Wandering encounter says you encounter a group of stone giants with two cave bears. Roll for imitative.

The sheer random chance of such an encounter was part of the danger inherent in the setting. On the other hand, you could encounter a group of giant rats or one cave bear by itself. There needs to be more random elements to things while providing players, in the option of the stone giants, with the opportunity to retreat if and when needed.

Another aspect of The Hammer, is that Gig is different. The whole 4e thing should have been the players were rising in a world of decay, not one that was necessarily full of decadence or evil, but one that needed new blood, new ideas and new methods to get things moving. In some instances, this might not even be new methods or new ideas, but motivation and energy. By having the players be the ones who are adding and changing the scenery, the GM is giving them far more power than giving them a slightly magical sword or dagger.

For example, in The Hammer, Gig creates a factory and with it, guns. This isn't new technology to the setting. It's not a new method. But no one has done it before because no one thought of it. No one took the time to do it. No one was interested in it. Everyone was interested in keeping things the exact way they were, fighting that inevitable decline of their ways as society collapsed slowly, ever so slowly about them.

This, the spirit of exploration, the spirit of fighting against the standard, is what D&D can be about without changing game mechanics and instead working on the settings.

But in order to do that, there would have to be some changes to the core structure of the game.

As much as I enjoy magic, and magic item shops, and schools of wizardry, to get the new feeling, to get the 'shinny' feeling, Dungeons and Dragons has to drop kick it to the curb. Oh sure, in an appendix, perhaps next to the wandering harlot one, put some notes about adding colleges of magic and magic item shops, but for the most part, in order to keep magic different and new and special, it has to be extremely limited and random.

When you provide the opportunity for players to buy anything other then the most mundane of magic items, you've destroyed magic. Now mind you, for many genres and games, this is perfectly acceptable. Magic in and of itself becomes another form of technology.

But then you need to drop the whole concept of a dark savage age where a few independent city states struggle for survival because when players can go to a magic shop and pick up an enchanted sword, if the local government isn't doing something with that magic to safeguard the people in the first place, that logic is flawed.

And magic colleges? Part of the problem with spellcastersspellbooks, and the numerous costs associated with all of that ranging from the inks used to copy the spells, to the spellbooks themselves.

On the altar of game balance, those flavor elements have been fairly neutralized but in exchange, the wizards have become nothing more than fighters that don't use a sword to attack people but rather use spells that do similar damage and have similar effects.

Limiting spell selection, limiting the ability to buy spells, limiting the number of spellcasters in the setting, these all go a long way in making magic, well, magical again.

As I think of it, limiting the scope of what the players can access, when they can access it and how the can access it, is far more of a campaign element than what rule system you're using. If plate armor is something that only the highly skilled can create, then towns and villages won't have it. If players are looking for magic items, they have to hunt down rumors of such and hope that the gods are kind to their request when they hear of haunted ruins where an ancient elf crafted drifted in madness but may, mind you may, just have something similar to what the seeker wants.

And speaking of seeking out magic items, here is another area where I think earlier editions were able to throw in a bit of fun. Magic items tended to be a little more random in their power and abilities prior to 3rd edition and this allowed paladins, who always seemed to have holy avengers, have this iconic weapon with them, despite the fact that it was such a powerful magic item and probably level inappropriate. It allowed White Plume Mountain to be stacked with items of vast and great power. It allowed rings of wishes to wind up as random treasure.

Game balance may have to take a couple of blows to the face in 5th edition if Wizards of the Coast is serious about uniting fans of all editions and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Paizo and Open Design versus Wizards of the Coast: Round one: Monsters

2012-01-15T08:48:00.000-06:00

For some, when it comes to game mechanics, less is more. For example, when looking at 3rd edition, on one hand, one of the things many people say it did right, was make things more universal. While there are benefits to having one method of creating an NPC that will match up with a player, and of having standards for lowering and raising monsters, either based on hit dice or giving then levels, the problem almost becomes that you are no longer player Dungeons and Dragons.

Because you know what other systems use such a methodology? GURPS, Hero, Mutants and Masterminds, and I'm sure many others. But in Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition, the player creation aspect is so highly specialized and customized that for the Game Master, to honestly use it all the time, can be nightmarish. This isn't to say that many Dungeon Master's don't love to tweak or design or create. In some venues, this is WHY they are Dungeon Master's. In other's, because they are Dungeon's Masters and not playing, they get to tweak that part of the game like a player gets to do so with their character.

Each player though, generally only controls one character. If a Dungeon Master is making highly unique and customized characters and monsters each game, even if his enjoyment is high, his prep time is going to be huge. And taking up large chunks of prep time is never seen as a good thing.

So 4th edition went back to the drawing board on the monster side, and in terms of how monsters work, I think they largely succeeded. Oh, they screwed up the damage dealt and hit points possessed, but those aspects are able to be tweaked fairly right away. The presentation, the building, the roles, these things are shorter and sweater.

Yet in terms of Monster Manuals, after the third one, WoTC went back to the drawing board to tweak monsters because of the tweaks they did to the players in the relaunch of the Essentials line. It was another case of, "We're not going to reprint the core book because that's unnecessary, but here, have a book that fills the exact same role, including takes on all the old stuff, but is not actually a reprint." They followed up that Monster Vault boxed set with another monster product that failed to go epic but was well received due to the amount of information each monster had. It was almost like world building through the monsters. Very well done and very well received.

In terms of making monsters more, Open Design has their own Ecologies compiled from Kobold Quarterly. Paizo, while publishing Dragons and Dungeons, printed a compendium of Ecologies. Currently Paizo has a line of products that revisits monsters and expands them. The focus isn't on the game mechanics, its on making the monsters more useful to the Game Master by expanding information on where they live, how they live, why they act the way they do.

This was a fairly regular feature back in the day for Dragon magazine. Wulfgang's Ecology of the Ghoul is still one of my favorites from 2nd edition.

4th edition may have had some, but I honestly cannot recall Dragon online having any great impact on how I look at monsters. It's focus has been weak. There was a brief time when they created a new feature called Creature Incarnations. It featured a variety of monsters pulled from one monster. You can see one free article of it here. Its not bad in my opinion but...

I've mentioned before that Dragon Magazine used to be a fantastic resource for Dungeon Masters and players and I feel its become a little more than a preview and feedback machine. Back in 'my day' we had The Dragon's Beastiary and Ecology articles. When Dragon was feeling real generous and wanted to make the reader feel he got a huge bonus, we'd get a Creature Catalog, almost like a miniature sized Monster Manual.

If Dragon continued to support and publish the Incarnation articles, that would be one thing. You could say that they went in that direction. In the years, and its got to be going on something like four years, so over forty eight issues, there are less than twenty articles that fall in the heading according to a search on the article compendium.

When other companies are publishing books, in what is supposed to be a depressed buying market, especially for what are niche products, products that focus on the background and organization, and methodology, not on new game stats, if Wizards of the Coast is serious about learning from its past efforts, this is one of the directions they need to embrace.

ebooks: Freebies and Good Deals

2012-01-14T08:39:00.000-06:00

Every month Amazon has a 100 books under $3.99 deal.

Rides a Dread Legion by Raymond Feist. I'm a sucker for his writing because I've been reading it for years and years. $1.99

Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb. Enjoyed the original trilogy and some of the other books written by Hobb. $1.99

The Last Apprentice: I mention it not because I've read it, but because its for young readers. $1.99

Monsters and Manuals, a blog I follow, has a great post talking about a Project Guttenburg Appendix N. Public Domain for the win!

Orbit Books http://www.orbitebooks.com/offer/ has four ebooks for $2.99. Even though I've mentioned I wasn't blown away by Karren Miller's book http://modernappendixn.blogspot.com/2010/06/changing-nature-of-characters.html for $2.99 I bought it again to show my support. And Brent? I did enjoy the Night Angel trilogy so that was a no-brainer. And my mother is a huge fan of vampire and supernatural things so that was another book bought.

And I've mentioned it before, but Baen has a whole slew of free books over here: http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx

If you're not reading because paperbacks are $9.99 and hardcovers $30, these are some cheap reads for you.

The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker

2012-01-13T18:08:00.000-06:00

The Folding Knife is a powerful story well told. The thing is, while I enjoyed it immensely, I can't really point out too much that works in a standard Dungeons and Dragons game.

And that's a problem with Dungeons and Dragons. Make no mistake, I love D&D, but 3rd and 4th edition did really one thing very well and that's allow heroes to explore dungeons and battle monsters. While I'm not advocating that earlier editions were all about controlling the fate of nations via finances or that leadership was more that a feat, it was a 'name' level bit and that you had to work with hirelings, mercenaries and more, there is some truth to that. Sure, it was a bloody free for all in many ways and it didn't really work in many aspects but it allowed a GM who had players that wanted a different sort of end game, to not worry about killing Orcus to save the multiverse, but to pave roads and place more catapults onto the castle in order to protect it from the invading orcs.

Others have spoken more eloquently than I have on the 'end game' of the editions and I believe that while looking at opportunities for 5th edition, a hard look needs to be determined in what types of games people can play with it. If it stays focused on the slaying of monsters and the gathering of treasures, it needs to work damn hard to make sure those treasures are magical again. 3rd and 4th edition did a fantastic job of breaking things down into their numeric components but on the way, held firmly to the road by game balance, lost a lot of the magic of the game. Things like getting a Ring of Wishes or Blackrazor at 6th level, as it's old 1st ed stats were, unless you had a GM who loved to wing game balance, were not happening in 3rd and 4th. And maybe they need to.

Another benefit of the non-Epic fight game ending, is that like in the Folding Knife or hell, even in say Beowulf, it allows for some time gaps to fill in the years. Some of the Paizo adventure paths in Dragon magazine felt extremely rushed in terms of what the players were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it, etc... Mind you, they always offered things that players could do to fill time, to fatten out any levels they needed due to missing a sequence of a dungeon, etc... but I remember reading one of them where the characters are out and about and as they return home, their home base is literally burning! Yeah, not a lot of downtime there.

Another aspect of the Folding Knife that is fairly not D&D, is that the main character, Basso, is a lot like a GURPS character or a Champions character. While he certainly has many numerous positive traits, he has several negative ones, including an inability to use his left hand, which suffered serious injury in an attempt on his life. These negatives and positives might be 'role played' and indeed, 2nd edition was famous, or perhaps infamous, for using role playing penalties to counter real game mechanic bonuses. I'm not certain how 5th ed could get around such an issue, but the fact that so many games build them into the core system should provide some insight as to how it can be workable.

While not a short story or one of my favored popcorn reads like those books in a Forgotten Realms or Warhammer series, The Folding Knife is a done in one which means I can now move onto another book or perhaps one of those epic series. If you're looking for something that is gripping, well written and shows how another end game style might look, then The Folding Knife is for you.

DDI versus OGL

2012-01-12T21:51:00.000-06:00

I'm reading The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker. I bought it when Borders was closing. I also have The Hammer. Man, this guy can write. It's almost all character based. There are no elaborate magic systems like the Mistborn series and no big epic arc like too many fantasy series but it's going quick and well.

But as I'm reading that, and reading some Pathfinder material, I'm also wondering about the future of Dungeons and Dragons.

While much has been made of the OGL versus the more restrictive license the GSL, I think that in terms of overall utility in getting people to buy material, the DDI also played a role.

When you have a massive database for creating characters or looking up monsters or finding rules, but it only covers those rules that are official, what are the chances that you're going to put a lot of effort into getting 3rd party sourcebooks and supplements? For me as a player its not a huge issue to write out something and as a GM its again, not a huge issue.

For others, well, if you're paying a monthly fee to use something, why punish yourself with material you can't use?

I believe that if WoTC is serious about uniting the fan base, one of the things they'll need to do is have a license that allows 3rd party publishers to upload their game mechanics to the DDI.

Crazy? Possibly.

Worth WoTC time and money to invest in that and monitor it? Probably not.

Something that the gaming community would benefit from? Yup.

It's one of those things where I honestly don't think WoTC is going to be able to push aside corporate interest in the name of gaming interest and that as a whole, will be another missed opportunity.

Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition unite all fans tip or Orcus isn't covered in gold

2012-01-11T20:10:00.001-06:00

In my previous post, I mentioned some of the things that Wizards of the Coast could do in order to improve their relationship to the fans who will make or break the game.

The other thing that has nothing to do with game mechanics, is stop acting like Orcus, Asmodeus, the Slime Lord and the other numerous demons and devil higher powers have been dipped in gold and that we mere mortals are lucky to get one set of such stats per monster manual.

2nd edition pretty much skipped out on these big bads entirely. There were a few reasons why but in the end, it was just plain stupid. Mind you, in the end, it didn't really matter because the differences between 2nd and 1st edition were so small that if you couldn't run a game that incorporated both elements into your own campaign that you had more serious problems.

3rd edition though? Thank god for Necromancer Games and Green Ronin. They provided a ton of game stats that lasted a good long while even as WoTC hoarded the game stats for Orcus and other bad boys for the Book of Vile Darkness that was 3.0 and immediately had to be updated in books later on down the road.

4th edition was even worse in this regard as they decided one demon lord was enough and hey, a Legend and Lore book where you could throw down with Thor or other popular characters? I mean, we all know that there was a Thor movie that mad a ton of cash recently right and that the character is going to be in the Avengers movie? Apparently that was too much for 4th edition.

5th edition, right out of the gate, should look at the 1st edition Monster Manual and go, "If it was good enough for Gary..." and while perhaps not everything was, the demons and devil section of that old book wasn't afraid to tell you how many hit points those demon lords and devil princes had in the first core monster book.

WoTC has some interesting decesions ahead of them. If they are unable to put out quality material that can expand their reach past the core books and decide that the only way people are going to be interested in a Monster Manual 2 is if they piece meal out the game system, they are DOA in uniting all gamers.

5th Edition D&D Already?

2012-01-09T19:46:00.001-06:00

In looking at the various news posts today relating to Dungeons and Dragons, it looks like 5th ed is on the way. This is way too soon in my opinion. We didn't get 3.5 this quickly. Mind you, I'm of the firm opinion that the Essentials were a ".5" edition so the cycle does seem to be quite short this time around.

WoTC talks about uniting the fans of the brand behind "one ring" so to speak. Won't happen. While 3rd edition had a lot of the elements that made D&D what its known for, 4th ed went a completely different path. Not necessarily a bad one in terms of game design, but rituals, spells, and magic items were all lain down and sacrificed under the banner of balance. You will not be able to make people who want to play a powerful wizard who is weak at low levels happy at the same time you make those who want all of the classes to retain equal utility throughout the entire careers. Not going to happen. End. Fini.

There are some things that I think WoTC should do that could help reduce the issues that will crop up during this time. Many of them have nothing to do with game mechanic design and I've mentioned them numerous times before.

1. Know what the hell you're talking about. When 4th edition was in the pipeline, the VTT (virtual table top) along with other bits of the DDI were supposed to be seamlessly integrated into the edition. A recent article by Ryan Dancy further illustrates how this was supposed to happen. Not only that though, but anyone remember 'The Rouse'? He was a great guy from WoTC and was talking about how there would be codes you would get from buying the books that would allow you to buy a PDF for "a buck or two." None of that happened. Mind you, by shutting the hell up, you'll cut off some potential communication between players, buyers, and the makers, but people want what you tell them they'll get. Is it entitlement? Probably. Is it human nature? Definitely.

2. Bring back PDF's of all editions. Even if you have to hire someone from India for $1 a page to convert the material, bring back every old book. WoTC has been talking about a solution to the piracy and PDF problem ever since the Player's Handbook 2 came out. Anyone remember that? that the PHB2 sold out but PDFs were undercutting sales? So PDF sales were undercutting sales of a book that physically sold out? Here's something to think of. According to an article on ye old internets, digital sales have surpassed those of physical sales. Provided a legal alternative that people can use for a 'fair' price and people will buy.

3. OGL all the way. Not only does 5e need to embrace 5th edition, WoTC needs to give 'seed' money to companies like Green Ronin, Frog God Games, Malhavoc Press and others to support it. The GLS was a complete and utter failure. By not embracing the OGL, WoTC not only allowed, but essentially actively encouraged Paizo to come out with Pathfinder. And the other editions that WoTC now talks fondly of? Chances are there is a retro clone of it, and chances are there's a GOOD retro clone of it. The old editions don't need WoTC support as people who want to play an older edition have a ton of choices. Now if WoTC supports the OGL, and does so by allowing third parties full access to the material before its printed, WoTC can concentrate on a certain 'style' of D&D while others fill the void. I like many aspects of 4th edition but find it silly that there are still no official rules for firearms. I like some of what WoTC has done with say, Dark Sun, but miss the dozens of options I once had in terms of setting support such as the Scarred Lands.

4. Playtest Intensively. 4e suffers from the Hero/GURPS effect in that a lot of the powers and abilities are the same but due to the way they were written, instead of having a master list of such abilities and powers that players could select from, each class gets its own write up providing monstrous bloat to the system. This doesn't count things like how the first and second 4e Monster Manuals are, I don't want to say useless, but their utility was greatly diminished when the 3rd Monster Manual came out and basically said, "Yeah, we don't know hot to calculate damage so try these numbers instead." And other bits like magic items and rituals and spells? Things that we used to see numerous articles for in Dragon like Pages From The Mages and Bizzar of the Bazaar among others? DOA.

5. Pull in One Direction. It does no one any good to have several people who work at WoTC talking about the Character Builder going online because it makes things more compatible among the various types of computer users and then in an podcast have another person talk about how all the customers are thieves and the reason that the Character Builder is going online is because its the only way to fight piracy. Pull in one direction or risk making yourself look like a gigantic jackass.

6. Examine HTML 5 for the DDI. I'm not a computer expert or anything, but with Tablets and Android becoming larger and larger means of accessing the internet, it would seem that HTML 5 offers a lot of benefits that Silverlight does not. Once again, not a programmer, but when you see tablets talking the place of notebooks, the whole thing about making the DDI something you can access from anywhere becomes more hallow unless its something people using an iPad or android tablet can access.

7. Review your ebook pricing. I'm not saying that every book should be cut to $2.99 or anything like that. but... if you haven't made your money back on the Crystal Shard, or you still don't collect the omnibus editions for online selling, well, when looking at epic fantasy on the kindle and the first WoTC book pops in at #73, well after numerous authors selling their books for less than $6.39, what does it hurt to test out different prices? It's not like you're going to be crushed by returns of unsold books. If the new price points don't work and don't increase market penetration, move back to the old prices.

8. Stop making promises. This one is hard because different people have different definitions of what a promise is. For example, when asked if WoTC was going to reprint the Player's Handbook with all of the errata in it, a thing that would be useful since there were dozens of powers and abilities that were changed with errata, the initial reply was that there was no plan to do so because they had done such a massive print run but when the time was right.... well, after WoTC changed things up with the Essentials, when do you think that time was right? WoTC has to be able to react to market conditions and if those conditions tell them to cancel the first quarter of products, then that's what they need to do.

9. Make Dragon and Dungeon real magazines again. I hear some laughter out there, but seriously, the things have gone to waste when compared to the proud legacy they used to have. There was a time, for those who came into reading these magazines, that they were not just little magazines that were used to preview upcoming game material. They brought their own value. When WoTC doesn't provide epic support because of some unknown factor that its not viable, there was easily the opportunity to do The Dragon's Bestiary or Creature Catalog. When people talk about the lack of spell selection, as I mentioned earlier, even if keeping it in game balance, pages from the mages would easily fill that need. When discussing unique characters and characteristics of characters, Legend and Lore, where heroes of myth and legend are given game stats, would provide GMs with opportunities to see how professional game designers handle weapons like Excalibur and provide a quick round of NPCs that the GM can use if he's running a specific type of campaign, such as an Arthurian one. And for god's sake, stop with the nonsense about people reading individual articles and compile the magazine at the end of the month. Seriously.

10. In terms of print products, remember to support the GM. The GM is the one who makes the game work or fail. While it is great that players have ten thousand options for their characters, if there are not a wealth of adventurers for every level, then the GM has to work. When there are more options for a particular level than another, GMs will cluster around those levels. Support the GM and he will support you. Paizo does an excellent job of this with various books that build on the game setting, such as their recently released mythic monsters revised, as well as single adventurers, and adventure paths. Throw in their maps and other GM focused aids and you can see why GMs, despite the complexity of 3.5, stick with it.

11. Hit 'em With the Classics Right Away. For all the talk of the 'shared experience' that WoTC likes to parade like a show dog, there are dozens of adventurers that haven't seen a 4e adaptation. When launched 5e should come out the door with several options for the GM including a boxed set that has something like In Search of Adventure. In addition to adventures and other classics of setting, for god's sake, throw some money at the old artist that made D&D the sensation it was. The fact that you can see Larry Elmore's art on miniatures and posters but outside of the one cover we got on Dragon when the introduction boxed set came out, is a damn shame. There are numerous artist who should be getting work from WoTC just to showcase their ties to the community. If Kezner and Co can hire a certain artist to do the cover of Hakcmaster basic, there is absolutely no reason WoTC cannot.

12. A decent starter box. WoTC, your started box was inconsistent with the core rules that came out shortly thereafter. Look at what Paizo did. I'm not saying it's perfect, but damn is it better than yours in almost every way that counts.

13. (I knew I forgot one) Don't dick around with the content. What do I mean? When 4e first came it, there was a deliberate decesion to without certain material from the first core books like the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual to 'encourage' buying of future books. Want the Frost Giant? Sorry, not in the core Monster Manual. Want to play a barbarian? Not in the first Player's Handbook. Listen, if your future content can't stand on its own two legs, then its worthless regardless of how you dress it up. What's worse, letting people know ahead of time that this is some dicking around to get money? Another bad marketing decesion.

I'm sure I'm missing some very obvious things or some people will disagree with me, but I think if WoTC can get out of its own way and stop being a corporation long enough to be, and let's be honest, this is what it probably needs to be, a game company, than 5th edition can succeed. Mind you, I personally think it may be too late. The days of Dungeons and Dragons being able to hit the types of goals necessary for it seem over. Look at it this way. If WoTC tells us that 4th edition did better than 3.5 which did better than 3.0 and its still not hitting its target numbers... well, that writing may not be on the wall but it certainly can't be fair away.

Blood For The Blood God by C. L. Werner

2012-01-08T11:12:00.000-06:00

I have the omnibus edition of House of Serpents by Lisa Smedman and had started on Venom's Taste. I don't know why, but it wasn't grabbing me. So I put it down to pick up a stand alone book by an author whose work I've enjoyed in the past; Blood For The Blood God by C. L. Werner.

I'll be pinging some spoilers from the book below. For those who want a brief review, this is a stand alone book where the warriors of chaos find themselves hard pressed to battle a legendary entity known as the Skulltaker. It's very pulpy sword and sorcery fare and if this is the type of material you enjoy, then this book is for you.

Now onto the spoilers.

One, if you ever wonder how to run an evil campaign, this book might provide some solid foundations. There are no heroes here, nor even anti-heroes. There are barbarous murderers who fight among each other for survival and each tribe has its own tricks. The threat of an outside menace is what brings a few of these tribesmen together so that they can attempt to cheat destiny.

By providing an outside force for players to gather against, the GM can provide some reason for such players to travel together. This may not solve all of the problems of an evil campaign, but it does take care of at least the first issue; why should they trust each other.

The next thing, is use the setting elements. C. L. Werner, no stranger to the Warhammer setting, provides us with characters who often suffer the mutating touch of chaos with some of the protagonist having a tentacle for an arm or iron nodes poking through their skin.

Werner unleashes not only flesh hounds, but also blood letters. The weapons that many of the characters use, are demonic in nature and destroy both body and soul. These are standards in the world of Warhammer and by not shying away from them, Werner firmly places his tale of carnage into the setting.

Don't be afraid of the one shot. At the end of the story, the realm that the 'heroes' fought to save is destroyed. Everyone the main character knows is dead. Khorne has had his vengeance. But there is still war to be waged and battles to be fought and the book ends as another epic duel is about to begin.

Perhaps you don't want to run an entire evil campaign. Perhaps you just want to test out Dark Sun and see how those rules mesh with 4e. Perhaps you only want to dip your toe into Savage Worlds. A one shot allows you to up the stakes and push the characters to and past their limits as you are only running a one shot and the fate of worlds can be up for grabs. And if you enjoyed the game, you can run a separate game at a latter time.

My only issue with the book is the name of the villain of the piece; Skulltaker. For those who don't play the tabletop, this is skulltaker;

That massive figure above? He's not at all what is described in the book and the editors should have axed that name right away. When your game setting has dozens of slogans and mottos and you mix the material up, it does the reader and the fan no benefit. Keep the material clean, seperated, and easy to understand. It would be like having a new Forgotten Realms novel feature Elminster, a heroic blade troll who hunts down rogue tornadoes. It might be a great story, but anyone looking for Elminster is not going to be happy.

The Sea Devil's Eye by Mel Odom

2012-01-07T06:03:00.001-06:00

The third and final book in the Threat From the Sea series brings a close to the adventures of angst and ancient evil. I'll be discussing some of the things in the book that I didn't like and how I would try to avoid them.

The first thing is over use of the gods. The malanti that starts us off on this journey turns against her master and is protected thanks to the god.

The emo hero of the piece has been directed and guided by a god. He was knocked out a few times early in the series including once where he was shot by a crossbow and lived because he had to serve.

The bard hero of the piece is also directed by a god.

While the use of deities is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in a setting like the Forgotten Realms where the gods are very real, after a while you have to wonder, where the hell are the evil gods while the rest of these deities are planting their very firm hand on the setting? Mind you, the villain of the piece of old enough and powerful enough to perhaps qualify as some sort of demi-power, but you figure that some of the evil forces out there would be aligned on his side right?

So when running your game, try to be aware of the powers that be and that their overuse might have an adverse effect on the game.

For one, the players can become spoiled if they expect to have their fat pulled out of the fire by the gods when the going gets tough. If you bust them out of death's door once, why only that time? They can also get jaded in that they'll wonder why they are playing if the gods are going to solve all their problems to begin with. It's a fine line and once that can be crossed easier when you are familiar with the preferences of your group.

The next bit has to do with the villain of the piece. Iakhovas is an ancient entity native to the Forgotten Realms. He enjoyed the love of the Bitch Queen when the lands were young and he was one of the first creatures upon it. But he failed to keep that love and was punished.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands of years later, he comes back and seeks out all the old items that made him into such a power back in the day.

Okay, this is like the Emperor rebuilding the Death Star in the third Star Wars movie. Yeah, it was awesome when we first saw it, but do we need to see it again? Is that 'ultimate power' that got is ass whipped the first time around really the solution?

If in the day he could not achieve his goals with the items he had, why would he search out those exact items again? Did something change where now they are more powerful then ever? This falls into the trap of "the old stuff is better". It would have been more interesting if the author took that old standard and had the heroes going around securing all of Iakhovas old goods while he went and either made new ones himself or had new ones crafted for him.

The other problem I had with Iakhovas, is that he's shown as being a great leader. He's shown that he is a tactical genius. At the end, he stays to fight to the death against someone who has a superior weapon. This reminded me of the Transformers movie with the Fallen going on and on about how only a Prime can defeat him and hey, there's Optimus Prime renewed and invigorated and yeah, let's fight him!

What's worse, is at the point of his death, Iakhovas has a magic eye which when hit with a magical sword, blows his head off. How stupid of an entity do you have to be to put something that can take your head off into your head? "I think this grenade really sets off my features." Stupid.

Now the things that I thought worked, included bits that were set up for future follow up. This includes some glimpses into the future where the hero sees himself fighting his father. I thought this would've happened prior to the fight against Iakhovas as a sort of redemption piece but by leaving it for later, the author saves some space for future conflicts that perhaps may not be as epic, but are still personal to the hero.

The mentor of the young hero mentions his fallen sister, a necromancer, and her alliance with the Zhents. Another field where we get no resolution.

The destruction of the Sharksbane Wall. This was used to keep the old beasties away from the rest of the population in the Sea of Fallen Stars. It is a very real thing that leads the setting into more dangerous tides.

And on that last note, I have to wonder, again, how badly 4e screwed the Forgotten Realms pooch.

Prior to 4e, and not necessarily all at once, but all having long term effects, you have the following:

The elves retake Myth Drannor.

The Shades take over Sembia.

The Sharksbane Wall is destroyed and naval powers have suffered some crippling defeats.

The Dragons have gone mad and destroyed a lot of the standards and standbys.

And then instead of having to help fight back the hordes of undead dragons created during this time, or sail in peril across the Sword Coast or across the Sea of Fallen stars, or fight against the Shades in Sembia, or help rebuild the city of elves, we get a hundred year skip where all of the interesting stuff is someone done by still relevant?

M'eh.

One thing I thought interesting, when discussing the gods though, is that it provides a good example of how some of the deities, in this case, Sekolah, the god of the sahuagin, are multi-natural in order and would allow the villain of the piece to rise to prominence. The villain makes a note early on that the Shark God swims through many worlds, a nod to the huge connected nature of the planar settings that the Dungeons and Dragons rules utilized back in the day.

Threat From The Sea has a lot of action and keeps things moving, even when I'm not down with all of the pieces and bits that are used to tell the story.

Under Fallen Stars by Mel Odom

2012-01-05T19:24:00.000-06:00

One of the interesting things about how the previous book, Rising Tide ended, was the heroe's quest to get to Baldur's Gate. This is a fairly famous city in the Forgotten Realms for several reasons ranging from its initial launch point in the gray boxed set back in the day with the mercenary group the Flaming Fist, to its importance in a video game called... yes, Baldur's Gate.

At the end of the previous novel, the hero discovers that he needs to be at Baldur's Gate and so, he goes on an overland journey. Due to the raids and attacks, the pirates in alliance with the various horrors of the depths, the goods going north must now do so through land. But here Mel pulls out another set of sharpened stakes and notes that even overland journeys are more dangerous because everyone is doing it so the orcs, goblins and other land based monsters, are essentially having a field day. This is a good example of showcasing how one change in one part of the setting can effect other parts of the setting. Sure, soldiers and sailors are in more demand than ever, but that doesn't guarantee victory!

At the start of this novel though, the journey is finished. There is no daily recap of the heroic quest to reach the city. They made it. When running your own game, how important is each and every potential conflict? In some games I've played in, the GM insisted on careful calculations of every gold piece spent and earned, of every item of clothing and possession written down. Depending on the GM and the players, this can be fun and serve some distinction between games. In other groups and GMs, it can be tedious to a level that makes the players simply not want to play.

This gets back to another old adage around this blog; know your players. If your players are highly detail oriented and enjoy noting their possessions and are always on the lookout for the strange bits, then indulge them in it. If they don't, have some common ground where the players understand X amount of wealth will be lost on housing and supplies and in exchange you want bring the ban hammer down on them when they make assumptions that might be... presumptious in another style of game.

Now the big bad of the series, his attack on Baldur's Gate is meant to shatter it. To cast the city to the four winds. Well, at least according to this book and the 4th edition version of Baldur's Gate, that didn't quite happen. Which makes sense. Previous novels and material have established Baldur's Gate as well, not invincible, but something that would require such a major upheaval that having it taken down by some fish men might prove problematic to those readers heavily involved with the series.

And here's another old adage; kill your babies. If you, as the GM, are running some epic material and want to do the old styling of showcasing just how powerful and vile the enemy is, destroy a few major cities, kill some major NPCs, and create havoc on the shipping lanes. This lets the players know that the stakes are very high and that they need to be at the top of their game if they are to thrive.

The only potential problem in such cases though, is that if you are running multiple campaigns in the same setting and want things to not be so smashed or if you're running a group with other GMs in the same setting. You can either let the other Game Masters know ahead of time or you can decide that the epic nature of the story requires you to bring the setting to a different level than the players have assumed and this in and of itself will let the players know that something big is happening here.

As a GM though, unlike an author, you have to be ready to follow what the players do after the attack. In the previous novel, Waterdeep took a beating. In this one, it's Baldur's Gate. What if you're players are like true old school players, not like the 3rd and 4th ed ones, but characters who have build their towers, created their castles and have their thief guilds? Chances are good that they may want to rebuild their schools, recreate their schools, and renew their alliances prior to moving on to attack the ones who attacked them.

You can either push them onto the 'adventure' that is waiting, or you can craft material out of their rebuilding efforts. If supplies are limited, then there will be struggles over those supplies. If the players have not made firm alliances with the local politicians, then they will have even greater struggles. At the end of the day, depending on the previous actions of the players and their current activities, they may have to actually pack up and leave the city. If they are ready though, and they do have supplies, then let them reap those rewards. Perhaps they have foodstuffs that the city needs or access to magic that allows them to quickly clean and rebuild the city. Perhaps the fighter is in alliance with the thief and they keep the rougher rogues of the city in check allowing people to come into the city and make new opportunities for themselves until they learn that the beneficial players perhaps have a few 'taxes' of their own that they are going to lay down.

Another factor that comes into play here is a massive gate that allows the villain of the piece to move from the Sword Coast to the Sea of Fallen Stars. There are also nods to Spelljammer with a Helm, used tospelljamming helm on a ship or want that much magic in the setting, if it's not overly abused and isn't a sign of the campaign tone and focus shifting, and just an nod to those other elements, even the most jaded player may get a gidding feeling about knowing what a helm is and how the ship is going to meet up with others in the Sea of Fallen Stars from a river that ends long before it gets there.

Use the setting and the rules are bones to build the structure of your game and if those tools don't let you do what you want, smash them and make some new ones.

Meat Is Meat

2012-01-04T05:49:00.000-06:00

One of the things I forgot to mention about Mel Odom's Threat From The Sea, is how with a few key phrases and scenes, he gives the sahuagihn some life that makes their purpose and motivations stand out.

For one, the saying meat is meat. It represents how for those who live under the sea that supplies can often be in short supply and that even other sahuagihn can be meat.

The other one is something like We Who Eat. While people call them the sahuagihn and they themselves do at the same time, it also showcases that a culture can have a specific name for their own people.

In addition, the way of life for these creatures, includes a belief that those who fail or die, were too weak to live. A true survival of the fittest. In those cases when it was a strong sahuagihn who died fighting against a ruler in a blood feud or challenge for example, their mantra of meat is meat allows the strength of that fallen one to be passed onto the rest of the tribe.

When adding unusual races and monsters, thinking about how you can make them more then just a gathering of random statistics will go a long way in making memorable encounters.

Rising Tide by Mel Odom

2012-01-03T18:49:00.000-06:00

The first book in the Threat From the Sea series set in the Forgotten Realms setting introduces a number of new characters while utilizing existing monsters from the D&D mythology. For those who don't want a spoiler review, suffice it to say that I enjoyed the whole series despite thinking that the main character would win in an Emo off with Drizzt.

Onward to more specifics that may include some spoilers.

When looking at campaign design, there are many routes a Game Master can take. There are many groupings that may crop up. The trick is, do you use them or spread them out? Adventure paths often face this issue. If everything focuses too much on the main plot or event, it can feel very forced. If not, it can feel very random. For the traditional dungeon crawl, that random thing is part of the lure of the game. For those who want a little more focus out of things, it is something to be avoided.

When I read the year of Rogue Dragons series, I noted that by grouping things into a dragon category catch all, it allowed the authors to dig out all sorts of under utilized dragons like planar dragons, as well as various templates and other game bit lore from the 3.5 game engine.

Mel is able to do the same thing here with the Threat From The Sea. It's not just about the sauhagin, it's not just about the sea elves, it's not just about tritons. We have various giant marine predators, morkoth, kraken, and other water related monsters working their way through the series. And hey, look over there, pirates! This allows the author to mix up naval combat, underwater combat, and other entertaining bits that all fit logically together.

Speaking of underwater combat, this brings up another potential problem that the heroes have to face. Man versus the environment is a classic bit and in the Year of Rogue Dragons, when fighting enemies that can all fly, the air is an issue. Here, it's the water. There are several things that complicate the issue in both cases. There are a lot of native monsters to those environments whose mastery of them should be better than outsiders. Combat is now in all dimensions instead of just forward and back. Underwater fighting also involves a lot of things that may not be obvious on the surface like, oh, breathing. Vision also suffers the further down you get from the sun.

The real question is how much do you want those things to matter. Do you want to gloss it over or look for expanded rules and details? In the 3.5 era, there were a lot of aquatic based source books, some better than others. For most though, the core rules should do just fine.

Another element the book handles is weaving an epic story, that of an invasion of Waterdeep by the return of an ancient evil and its minions, with a deeply interpersonal story of a man searching for his purpose. While I absolutely detest the emo nature of the main character, his search for meaning is one that a lot of people can relate to. Regardless though, the fact that the author is able to bring the personal elements of one character to the forefront of a series where danger is all about is important. Never forget that while the action and scenery can help move a game along, if its all action shots and explosions, you get the Transformers which can be entertaining to watch, but lacks any depth or substance.

Mel Odom does a nice job of bringing various elements and areas together and showcases an epic story with a series of heroes that have a long way to go prior to meeting the evil that threatens them all.

1st e-book failure of 2012

2012-01-03T05:57:00.000-06:00

I just finished the omnibus edition of Threat from the Sea by Mel Odom. One of the things I do after I finish a book, is look to the ebook edition to see what the pricing is. I do this for a few reasons.

One, I'm just curious.

Two, if it's a good book and the ebook price isn't cheap, I'll buy it. I have too many physical books that I've owned for years due to garage sales, Half-Priced books, auctions, and book markets.

Three, it acts as a good measure of where that company is with their ebooks.

Now I could be completely failing, but when I go to Amazon and look for Rising Tide, the first book in the series, there is no ebook version. The omnibus edition is there for just under $11. But an ebook version? Or the omnibus or the individual books?

WoTC, welcome to 2012 and my first opinion of your ebook catalog is fail.

2011: A Look Back

2012-01-01T05:48:00.000-06:00

I haven't written nearly anywhere as much as I would have enjoyed last year. This was due in no small part to working many hours and being too tired to put much effort into anything outside of trying not to get buried in laundry and spending money on games I don't get to play because I'm at work.

In terms of gaming, it was also a brutal year. With so many mandatory Saturdays, my game groups decesion to play on Friday meant I essentially had to drop out. Not that any other day of the week would've mattered mind you. When your normal start time is 6:30 AM and you're awake at 5:00 AM and then on OT it's 4:30 AM and awake at 3:00 AM, well, gaming past ten just isn't sensible. While I'm pretty terrible at keeping my weight down, my sleep is very important to me.

One of the things I'm going to strive to work on in the new year is gaming more. It's great to have a Pathfinder subscription, and to have numerous books in the line that I enjoy, but I'm getting to the point where my backlog of Pathfinder specific material that I haven't used is so large that if I'm not going to start playing, I might as well stop.

Speaking of stopping, when one of my friends finished his 4e campaign because his own job became a little too time intensive to run, that was pretty much when I stopped buying 4e gaming products. I hadn't renewed my subscription to the DDI sent the character builder went online only and to be honest, while it seems there have been some great articles that have come out of the online DDI, the fact that WoTC can't seem to hit the regulars, the things that should be in many issues of Dragon on a monthly basis, says to me it's not a magazine I need to subscribe to. When the Dragon's Bestiary, Bizzaare of the Bazzar, Pages From The Mages, Legends and Lore, and other features start making monthly come backs as opposed to being a preview magazine, then I might renew.

And it's not that I don't enjoy 4e. It has a lot of things going for it. I just find that Pathfinder is more fun to read and support because, and I've mentioned this before, extensive setting support, wide body support (the various classic revisited), and adventure support. 4e has done a piss poor job of supporting adventurers in print. While both Pathfinder and 4e bite the big one in terms of wide body support for Epic play, at least with Pathfinder I'm not feeling that the book old beastiary books are completely ignoring it, unlike 4e's last monster book. It wasn't that the last book was poorly written or anything, it just didn't feature enough of the material I wanted in favor of capping out at 20th or so level.

Miniature wise, I cut back a lot. I didn't stop or anything mind you. Gen Con alone saw many dollars spent on new figure acquisition. However, I didn't do my usually auction stops, e-bay trolling or other such venues. I'm still buying supplies like green stuff, primer, and brushes, but figures have cooled. I still have a lot of stuff to paint up and I'm going to try and catch up on some of that.

Book wise, I bought my mom a Kindle Fire for X-Mas and she loves it. Because she does most of her reading indoors the screen doesn't bother her. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. With its brightly lit white bright, she can read easier and has done so by devouring numerous books already. A worthy purchase in this case. Add in I'm an Amazon Prime member and she gets to watch videoes for free and that I have a decent collection of music in Amazon's cloud, and well, she is one happy camper. I've continued to support the low end cost books on the Kindle where I can because I want to support a price that I find acceptable. It may mean some weird odds and ends in my collection but I'll take that particular hit to show support for one price point and disdain for another.

Thanks to some great sales, I also have a lot of reading material to get me well through into 2012. When Lamentations of the Flame Princes did their sale, I bought quite a haul. I haven't read any of it yet. Between work and trying to stay informed on the politics, as 2012 is going to be a very interesting year for that, my time to read gaming material that I'm not actively using has sunk massively.

And friends? Ugh. I hate to say that my only friends are gamers, because I hang with some people at work that could care less about gaming, but my older friends, the ones from high school, yeah, mainly we hang out to game, go to movies, and things of that nature. Work and my inability to work 60+ hours a week and still go out at night pretty much killed those things too. But to be honest, they haven't put a lot of effort into keeping me in the loop either so I'm okay with that situation as it stands. Still, in 2012, I would like to do more with my amigos. A lot of my hobbies like painting miniatures, reading, sketching, etc... are pretty internal so I'm not dying to go hang and my work buddies love to drink, but gaming. Again it gets back to gaming. Need to do some more of that.

In terms of what I've been reading, right now I'm into Mel's trilogy of the deep bit set in the Forgotten Realms. Its a good read so far and I plan on doing some posts on it in the near future. I'm also still in the middle of Doom of Camelot. Historical wise, I'm hitting the War on the Barbary Pirates. It's a great look at how a war can have some easy victories and have some horrid losses. It showcases the short sighted nature of government at all points in history, as well as the effects of one man's gross incompetence on a navy as well as various valient heroes. I've also been fascinated by Mexico.

Back in the day, I used to run a lot of Champions. In my games, Mexico and Columbia used to be big drug running companies that would use drugs to create short term bricks that would die out after using the enchancements. The cartels would use either a lot of money, women, or awesome lifestyles to get young stupid people to do it, or threaten families to get more honest people to do it. My image of Mexican 'thug life', if anything, was far too modest.

Cartels have built their own tunnels into America. They use high-tech equipment to make their own communication network. They have access to military grade hardware. And they are killers.

While this makes for a terrible living experience down south, and I know first hand as I have friends who still go and visit and give me some horror stories, it makes some fantastic gaming material. I'll ping that idea later.

In terms of personal health, 2012 is going to be interesting. My company stopped offering the HMO option. While expensive as hell, the few times I've needed it, like when I broke my toe or had major back pain a few years ago, proved its value. Now with a PPO whose coverage isn't anywhere near as impressive, I will be holding my doctors to a much higher standard. When I broke my toe, I was sent to a hospital. They billed my insurance something like $2 grand. And here's the funny part. They did nothing.

I was sent with the assurance that I would be seen right away because they called a specialist. I get there and hey, no specialist. So I have to wait. With a dislocated broken toe. And after the nurse gets my vitals, no pain killers or even ice. So after about four hours of that, I ask for some pain killers or ice. I get the ice. When they do see me, I'm out in the hallway and they think I'm some other hillbilly who broke his big toe in the shed as opposed to the third toe. I make a crack that I'm glad I'm not having a heart attack and the doctor cracks back that if it was my pinkie they'd just cut it off and send me on my way.

Well, they give me one 10 mg vicadine and procedue to pull the toe back into place. Only X-Rays show it doesn't take because it comes out again cause the muslces are torn. So geniuses there bandage it up and send me on my way.

When I see the specialists, he notes that there is nothing he can do because it's already healed. Mind you, the first time I see him, he does a detailed examination of the foot, noting that I have empire amount of arthritis build up in my big toe on the same foot. So more pain killers. When I see him a month later, he doesn't even want to see the foot. He asks how I'm feeling. When I reply fine, he sends me on my way. In 2012, if I have to drive an hour out, wait a half hour in the office, and then have to drive another hour back? Yeah, I won't be paying for a two-minute doctor appointment. In 2012, doctors will have to earn that cash.

Music wise, I think my favorite 'discovered' group for me, would probably be the Vaccines followed by Cults. There are some other groups I'm enjoying but those are ones I found last year like Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, the National, Interpol, and She Wants Revenge. If there are any groups of a similiar style, hit me up in the comments.

Anyway, I hope 2012 treats everyone better than 2011 did, even if you had a great year. Now let's get this year long party started!

Lives of the Predators, The Red Hourglass, by Gordon Grice

2011-12-10T18:45:00.001-06:00

First, let me say that Gordon Grice writes with a smooth flow that is easy to appreciate regardless of why you might be interested in reading in the first place. His tone is easy on the inner ear and yet has its own pace, timing and black humor to it.

Having said that, I would recommend anyone interested in adding some more details to the 'mundane' animals in their role playing games, or in their fiction if writing, buy and read The Red Hourglass. It's entertaining and after watching some nature stuff on dangerous animals on the Nature Channel or the History Channel or one of those shows that has completely sold out, doesn't treat you like you were some brain dead dolt.

When last I left off, there were quite a few chapters to go. I'm going to try not to bore readers with a breakdown of each chapter, rather I'm going to hit a few things I thought were interesting and a few that even made me think in terms of where some of our belief systems come from as opposed to why we have them.

Looking at the Mantid, the thing I took from the author is that while we may attribute features to an insect based on our own lifestyles, such as needing a head to survive, they may not be true. Grice talks about roachs living for a month before dying or starvation. This would be a great thing to add to a role playing game where you still keep the villains fighting, perhaps minus an attack, to showcase the grizzly nature of combat against non-humanoid foes.

Another bit that Grice adds is that we don't know everything. The author captures some weird bug and throws it in with a Mantid, fully assuming that the Mantid, a very dangerous predator in its chain, will easily kill the creature. It retreats, it runs, it seemingly shows fear! Keep in mind that there may be some horrific monsters in a role playing game, but that doesn't mean they know no fear. Just because the players may not know what something fears, doesn't mean the creature is fearless. This could result in a separate quest in and of itself in which the players have to find a fierce predator that is fairly harmless to everything else but their chosen enemy. What if there is some weird type of deer in another reality that finds Mind Flayers taste just like deep fried squid?

Rattlesnake is a potent reminder that rules for poison should favor the players. This isn't to say that poison from snakes or other animals isn't potent or dangerous, but it isn't always fatal and may be the result of a 'dry' bite. Snakes have their own hunting mojo and methods and the interesting factor for many different types of snakes is in terms of their venom. If you're not throwing a huge snake at the party to crush them physically, be ready with a few different types of venomous effects. Does it cause the organs to fail? Does it cause internal bleeding through lack of clotting? Does it just really mess with the body causing other issues like heart attack and stroke, but not outright death?

I put the pic of a tarantula up front because the author makes a very strong point about tarantulas, sharks, and crocodiles. Sometimes, a simple predator that leaps on its enemy and rips it to pieces, a throwback in terms of evolution, is all you need. Sure, there are hundreds of templates, numerous bestiaries and manuals of monsters and other sources of creatures, but sometimes, simple is better and brute force is indeed the answer.

Pig and Canid, despite having little in common in Grice's words, do have one thing in common. They are both flesh eaters, both scavengers, and in the dark ages of humanity, ate dead human flesh. Grice contents that the Jewish prohibition in eating pig flesh is in part because of their diet of dead human flesh. The fear of cannibalism even through a third party so to speak.

He also brings up an interesting point in terms of how quickly some animals are able to be tamed and made into different things contrasting the wolf and the dog, contrasting the wild hog and the slaughtered pig. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, because he points out that some domestic pigs are huge and only possible due to their specific breeding conditions. He also notes that there are several similarities, in terms of organs and placement, between pigs and humans. It's almost too easy to imagine a setting where orcs are the direct result of skin and organ grafting between humans and pigs as opposed to their own wholly original race.

Grice ends with the recluse spider. This is another example of giving players a break with poison. Some people die from the bits of the brown spider. Some develop a small necrotic piece of skin that falls off. Some suffer greatly and for years after as the venom effects them for the rest of their life. Some don't suffer any effects at all.

Lastly, as entertaining as Gordon Grice is, don't take any one source as the end all be all. I've paged through his next book a little and he has a huge section that provides a list of recommended reading. Don't be afraid to move beyond a single sourcebook if you feel that adding more details and options will make the material more entertaining.

On the other hand, if youre running a beer and pretzels game, save or die in the OSR is pretty standard and you should enjoy that horrible power while you have it!

Lamentations of the Flame Princes Sale

2011-12-07T17:50:00.000-06:00

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?manufacturers_id=2795

One of the blogs I follow is heavy into old school. Like actually producing their own products and other people's products. At Gen Con, I picked up a few old school products like Lesserton and Mor, Relams of Crawling Chaos and Vornheim. Turns out that latter was also published by LoTFP.

Now they're having a sale for a few more days. I pretty much picked up everything. I'd been hearing good things about Death Frost Doom for a long time and it seems like something I can raid for ideas in most game systems.

For $1.35, its hard to go completely wrong here. Note that some of these are considered 'adult' products so if looking for the core book, make sure you have your filters off in your preferences. Spread the news.

13 Assassins

2011-12-06T12:10:00.000-06:00

Blogger ate my initial post so I'll try to break this one down again. Spoilers follow so beware.

1. 13 assassins uses a standard formula of a small group against a larger enemy. Note that for role playing games that are level based, such as Rolemaster and Dungeons and Dragons, due to the way magic tends to increase for spellcasters, this might not be a viable threat if the larger enemy is mainly 'fodder' type as the spellcasters will make sure work of them.

2. While the visual appeal of a small group against a larger group is great and can be fun, remember that if you use a critical hit based system that it will work against the players due to the odds of the dice being rolled multiple times against them.

3. Speaking of dice rolling, when there are dozens if not hundreds of enemies, it might take hous for a few rounds to be played out. Be prepared for a long haul or have another way to handle mass actions in play and explain it to the players before hand.

4. Some of the material that works in the film will not work in the game. For example, one ssamurai sets up a place to take a stand where he has dozens of weapons stuck into walls, ceilings, and other spots. While it has a great visual, no player is going to give up a magic weapon in order to allow some visual to play out.

5. Evil. the main villain of the piece if shown as being unremorsefully evil. To the point where like even his loyal retainers trained strongly in the ways of the samurai and to serve their lord have doubts about it. This allows thep layers to be pretty self assured in their actions and works well for the constrast of samurai versus samurai.

6. Times of peace suck for samurai. I've mentioned this before for the Ronnin Rabbit, but in a time of peace, while there are things for characters to do, the caste as a whole comes into question. Are they still needed? Are they still the warriors their forefathers were? This firlm answers that question with a resounding "No!" It in essence explains minion status. See, when you do nothing but sit around on your ass all day eating bon bons, you're not a warrior. There are those from old blood lines, true tradionalists, naturally skilled warriors, and some rogues, who manage to retain and improve their sword skills through grit and determination, but for most of the caste? Yeah, they're hopless which is why they can be challenged in this fashion.

13 Assassins is well worth a viewing for those who enjoy Seven Samura or similiar films.

The Red Hourglass: Lives of the predators by Gordon Grice

2011-12-05T18:59:00.000-06:00

One of the great things about the web is how it allows you to communicate ideas and recommended reading with a few keystrokes. In this instance, Philip Athans, author of several books, on his blog, mentioned The Red Hourglass by Gordon Grice. I was a little disappointed at the ebook price as the print price was similar so went with the print book. While I enjoy e-format, the main benefit to me know still has to come in savings.

I have not read the whole book, only the first portion dealing with the Black Widow, but Gordon's writing is so breezy and entertaining, that I have ordered the 'sequel' if you will, written by Gordon that is in hard cover (and still almost the same price as the ebook.)

So what are some things you can learn about the black widow if you know nothing about them?

1. They coat themselves in a special secretion so that they do not stick to their own webbing.

2. They use their spider webs as ropes and binding on those entities that become stuck in them.

3. They can 'dry' bite, a bite with no venom, to try and scare away larger predators that may not feel the effects of venom anyway.

4. They are such voracious eaters that they can eat themselves to death.

5. Depending on their food supply, their spider brood can grow. May help explain when they'll eat themselves to death.

6. They do not always kill their mates. The mating, especially on the male side, if heavily ritualized.

7. They have a ton of names. This can be good for those wishing to move outside of the standard. Names range from cherry spider, black wolf, twenty-four hour spider, night stringer, shoe button spider, coal-black lady and others like sneaky bitter.

8. The spiders get darker as they get older with the traditional red hourglass coming in when they turn black. This can be a great way to showcase the age of mutant or giant spiders. "That spider wasn't really black... more like brown?" To prepare the party for ever larger creatures.

9. The venom of a black widow can vary in its intensity, but can take a grown man out for week and kill the elderly or the young. One thing to play with, is not making the venom fatal to full grown healthy men, but to make them sick and a liability to the party they travel with. They can't wield weapons, can't march, can't take guard. All they can do is suck up resources. Mind you I've been there as a player when you get hit by a ghoul or a carrion crawler so yeah, it sucks but it is an alternative to death and a cure poison or antivemon might take you out of it.

10. The webbing is almost invisible to the naked eye, requiring you to look at it from a certain angle or determine its whereabouts through the things captured within it.

11. They are invisible. Well, not quite, but if they're not biting you, chances are you won't notice them because they go after different prey. Most attacks used to occur in the outhouse because see, spiders love the hole shape of the toilet. It's wind proof and has a place for bugs to come get stuck in. Spiders have been taken around the world, like other vermin and beasts, around in boats and other travelling methods. Could be a great point of origin for an Island of Spiders where players once travelled to a dinosaur filled island only to discover that the new inhabitants have grown... very large and now run things.

There are all sorts of other neat facets to the Black Widow and based on that chapter alone, I'd give the book a recommended reading.

Amazon's Kindle 100 Sales for December

2011-12-04T22:18:00.001-06:00

Every month Amazon selects or has one hundred books, in addition to the daily deal, that go on sale for the month. It's a nice way to try out a different author or catch up on the back stock if you're a fan of the medium but have a low price threshold like myself.

For December, I'm thinking about the following;

Star Wars: Fate of th Jedi: Outcast. It's by Aaron Alliston, the guy who wrote Hero's Strike Force, a book that essentially was incorporated into the BBB (Big Blue Book). It's also Star Wars. I'm a sucker for the setting and am greatly enjoying the Clone Wars animated series from the net with new episodes popping up once a week.

Temple of the Winds: Sword of Truth Vol 4 by Terry Goodkind. I know, I have no taste but this was the last one I read and since I already have book 1 in Kindle format and it is on sale...

Warrior (The Blade of the Rose) by Zoe Archer. No idea but it's inexpensive and as I mentioned updthread, a good opportunity to check out new authors.

The Romance of Tristant and Iseult by Vincent Nicolosi: I'm a sucker for the old tales and even though I'm sure there's a version free, the cost ones are usually better formatted.

I'm sure my mother will want a few of the thrillers and some of the non-fiction stuff looks interesting but let's see how much overtime they're going to dump on me as I'm recovering from a seven day straight week and fighting off the plague as I type.

Conan the Barbarian 2011

2011-12-03T21:53:00.000-06:00

While I rarely get to the movies, having Netflix and RedBox does allow me to occasionally pick up some of the more modern releases. I'm not going to talk about Conan the Barbarian 2011 version in terms of a review, just what might be useful for those looking for Appendix N style inspiration.

1. A brief history of the character. Conan has gone through many incarnations ranging from his origins in the pulps to Fazetta's covers renewal and Marvel Comics to Dark Horse Comics with the movie, television show and cartoons in the middle. It's not an intensely detailed section or anything of that nature, but it does showcase how an idea can change and grow and become something different.

2. A brief history of Robert E. Howard. I know little of the man and a little more of his now that I've watched the special. I note this in terms of inspiration because Howard would interview older people and they lived through some things back then. As some of my inner city friends, they had "for realzies" experiences like taming the west, the civil war, and slavery. Not the type of sex slave trade we have going on now mind you, but actual legal ownership of people. It helped inform him of various bits of foreign lore not native to the shores and expanded his horizons quite a bit there.

3. Visuals. While Conan the Barbarian may have some script/pacing/action sequence issues for some, there are some great vistas that can be used for fire up the imagination. One of my favorites is the walking fortress that is pulled along by some odd eight elephants. It also serves as a battering ram.

4. Monsters. There are not a lot of monsters in the movie. Really, I only get two real monsters. The first are what I'd call Sand Stalkers. Summoned by a witch, these creatures look like muscular humans with skin too tight the color of sand. The only exception here would be their eyes which appear startling human. They wield weapons of hard sand that can be used in melee or thrown. They appear fragile, being smashed to pieces through falls that wouldn't even stun a normal person. They can be pretty simple in game terms as in 4e, something like a Minion status would work well with one good hit providing shattering them. The second would be the Dweller. In infiltrating a fortress, Conan is chest deep in the sewage. His friend, a prince of thieves, is pulled under by a tentacle. Conan saves him. This tentacle turns out is only one of many that is brought out by sacrificing people to it. The creature isn't ever really dealt with. In this instance, it serves more as a trap or an obstacle to overcome. This might be resolved either by making it a constant effect like a Evard's Black Tentacles, or an ongoing attack, or an ability check. Most game systems are versatile enough to handle a variety of methods to prevent similar encounters from being exactly the same.

5. Unique Looks and Weapons. This is one I've mentioned numerous times. The main villain has his own goofy version of a double bladed sword that reminds me of some funky 90's remix of the three blade sword from the ancient times of the 70's-80's. Many of the henchman we are first introduced to are very unique looking either with special weapons, tribal tattoos or massive frames and scars or other distinguishing marks that make them stand out. for the most part, they pose no threat to the main character, but viewers are able to instantly recognize them and this provides a quick intro to them that doesn't have to be anything other than a visual. Robert Jordan was actually pretty good with this, not even bothering to name some of those who fought Conan outside of their physical traits. This is true for the main character as well as his daughter who has a very unique hair style and a set of rings that covers her fingers and acts as a set of claws as well.

6. Enjoy it for what its worth. Too often you might get caught up in a game thinking of ways to pile on the action, pile on the threat, pile on the meaning. sometimes you might just need to take a step back and bring out some minions and let the dice roll. Beer and pretzels games have been part of the game from the start and not every game will roll the way you as a GM or even as a player want. Try to recognize the situation you find yourself in and see if its something you can enjoy for what it.

Kindle Daily Deal for Cyber Monday is Pretty Sweet

2011-11-28T16:05:00.000-06:00

My favored price pint of $2.99 is on for a lot of books by authors whose work I've enjoyed but due to spacial constraints, have rid myself of. The e-formats, assuming Amazon doesn't freak out and die or some other weird bats from space attack, provides me a quick way of renewing my ownership of some Barbara Hambly and some Robert R. McCammon, including Swan Song, the book a lot of people recommend when someone says they enjoy Stephen King's The Stand.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of books on sale this Cyber Monday and hey, unlike a lot of sales on Black Friday, you don't have to wait in line, don't have to wait for a lightning deal that will probably sell out before you can click it, and don't have to get pepper sprayed in the face by a woman looking to score a cheap X-Box.

The Art of Ray Harryhausen by Ray Harryhaussen and Tony Dalton

2011-11-25T13:18:00.000-06:00

Half-Priced Books continues to be a gold mine for the imagination. The Art of Ray Harryhausen was $14.99 and I had a coupon so it's overall price was embarrassingly low. On Amazon the sucker goes for $50 but they have a decent discount. The thing is though, the book I have was a stack of 'em so that tells me these are overstock sales.

Anyway, the book is filled to the brim with goodness. There are pictures of the various models Ray created, black and white illustrations, full color paintings, movie panels, and all sorts of awesome within.

This includes images that Ray gained his own inspiration from so you can see and compare and contrast the art styles.

There is so much majestic stuff here, it's hard not to emphasis it.

For example, let's start with the cover. An arabian adventurer fighting a skeleton warrior atop a crumbling stair well admists ruins while the clouds blow behind him. How about a charcoal and pencil illustration of the Hall of Zeus where a massive status of Zeus is surrounded by vast pillars and huge braizers light the temple. All this atop a dias where people walk up and down and look up at their god.

How about something a little more action based as King Kong, in front of a wooded fenced in village, is beating the crap out of a pride of lions, using one of them as a club by the tail, crushing another in his hands, and snarling his defiance at them. No bear baiting here!

There are dozens of great illustrations as well as details about various other bits in the book. It's well worth having on the shelf and well worth doing some internet searching if you're never heard of him before.

W. Barnard Faraday's Pendragon published by Green Knight

2011-11-24T11:41:00.000-06:00

Having finished off Pendragon, I thought I would take a few moments on an actual day off, to post a few more thoughts on the book.

Even in a time when war with the Saxons and Pics if upon them, the land is not singularly united. This theme plays out in the book in several instances that would make for good role playing opportunities.

For one, Gwendaello, the actual Pendragon in this version, is not well loved. Her former leader was conspiring with the Saxons to take the lands and lords down in exchange for treasures and plunder. His plan didn't work out too well but did leave Gwen in charge of things. However, the other rulers are not pleased at this prospect and try to take away her lands and titles.

This results in a large meeting where diplomacy is at full bloom. The various lords and ladies vieing for attention and trying to determine who has the right of things. It works well in the novel, showcasing a deep amount of mistrust between the rulers as well as showing how things can quickly move from one assumed finale to another with the right placed bribes and blackmail.

3rd edition brought out a lot of rules, well, not a lot of rules, but some rules, to try and bring these role playing elements to the table top with dice rolls and for some, they work. Others, used to having to actually speak and interact with the other participants around the table, are able to talk a fantastic game. 4th edition brought this more into the game with skill challenges that allow different characters to bring different things to the game.

For example, a skill challenge here might involve some of the more obvious candidates like intimidation and diplomacy, but a GM who has players that know the setting and details of it, and have the appropriate skills like ancient history, should be allowed to persuade people through speaking of the land and its past and how those ancient lores may be effecting the here and now. Others may speak using their religion skill to detail how the gods will be angered or pleased by the path being taken here.

I can agree with this because it helps get people who might not have any will or desire to roleplaying, or worse, who have no skill at it, to still contribute to the game with a dice roll and some idea to me how they're trying to achieve their goals.

I also allow role playing 'stunting' for those who get into it. I'll allow them to make a speech and detail what they have in mind and why they think it'll work and provide a bonus to the roll. Now if there are things that the characters don't know, like their speech is hostile to the locals around them, or that they've gotten several things wrong, or if they just flub it, I'll give them a penalty. Of course, the natural 1 always rolls around as well so perhaps while they were talking, they choked on a chicken bone or something of that nature.

For those who don't enjoy such politics though, and are more action based, what about assassination? In this instance, Artorious learns of an attempt on Gwen's life. Of course he does! He's the main character of the book. This is the same deal players can expect for their characters when the DM wants the characters to be able to effect the game. While hearing about an assassination is powerful stuff because it potentially reminds everyone at the table that they are mortal, being the ones to stop such an event carries with it the promise not only of stopping a murder, but the thanks of whatever lord they saved. Finding out who did the deed and what to do about it then become further adventure seeds.

Another issue that arises when the land is in turmoil, is bandits. Artorius notes during his journey, that by travelling alone, if necessary, he can usually hide from such bandits, but a small group is easy pickings as the bandits ten to travel in groups of ten to one hundred. Seeing this in print makes me smile because I don't feel bad when I do it to the players. I'm sure the AngryGM would love having that quote above his DM Screen so that he could point out the 'semi-historical' accuracy of a hundred man bandit attack.

Despite some of the problems in these times though, people do tend to pull together and the rulers must respect those that do so. While talking about the problems with bandits, he recounts how a well liked merchant sought justice for the loss of his goods to bandits and had to pay a legal fee, that was provided by his fellow merchants who wanted to see justice done. When nothing was done and the fee not returned, social unrest sprouted up.

In Usagi Yojimbo, there is an instance where a Samurai tests his sword on a beggar, killing the man instantly. The surviving beggar, the father of the slain one, goes to his guild and they pool their funds together and hire an assassin who kills the son of the samurai.

In short, just because one person is not a problem, does not mean that one person lacks the means to become a problem, even if they themselves are never wielding a sword or casting a spell.

Pendragon by W. Barnard Faraday

2011-11-22T13:56:00.000-06:00

I love me some Arthurian fiction. It can take a wide variety of shapes and styles. It can be written in a deep dark gritty style or as a take on modern events. This version tends to feel more historical in nature and brings some differences to the table.

I'll be laying into the spoilers fairly quickly here and note, I haven't finished reading it, so there may be some more random thoughts shot out on another post soon.

King Arthur is replaced here by Artorius. His lady love is now Gwendaello, and we have a druid bard known as Merddin. The little changes in name give it a more archaic feel, more ancient, more fitting perhaps to some of the themes within.

One of the interesting things is that here, Gwendaello is not some princess to be rescued. She meets Artorius, who is a general at this point, after she has escaped capture by killing those who sought to despoil her. Artorius is a bit unsure of her, perhaps because she's already tried to kill him at this point!

She's brash and bold and has a love for the Island of the Mighty and sees in Artorius, someone who will do all he can to save the people of that island, even if they themselves are not going to do all they can. She is a battle queen here, and it's a role that fits her well.

Another interesting bit was reading on what were accepted common courtesies of the time. For example, when stopping at someones home. The thing that struck me was the author mentioning that people were welcome in such instances not only because of manners, but because there were hungry for gossip, for news, for things outside of the norm. This was their chance for entertainment.

In an era where there are no phones and no Internet, human interaction and communication becomes vital. The going door to door, as the bards do here, to raise spirits and showcase confidence, are of great importance as well as providing that touch of entertainment that people long for.

While there is no G4 network, there is still paper. Artorius is written to by Princess Gwendaello and she wishes him luck in his efforts to preserve the Isle of the Mighty even as she explains to him that forces she herself will be leading. Letters are an excellent way to do some 'Blue Booking'.

Pendragon has a lot of historical richness in its veins and that material can come through in any setting should the GM focus on it. For example, when looking at the spot where two rivers meet, Artorius notes that people will always go to such locations regardless of how many times they are destroyed or occupied because of the utility of such a boon. Towns build on rivers or bodies of water are a staple of fantasy games because they are all over the place in history. Survival becomes much more achievable when water ways become involved not only for trade and transportation, but food and well, water.

If you're looking for a Pendragon with a bit more weight in its heft, Pendragon by W. Barnard Faraday is for you.

e-book Free Battles!

2011-11-21T15:41:00.000-06:00

I was listening to NPR, National Public Radio, and a musician was discussing the difficulty of getting the brand name and brand awareness out there and while he admitted that he wasn't sure what the financals of it all would be, some bands would be lucky if people would even bother to steal their music given how much material is out there in the 'wilds' of the internet.

When looking through the top one-hundred free science-fiction books on Amazon for their kindle format, I noticed that At the Queen's Command, while in the top ten, is still being beaten out by two authors I have no idea who they are or what they write, and one by H.G. Wells, his novel, The Time Machine. This is a man whose been dead since 1946. If at free, with a great cover and a brand new book in the series, you can't make the first place or beat out a dead man, this is some serious thought to be given to how expensive your book is not only in comparission to other authors, some of them whose popularity allows them to essentially charge whatever the market will bear in whatever format, but to the dead authors who have been classics before you were even born.

Now to go download the Time Machine...

The Haunting of Dragons Cliff: Arron of the Black Forest

2011-11-19T00:24:00.000-06:00

I try to keep my price point of ebooks fairly low. Even when there is an author you enjoy, there's no guarantee that you'll enjoy every book they make. In addition, thanks to living in Chicago, I can often find books very inexpensive at Half Price or at various book fairs. But when I see something like The Haunting for $2.99, I'm willing to take a chance on it.

I'll be discussing one of the elements from the novel below, so if you want to avoid spoilers, read no further.

Alright, the thing to steal from this book is how they set up a haunted house. Dragon's Cliff is the name of the manor where an old captain went to die after failing to finish off some great sea wyrm. The manor is haunted by various retainers of the captain who want the captain's funds that he supposedly saved away.

But while those details are important to the novel, they're not important to the set up of the haunted house itself.

When the main character, Arron of the Black Forest, gets himself into this location, it's not a typical exploration of a house. If you or I go to a house to do a tour, we know where everything is, or at least, we can do the tour and find it.

Not so here.

Every time Arron opens a door to try and escape from the house, he discovers another room, without rhyme or reason. In a role playing game, this would be the perfect opportunity to make a haunted house entirely out of randomly rolled rooms. This would make preparation very quick and easy and could be something that you could use in several different styles of haunted house.

You could assemble common cards of each of the standard type of rooms if you wanted to lay down maps for example, and each time the characters open a door, take out a new room tile to showcase what the room is.

You might have a few keyed encounters for specific rooms, like perhaps a certain haunt runs in that room and if the players defeat it, that room is no longer encountered. You could do this until they defeated the 'end boss' at which point the house becomes normal.

Hell, that would almost make for a good random board game. Someone get on that right away.

Season of the Witch

2011-11-18T04:29:00.000-06:00

Season of the Witch falls into one of those rare movie spots for me. As a 'regular' movie, I'm not that impressed with it. As a gaming movie, I don't want to say its pure gold, but I could easily see a GM stealing everything from the movie itself.

I'm going to be hitting the spoilers for the movie below so if you wish to avoid such for the movie, read no more!

The plot of Season of the Witch is relatively simple. A young woman that is accused of being a witch that has brought the plague to the lands must be taken to a specific temple so that the priest there may use a special book of exorcism to break the back of the plague.

That's pretty simple no? It's a get someone from here to there bit.

Now the characters add a little something to the story mind you, but not overly. We have Nicolas Cage and his friend, two templars that have left the holy war. We get a third knight whose lost many to the plague. We get a priest whose a little shall we say, zealous in his work, and another priest who wishes to become a knight. And of course, the witch herself.

Now mind you, in almost any game I've run or seen, if the players were trying to keep things running smoothly, unless they were paid, or quested, or on their word of honor or other really pushing it factor, the witch would not have lived to see the light of day because the witch here is obviously an actual witch. Or at least she appears to be.

Because this is where the movie makes for a perfectly good Warhammer of Dark Ages Call of Cthulhu mix because of the switch. You see, at climax of the movie, if you will, when they arrive at the church, and find that place already decimated by plague, they discover that all of the priests there were making copies of that one sacred text. The witch? Turns out she's actually a demon that, for some reason, needed to be taken to the church so that she could destroy this last full copy of the sacred texts as it's actually one of the few things that can banish demons.

This leads to a battle against the animated corpses of the priests and the demon itself. It also only leaves one survivor and the young woman whose soul is saved from demonic possession. But the plague is broken and the world itself saved.

That little switch made the whole movie for me in terms of role playing elements because to be honest, I didn't see it coming. It just seemed to be a kinda m'eh movie, a no-brainer or sorts, and that took it to another level.

In terms of gaming, as I mentioned upthread, Dark Ages Cthulhu or a similar variant would be good for a one shot. The 'witch' is able to summon wolves and use illusions. She knows things that she's not supposed to but never lets out exactly how much more she knows until the end. She displays great strength as well as stamina and is able to shake off the effects of sedative drugs as well as hold a man above a yawning chasm with one arm.

The ending of the movie, also showcases that in true Cthulhu fashion, not everyone needs to survive for the mission itself to be a success.

In terms of game mechanics, the possessed priest at the end showcase something I've done with minions and one hit wonders in the past. I stat up the creature as a regular creature with a weakness and when the players discover the weakness, I break then down to minion status. If you've ever read an X-Man comic book, there are enemies they battle, like the Brood or Sentinels, where the initial one is almost a match for the whole team, but then when they fight groups of them, they mow through them. That's how I try to model it. Not easy but...

In terms of the exorcism itself, I think you could run that a few ways. You might have the players making some type of skill check and have to hit so many numbers, or that they have to hit a certain level of success or that they have to actually be reading it for so many rounds. Something that can't just be a single dice roll has to be initiated to represent the time needed for the ritual.

Season of the Witch is available for instant viewing on Netflix and if you're a gamer who wants a quick steal of a movie, this might do it for you.

What D&D Character Am I?

2011-11-16T16:37:00.000-06:00

On one of the blogs I regularly follow, I saw this test so had to take it.
http://www.easydamus.com/character.html

warning, it is long.

As far as character...

I Am A: True Neutral Dwarf Bard/Wizard (2nd/1st Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-11

Dexterity-9

Constitution-12

Intelligence-13

Wisdom-15

Charisma-12

Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Dwarves are known for their skill in warfare, their ability to withstand physical and magical punishment, their hard work, and their capacity for drinking ale. Dwarves are slow to jest and suspicious of strangers, but they are generous to those who earn their trust. They stand just 4 to 4.5 feet tall, but are broad and compactly built, almost as wide as they are tall. Dwarven men value their beards highly.

Primary Class:
Bards often serve as negotiators, messengers, scouts, and spies. They love to accompany heroes (and villains) to witness heroic (or villainous) deeds firsthand, since a bard who can tell a story from personal experience earns renown among his fellows. A bard casts arcane spells without any advance preparation, much like a sorcerer. Bards also share some specialized skills with rogues, and their knowledge of item lore is nearly unmatched. A high Charisma score allows a bard to cast high-level spells.

Secondary Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

At the Queen's Command for Free At Amazon

2011-11-15T22:58:00.000-06:00

While I will be purchasing books in physical format for some time to come, due to great deals at various markets or through Half-Priced books, or simply when the format is not available in another format, I'm always pleased when e-books provide readers with reasons to check them out. In this casse, At the Queen's Command: The First Book of the Crown Colonies, by Michael A. Stackpole is available in Kindle format for the princely sum of zero.

http://www.amazon.com/At-Queens-Command-Colonies-ebook/dp/B0046LVDKA/ref=ntt_at_ep_edition_2_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

I find these types of bargains, where the first book in a series is reduced or even free, or the first book by a new author, to be an excellent way to provide new readers to that authors work with an introduction to the work without fear of investment. Well, outside of time.

I hope to see more authors doing this and seeing older works continue to go down and more variety in sales as Amazon and it's new Fire tablet continue to work the market.

Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes For $1.99!

2011-11-14T05:00:00.000-06:00

I have a few posts where I discuss some of Joe Abercrombie's work and well, if you are interested in getting his latest in e-format, Amazon has The Heroes for $1.99. It's not my favorite of his works but there was enough in there for me to post a few things about it and well, it's the price of a cup of coffee at Star Bucks.

When Art Attacks

2011-11-13T22:38:00.000-06:00

I'm certainly not saying that the two have any relation to each other, the one being a Frank piece and the other a more recent artist, but the pose certainly seems iconic in and of itself.

Lawrence Watt-Evans The Sword of Bheleu

2011-11-13T11:54:00.000-06:00

I have finished The Sword of Bheleu, a relic from the dark era known as the 80's or that specific time known as the early 80's. The books are still available in both print and in electronic format so those interested in some old fashioned sword and sorcery books might want to check them out. This volume at least, was well worth the read.

Below I'll be discussing some of the bits in the book that I enjoyed and how I might try and bring some of those elements to my game, as well as somethings that I would try to be aware of before bringing them to my game.

First, when looking at material like the Sword of Bheleu, it's important to keep in mind the different purposes between fiction and gaming material. Much like Elric and his famous sword, Stormbringer, or King Arthur and his blade, Excalibur, these characters and events are not written with anything resembling 'balance' or 'realism' in mind. There are ways and methods to overcome these individuals and they are not invincible, but the needs of fiction pit them against a few select enemies while a standard dungeon crawl might pit players against dozens who would be powerless against such might.

And if that's what your game is going for, a throw the game balance out the window thing, that's fine. Because in such situations, it often works both ways.

For example, Elric's sword, as awesome as it is, has a whole host of enemies that its ineffective against that Elric rarely meets. A player on the other hand with a soul sucking blade might find himself fighting a lot more constructs and elements and traps. Garth the Overman, finds he's got two choices in this book. The first is to accept that he is indeed the avatar of the god of destruction and will rain death on the world for thirty years, or give in to the King in Yellow. Neither one appeals to him, but he hopes he'll be able to work out something to his satisfaction with the King in Yellow. In a standard role playing game, if Garth decided to just keep on his marry way, he'd probably become an NPC.

Interestingly enough, I recently picked up a PDF copy of something called Fourthcore Alphabet. The whole idea of Fourthcore seems a bit supported in this in that there are high risks and high rewards that go beyond the standard balanced encounters and in many ways, remind me of the older editions of the game where one, at a fairly low to mid level, might encounter a weapon like Black Razor in an adventure as opposed to 3rd and 4th editions where most items are good in what they do, but rarely bring the awe to the game that earlier editions did. Game balance in this instance is great in terms of easily designing scenarios and encounters but terrible an encompassing some of the non-tangible elements of game play.

Another interesting thing Lawrence Watt-Evans does here, is provide the viewpoint of Garth's enemies, a council of mages. It's interesting because in previous adventures that have been recaptured here quickly, the council is catching up to events from an outsider's viewpoint. While some might be upset at what could be perceived as a waste of pages telling us things from a different perspective, I found it interesting and as a Game Master, a reminder that the world is not one big vast network where everyone knows everything that goes on.

In some instances, this should be a boon for players when they are at the center of events. If players see a king, baron, or other noble taken down and have first hand information on how things actually went down, they may be able to husband this information into deals behind the scenes latter. If they are actually the cause of some news, they may have a limited time to work things out before their adventurers become well known. While many campaign settings do have some magical means of communication, in default sword and sorcery settings, or settings like 4th edition's Points of Light, communication is dangerous and takes time. This should give the players time to engage in other acts.

Am I saying that players should be able to do anything they want with never fear of repercussion? No. But without things like telephones, the internet, or some other method of world wide communication and perhaps more importantly, visual recording, players would probably have a lot more leeway than the Game Master might initially think about. Even in a large fantasy city broken down by wards, the people in a rich ward might know nothing of the murder of the Beggar King in a lower ward by a group of vagrant adventurers.

Another break against common fantasy elements, is that Garth, as an overman, is of a created race, and while that creation happened thousands of years ago, the creator is known and it's essentially an established fact. Most games hem and haw about race creation, pointing out to the very roots of time and the gods involved with such things. Not so here. Its a change of pace from the standard methods of showcasing how ancient and vast a race is.

The Sword of Bheleu, while the third in the series, and doesn't end in a spot I'm happy with as a reader, is fairly self contained and easy to get into. Those looking for magic items with outrageous powers and an author not afraid to chop up his setting should check it out.

The Sword of Bheleu by Lawrence Watt-Evans

2011-11-06T21:41:00.000-06:00

Written by Lawrence Watt-Evans, the Sword of Bheleu is apparently the third in a series. This is another one of those novels that I picked up for $1.00 at Half Priced books. Hell, maybe I had a coupon and picked it up for eighty cents or something.

The interesting thing is that at the time of its printing, it was $2.50. Yeah, inflation in a specific field gone wild again eh? More interesting to me, is that at Amazon, you can buy it in ebook format for $5.59 which to me is a little overpriced considering the original cover price but not horrible.

Knowing nothing of the series, the author, or what happens after, as I'm still reading it, but I'm going to hit some spoilers below.

First off, the book is sword and sorcerer. Magic is fairly rare but those who have it tend to be powerful. Magic items are also fairly rare, and in this case, while we have a few of the standards, like the crystal ball, the Sword of Bheleu itself turns out to be a major artifact, effectively making the user a avatar of the god of destruction. This isn't a one way ticket though. Indeed, the sword often compels its user to destroy, to attack, to kill. this is often indicated by the massive ruby on the hilt of this two-handed bad boy glowing with an inner fire. A great visual cue but if you're playing the prototypical dumb fighter, all the visual cues in the world aren't going to help.

The sword is also a bit of old school in that it seems it can do many things. For example, when the wielder, Garth, is spied upon with a crystal ball, his connection to the got of destruction travels back on that feed and destroys the crystal ball. Garth can also use the weapon to set fire to buildings, to burn through stone itself. This doesn't count that others don't seem to be able to use the weapon without suffering massive burns and wind up dropping it.

By not pinning everything the sword does, the author provides himself some space in which to use the sword for different elements. One of the terrible things that third edition started, and fourth edition fully embraced and has been struggling to get back ever since, is removed the magic from magic items. I haven't played a lot of 4e lately and I know that some others, like the Fourthcore group, have also tried to bring some of the magic back to the magic so to speak. Damn shame that it ever got that far to begin with.

Anyway...

Another interesting aspect of the book is that Garth isn't human, he's what's called an overman, humanoid but physically better than a human. The problem is that the overmen lost the Racial Wars that happened some odd three hundred years ago. Turns out that like orcs and some other humanoids, while they may be great independent fighters, they are terrible fighters when it comes to war as they are not great social creatures, each too headstrong and independent to do any group warfare that doesn't involve a numerous commanders involved with many levels of the soldiers. Their home life structure isn't that great either, they essentially borrow the idea of marriage to provide some stability to their lives.

I like this factor because it provides the overmen some character and showcases why they are where they are when I read this book. It's not some nine hundred page beast that I feel compelled to read because it's trying to teach me history. Rather, it's a quick sword and sorcery romp that showcases bad things happen and sometimes, more bad things happen. Heck, I think Rolemaster old versions may even have something similar to this guy. I know that they had High Men, which were essentially homages to Strider's people, but I think they had something even bigger and stronger and with even fewer background points in one of their series of companions.

In addition, it gives me some ideas as to why elves and dwarves and other long lived races don't rule the world. They're just not able to compete with humanity. It's not that elves aren't the best archers, rangers, or masters of magic. It's just that they're so tied up in their own thing they never think, "Man, these humans are going to take it all over." For the dwarves, they might have so much going on in their various book of grudges, that they don't necessarily care that humans are taking over until those humans get into the book of grudges themselves, and because humanity at least if often allied to dwarves, the dwarves are only worried about specific humans to hunt down. The decline of their race isn't something directly attributed to humans often, but rather to their many numerous other enemies ranging, at least in say, Warhammer, to goblins, trolls, orcs and Skaven, to even chaos dwarves. Humans may provide worthy foes, a few may even go into the book, but for the most part, allies and trade partners.

Speaking of those bad things, in that war three hundred years ago, when the overmen lost, they got some bad terms. But interestingly enough, the garrison, the town, the fortress that provided them? Well, as Garth notes, humans have short memories and yesterday's heroes are today's useless dregs of society. The town that has its borders with the overmen is poor and feeble and easily overcome. Mind you this isn't necessarily a good thing because as I read its indicated that yeah, this was a wasting outpost but its just a part of a larger entity. Still, showcasing how decay can ease up onto these elements of society, especially those that might have been considered the most important at one part of a setting's history, are important.

The overmen have another advantage here in that they have warbeasts. These are essentially large, black massive hunting cats that, like like worgs, wargs, or dire wolves, are actually more dangerous than the overmen themselves. This makes fighting overmen even worse when they come prepared. Worse still, the beasts aren't too concerned with what they eat as at one point Garth is worried about the warbeast eating patrolling soldiers if they're not feed soon. Scary but entertaining stuff.

A third interesting factor, is the use of the King in Yellow. Now I'm not saying it's the exact character from the Mythos, but when you read a little on the author's page about the series, yeah, it's pretty much him. He comes off as a tragic character with a terrible destiny but also a little like the dude of Many Eyes and the Faceless mentors of the Twain from Fritz Lieber's various Swords Against series. Good stuff.

So, still reading, and may/may not get the ebook versions, but they're out there, the paperbacks are still out there, and there's even an omnibus edition. It's old school with a bit of a twist and well worth reading for those looking for a non-human hero with a kick ass magic weapon.

and come on, how can you not lover a cover where the guy in the middle of these enemies isn't looking like he's going, "What, you wanna piece of this?"

Brunner: Equipment Evolution

2011-11-03T19:07:00.000-05:00

One of the interesting things about Brunner, the bounty hunter from the Warhammer series of books, is that unlike a lot of fantasy characters, he tends to accumulate some toys along the way.

Don't misunderstand me, there's a lot of cash he's collected. Somehow we never see him spend it. I suspect that like the manga Lone Wolf and Cub, we'll see he's been saving these coins for a very special rainy day.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not even talking about how he names his large serrated cutting knife because that's what he uses to lop the heads off his bounties or his horse or his pony that he carries various items. I'm not even talking about the 'standard' weapons he starts with, which include some expensive ones like a highly polished gun that works almost every time he needs it to.

Rather, I'm talking about loot!

In one of the stories, he 'liberates' a sword from a false noble. The blade is of a special magical variety against those of chaos.

In another, he earns a repeating crossbow from an encounter with Skaven.

These items in and of their own, become a bit of a signature thing with Brunner.

This is something that happens in movies and books and comics all the time. A nifty weapon makes an appearance and then everyone wants one! Admit it, how long after the Phantom Menace came out and we saw Double Light Sabers did you see one at the game?

Signature weapons can be useful and fun if used correctly. In level based games like Rolemaster or Dungeons and Dragons, they can be a little more difficult to efficiently fit in the actual game as unless you allow the player to upgrade the item, no matter how signature the Blade of the Family Blood is, it's it's +1 +2 versus Undead and the character gets an opportunity to get a +3 weapon... well, we can all see that old blade hanging on the shelf right?

Another thing about signature weapons and items is that they may have history and significance that showcases some aspect of the character's own background. For example, some weapons may only work for individuals of a specific race or a specific family line. Others may take rites and rituals to activate. Others may just look so unique that they are known wherever they go. One of the fun things to do is allow these items to provide hooks into the game, but not dominate it.

Use and reward players with special items that fit into their own goals and background and don't forget to use them against them when the players are trying to sneak around. "The Dagger of St. McMac! No lowly acolyte would have that item! Arrest them!'

Good times.

Warhammer Religions Versus Brunner by C. L. Werner

2011-10-26T17:56:00.000-05:00

In the Warhammer setting, there are many deities that are followed. The general ones or the popular ones, would probably be Sigmar, the patron of the Empire, the White Wolf 'cult' in the north, and the Ruinous Powers of Chaos.

While Brunner himself is not given over to active worship, or at least, does not appear to acknowledge it, he does have several incidents or encounters with religion and those who are religious, or at least pay lip service to it that span a bit differently than the standard gods of the Warhammer setting.

Shallya: While Brunner does wind up crossing blades with a worshipper of Uncle Nurgle, the interesting thing was the prespective it puts on that worship. Tear down hospitals not because the help the injured, but because they cure the sick. This in and of itself could easily become a mini-campaign with one faction trying to wipe the other one's forces out. Brunner appreciates the healing but doesn't feel he owes anyone here anything because he earns his keep.

Solkan: I remember when I first bought my Warhammer FRPG book. It wasn't the hardcover first edition, but it was a great edition by Hogshead. Nonetheless, one of the interesting things I remember reading about in those early days, was deities of law. Not as known or as active in the world as those of Chaos, nonetheless, they were there. One of my friends ran a campaign where we were trying to free one of the trapped gods, the Lady of Law or something like that.

In one of the stories, Brunner is visiting a city state where Solkan is ascendant and his worshippers, while not the only faction, do have a lot of leeway in how they deal with sinners. The unfortunate thing is that they essentially come off like flagellants or other heavy handed worshippers of Sigmar so with a little name change, I wasn't seeing a lot of difference.

Ranald: The patron god of thieves and someone one of Brunner's bounties gives lip service to often.

When using a setting that has a lot of deities, try to focus on some that may not be receiving a lot of attention. It may force the players to pay a little more attention. If in a game where there are special toys different deities provide their worshippers, or different methods of worship are known, use them. Make the game a little different in aspects so that you can get away from the whole Ruinous Powers and Sigmar association that tie up so much of the Warhammer setting.

Keep it fresh and keep the players guessing.

Brunner the Bounty Hunter by C. L. Werner

2011-10-23T00:41:00.000-05:00

Brunner the Bounty Hunter is a collection of a trilogy of books; Blood & Steel, Blood Money and Blood of the Dragon. I'm not quite sure what the actual break down is in each book as most of the tales are short stores, framed by an author in the fantasy Warhammer setting who knows Brunner and sells tales that Brunner tells him.

C. L. Werner's work is solid here but may suffer a little from the length of the stories. With most of the contents being short, there isn't a lot of room for character development, and while the overall story continues to build and change and evolve and we see everything in previous tales move forward, it's a much different feel than reading a standard trilogy where there might be dozens of characters with their own goals and motivations.

On one hand, this allows C. L. Werner to put Brunner into a lot of situations and brings a lot of action to the reader. In many ways Brunner would be perfect for a weekly cliff hanger style show where Brunner continues to hunt down bounties and we continue to learn a little more about him.

On the other hand, there's not a lot of supporting cast and well, I can only read about how fierce Brunner looks a dozen times before yawning at his bad assery so to speak.

I think overall I enjoyed C. L. Werner's Witch Hunter series a little more but know that in many ways, Brunner is far more appropriate for gaming inspiration thanks to its shorter tales providing more material to a potential GM.

I've often mentioned that bounty hunters are my favorite type of character in games. They have a quick and easy hook that the GM can use to bait the campaign with a variety of bounties, rival hunters, and organizations that make use of such individuals. The ring of details that can be included varies from informants, bars to gather information in, and the law men who sit back and allow the hunters to do the leg work.

These law men may vary tremendously in terms of their authority and their need. In the standard, Brunner receives many of his 'quests' from a judge. On some of his travels while getting those bounties though, Brunner comes across situations that are tasked of him that come from a different authority. In one instance, he's invited by a noble to kill a were wolf. Normally a man of Brunner's status wouldn't even be allowed near the man, but due to the noble's need of seeing the creature captured or killed, Brunner is allowed into the inner circle.

A short job like this allow the character to brush up against society he might not normally be involved with. Unlike the manga Berserk, where initially Griffin is able to rise in rank and ascend to the highest political levels, the jobs Brunner does are so quick that he's not around long enough to necessarily rise or want to. Staying in one place limits the type of jobs he could take after all.

One of the things that Werner does well, is provides a larger backdrop to the setting. For example, when discussing Brunner. "It was said that the bounty hunter had spirited a buccaneer captain from the sanctuary of the pirate stronghold of Sartosa, that he had brought down a traitor to the King of Bretonnia in the court of an Arabyan sheik, and that he had pursued one notorious smuggler to the depths of Black Crag and returned with his prey from the bowels of the goblin fortress."

In that bit alone we get a brief flare of how large the setting is, and how fierce Brunner is. It's a nice bit of reputation and the GM should allow players to craft their own reputations and incorporate things they've down, as well as things that might sound like things they've done. Exaggeration is always a useful tool to have.

Another bit to consider when running characters who thirst for bounties, is that they will be spending a lot of their time in places knights, nobles, and other aristrocrat races, like elves, would probably avoid. They would need to do this in order to gather information, and it allows the GM to occasionally throw them a small bone in that they may recognize a bandit, a mugger, or a smuggler with a bounty on his head. Of course the players need to be secure in their own prowess least they fall prey to ambush or trap themselves...

When looking at where the enemy might flee to, try to incorporate already existing bits of the setting into it. For example, in one story, Brunner has to hunt down a man known as Bertolucci. Turns out their family, like many, owned villas in the country, but waves of beastmen and orcs drove the nobles out of those homes. But sometimes better the unknown then the sure death that waits if you stay... These little bits allow the players, especially those who are already familiar with a setting with a large fan base, such as Warhammer, Greyhawk, or the Forgotten Realms, a chance to enjoy it.

Collecting bounties may provide some challenges to characters. For one thing, if they are employed as more than just assassins, a lot of their victims may have to come back alive. This is something the GM can play on the characters with by providing bounties of various costs that may be worth less than half, or even a fourth dead. Keeping the characters on their toes, and actually providing them with a sound reason for keeping an enemy they've defeated alive.

Another benefit of having a setting like Warhammer, is that little things can be done to customize it further that incorporate the already existing elements. For example, "Farmers in Bretonnia would train hogs to hunt truffles and they held that the noses of their hogs were sharper than any hound. He was counting that the snouts of the Empire's swine were no less keen. If there was one thing a pig enjoyed eating more than a truffle it was a snotling."

Snotlings are a race of goblinoid in the Warhammer setting and by putting that little touch of character there, it provides just a touch more of being somewhere that isn't Earth in a dark ages setting.

Another benefit of running a bounty hunter style campaign, is that the players should be on the alert for the unusual. Brunner is often noted for having a great memory and always examining his surroundings. "I have both three-toe and the one with the clubbed foot here. There can't be two orcs with feet like that rampaging about in your father's domain.'.

A fine example of knowing what to look for and where to look for it.

In terms of these unique elements though, Werner doesn't pause when detailing out monsters, bandits, dragons, vampires, or others. His vivid imagery showcases an interesting bit though when compared to gaming. There are several enemies Brunner quickly bowls through thanks to the use of his crossbow pistols, his actual pistol, and other weapons he's mastered. But from a quick read, you might not know which foe was supposed to be which. Treat every enemy the players face as if it was the preordained winner in the fight when describing it. The players won't know who is a minion and who is the real deal.

Werner is also entertaining. The Warhammer setting is strange in its use of fire arms and dueling and knights and wizards. There are often unspoken honorable agreements about how such things are to be used. But he does manage to capture what I'd call an Indiana Jones moment here when a famous duelist challenges Brunner, the bounty hunter goes outside and shots the man. It's entertaining but also gets the point across that most often, unless restricted by some limitation, Brunner, like many players, will do what he needs to win.

Keep that in mind when coming up with adversaries and foe men. The players might not be bound by the same rules of honor. They might be so slipper on the morale chart that those around them keep a wide distance.

But at the same time, unless you've completely changed the fantasy setting you're running, this should have the occasional benefit allowing them to get the drop on a knight, on a noble, on an elf, or another variant whose honor is held in such high regard that they would never think the players would sink to some dastardly level.

At the same time, the players, engaged in bounty hunting, may be involved in locations that only the most vile murderers and scum may call home. For example, "Will you be needing more salt, master?' the boy asked, a tone of eagerness in his voice. Even at his tender age, he had witnessed death often enough, and heads of criminals adorning pikes set before the town's main gate were commonplace." Remember that no matter how shinny the armor of a knight, that knight is still probably ruling over peasants and dispensing harsh justice that may take the form of entertainment for the common folk. No television, no radio, and no form of instant communication with people around the world makes for some people who in their limited experience have already seen a lot of things that others would consider truly horrid but to them is mild entertainment.

There are some more bits I'll pull from Brunner, but I'll leave off with the recommendation to pick it up in trade paperback as the individual books run quite a bit higher.

The Problem With Brunner

2011-10-22T15:07:00.000-05:00

As I'm getting ready to finish off Brunner, a collection of short stories set in the Warhammer Fantasy setting that features Brunner, a bounty hunter of no small prowess, I decided to do a quick snoop around the Black Library site to see if this was offered as an ebook.

No such luck.

I did however, look around at another series by the same author, the one about the Witch Hunter. Now when I read the series, I read it in a collected format that I bought either at Amazon.com for something like $11 or at Half-Price for something like $7.50 plus tax. So how does the Black Library decide to sell the series?

In individual book form only for $7.99.

So... buy all three books and pay more than you would if you bought the print collection at a brand new price with zero discount, or, well don't.

I think publishers still have a long way to go in terms of figuring out where they want to be, what they think the customer will pay, and how the customers behavior will influence them.

For myself, I would never buy an ebook for more than the price of the printed book, and this includes collected editions. If as a publisher you've already made enough money from the series that you decide to get another round of dollars from it by collecting the books into a collection and don't sell that in the same format as an ebook, you, as a publisher, are effectively telling your fans to buy the print version.

There is nothing wrong with that, but considering unless its a direct sale that most of the profits from sales of print books go to the various middlemen there as opposed to the ebook, that might not be the best way to make the money.

Ah well, let me finish off Brunner here and post some actual inspiration material as opposed to yet another ebook price rant.

Return of the Living Dead

2011-10-18T20:54:00.000-05:00

With the Halloween season on a full run, I decided to watch Return of the Living Dead. I saw movie in the theater when it first came out with some friends and my dad. He was, shall we say, unimpressed with the need for the undead to eat brains to cull the pain of being dead.

Return of the Living Dead is a sequel in a different vein than Dawn of the Dead of the movies that follow that director's vision of the undead as social commentary.

Indeed, Return of the Living Dead has many differences in its adaptation of the zombies to the big screen.

1. The zombies in the Return series can still speak. They are far more mobile than those in the standard zombie films with the remake Dawn of the Dead being a clear exception to that rule.

2. The zombies have thinking process. Now mind you, this isn't always the best and they have no sense of self preservation, but since they're incredibly difficult to destroy, that's isn't a problem. Indeed, it leads to some entertaining moments. The point of their intelligence though, comes through when they're using emergency radios to call for more paramedics and send more cops and other such classic lines.

3. The zombies don't have a single point of weakness. This isn't to indicate that they are super strong or that they can accomplish feats of physical prowess beyond humanly possible. They just ignore all injury. A blow to the skull does nothing more than annoy them. They require complete physical destruction. This might be a challenge to rule so in a game.

4. The zombies haven't taken over the world yet.

That latter part might or might not be important because the zombie in say, the Walking Dead, are an omnipresent threat that are everywhere. In Return of the Living Dead, they are a localized one. They might make for an interesting threat in a location that was somehow cut off from the rest of a setting. An island, warded cemetery, or even a demi-plane where something the characters need is trapped with these difficult to destroy undead.

Another part that is tied into the isolation factor, is that everyone who comes into the area, is killed. Paramedics, police, and friends of the employee working at the cemetery, all meet an untimely death at the hands of the zombies. This can work it's way into a setting as well and provide another reason why characters all called on. Everyone else that the kingdom has sent into this location with the super zombies, has already died and the players are the last hope before the entrance way is sealed forever.

Return of the Living Dead is goofy but it does provide some differences in zombie action to those looking for more than just shamblers that aimlessly get shot, bashed, or stabbed in the brain.

Mordenheim by Chet Williamson

2011-10-17T21:20:00.000-05:00

In between reading the Invisible Man on my Toshiba, the Brunner trade paperback collection, and various other books, I've been reading Mordenheim by Chet Williamson. This is another book I bought at Half Priced Books for the kingly sum of $1.00.

Mordenheim is one of the books in the Ravenloft series. This series brought a touch of gothic horror to the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons setting initially through a single module and then through a meta-setting that could reach any other setting and was heavily inspired by many a tale of the classics.

Mordenheim is in many ways the answer to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. The interesting thing, to me, is how the author plays off the differences inherent in such a take. Mordenheim, the name of the doctor, lives in a setting where magic is real. Being a true man of 'science' however, he has long discounted magic and relied only on those things that he himself can bring to the table.

This makes him an interesting stand out from other villains. He seeks a deeper understanding of the world through the physical attributes that he can disect. This started off with animals and worked its way up to humans, including the associated grave robbing inherent in such a task. But his goal, of extending life, of curing disease, or making man immortal and invicible, well, to him, and to many throughout history, the ends justify the means.

And that makes him a dangerous villain and makes for a great nemesis motivation. If the GM can play such a villain correctly, if he can choose his words and examples with great care and catered to the players, he may even be able to lure some of them to the villain's side. But it has to be a compelling arguement. It has to be something grand.

And more importantly, there has to be some evidence that the villain is capable of doing what he wants. In this case, Mordenheim is no idle scientist, he has created Adam, which in Dungeons and Dragons, amounts to a unique, advanced Flesh Golem with its own will and mind and its own desires. But to Mordenheim, it is a truimpth of science. And to anyone who sees it, physical proof that Mordenheim is capable of showing his theories in the flesh.

Keep the motivation of the villain out front where the players cna see the strength of it and either take up arms in rebellion against those ideas which tye consider foul or pause and wonder if indeed, the ends do justify the means.

And for one more furthe price rant, the cover price of this book was $4.95 in 1994 and most paperbacks these days cost $9.95. So... 100% inflation in less than twenty years... but surely everyone is making double what they made back then right? The minimum wage has doubled since then right? Righ? Ugh. And the Kindle Price? No such animal. Ugh again.

Another e-book Pricing Rant

2011-10-16T21:19:00.001-05:00

I've mentioned before that my sweet spot for e-publications is around the $2.99 point. Amazon has various daily deals that meet my standard in addition to hundreds, if not thousands of free books. Hell, I'm reading the invisible man now that was free. Tor has some steambooks on sale for the $2.99 and took some of their biggest fantasy franchises to the $2.99 price point for the first book in the series. I've seen a few others, like a recent steampunk fantasy anthology for $2.99 as well as others, that makes me ponder that my 'mythical' price point isn't that far out of line.

What does that have to do with anything?

On RPG.net, someone start a WIR, short for where I read, and the book in question was Black Company, by Glen Cook. Go over to Amazon and hey, no Kindle copies at all, regardless of the cost. But the new stuff? Yeah, it's there. This is another case of author not taking control of his e-rights and insuring that his existing material is creating another revenue stream for him.

But then on an art blog, I see this fantastic drawing of Death Dealer, a Frank Fazetta character. It inspires me to look up one of my favorite authors of sword and sorcery fiction or semi-modern times, David Gemell. All of his books cost around $7.99 in kindle format.

Uh... listen estate of Dave, if you didn't make the money necessary to earn profit on those books while he was alive, then it might be a little late now and because the author is dead, it might be easier to spread information about him and his works at a much lower price point since as I started off, there are thousands of e-books out there for free.

I dread looking up what something like the Amber series would cost.

And one reason for that, is at the end of the series, sometime well after it, there was a nice trade paperback collection of the whole series. And Glen Cook's Black Company is also in collection edition. So how would the e books go in that instance? $7.99 per each of the original Black Company or Amber books or one reasonable price for a collection? While many of Bernard Cornwell's e books are around paperback price, the trilogy covering Bernard's version of King Arthur, the Warlord Chronicles, covers all three books and runs $5.14 for The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur under one file.

Once again, this tells me that my preferred price point isn't out of whack with reality and that if living authors like Bernard can do it with collections of their work, that someone needs to step up to the black and first make sure we have e books that take the existing work already out there and two, make it affordable to the masses.

The Lincon Park Zoo

2011-10-12T20:27:00.000-05:00

One of the nice things about living in Chicago, outside of having one of the most expensive set of taxes, parking tickets, public transportation, gas, and electricity, is there is a lot of free stuff to do and a lot of it is cool if you're willing to either take public transportation there or be gouged on 'public' parking.

I went with the later option knowing that I was going to be doing some further driving down the road and went to the Lincon Park Zoo. Turns out that after thirty years the zoo is going to be, in theory, temporarily removing the penguins due to the age of the machines in the park. They are some odd thirty years old.

Bad news? A few of the beasts were no where to be found. A lot of the cafes were closed. The price for a bottle of water or soda was $3.00. My girl friend smoked me in terms of walking. Sure, I've got a broken toe, but when we hit the gym I'm usually able to do the cardio far longer then her. The reality of walking up and down and moving in the outdoors came into play here. Embarrassing! I'm sure there are a few other petty annoyances I could think of but...

The good was that it was a fantastic day in Chicago. The crowd's weren't too bad. There were plenty of places to sit so that when my girlfriend was leaving me in the dust, I was able to gather my wits. My camera actually lasted most of the trip so I had opportunity to take a lot of pictures, or at least, my girlfriend did after I showed her how to work the thing and she stopped worrying about dropping it.

But why post this type of stuff here on Appendix N? What about it brought out any gaming inspiration?

Lots of things.

For one, despite it being a public and free zoo, it has a lot of variety there. Sure, you're typical fantasy campaign setting may not be appropriate to throw all of the animals that you can see gathered in one spot at a zoo, but it does allow you to get an idea of just how diverse animal life can be.

Differences in animals of the same type and the same breed can be vast. This one should be a no brainer. I'm six and a half feet tall and a fat bastich. I tower over a lot of my co workers and outweigh many of them. You'd think some of them were from pygmy tribes if you didn't know we were all human.

The same is true of animals but even more so. For example, one set of birds I saw had different lengths and colors of beaks. The sizes between male and female can be vast, and not always in the male's favor. The coloration of animals can vary by age. In one exhibit on fish, the smallest of the fist started off as yellow with blue stripes and grew to be blue as they grew larger. And the smallest of these fish were perhaps in the two to three inch range while the largest were over a foot in length and almost as wide.

Adding little details like that can either be boring or fascinating for your group, depending on the preference of the players. For example, knowing that an ape should be approximately so many pounds and knowing that whatever they're following appears to be an ape, but one much larger, is mostly background noise leading to a confrontation with a giant ape, but what if the nature sense people can tell that even at the giant size, it's still a young ape? Now you're setting up foreshadowing.

Animals also have their own needs and cares. One of the bears had surgery on its mouth so that its tongue slightly protruded. The animal would have died without it but thanks to modern science it was saved. These distinguishing marks can be the sign of a druid or other animal lover in the region or noticing issues with the animals in the first place, could be the start of a separate campaign dealing with plague.

The movie reviewer, Ebert, noted that the Hunted, wasn't some tricky fighting movie but that its characters looked like they had weight and that they felt ever blow and cut between each thrust and attack. When looking at some of the animals here, especially some of the lions or the rhino, its important to think about how weight can be an issue. A charging rhino may not have all that jazz of a demon or undead, but the sheer weight of it should be enough to ensure that all but the most heavily armed and armored character strive to remove themselves.

The important thing though, is that with all of the things animals can have going for them, in terms of superior senses, using the environment, pack tactics, and a host of other bits, that if the GM goes out of his way to make them 'realistic' and the players are feeling like they're in a slash fic remake of The Ghost and the Darkness, then what happens when the GM starts using supernatural elements like demons and devils or animals that are well, greater animals such as dire or legendary?

I'm not saying ditch all the cool elements that an animal can bring to the game, but don't become so bogged down in how much more dangerous hippos are than crocodiles that you make them tougher than stone giants. Respect the animals but in most fantasy games, know their place.

John Carpenter's The Thing

2011-10-09T22:20:00.000-05:00

As Halloween comes around, I tend to watch more horror movies. So far this month I've knocked out Trick 'R Treat, the original Wolf Man with Lon Chaney, and today, John Carpenter's The Thing. I watched this one because of a few reasons.

One, it's a classic. It's almost thirty years old. There are some good things still going on here.

Two, there is a remake that is also a prequel coming out.

Three, there is a Dark Horse digital free comic; http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/629/thing-returns-dark-horse-comics-free-digitally-now Some good stuff there, especially since it's in a dark ages setting.

The Thing relies on several common elements of horror.

The first of these, is isolation. By placing it in a far flung location that is physically isolated from the rest of the world, the director forces the characters to rely on only the possessions and knowledge that they have and can expand in a limited direction.

The second, is man against the elements. This isn't some tropical island where if they didn't have issues with an alien capable of assimiliating them all that they could just go play some golf. Survival itself is at stake here.

The third, is fear of the unknown. Like a good Call of Cthulhu adventure, the characters go about learning more and more about the nature of the enemy they face until its time for the final showdown.

John Carpenter's The Thing is definately worth a second look and could easily be a campaign in and of itself. Imagine that instead of the Far Realm sending out specific entities to the prime material plane, the 'Thing' arrives as a disease. Can players either stop it from escaping the planar workshop they are in or must they destroy the gates on the other side to insure that no one escapes?

Berserk 35 by Kentaro Miura

2011-10-08T22:28:00.000-05:00

Dark Horse comics continues to support my type of manga as Berserk collection 35 hits the United States. While the series is a little further according to my research, it looks like it'll be some time before volume 36 hits the streets.

When I read Berserk, the high energy of Miura's art inspires me. For me, his style is similar to another favorite of mine on the Super Hero comics shores, George Perez. It has a ton of detail and a lot of movement to it.

In this volume, we see further ramifications of past events continue to unfold. This provides some good ground work for those who run episodic adventures with an other all theme or arc. In this instance, Guts efforts to save Caska by taking her to the isle of the fey comes under complication when a pirate ship falls pray to the new madness and in turn becomes an enormous threat. In D&D 3rd edition, this could easily be done through the addition of templates, class levels, or other such goods. In other versions of the game, depending on how serious the GM is taking it, he might just rewrite the material and hand wave the reasoning.

In addition, since the ship takes some damage in their battle with the monster ship, the group is forced to make landfall on an island.

Islands are great bits for fantasy games for several reasons.

1. They can be isolated. This allows the GM to throw in things that are older than the standard setting in terms of dress, eating, religion, weapons, attitudes and outlook.

2. They can be isolated physically. Sure, the weird natives might be giving off a Wicker Man vibe and setting up all sorts of unpleasant events, but the real problem is that there's no damn way off an island outside of repairing the wreck you came in.

Movies like Cast Away or television shows like Lost showcase some of the other problems with an island. Equipment may be hard to come by for example. Isolation from the mainland may cause strange mental illness to forment on those isolated too long.

But in a fantasy game, there could be other issues.

For one, the island itself could be alive.

For another, the island could be slowly moving through the planes.

For another, the island could be at a center of power that attracts all sorts of weirdness to it as individuals try to harness this energy in ritualistic manner.

Another useful thing about islands, is that if you're not making them a continuous stop or part of the setting, it's not that big a deal to wipe out the inhabitants to showcase how vile a particular monster is. In this case, the creature that's coming after Guts and his party has destroyed the village and absorbed them, making them new monsters that come against the party.

Another thing to note about islands though, in all this talk of flesh eating and isolation, is that they make a good point in a sea campaign to introduce new players. In this instance, Isma, a native to the island whose mother is supposedly a mermaid and whose life is outside the town, showcases how to introduce a new character that has reason to trust the party (isolated from the other inhabitants of the island) and is full of the desire to explore and leave the small town behind. It works well in this instance and provides more fuel for the unusual side of the Berserk saga.

Berserk 35 isn't going to bring in any new fans to the series but it doesn't disappoint the old fans. The kinetic art and action provide a lot of fodder for the imagination and the new character brings more complications to the young 'ens of the cast.

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

2011-10-06T18:43:00.000-05:00

I love the cover of this book. It's a simple piece that would work fantastic as a miniature with a character in apparently some type of light armor with a nice fancy hilted sword with a hooded cloak where the cap is moving. Dynamic but static.

In terms of the book, it's got a lot of grit going for it but I'm a little undecided if I like it or not. the main character is a little too competent either through blind stupid luck or through bad assery that makes me think this kid could bitch slap Elminster and while that would be amusing, it just rubs me wrong in some ways.

In terms of spoilers, they'll be coming below because I'm going to talk about intangibles as they relate to setting the tone of a campaign.

Prince of Thorns isn't heroic. It's not even friendly. the character isn't even an anti-hero. But how could you do this in a role playing game? How could you model having 'brothers', a group of murderous bandits, working with the Prince, a player, and showcase the tone you're trying to set?

First off, let's discuss the brothers. By being part of a bandit group, Mark Lawrence has provided the main character with a group of characters he can easily kill off and most people aren't going to care or blink an eye. This almost harkens back to older editions of Dungeons and Dragons with hirelings. "You there peasant, take this mighty one silver and take up arms against yon ogre for a further single piece of gold!" Of course morale was a game factor too in the day eh?

But in terms of showcasing a setting, you can crib the following without having to resort to game mechanics.

1. Life is worthless. The main character is almost assassinated by an enemy from one of the Hundred Kindgoms that make up the setting and his father, instead of taking vengeance against the murderer or his wife and his youngest son, makes peace through concessions from the enemy king.

2. Life is worthless. Kill some of the 'brothers' or bandits, or hirelings in standard tasks or fights. For example, in the book, while the characters are climbing a mountain, one of them falls to his death. Another character suffers a cut from a farming implement and dies as a result of infection.

3. Life is worthless. Introduce a whole new race of creatures and entities that the players interact with a bit and have a few of those new found humanoids join the player characters. Then destroy the rest of the race while the players continue their trials and journeys.

4. Life is worthless. Have the players use every means at this disposal to win, even if that win results in mass overkill and the destruction of hundreds of people. Some may argue that the method used in the book needs rules when Jorg, the Prince of Thorns, destroys another kingdom. They may note that it is science that destroys it! Humbug. In Eberon and the Forgotten Realms we've got numerous scars and blisters on the land that are the direct result of magical armagedon. Rules only matter when destroying a kingdom if you want them to matter.

5. Life is worthless: In having the players use every means at this disposal, push them against the boundaries of the standard fantasy tropes. This is done twice in the novel. The first time, Jorg kills a man so skilled with the blade that this knight is able to out fence Jorg's champion, who himself is a master duelist. Jorg however has no problem provoking the knight, running into a guard, snatching a crossbow and putting one through the blademan's skull. This is allowable because Jorg is the King's son and the king is impressed with this show of ruthlessness. In another venue, Jorg is in a knightly tournament and goes for the kill on numerous knights. Because Jorg not only survives in that arena but takes out the king of that realm, he is able to avoid repercussions from it.

6. Life is worthless. Have the 'brothers', the brigands that you've been so eager to kill off in the most minor of fashions to showcase how fragile life is, ready to turn on the players if they're not always at the peak of the game. It's not just that life is worthless for them, it's worthless for the players if those slip and showcase mercy or weakness. Have some of the 'named' brothers challenge the players after a particularly tough battle or when a loved one dies as an opportunity for the player to man up or be put down.

By focusing on the things you want the campaign to convey, regardless of the game you're running, you can do a far better job than if you sat around making up rules for diseases that lice may be carrying or what the chances of players catching infections from having sex with villager's unwilling daughters. Focus on the mood. Focus on the atmosphere. Focus on the tone.

Samurai Champloo

2011-10-02T23:01:00.000-05:00

One of the benefits of actually having two days off in a row, is I caught up on Samurai Champloo. I'd been hearing good things about it for a while now, especially in compassion to Cowboy Bebop. While I enjoyed it, I'd have to say that the larger cast in Cowboy allowed it to tell more within its frame work as Samurai Champloo uses only three main characters and towards the end veered off into some weirdness that topped anything Bebop did.

In terms of character, I'll let Wikipedia do the work;

Mugen: A brash vagabond from the Ryukyu Islands, Mugen is a wanderer with a wildly unconventional fighting style. He wears metal-soled geta and carries an exotic sword on his back. In Japanese, the word "Mugen" means "infinite" (literally, "without limit" or "limitless").

Jin: Jin is a reserved ronin of 20 years who carries himself in the conventionally stoic manner of a samurai of the Tokugawa era. Using his waist-strung daishō, he fights in the traditional kenjutsu style of a samurai trained in a prominent, sanctioned dojo. Jin wears glasses, an available but uncommon accessory in Edo era Japan. Spectacles, called "Dutch glass merchandise" ("Oranda gyoku shinajina" in Japanese) at the time, were imported from Holland early in the Tokugawa period and became more widely available as the 17th century progressed. In Japanese, the word "Jin" means "benevolence" or "compassion."

Fuu: A feisty 15-year-old girl, Fuu recruits Mugen and Jin to help her find a sparsely described man she calls "the samurai who smells of sunflowers." A flying squirrel named "Momo" (short for momonga, "flying squirrel") accompanies her, inhabiting her kimono and frequently leaping out to her rescue.

Mugen, is, in many ways a player character to the bone.

He is interested in showcasing his strength and little else. This demonstration of physical prowess isn't necessarily limited to just swordsmanship though. When there is a contest for eating, he joins. When there is a graffiti contest, he joins in. When there is a baseball game against Americans, he wins it. When not being able to read becomes something his comrades are able to harass him about, he learns it. In this, he is much like Guts of the manga Berserk in some of the early material. His goal is to find strong enemies so that he himself may become stronger.

His adventuring spirit though, isn't just killing. It's living life the way he wants to. He has no use or need for social conventions. He's perfectly happy fighting against lawmen as well as bandits. This allows him to be put into many situations that a paladin or other good type of character would inherently avoid.

Jin on the other hand, like Usagi Yojimbo from the graphic novels and comics, suffers a bit because he's a true believer of the samurai caste and its meanings. Because of this, and the fact that the lands are now at peace, the true value of armed men is diminishing and doing so rapidly. Who needs a standing army of soldiers when there is no war? This theme of a soldier without a war is used often when dealing with Samurai in films such as Hari Kari, an old classic of soldiers out of luck and needing support to comics such as the already mentioned Usagi Yojimbo.

It's one of the reasons why having characters active in a time of danger, in a time of trouble, is often more viable. There are things to do when the country is at war and when times are tough. When things are good, its time for another type of character such as yakuza or nobles or rising merchants. For a warrior, things are difficult in these times because they're not needed nor wanted.

Jin finds himself fighting against what he sees as the corruption of the samurai spirit starting from the first episode, asking if its worth serving a corrupt lord when service is part of the samurai creed, but to do so to those who are foolish or greedy or otherwise unworthy of that service, renders that need to serve false. It is why he walks the road alone as opposed to being the head of his own school.

The two are an interesting contrast in many ways.

The former, a wild fighter looking only to test his strength, and the later willing to walk the line of Bushido even when its inconvenient to do so.

The show has several other bits going for it that a GM might want to crib for his own game.

For one, there is a showdown between Jin and a blind assassin. The battle takes place on a narrow wooden bridge. This prevents a lot of movement and fancy footwork. The environment becomes its own thing.

On another showdown between Mugen and an assassin, they fight on a boat. The small boat capsizes and puts the battle underwater. Try to keep some options available for those scenes where it needs to be dramatic and needs to move fast paced.

In terms of pacing, while the series does follow an overall goal of finding a specific individual, most of the episodes are very self contained. This type of campaign would be an easy model for a GM to run with an over arching goal and various encounters that the GM puts together between sessions to keep things moving along.

Samurai Champloo does mix a lot of modernismsbling or having other aspects of 'gangsta' life hit the points of let default setting that 4e uses.

Samurai Champloo is worth a viewing and Netflix has it for those with that service.

Dai-San by Eric Van Lustbader

2011-10-01T09:57:00.000-05:00

I bough Dai-San from Half-Priced Books for the royal sum of $1.00. Despite the fact that it's the third in a series, and unlike today's mammoth telling, is actually the end of a standard trilogy, I didn't have a problem following what was going on for the most part. There were a few times when the sparse descriptive writing of Eric left me wondering what exactly I was supposed to be 'seeing', but for the most part, not a problem. Eric's writing style in other aspects of the book was meaty and good for those who are playing fighters or other martial types in describing the physical attributes of the act of combat, such as taking deep breaths to oxygenate the body or adrenaline coursing through the veins and other bits.

For gaming purposes, there were a few things I'll try to remember.

As characters gain levels, they become more powerful in many ways. Here, Ronin, the Sunset Warrior, undergoes a physical transformation. In 3rd edition D&D, I recall an adventure where the characters, at 20th level, can enter a pool that provides them with abilities and opens the door for the new then epic rules.

In 4th edition, the characters are broken into three tiers; heroic, paragon and epic.

What if when the characters reach these new levels they actually undergo a physical change? That hair, eye, even physical frame, all change. In earlier editions character's stats didn't change through level advancement, usually only magic, especially a wish spell, could do such wonders. In later editions though, stat modifications, while not an every level thing, were possible. What if the characters physically change to showcase those new traits?

In other aspects, when Ronin meets a monstrous creature that he's fought in the past with great difficulty in just surviving, he's not on more than equal terms. Allow players to encounter old enemies that would've resulted in a TPK and allow them to glory in their new found powers and abilities.

On the same vein though, don't be afraid to throw advanced versions of those already powerful creatures at the players. In this case, Ronin manages to overcome these old foes but then learns that there are more powerful versions of these monsters out there. It allows him to have his moment of glory and revel in his new found power, while still reminding him that he is not invulnerable.

For the big boss, while I felt the book had too much of a 'easy' victory, the method of introducing the final villain struck me as something that 4e could easily do. In this instance, Ronin is fighting the Salamander, an ancient being who has sold out mankind and is the author of much of the misery in Ronin's life. When Ronin kills this adversary, the final adversary emerges forth from the corpse. In 4e, this might be a change of monstrous abilities when the creature reaches it's 'bloody' state or half its hit points. This would allow the GM to essentially use two completely different monster stats for one encounter.

Other staples are present. For example, Ronin or the Sunset Warrior as he becomes, uses a named katana. This is a blue green blade. His armor is also of a unique nature with things like a red jade helmet. This naming of things, of providing them with a unique description, customizes the characters and setting. It doesn't take much but makes the characters stand out a bit more.

If Eric Van Lustbader ever puts the Sunset Warrior Trilogy out in an affordable ebook format, I'm down for the first two.

Tome of Horrors Complete for Pathfinder

2011-09-29T21:22:00.000-05:00

One of the things I tell people is that they have to support the things they like with money. I can't always do it and my priorities aren't always where they should be, especially on luxury purchases. But when I look at the Tome of Horrors Complete, I see both failure and success.

Failure is on the path of WoTC. Their restrictive licensing, instead of embracing the OGL, put this puppy right into the hands of a third party instead of killing it. Oh sure, it was dead for a while but the potential for it to be released under the OGL under Pathfinder was always there. For 4th ed? No using that license and not apparently by anyone who just wanted to run a book of 4e monsters out there using this material under a heading of "For the world's most popular role playing game" as I've seen some try to avoid the license WoTC is currently offering.

And it's a damn shame and yet a good thing. If such a book had come out at the start of 4e's lifespan, it would be using the 'wrong' math. Yeah, while we haven't got a 4.5 edition (ha!) the game plays differently now in combat and other aspects (rituals anyone) than it initially did.

The sad thing is its not like WoTC couldn't have used more monster support, especially up in the higher levels of things. Perhaps when they were talking about keeping core monsters like the Frost Giant out of the original Monster Manual to insure higher sales for the 2nd Monster Manual, they should have been working on some more epic material?

Anyway, for WoTC, the publication of this book is failure. On their part.

For Paizo, and for Frog God Games, it's a success. Even without cracking it open and talking about what I'm sure needs to be errata'd, the book sold out of its initial Pathfinder print run and went back for a second print. To me, this indicates that the Pathfinder market is healthier than the end run of 3.5. I'm not saying this is AWESOME news or anything but Necromancers games kept things close to the vest in order to avoid over printing at the end of times and well, we didnt' get a lot of reprints. The fact that this book is being reprinted? Good news.

In terms of errata, I'm disillusioned of it. WoTC has put out so much errata for their games that when I see another company or book with errata, I can't really muster a lot of energy to go, "sonofabitch" as opposed to 'm'eh'. Now if it's really game changing errata or just plain damn errors, like missing pages, yeah, the nerd fires get stoked there.

Better news in that if you were a fan of the old books, or a fan of 1st edition monsters and wanted to see them in Pathfinder, well, you've got them. there's a ton of inspiration to be found here. Hell, the book itself is like some primitive printed monolith waiting to be placed on the shelf.

WoTC, I hope that when 5th ed rolls around you realize you're not the producers of D&D being sold in Toys R Us and open up to the OGL again and Paizo, I tip my hat off to you and Frog God for this success.

Dai-San: Missing in Action?

2011-09-18T09:34:00.000-05:00

One of the things I generally fail to understand about ebooks, is how authors with a larger backlog of books don't put their books to work for them. In some cases, the book might be so old that there is no electronic file of it to modify and upload. When doing research on various bits though, I see that you can have this done with $1 a page.

The catalog of an author can do many important things for the reader. If you find an author you enjoy, especially later in the author's writing career, or through some media coverage on the author, such as the author writing a licensed book in a genre you enjoy (Star Wars, Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, etc...), then it is handy when you can puruse and purchase at your leisure.

I suspect part of the lack of Dai-San and other books by Eric Van Lustbader, is that the new properties he is working on, from what I See, the Bourne material, takes presidence. Or it could be that like many things in the past, the rights of the electronic material are in shaky waters. Will it be a priority for Fawcette to make an ebook or do they have their own new properties that they have to promote?

From things I'm reading about ebooks, when the author needs to take control of such a situation, as putting their catalog online, they can't rely on the publisher to make that a priority. In addition, doing so for the author makes the author into a jack of all trades. The author now has to increase his skill set and knowledge pool to learn how to handle the various aspects of which digital rights he owns, what is the most efficient way to publish his backcatalog, and how can he get word out once that is done, that books released 25 years ago now have new life?

Some may feel that it's not the authors place to take control of their work like that. That they don't have to know or shouldn't need to know these things. In general labor terms, people whose skill sets aren't expanded, especially in modern America where cheap labor is found through illegal use of migrant works, minimum wage payment of migrant workers, or just offshored to another country, everyone has to step their game up.

It's like its okay for a computer to be four times as powerful and new technologies to continue to emerge, but to have people whose finances depend on those take charge of those technologies and move forward on their own? The days of the writer who only writes, if they haven't already done so, are coming dangerously close to the end.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings

2011-09-17T21:57:00.000-05:00

My new 3.5 game started the other day. My skills are a bit rusty but things went fairly well. We had a bit of page turning as many of us were used to 4th edition. The look of horror on players faces when they realized they didn't have the cushion in terms of dying that 4th ed allowed was pretty priceless.

I already put in a few minor mods which don't necessarily work in the players favor. For one, I'm not confirming criticals or fumbles and I am using the decks that Paizo makes for each. Its good stuff as I got to use both of them. For another, point buy and fixed hit points. I hate to say it but I am a bit of a control freak and that was one of the things that 4e had that does appeal to me.

For the initial combat, my main problem was that there were many players; from my left to the right were Ryan playing a sorcerer, Sergio playing a halberd wielding fighter, Angel playing a druid specializing in shape changing, Tom, our host, playing a warlock, Erik playing a cleric, and Ana, playing a halfling rogue. I needed to add some most monsters to the three encounters but failed to do so, still getting my feet back under me.

On the other hand, the players didn't get as much experience as they might have otherwise. And ugh, the 3rd edition experience point system is still an ugly dog. Of all the things Monte cribbed from Rolemaster, that was one of the worst. Challenge rating against character level is good in theory to prevent players from gaining experience from slaughtering things many levels beneath them but its also another layer of complexity in the game that doesn't need it.

In terms of what works, Paizo does a great job of providing information on the locations and the locals. This allows you to add in a lot of minor flourishes that might otherwise be missed. For example, in the Iron Dragon tavern/inn, I explained to the players the different garb that the barbarians and tinkers were wearing and drew a few interested eyes in terms of the sword-shield the barbarians have.

The real winner of the game, and the one that gets the inspiration going here, is the reimagining of the goblins. In addition to a catchy little goblin tune, the players also get to meet a skilled ranger whose battled the goblins numerous times, and she can act as an information dump allow you to humorously highlight the strange behaviors of the goblins of this setting.

In terms of providing details though, Paizo offers a free player's guide, that provides some minor game mechanic information (3.5 at this point) as well as role playing details on the region. Because this is a free download, I'd recommend anyone who wants to see what the praise being passed along on the setting is about, download the guide. Paizo has continued to offer free guides for each of their adventure paths so they allow the players and Game Masters a chance to see if there might be some hooks for them.

The only flawed thing I find in Paizo's logic here is that with the print books being out of print, and the whole first series, Rise of the Runelords, getting revised latter, that they should drop the price of the original six books by a substantial amount to generate more interest and allow those that may not have purchased the adventure paths when first brought out, into the fold.

Okko The Cycle of Air by Hub

2011-09-10T16:27:00.000-05:00

As my unpaid time off is getting ready to come to a close, I thought I should hit on the last book of Okko that is currently available, Okko, the cycle of Air, by Hub, publishing by Archaia.

To me, in terms of direct gaming inspiration, this one is probably the weakest. It's not that there aren't some great battles. It's not that there aren't some great turn arounds. It's not that we don't get to see a little more of the setting and how those in higher positions are probably more tighhtly bound by society than those who are wanderers and ronin like Okko.

Rather, it's that the action takes place because of an individual demon hunter that has come for Okko's giant friend. This brings the action straight to the characters and for once, the characters are completely outmatched. They only win through a bit of luck thanks to their youngest member.

While as a GM you may be tempted to 'ass kick' the players every now and again to put them in their place, there better be a hell of a good reason or story behind it. At almost every level, as the GM, you can always flatten the characters. Going out of the way to do so is pointless. And because this is book three of a five book series, we only get vague hints as to why Okko and his friend were hunted in the first place so it feels very incomplete.

Art, overall story, theme, and background details that pop out all make it worth having in terms of reading the series for itself, but in terms of developing some action around the activities, the previous two volumes probably fill that role better.

Rise of the Runelords from Paizo

2011-09-10T12:18:00.001-05:00

I used to subscribe to Dragon and Dungeon when they were print magazines. When 4th edition was announced, there were problems for third party supporters. The OGL was being dropped in favor of a different license. In addition, although I don't think it was an issue at that time, WoTC own digital offering, for character generation especially, I think put a big block on any 3rd party player resources that might have come down the line.

Anyway, Paizo was starting their own stuff, in this case, Pathfinder. This is still using the 3.5 rule set as it was well before Pathfinder as an RPG was out.

I had left over issues from my subscriptions and allowed that to fall into the Pathfinder adventure path.

In the real world...

I've been working many hours of overtime but that was recently rewarded with a week off with no pay so that the company can post larger profits. Made me evaluate what's important to me and while I'm not putting running Dungeons and Dragons ahead of working, I'm not going to take work so serious from now on. This gives me opportunities to indulge my game master side.

Still, I will be working most Saturdays. It's not like the company said screw you and I decided I don't need that overtime, especially after having a week off, and decided to cut my nose off to spite my face.

So I find I'm able to work with a pregenerated adventure, especially if it's a pregenerated adventure path. I've already read the books multiple times so I'm pretty sure I'll have no problems running it. I also still have all my WoTC 3.5 books, so that'll be no problem either.

But why 3.5? I'm not some fanatic that thinks one edition is better than the other and that all other editions must be cast into the first.

For one, I like the fact that Paizo is supporting the setting. For me, WoTC dropped the ball here. Sure, we just got Neverwinter as a hardcover (way to screw that one up WoTC) and it's not a bad book but... it's a heroic campaign and it's set in a Forgotten Realms I don't like. That is a personal preference. I don't like what they did. To me, as a reader of the fiction line, right before 4th ed, they had done a lot of setup that would have made the Forgotten Realms an exciting place to adventure in.

Sembia falling under control of the Shades?

The Elf Kingdom starting to rise?

Thay becoming an undead nightmare land?

Dragons on a rampage that destroyed or damaged many towns or lands?

Now some might want to have some influence in those areas, and I agree, that would be great. But these are campaign changers that have made the world more unsteady. For the new setting, they took even bigger steps and allowed the players to partake in none of that . The fans of Eberron dodged a bullet here.

So on one hand, I like how Paizo is treating the campaign setting. Hell, in the new adventure path, they use material that was introduced in the first adventure path.

Next, Paizo did some fun stuff with goblins and ogres. The Paizo goblins have a standard all of their own and their use of ogres, making them into inbreeds that resemble something out of the hills have eyes, works perfectly.

In terms of adventure structure, add in the 'missing' Revenge of the Giants stone giant adventure, and we have a nice call back to earlier editions. It's such a neat call back that WoTC has decided to do something similar. Only about three years behind the curb here.

Next, well, I already own it. I'm familiar with 3.5. Sure, it can be a nightmare system when doing everything off the cuff or doing everything by hand, but I still own a ton of 3rd party material, all the official books, and the adventure path itself. I don't think I have to worry too much about my personal time being bogged down.

What about miniatures? While there is not a metal miniature for every encounter in Rise of the Runelords, I'm pretty sure we have more miniatures for this adventure path than we do for any WoTC adventure path. For me, this is baffling. When you run your own miniature division, how can you not tie the miniature production to the actual campaign material being written? I know that the miniatures have a long lead way, but it would not be impossible to provide details of what's coming on down the line. But to be fair, how can I expect WoTC to support the adventurers when they couldn’t' even support the core races in the Player's Handbook? "Dragonborn are hard to design!" Uh... you didn't know that they were going to be a core race and decided to put more elves, halflings, and dwarves as random figures in the set? Go WoTC! Ugh.

Last, and this is again, a matter of opinion, WoTC adventure writing lacks too much. For one, both the completed adventure paths they have, such as the printed one that started with the Keep on the Shadowfell or something, and ends with a brawl against Orcus, is using 'the old math'. Yeah, while there has been no .5 edition of 4e (which again I disagree with), the math of the monsters has dramatically changed and many other features have changed. Only post Essentials plays differently then only pre Essentials. The e-adventure, Scales of War, also lacked something. On one hand, I didn't want to print all that information out. On the other, it seemed more haphazard than any previous Adventure Path.

I was willing to forgive that because really, it was WoTC second effort at doing an adventure path after the printed one.

But... they're not doing any more.

WoTC has fallen into a pattern of not quite exclusive, but heavily focused Heroic tier support. This makes little sense as the platform of 4e was to include epic. Paizo at least acknowledges that high level play can be beyond any prewritten adventure and bows out at about 15th-17th level. WoTC decided to add another ten levels to the core and then promptly decided not to support said levels.

The recent campaign book, Neverwinter, is heroic. The recent boxed set Madness, is heroic. The Dungeon Master's Guide 3, which was supposed to cover epic, cancelled. The latest monster book, no epic foes.

Now this might not be an issue if characters gained levels in a manner similar to how they did in 1st and 2nd edition. It could take a damn long time, dozens of adventurers and many many gold pieces and magic items. In 3rd and 4th edition? A few adventurers will prop the characters right up there in levels. I guess after every three adventurers you're supposed to trash your campaign and absorb what WoTC is sellinng.

Now for those who have more free time than I do, this might not be a problem. 4th edition, to me, harkens back a bit to 2nd and 1st edition in that monsters are easier to craft. Encounters are easier to craft. Magic items, while sucking mightily in 4th edition, are almost optional and allow the players to focus on being the star and not the magic item.

And I'm not against 4e in terms of what was done with the system. I've played it and I've run it. I ran it when it first came out. I've run it at Game Day events. I've run it for different groups. I've played it numerous times.

Hell, maybe at the end of the day, I just miss a well-supported campaign setting that takes the old and standard and makes them new and exciting. Anyway, that's my thoughts for today. If anyone's interested in how the campaign goes, let me know and I'll see if I can post some post even plays here.

Okko the Cycle of Earth by Hub

2011-09-09T13:43:00.000-05:00

The second book in the Okko graphic novel series, Okko, the Cycle Of Earth, continues the travels of the demon hunter Okko and his motley band of allies. The illustrations are strong, crisp whil still having tons of detail. The setting comes alive under the artist here and the feel of the setting is made clear through careful placement of little details.

The story line here works fantastic for a RPG and could be lifted whole cloth. In short, I highly recommend anyone running Oriental Adventurers, Legends of the Five Rings, or other manner of games where a little Samurai Sunday attitude is called for, look it over. This isn't to say that a standard fantasy game of Dungeons and Dragons couldn't swipe the plot by changing a few things.

The book starts off with an introduction to a city. The youngest of their group, Tikku, acts as our outsider. Because he is not well versed or travelled, his mentor must inform him, and through him, the audience of the importance of places and events going on around them.

For example, in the city they are at, it's a celebration for the first day of winter. Floats are carried on the streets, dragons manned by multiple people dance around, masks are worn and "every kind of outlandishness is allowed." We discover that Bakuyaku's nicnmake is "Black Poweder City" because the seven monastery range has a lot of despotis of the stuff around them.

Okko himself becomes involved in greater events by having a man seek him out and die in front of him from an assassin's attack. His ally, Noburo, seeks to hunt down the assassin, but during the celebration, the tightly wound city with all of its masked inhabitants makes this a difficult task.

In looking at such a set up for your own campaigns, this is one of the reasons its good to have a calendar of the holidays and what those holidays mean. If people are all out celebrating in the streets and the streets are crowded with floats and other obsticales, it can make for a more challenging race against individuals that are seeking to escape. It also makes things more colorful and takes away some of the 'generic' that some settings can suffer from as they all seem so similiar.

Now on the hunt for the assassins and for the person that was identified by the slain courier, Okko begins wandering the Seven Monstary Range looking for the Raven Mon. This allows the characters to learn about the setting and details of background even as they suffer some random encounters. It also provides some background on the senior monk as he used to be a student at one of the monastaries.

This is another useful trick when a player has information in his background about where he came from and what he did. Some players put it there for active use, some to just have a grounding part of their characters. the players will generally give you a good idea of what they'd like done with that information and pulling a little of it into the game when appropriate is never a back idea.

One of the things the monks encounter is an oracle who provides information, but that information relates to what they are seeking only on the very edges of that mission. This is a fairly standard method of providing some information, to not hand out the exact answers that are sought, but to provide perhaps more details to the overall scheme of what the players may be involved in.

Inthis instance, no search could be complete without visiting all seven monastary's, and only at the end, learning that "An eight exists, perched atop the roof of the world. There dwells an order of illuminators in their hands ap riceless collection of books! nly the powerful and the prvileged few have access to this immense source of knowledge... or even know of its existence..."

That bit right there does a few things. It takes the knowledge that is commonly known, that there are seven schools, and expands it. It then names the location, the location of which, is known to their guide as "oneo f the highest mountaints known to man! I know none fool enough to dare is heights. And I do not know the path." This bit of player knowledge is like having a player talk about a demon inhabited realm or a blasted wasteland. It may add a little more inherent danger in the trip, but overall, it's not going to stop the players from going there.

Here though, the author provides some hope in the form of the Sanctuary of the 47 Geysers. By placing these unlikely found but named locations throughout the book, the author is cementing the setting. By allowing the players to visit these locations that are few and out of the way, he is providing color and character to the landscape. This is a useful trick for any game master and not every encounter has to end in a fight. The wonder of the setting should also strike the characters as much as the monsters.

When Okko does meet the samurai that the courier died trying to name, the meeting is like oil and water. Okko, being considered a ronin and an outsider of the standard civilization of his time, is not necessarily respected in the manner that other Samurai are. This happens in role playing games all the time as adventurers are generally not land owners and only have themselves to be responsible to. This allows them to do and say things that might get say, a farmer a trip to the gallows but to which an adventurer might reply, "Do you really want me to kill the garrison and leave you vulnerable to the giants in the area?"

When the whole group comes under attack, the monk is taken out in the first volley of the assault. This is something to remember for the Game Master when playing monsters that have intelligence or tactics. In pre-4th edition games, the wisdom is go for the spellcasters. Nothing like a group of fire balls or turning efforts on the undead to quickly undermine a horde of minions and monsters. To counter this, don't act like the monsters are stupid. If a lich, an undead spellcaster, is among the villains, he's going to know exactly how powerful an opposing spell caster is and want that creature dead.

Eventually, when they do find the forbidden libraries, they discover that they are there too late. The library has been ransacked and its men killed. What they learn though, is that their enemies started off as healers but seeing the land plunged into such deep war, decided that they should be the ones to rule as they could, using their forbidden studies, control the dead of all the clans. With the land in such a constant state of warefare, they are not left wanting for raw supplies.

This is part of the appeal of running a campaign during a time of trouble. If everything is normal and the characters are merely looters, then their overall impact on the setting, as great as it may be, is one of the outsider. If on the other hand, the setting is alive and thriving with its own series of conflicts, things that no one adventurer will be able to solve, then it allows them to gather into different places and impact the setting in different ways. They are not necessarily merely dungeon crawling, but choosing sides in a multi-angled war. If they choose to do so. After all, with so many dying on the battlefield, that just means more empty castles for looting right?

The whole thing comes to a conclussion as Okko and his allies hold down an old fort against the legions of undead and their spellcasting masters. It has very much the feel of a Seven Samurai, a group of skilled individuals against a horde of nameless enemies. Okko and his allies are only able to claim victory though the use of a surgecial strike against the leaders of the undead.

Which is something that the Game Master has to look out for. Unless you're dealing with a group of brand new players, the characters will often go after the puppeter, not the puppets. You have to be ready with appropriate challenging counters if the villains are clver enough to have them. If your bad guys aren't expecting a scrying, teleportation, assassination attack, then you're not playing at mid-high levels of D&D with thinking villains. Prepare and defend appropriately, but don't provide everyone the exact same type of defense. Vary things up. Provide differences.

Okko the Cycle of Earth provides investigation, strained alliances, exploration, and combat against dark masters insistant that their rule would be better for the land then those currently ruling.

Character Archetypes Inspired by Blue Gender

2011-09-07T23:22:00.000-05:00

On ye old Netflix, I'm watching the 'classic' anime, Blue Gender. In honor of this watching, I've decided to give some half assed thoughts to what I see as two archetypes that I've seen in a few different situations and genres. Let me know if this is something a reader would like to see more of, or perhaps more random babbling from the various viewings and readings.

The Out of Time Character:

In many different genres, a character can become locked in time. In many instances, this character can be a default 'standard' viewpoint character. In Thundar the Barbarian for example, there are instances of people from pre-Cataclysm Earth that Thundar runs into. In Blue Gender, Eugene is another such character. He suffers from a disease and is placed into a sleep that allows him to bypass the Blue invasion. In other settings, such as those written by David Gemmell, a whole race of warriors is set in stone so that they may be called forth when needed to fight an invasion by an old foe.

Such a viewpoint character often fits the standard of where they come from or what the rules and or time of the genre may be. For example, in a setting taking place in an Oriental Adventure setting, the character may be a Westerner whose outlook and equipment is familiar to those who read Knightly tales or standard fantasy. In a Vampire or other setting where the characters are monstrous, the character in question may be new. The path of the character is to discover what they are in relation to the setting about them.

They judge others around them by the manner in which they used to. It may take them some time, if ever, to accumulate to the new setting and or situation that they find themselves in. Such an archetype is useful for new characters or new players who may not be familiar with the current setting or game system. A potential problem such individuals may have, is adapting to the current weapons and armor of the setting. For example, while a sword may just be a sword, a blade like the Sunsword in Thundar might be quite different than one a standard character is used to. In some instances, such a time displaced characters may not have any weapon skills to call upon.

When such a character is offered the chance to return to the womb, or to return to the simpler times, they often pass on it. They've already lived that life, already done those deeds. This is a new life and a new time and even though it is challenging, they accept where they are.

The Doomed Soldier:

A professional by trade, the Doomed Soldier is a stoic individual that doesn't complain. They are often highly skilled in their field and while not necessarily boastful of it, they have no problem demonstrating their skills to others. They have little use for those who don't follow orders, because in their experience, those who do not follow orders tend to die and often times, wind up taking other members of the crew with them. In terms of respecting those they work with, they often only have a great degree of respect for those in a similar outlook to themselves, especially if they are part of the same organization.

The Doomed Soldier doesn't necessarily have a problem making allies, but making real friends on the other hand, is difficult. In their experience and history, it just isn't worth the time. They know that most people they associate with and ally themselves with, will in time, through circumstance or situation, perish.

They do not hold themselves above such a situation happening to them, but worry that due to some failure of their own, they may cause others to die. This is something that the Doomed Soldier struggles against with every fiber of their being. Others perishing because of their own inability to follow the rules and existing structure is bound to happen but under their watch and under their control? Never.

Despite their outlook of death being perhaps inevitable, or perhaps because of it, they have no problem enjoying the sensations that the world offers. This could be as simple as a fine meal, or satisfying other physical needs. Their theory is that because they could die at any point, weeks, days, or minutes from now, they should take advantage of life when they can. This pleasure seeking however, never interferes with the mission.

Doomed Soldiers may not necessarily start off with such a pessimistic attitude but may gain one through game play and suffering through difficult times that tend to stretch on for years at a time.

National Buy A Book Day? Okay, I'm In!

2011-09-07T18:13:00.000-05:00

Philip Athans declared today National Buy A Book Day last year over here on one of the blogs he writes for. Reading that blog entry we see a pretty accurate prediction for Borders and the way things are going for Barnes and Noble... well, perhaps in the future they'll be more like Amazon, a place where you buy things through some type of interface and get your Star Bucks coffee at the actual coffee shop.

Anyway, I bugged him about downloading free books. In case you were unaware for example, if you look for Tarzan on Amazon in Kindle format, there are a ton of such books for free over here. While he seemed overjoyed to download such classics at no cost, I felt the stern eye and explanation that no, a purchase must be made.

Me? I've made no secret that I think most ebooks are priced way too high. I've seen some authors come out and say they have no control over that. Eh? This isn't the Exorcist. You can't sit back while someone goes, "The Power of Christ Compels You." and writhe on the ground. If you're not willing to stand up for your own digital rights then say nothing or say, "I gave up all ability to control pricing," not "I'm powerless."

But that's another story.

Instead, I'm here to talk about somethings I did buy. In a rare move for me because I've already read all these books in particular. But... I'm a big fan of voting with your wallet. If you vote that it's okay to pay $14.99 for an ebook, that's your vote. I vote that $2.99, and over here, on Tor, apparently someone thinks that perhaps as the first book, as an introduction thing, that The Eye Of The World, Gardens of the Moon, and Mistborn, are all priced at $2.99.

So with my e-wallet, $2.99 for each and I'm there. Will I ever read any of them again? Maybe. While I read the first trilogy of Mistborn, I decided to wait until both Wheel of Time and Malazan were finished so haven't finished reading them. Will I pay anything more than $2.99 for the other books in the e format? Nope. The dollar rack is spinning with tons of these series books and I don't think I'll have to suffer for 'em.

But if they come along at $2.99? Mother may I have another.

Okko: the Cycle of Water by Hub

2011-09-07T10:04:00.001-05:00

While at Gen Con this year, one of the things I picked up was Okko, the Cycle of Earth and the Cycle of Air, both by Hub, sold through the Archaia both. They had a deal where it was buy one get one free and as these are sturdy hardcovers, the cover price of $19.95 seemed more than fair for two of them. I was so enthralled with them, that I immediately ordered the the Cycle of Water, which was waiting for me by the time I made it back to Chicago.

I'd heard of Okko before. Thinking back on it, it was during my numerous trips to Games Plus where I first saw it, but it was in a miniature game format there. The figures always looked interesting but since I wasn't playing anything that would require them, and I have a ton, perhaps more, or miniatures, I always passed on them.

But reading? Hell, I could read that with no problem, especially in a graphic novel format.

So what is Okko about? A group of, well, they're not all quite friends, but allies in some aspects with Okko, the demon queller, serving as the master of the group, go about Pajan, that is not a misspelling, and take care of demons and other supernatural entities.

After reading the thee graphic novels, I am more fist shaking at the skies then before that I didn't have material such as this to inspire my Oriental Adventurers and Legend of the Five Rings games.

In the first volume, The Cycle of Water, which by the way, I'm going to start spolier alerts now so read no further if you wish to remain unaware of what's coming....

Anyway, in the first collection, Okko and his friend Noburo, an oversized warrior who always has a red demonic mask on, is visiting Little Carp, a young Geisha, who Noburo informs her, is preganent. During the night, the house is attacked and Little Carp taken away. Here we see something resembling a hencheman coming into play as Tikku offers his service to Okko if he will rescue his sister, Little Carp.

This is a standard of some stories where the characters have the action brought to them. If the players are sitting around too much, doing too much role playing with the weapon smith and the tavern keeper, have something happen. Force them to engage the setting.

During the investigation to find Little Carp, we are given some glimpses into the setting. This includes visiting Tagakka Uchi, the port of the hundred Morays, and upon that, a trip to the Red Lotus, "the most infamous and dangerous casino in the city.". We also get to see what sets this setting apart from merely being 'Japan' with some misspellings in the form of a demonic water creature that Okko has killed, a summoning of a water spirit, and a combat 'Bunraku', a so called 'puppet' which is actually similiar to a giant robot piloted from within.

Okko and his allies manage to do a lot of investigating in a little time at the Red Lotus. This involves looking around the massive casino, finding secret passages, and finding an abaitor pit in the heart of the casino. One of the things that happens though, is that their 'stealth' is blown early because Noburo, being a masked giant of a man, is quite easy to spot and quite distinctive.

This is something that the GM should keep in mind with the players in his own game. While some players, especially those of rogues or rangers, prefer to stay out of the limelight with dirty grimy cloaks, the fighters, paladin, clerics, and mages, often have very distinctive clothing, weapons, and reputations. If the players are looking for information by those on the run, and they carry such distinguishing marks with them, make things a little more difficult for them.

The next thrust of the adventure takes place on an island. In fantasy role playing games, islands work fantastic to provide some weird things because they are isolated from the main land and can have vastly different rules and structures. In this case, Here, the island is ruled by the Satorror Clan, the rulers of the northern archipelagoes. An ancient, and supposedly dead clan...

The author makes good use of the characters here in providing more challenges and more story.

The drunken monk for example, seeks spiritual guideance, but in exchange, must rebuild the temple left to rot.

The warrior Okko himself, tests out the head samurai here and manages to get a look around the compound.

The giant manages to fit in with the other commoners, finding out details of what else is happening.

Tikku, being new to the whole thing of being an adventurer, does some unofficial scouting of his own and gets a brand upon his forehead of the thief. This brand is a permanent mark and is noted on in later issues. When looking at the cost of failure, I've mentioned before that death does not have to be the only alternative. Having something happen that marks the players, is one way to move the story forward with a complication, but still move the story forward. Perhaps the mark is common and everyone knows it. Perhaps the mark is more obscure and only a select group of people know of it.

In a game like Hero, this would be a distinctive feature and be worth points. In GURPS, or at least the last version I played, while it's still a distinctive feature, earning one during game play provides no points. In class and level based games, such earned scars and marks often do not have any game play mechanics to them but the role playing opportunities can be huge. If nothing else, they are a point of conversation starters for those various nights adventurerers spend at the taverns.

Another twist is that in the battle between the giant and the puppet, our giant masked warrior finds even his strength isn't enough to overcome a giant robot and has to use different tactics. In 4e, some skill checks to provide ideas on how to beat a puppet, even a combat one, might lead to what happens in the comic. In this case, it's a chase to wear the driver down, and then a sneak attack to knock the puppter off a ledge and crush the drivers inside the machine. While 4e skill checks can be some what odious at times, the ability to do things that only combat mechanics would result in failure, is a nice change of pace and does allow the players to use a larger variety of skills.

In the end, it turns out that the enemies Okko faces are a pair of pennagolans (in D&D they're the vampire undead creatures that are just heads with organs) who seek to create a child. To do so, they needed a woman that was already preganent because of their undead nature.

After Okko and his comrades defeat the undead, Okko reads up on the notes of the Lady of the house and discovers their ties to the Red Lotus, and where they originally came from. By putting the details in the back, the author allows the characters to pursue the information at their own leisure. In D&D or other action oriented games, this is a fine possibility, while in a game like Call of Cthulhu, whose nature is mostly centered around investigation, it might be better to have those documents found earlier.

Okko brings together a varied cast of characters in a manner that would work well for any role playing game. By making them demon hunters, the Game Master can avoid a lot of the whole clan and hnor issue that can drag down certain aspects of OA style games and focus on the demon hunting and exploring a setting different than the standards.

If you're running a fantasy game, especially something like Legend of the Five Rings, Okko is a visual inspiration with a solid story running through it.

Hunted The Demon's Forge

2011-09-07T01:31:00.000-05:00

While I generally consider myself someone who doesn't play a lot of video games, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy them. With the unpaid week off work, I decided to throw on Hunted, The Demon's Forge. I picked it up from Amazon for under $20. Not bad for what is a new game.

I'm still playing and learning it and while it could be me, it feels very... choppy. It does set up a very nice, grim and gritty, down and dirty setting though. While the two characters, who might as well be named Cheese Cake and Beef Cake, claim to not be heroes, at the first opportunity they start to help out the innocent townsfolk.

I give it a C+, maybe a B on the old Kushner scale. It has some interesting bits, like having your shield get destroyed over time and having to swap it out, but there are other bits I thought worth mentioning because they gave me a OSR smile.

1. Interaction with the environment. Long before 4th ed came along and pretened that it made the environment some integrated part of the game, older editions had traps that required you to think about what you were doing and explain these efforts to the GM. Here, Beef Cake, I mean, Caddoc, uses muscle to move the environment around. This is a great reminder to add in things that require strength tests not necessarily to break or smash open, but to change the environment by say, moving a statue onto a pressure plate.

In addition, Cheesecake, I mean, E'lara, is often called on to use her sharpshooting to either shoot prisoners free or to set fire to things. In one early instance in the game, there is a riddle read aloud that you, the gamer, have to figure out what it means. It wasn't a difficult one or anything, but it was just a nice nod to not having to chop the crap out of everything. And it's something that can usually be added to a role playing game with little difficulty.

The next time you're adding some material to your game, think about ways in which the players can use little things to impact the environment. Can they change the area in some way? Can a statue be moved? Can a rope be cut? Can they climb over the walls? Can they navigate tumbling walls to their own benefit? If a C+ game like The Demon's Forge makes it possible, when the GM is running it without computer assistance, anything should be possible.

What Price Dai-San by Eric Van Lustbader

2011-09-06T19:45:00.002-05:00

Another $1.00 book I bought at the Half Price spinner rack, Dai-San is the third in the Sunset Warrior trilogy. The copy I have is a fifth printing from 1982 that costs $2.75.

What is the old rate of inflation eh? In terms of growth, you always hear about, say 3% a year is good growth. Would that bring this book into the 2011 price that most paperbacks are, the $9.99 reach? Short answer, no. With a 3% increase from 1982 to 2011, $6.48 is the magic number. The book looks like it would have something like a 400% increase no? Well, if it was $2.50 (x2 = $5.00, x3 = $7.50 and x4 $10.00) I'm sure there are some 'real numbers' out there, but as things continue to go up hundreds of % in a short span of years, think about the effect these purchases have on your income. I can't speak for everyone, as I've only be in the working field since I was oh, 16 but I don't make 400% of what I did then and hey, minimum rate isn't 400% of what it was then either.

Keep looking for the inexpensive buys and keep fighting the voices the tell you X must cost Y.

year	price
1982	$ 2.75
1983	$ 2.83
1984	$ 2.92
1985	$ 3.00
1986	$ 3.10
1987	$ 3.19
1988	$ 3.28
1989	$ 3.38
1990	$ 3.48
1991	$ 3.59
1992	$ 3.70
1993	$ 3.81
1994	$ 3.92
1995	$ 4.04
1996	$ 4.16
1997	$ 4.28
1998	$ 4.41
1999	$ 4.55
2000	$ 4.68
2001	$ 4.82
2002	$ 4.97
2003	$ 5.12
2004	$ 5.27
2005	$ 5.43
2006	$ 5.59
2007	$ 5.76
2008	$ 5.93
2009	$ 6.11
2010	$ 6.29
2011	$ 6.48

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

2011-09-06T12:57:00.001-05:00

When I posted yesterday bout the old $1.00 Exalted book, I knew that sooner or later I'd mention another reason why I think ebooks are vastly overpriced.

The free ebooks. Now these aren't only books done by unknown authors or authors trying to get word out on the street. They are books whose age puts them into the public domain and well, are free to read if you have a reader and well, are classics such as, you guessed it, treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. For a brand new author to come out with an ebook that cost $14.99 out the gate when readers have the choice of thousands of classic titles... well, that's just $14.99 I'm going to save.

Today's post was in part inspired by the webcomic, d20monkey, in particular, this strip.

http://www.d20monkey.com/2011/07/27/laying-claim/

In Treasure Island, one of the passages goes a little something like this;

"Captain," said I, "Trelawney is the dead shot. Give him your gun; his own is useless."

They exchanged guns, and Trelawney, silent and cool as he had been since the beginning of the bustle, hung a moment on his heel to see that all was fit for service. at the same time, observing Gray to be unarmed, I handed him my cutlass. It did all our hearts good to see him spit in his hand, knit his brows, and make the blade sing through the air. It was plain from every line of his body that our new hand was worth his salt."

When I read the above in Treasure Island, I instantly thought of the d20 Monkey comic because I've seen similar behavior and at times, as a GM, I'm a little stumped by it because it transcends editions and game systems and its a point of player behavior. As a GM do you just stomp on this player because he's being an ass or do you wait it out and see what the other players do? There are no easy or right answers because people are complex and what works for one group may not work for another group.

All too often advice for role playing games tends to focus on the Game Master. How to be a Yes Game Master. How to be a No Game Master. How to identify different play styles. How to accommodate said play styles.

What is really needed is more advice on how to get players to work together in the game. How to let players use that knowledge they have of the system to not lay claim to an item whose obvious use is better with another class. To use that meta knowledge to make a character that fits into the party.

In short, to be part of a group. Stop hiding behind "It's what my character would do." If you as a player can ask for healing because you're down 25 hit points, you as the player can stop and go, "Maybe I shouldn't sell this wand of magic missile for gold because the mage or the fighter-mage can use it." Don't hide behind your character on one hand and then profit from it on the other.

Oh, and speaking of free books...

http://www.gutenberg.org/
http://www.baen.com/library/

Don't believe the hype!

A Day Dark As Night by Carl Bowen

2011-09-04T22:44:00.000-05:00

I bought A Day Dark As Night at Half-Priced books on Touhy for $1.00 off of the spinner rack. The low price that the store has, and the huge number of books, continues to tell me that epublications have a long way to come till I'm reading them in anything resembling a normal pattern.

Part of this just strikes me as odd though because if these various media industries haven't seen what's happening with the music industry, to start off with, and they think charging people the same thing for a trade paperback as for an ebook by a first time out author... well, truly the drugs are in need of passing.

Anyway, off that stand onto the Exalted stand.

I know some people who don't like anime. I'm not one of them. I find there there are a lot of interesting bits out there and that much of it doesn't try to fold itself into the standards as many block buster movies do in terms of being so formulaic. Now on one hand, that means we get some great series but on the other, it means we get some thing that could've been great series but ended up in some strange location where even the original author is shrugging his shoulders in trying to explain what happened. I try not to judge the whole of anime by what I've seen of it, because much like Hollywood is finding out with CGI and other methods over here, movie making magic doesn't necessarily have to be just one type of story.

But back to Exalted. The high energy and action vibe I get from some of my favorite anime is something I 'get' from Exalted. It's a role playing game where you're coming back from the dead, from a past life, from betrayals that are deep and hidden. It's one where upon your return, you are blessed with vast powers, the powers of a demi-god, or perhaps even greater. The setting, monsters, foes, allies, sourcebooks, region books, and other bits, all point towards an awesome experience.

Unless someone else is running it, even more so than 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons, I tend to stay away and must ask for assistance when it is my turn to make a character. See, I've always found it a bit too over the top in terms of how the system runs. and whenever I look at say RPG.net, despite several fans of the system, many admit that its highly crunch and that it takes a certain... willingness to run as is. Add on that its probably got as much errata as 4th ed... well, you can see why I might want to read the fiction line but avoid the game itself.

But why read the book, even for $1.00? Part of the epic scope of the setting, is in the naming. Take one of the villains of the setting, Adorjan, the Silent Wind. I dig that. How about the Witness of Lingering Shadows? How about one of the main characters, Harmonious Jade? Her love interest, Disciple of the Seven Forbidden Wisdoms? Very inspiring, especially if you're going for over the top names. Perfect for D&D Death Knights who've given up their old titles, ancient monks who no longer have standard names, or the arrogant player character's who feel that to name oneself in such a fashion is the top of the list.

It's also got a pretty standard storyline that can easily be snagged. While out for revenge, the characters learn that their enemies have made allies of powerful undead who are seeking to unleash a demonic entity into the world and unless they can stop them, more villages and towns will be wiped from the face of the world. This requires them to dig into the ancient vaults of their home city, pit themselves against the corrupt politicians and police, and try to determine where the entity that works the cities will stands and exactly ow powerful is he. And what exactly is stored in those old vaults anyway? Why were they constructed as they were? Were all the rituals performed correctly? Are there any secrets buried down there? Along the way they must deal with old friends and rivals who have their own stake in the happenings of the city.

A Day Dark as Night has a lot of high action going on and while it has a few heavy handed bits and a few cop out sections, as an introduction to the bones of the setting, it provides enough details to showcase how powerful the Exalted are as well as how much they're needed and indeed, how much they don't know about the world in which they've risen.

Robert V. S. Redick's The Red Wolf Conspiracy

2011-09-04T08:19:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, but like the end of every month, it was time to take my beating at work. Then to add the awesome to the sauce, they gave me a week off without pay to help bolster company profits for the 3rd quarter. Ah well, there is neither here nor there but just a warning to the readers that I may have a bit more free time to post and assault the internets with my thoughts this week.

One of the things I mentioned about Robert V.S. Redick's book is that he introduces a race of savage Littles. Tiny humanoids with their own origin story and own purpose and own deeds that intermix with the, ahem, excuse me, larger action going on around them.

But Robert wasn't happy just leaving things alone there. Indeed, he also added awakened animals. These are various animals that discover how to talk and reason. When it happens to a rat, the revelation of thinking, of the greater world, of how things work, is almost too much for him. Another rat it happens to, does indeed turn him mad. The animals can still communicate with their own kind, but when you're a rat, the conversational skills of the other rats aren't quite up there and well, the only others you're size, the murderous littles, aren't too keen on making friends with a carnivore such as yourself.

It's another example of taking a standard of a fantasy setting, and putting it on its side. While I've seen the magical companions done up in such a fashion before, I get the feeling that Robert is going to be taking these characters a little further. In a point based game, you might be hard preseed to use everything in a manner that didn't make you a super rat unless it was a very low point buy game, but in a game like D&D or other level based game... unless it's something like Rifts, the GM would have to do a lot of handwaving.

When designing your races, you don't necessary have to design just for the players side of things. To me, this is part of where 3rd and 4th edition took a nosedive into their own kool-aid. When the dark elves became nothing more than just common player races, where was the mystery? It's must the same as I've noted on the Archon in Dungeon Siege III, limited playable attributes and lack of background information can make for an interesting unique character. Turning everything into something everyone can play? Not so much.

In short, unlike the yes motto of third and fourth edition, don't be afraid to design some really weird races and cultures and explicitly tell the players, "this is not for you."

Another thing I'd like to hit here, is the ship that is almost another character in and of itself. From the inside cover, "The Imperial Merchant Ship Chathrand is the last of her kind. Six hundred years old, the secrets of her construction long forgotten, the massive vessel dwarfs every other sailing craft in the world. It is a palace with a sails, a floating outpost of the Empire of Arqual."

That whole bit sounds awesome to me. while Dragonlance did bring us the floating citadels, a fortress ship sounds pretty plausible too. As a matter of fact, it reminds me a little of the old carton, Pirates of the Dark Waters, where there was a huge vessel.

By making such a ship, and making it the last of its kind, and hinting that the details of how to make these ships were lost to intra-guild warfare and greed, it showcases a destination that few can claim to have travelled and sets up the stage for elements to come further down the road.

By being so huge, much like the Macross from the Robotech saga, it allows the author to throw in dozens of characters that won't push the boundries of "how many damn people are on this boat.".

When looking at the military might of your setting, or when looking to how trade works, don't forget the ships. For example, the miniature company Forge World, has a massive land ship that is perfect for soldiers of the Warhammer setting army, The Empire.

Much like the war wagons used in Earth's own history, a little unique elements go a long way.

Dungeon Siege III: The Causeways

2011-08-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

One of the things I bought at Gen Con this year, was Paizo's GameMastery Map Pack: Extradimensional Spaces which I was directly inspired to do so by Dungeon Siege III's use of the Causeways.

The Causeways are an outer planar feature that allows rapid movement between one location to the next.

This is not a brand new innovation, even in video games. Games like Diablo have used them for a long time, and I know that at least in places like the Wheel of Time, where you can enter another dimension to save some time on the material plane, in terms of travelling, they have been used.

The lure of such places fits a few things though. For one, teleportation, especially as a spell, if a very powerful tool and something many players, especially those who've actually played through to the level where they can gain it, will keep in their back pocket. This may at times leave the party in the lurch as their artillery suddenly decides that after taking 40 of his 45 hit points of damage in a single stroke, to get the hell out of there.

By introducing such a manner of movement, you allow the players to bypass having teleportation. sure, they may want it, but if customizing your campaign, don't give it to them. It doesn't exist. Movement of troops and small elite forces, such as adventurers, is often done through the use of these types of causeways. This allows the players to still have a means of moving rapidly without potentially unbalancing the campaign to the point where the GM has to have some viable reason why the player's can's scry, teleport and assassinate.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy

2011-08-26T19:45:00.000-05:00

Occassionally the Science Fiction Book Club will recommend something to me while I'm picking up say, The Barry Windsor Smith Archieves of Conan for a very low price. One of them was the Red Wolf Conspiracy. I'm always interested in seeing how new authors, or at least authors I haven't read, are doing in terms of what they bring to the genre.

The shoft list is that this is a fun book that has a fairly wide cast of characters. It involves numerous nationalities and social classes. It has magic, but isn't about throwing fireballs and lightning bolts about. It's an entertaining read.

I'll be looking at some of the specifics below so if you want to avoid spoilers, read no further.

"Pazel, however, was a bonded servant and a foreigner- even worse, a member of a conquered race."

One of the things that's interesting here is the use of one nation as a 'super nation' if you will that has bested several other nations and accumulated their people into its own workforce and borders. This does not go smoothly many times and resentments linger. Those of the 'super nation' carry an air of superiority about them and are dismissive of many other nationality's own gifts, including those of magic believing very little in it unless directly confronted.

These traits can make good role playing attributes for new characters. Those who are playing older characters, may tone down the arrogance and attitude as they may have seen their home nation at both its best and its worst. Those who are playing younger characters, or nationalist, may adopt a my country right or wrong, the ethos of the super patriot. Of course if they find out that they're all sacrifical lambs sent out to start a war, their attitude may change...

The opposite is also true though. Those who are conquered may be bitter.

"They tried to kill us for hundreds of years, and couldn't. You managed it in two days."

"Crawlies! Muckin' sewer-sippin' whorespawned grubs! I'll kill ye!"

One of the things that the book introduces is the Ixchel. Imagine if you will, the old carton characters, The Littles, but armed and armored like Tarzan or Conan. A wild savage lot who have suffered a great deal at the hands of people who don't understand them and fear them. These individuals are assumed to bring bad luck and are hunted down. They are supposed to sink ships and do other unspeakable things. But they show themselves here as a warrior race.

This is an interesting take on a race of tiny individuals. It also makes for a different take on things. When designing your races, think of how you can make things different. Think of how you can switch things up.

Dungeon Siege III: Rare Rares Part 2

2011-08-19T14:21:00.000-05:00

When I was discussing Anjali in the Dungeon Siege setting, one of the things I forgot to mention, and it tends to apply to many who are of a unique or rare race, is that the thrust of the character's involvement in the world tends to revolve around how they interact with others of their kind.

Drizzt: Prior to his lifting into super stardom and simulcast hatred, Drizzt didn't have a lot of interaction with other drow. When he did however, it was usually on the other side of the battle field.

Elric: Well, this guy destroys the kingdom that endured for ten thousand years.

Vampire Hunter D: While not a full blooded vampire himself, well, suffice it to say that he kills the full blooded ones.

Magiere: A half-vampire from the Noble Dead series, finds herself in a similar position to D. She has more in common with the blood suckers than she should, but she still winds up killing them.

I'm sure there are just as many instances of strange and rare races fighting alongside their fellow, such as Corum, whose race still essentially dies off despite him being on their side, but it tends to be the ones who have a steak in how their own lives are impacted by their people, that stand out to me. It may not work for every group, but when that Shardmind thinks he's doing the will of the people, perhaps he discovers that their origin is a ruse. When that Warforge decides to adept human ways, perhaps the war between metal and flesh begins in earnest.

These manner of conflicts also set up internal turmoil for the character. Is every member of their race out to get them? Are there any they can trust? Should they be fighting against their own people? It allows the character to examine who they are in relation to the world about them.

Dungeon Siege III: Anjali

2011-08-18T22:27:00.000-05:00

If you check out the Dungeon Siege III homepage, you may notice a woman on fire with blazing hair and runes glowing about her apparently naked body. This is Anjali, an Archon of this setting.

While racial history does play a small role in the humans, such as Katarina being related to Lucas through the father, Anjali is the only non-human here.

Some of the things that makes her work though in terms of story and pacing and place, can also work for other esoteric races in fantasy games.

For one, she is human or at least human looking. When she uses her other form, her Archon form, she's still humanoid.

Two, she's been raised while not necessarily in secret, by those who know taht she is not a normal child.

Three, she is not the only one of her kind. The big bad of the series? Her mother was an Archon. The Archon's ages old origins and place in the setting? Important to the game, especially in their role as heralds to the old gods. The other Archons you encounter? Depending on how the initial encounters go, can either fight against you to the death, or provide you access to areas and put up a brief fight for the sake of a show.

Four, the Archons are rare. Remember when drow as players were rare? I'm not saying that they were 'cooler' back then, but the fact that they weren't meant to be a player race from the get go, as well as the other strange races that were introduced in the game, were rare. The disconnect some gamers have with more modern games that are fantasy based, is it's more like Star Wars and the Cantina scene where a thousand different aliens are mingling with the humans. There's nothing wrong with this appraoch. After all, some of the oldest takes on D&D, like Arduin, have some very strange races in them, but its not necessarily for everyone, especially those who grew up on Conan or Fafrd and the Gray Mouser or even Elric, who despite his heritage, didin't necessarily run into a lot of non-human character.

Five, because she's rare, she has questions about her background. She has questions about her role in the world. She doesn't quite know everything that she's supposed to be doing despite feelings she has. If she were a more common race, these questions are already answered. Its possible to play against type, but even that's playing type. How many noble drow, cambions or other evil races have we seen in addition to fallen angels, and other divine types?

By making the race of the character important and playing a role in the background and current adventurers in the campaign, you can add the unusual or the different. Beware of trying to including too much at one time or allowing players to step on each others toes with a thousand variants. Enjoy the rare character ever now and again if that's the style your going for but beware of the dilution of the default 4th edition assumption of "Yes."

Dungeon Siege III

2011-08-15T21:49:00.000-05:00

I don't play a lot of video games. Between work, the g/f, my vast reading pile, and the occasional movie, it's rare that I'm willing to sacrifice a huge time chunk to a full fledged video game.

Dungeon Siege III is probably the first new game I've bought in quite a while. The last one probably being Assassin's Creed years after it was out.

Dungeon Siege III is far more character based and in some ways, limited than previous entries. You have a choice of four different characters to select. The interesting thing is that the characters all play different in terms of appearance, style, and abilities. They can be highly customized with various attributes that rise as you gain levels, allowing a user to play through the game multiple ways with the same character. I'll be mentioning some specifics below so if you want to avoid spoilers, read no further.

That reminds me of one of the strengths of D&D. As a whole, it's generally good to have a well rounded party. While 4th edition may have given these roles terms like striker, defender, controller and leader, in many ways, they've been a part of the game since thief, fighter, magic user, and cleric. Perhaps not always in exactly the same role, and perhaps some customization could change how classes worked in the game, such as multi-classing demi-humans in the OSR realms, but for the most part...

The game hits on a lot of high points I've mentioned in the past.

Religion plays a huge role. The main villain of the series is called the Living Saint and has a massive following in the East where the church is strong.

Family relations play another big role. The villain is after the heroes because they murdered her father. The villain is also related to the current queen and has a legitimate claim to the crown. Two of the selectable characters are related to each other. One of the characters is a direct descendant of one of the most powerful spellcasters in the history of the setting. These things have an influence on how people see each other, they provide illumination into motivations and provide insight into what someone might do.

The game isn't that open in some aspects, but it does allow a few variations including redeeming foes, sparing foes, and taking different paths that wind up crossing the paths not taken. The writing isn't bad and there are probably a few ideas that could easily be yanked for your own campaign.

The side quests aren't always fighting either, even if they may have an ultimate effect of providing some damage to the enemy. For example, while the Queen's forces are under siege, you can set up a cannon and prevent the enemy from entering the cave complex where the Queen is holding up. There are a few examples of this combat handy but not actual combat skill tests throughout the game. When setting up challenges for the players, see what options you can provide them that don't necessarily rely straight up on dealing damage.

Revelation by C. J. Sansom

2011-08-14T21:30:00.000-05:00

C. J. Sansom's lawyer, Matthew Shardlake, continues his tour with the authorities of his time in this novel by the author of Winter in Madrid and Sovereign. This time around, the author pits Matthew's keen mind against a serial killer. It's an interesting twist of how things can be worked in an different setting, and while most fantasy games have a lot of elements of magic to them, there are a few bits that might prove of use to someone attempting to run an adventure with murder mystery elements to it.

The first, is a wide cast of characters. Sansom isn't afraid to throw characters into the mix and then murder them off. I've heard it said before that GM's must be ready to murder their children. This is a truism that needs to be followed. While some of the characters you create may have some untold stories, keep those stories in mind and transfer them over and let the characters wonder what's going on as some of their favorites die off.

The next thing, is keep the plot moving. If the character run up against some walls or issues or, well, let's be honest, just stink at investigating, throw them a bone or two. Perhaps the villain isn't as clever as he though and leaves some evidence out to torture the players with just how smart he thinks he is? Perhaps someone the players have helped in the past has seen something and wishes to provide some assistance in compensation for the player's aid in the past?

Another factor to keep in mind, is bodies rot. In the novel, the villain leaves the windows open during winter so that the cold air will slow down the rot. In a game where blasts of ice might not be that hard to summon up, or even where magical means of completely destroying a body might be applicable, players may not discover murder has been done in a timely fashion or at all unless they use their own divination magics.

For the old school gamers, remember poisons are bad. In most old school games, if you fail a saving throw versus poison, you're dead. On the other hand, an interesting thing used here, is a poison that provide not death, but a pleasant feeling so that when the corpses are found, they seem to be in a state of bliss. Poisons and drugs can do more than kill, then can alter perception, alter reality, and without some type of anti-venom or cure-all, there isn't much that can be done outside of making a save and noting that the poison didn't enter the old blood stream.

Another aspect of the book that takes place is omens and con men. A few big fish wash up on shore from the Thames and people claim that they are Leviathan. Of course as soon as some religious significance is attached to the fish, the snake oil sellers are out selling various unguents, oils, and potions that they claim are made from the fish with various abilities to heal, cure, and do other things. Small incidents can help showcase the reality of the setting so to speak, and provide players with some interaction with the background that isn't necessarily of the violent nature. GMs feeling generous might even allow the players to make some knowledge or skill checks to see if any of the snake oil is real or might have properties that the seller's are unaware of. Its okay to let the players occasionally cheat a con man out of something he doesn't know he has.

For campaign seeds, it can be difficult to provide advice that means anything unless its specific to a campaign. For example, one of the characters here, Guy, is a doctor. He is reading a book that focuses on medicine in a whole new way. A manner that proves older books, books that have been used for decades if not longer, are false. While the same fervor is not attached to them as might be a religious text, old ideas can be hard to change. But if none of the people in the group are interested in medicine, its a moot point. It's a possible background element you might be able to introduce.

The same is true of false teeth. Here doctors are buying people's teeth for the creation of false teeth, apparently a fad that was popular in France during this time that made its way among the English. Little elements that provide a touch of, in this case, strangeness.

Having said all of that though, when you're running a game, it's not the same thing as reading a book at all. The players may simply be smarter then you or may get lucky. In a novel, the author can keep the audience and the hero guessing for quite a while. In a role playing game, the players may just stumble onto the main villain in the first act.

Go with it. Few things are more annoying than having the players do this as it's happened to me. It happens in written modules all the time. While I love the concept of the Witch Fire trilogy for the Iron Kingdoms Game, originally just for fantasy d20 in many ways, I don't think I ever saw a group have a hard time figuring out what was going on in the mystery portion of the game. Just run with it. Keep the rest of the stuff, characters, encounters, details, and other important bits, for another game or another sesson.

C. J. Sansom provides a wide cast of characters and events to keep the story going and someone looking for how an investigation might have happened during this darker days should pick up a copy of Revelation today.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-08-13T18:48:00.000-05:00

Just saw Captain America, The First Avenger. It was a solid movie and I enjoyed it. I actually thought it was too short, which is a rarity for a me to think such of a movie. The actors did a good job with their characters. The little differences between the comic and movies, actually worked in the movies favor this time around. For example,I wouldn't mind seeing the origin of the Red Skull as done in the movie makes a lot of sense and makes the Red Skull and Captain America more alike in some ways.

Now I'll be talking about specifics in the movie and how they bounce around the old brain and how I might relate some of that to a role playing game.

In terms of structure, Captain America is a soldier. Prior to that, he is a patriot. He wants to serve his country. One of the reasons I like games that follow some type of military structure, either mercenary or military, is that they provide a fairly clear structure that allows the game to flow in a manner that the GM has a little bit more leeway in controlling. As shown in the film however, not every soldier always does as he's told and even in those situations, they work out to be action filled scenarios that have the soldier 'officially' in the wrong, but doing such a good job of crippling the enemy, that it still works out to every one's advantage and any actual punishments are wink winked away.

For equipment, Captain America uses a specialized mesh for his uniform to protect him from small arms fire as well as from bayonets. His shield however, is a unique weapon of defense that is painted over and over again in the colors of his home country. With his augmented strength and agility, the shield becomes both defensive and offensive weapon. It is also iconic. Few fans of Marvel Comics wouldn't recognize the red, white, and blue of Captain America's shield.

Supporting cast includes fellow officers and agents who are allied with America. Another reason why I enjoy the military structure, there are opportunities to surround the players with interesting people who may not have the same type of plot protection that the players have. Will an explosion kill a friend? Will a sniper take out an important ally?

The nemesis... I've mentioned the Red Skull already. In this version, he too benefits from the super serum that turns a man into a super soldier. It ties him and Captain America together. the actor playing the Red Skull does a great job of bringing a level of arrogance to the Skull that works well. For example, when first introduced, he is warned away from an item of great power by an old guardian who tells him, "It's not meant for normal men to look upon", or something of that nature. The Red Skull agrees with him! Other opportunities for the Red Skull to shine include his first physical encounter with Captain America, which is cut short by the destruction of the building around them.

This destruction is a good method of keeping the final fight from happening. It allows the audience to get a taste of the Red Skull's physical prowess and reveals his madness as he claims to embrace his greater than human nature, by showcase his well, red skull visage.

In many situations where there is a need for a nemesis, having that nemesis have a similar origin to the players can provide insight into the abilities, methods, and motivations of the nemesis. It also serves to set up the nemesis as someone who is just as capable as the players. a good villain needs a good introduction. He needs a good theme.

The Red Skull also benefits in that he has a lot of neat toys. His car for example, is a slick piece of machinery while his soldiers, Hydra, are all armed with high powered energy weapons with their own signature look. These touches work well for the movie in that they allow viewers to quickly identify who the good guys and bad guys are.

Captain America is also packed with high energy. It keeps moving. There are times I wanted it to slow down as it actually uses a montage of Cap taking down various Hydra bases instead of showcasing specific missions. Keeping things moving is also vital to a role playing game. It helps keep things moving. It provides the players reasons to pay attention, to keep their hands close to the dice.

While many of the ideas are immediately of use to a super hero based campaign, they are also grounds for any campaign that requires the GM to have a military structure with a villain who shares a common point of origin with the players. Good stuff all around.

100 Fantasy Adventure Seeds

2011-08-12T16:56:00.001-05:00

One of the books I picked up for my demoing was 100 Fantasy adventure Seeds by James 'Grim' Desborough. I love the cover which features an undead warrior standing over an injured warrior while it appears that a wizard prepares to blast him as a female with a mace, I'm assuming a cleric, watches over the fallen fighter. The cover is done by Andrew Hepworth. It's eye catching.

I don't mention too many RPG based books on my blog here because when I do review such materials, its often on a dedicated channel, and that remains true here as well. I just wanted to talk a little about how the sum of what I've read tends to interact with what I'm reading.

Anyway, adventure seed seven is 'Plague of Permutations'. the idea is that the inhabitants of the river town Oakreach, are suffering mutations and the mutations are effecting everyone. The source is alchemical waste. It's a solid idea in and of itself that could present the players with all sorts of strange mutated monsters to fight.

But there are certain settings where such a twist of a possible innocent action, can take on a more sinister nature. For example, in the Warhammer setting, the mutation effects could be caused by warpstone. Imagine a lone alchemist doing his standard deeds who happens to come under the watchful eye of the Skaven who make him perform various rituals using the Warpstone? A situation that people who've read C. L. Werner's Witch Hunter series will find familiar.

But what if instead of Skaven, the alchemist is indeed a villain and is using the warpstone to spread chaos for his patron demon deity, Nurgle?

It's not that the book doesn't have a few twists of its own and doesn't offer some follow up adventure potential, it does, but when you can look at the material and adapt it.

The greater pool of material you have access to, the great the possible mash ups you can see in sample adventure seeds and the easier time you'll have flushing them to match your home campaign.

Sharktopus!

2011-08-11T19:50:00.000-05:00

When you have monsters like the owlbear in Dungeons and Dragons, one has to wonder, where does it stop? The Sharktopus is the answer!

This is a bit of a silly movie but it has numerous great kill scenes. The set up is relatively simple in that it's science gone mad. There are the standard cast of characters including the professional mercenary, the amoral leader, the dubious military contacts and others of that ilk who fit in such a concept.

In terms of D&D though, the Sharktopus wouldn't even be that unusual. The film's biggest problem can even be seen as a bit of a strength in that the size of the creature varies from scene to scene. In one, it's big enough that a man can fight it off for a few seconds while a friend sees him die up close and personal. In another, it's big enough to rip a large boat in half.

But what if these are different creatures altogether? The smaller ones can be minions, killers in their own right, but pale immitations of the bigger creature.

The Sci-Fi channel has done several shows of this variety. In some ways, you coudl string them together as a modern mad science series where players are either military specialists or mercenaires that go from job to job, fighting genetically engineered horrors and various beasts that have survived slumbering for millions of years. Or a combination of both.

Gen Con 2011: The remaining loot!

2011-08-07T23:36:00.000-05:00

Fantasy Flight Games had prepainted figures for their Cadewallon board game. These figures are based on Confrontation miniatures for the same faction. They're okay, lacking some of the subtle and superb sculpting of the original metals but it's ten figures for $30. And there were two separate boxes so yeah, both of those were bought. I keep hearing gamers talk about non-random figures. If you're one of them and haven't bought these because, "they're not what I want specifically", well, you've just proven why non-random probably will never work. At $3 a fig, it's a good deal.

OSR! Yeah, I stopped by the OSR both. Spoke very briefly with Suzie and Joe. They used to live, or at least hang out, in the Chicagoland area and head out to Games Plus! I kept hearing good things about Vornheim so bought it. Hate that cover though. Also hate the format in terms of its size. Realms of Crawling Chaos... well, it's meant for Labyrinth Lord, but really, I just bought it because it's 'Love craftian Dark Fantasy.' Last was Lesserton and Mor. This is a city sourcebook that I keep hearing good things about. Also for Labyrinth Lord. Note that I didn't buy Joe and Suzie's monster book because I bought the Pathfinder version, also by them, that was not in the OSR both but in the Paizo booth.

I mentioned that for running the six games (one Dr. Who, two Laundry, and three Primeval, which was supposed to be four but John spared me that), I received credit for Cubile 7 products. So what did I get with that? 100 Fantasy Adventure Seeds, 100 Horror Adventure Seeds, two Rite Publishing Presents books, The Breaking of Forstor Nagar and The Gift, Curse of the Golden Spear Part 1. My last purchase was Dragon Lines, Guardians of the Forbidden City, a BRP (same as Chaosium's Cthulhu core system).

The first two were because I enjoy generic or all purpose books. The next two were because I like Pathfinder and I like adventurers. The last... it sounded cool. I could have picked up some other stuff but I was trying to make the credit equal the amount I was spending and it worked out well.

This Gen Con was probably the first where I spend absolutely more money on miniatures and related things (such as maps), then I did books. No comparission. The Gale Force 9 Both, as well as the Savage Mojo Maps and others, along with the Coolminiornot and Warstore purchases, easily blew past the few RPG books I did buy. Hell, I might have spent as much on comics this year.

Speaking of comics, I noted before that there were a lot of third party vendors there. People who are not publishers in and of themselves or are not selling RPGs or gaming products. I mentioned Half Priced books, as well as various clothing and jewelery manufacturing, but probably didn't mention the card sellers and buyers, or the massive comic stand there. They were selling some Omnibus editions, done up for Marvel, for half price and if I had space, and more importantly more money, yeah, there would have been a lot more purchases going on there.

Anyway, the changing face of Gen Con continues to provide me with things to think about and ponderings of smacking up some of the amigos to go next year.

Tomorrow it's back to the dreaded work and then taking the madre back to the doctor. Ugh and double ugh. Worse part is that I'll probably have to stop at Games Plus to pick up some primer, as I didn't buy any while at the convention, because I still try and throw business their way when I can. Ugh again! Ugh I say!

Gen Con 2011: Day 4 or Damn My Feet Hurt!

2011-08-07T19:51:00.000-05:00

My game of Primeval wasn't scheduled to run until 12:00 today. So I decided to hit the dealer hall one more time. I found a place selling Confrontation miniatures, including the old metal ones, at 50% off. But the same dealer was also doing insane deals on a horde of books and I was pressed for time and I wasn't going to fight that crowd outside of a few bits I managed to snag that were on the end.

The gamers there though, were very fussy. Working the overworked staff even more with esoteric requests and wanting bigger discounts and some were just stupid. For example, if you keep your backpack on your back while people are walking in and out of an aisle, are you going to get hit each and every time? Why yes Mr. Jackass, you are. It's not complicated people. You want to make yourself as small of a target as possible and keeping your backpack on your back while hunched over... probably ain't the way to go about it.

In this instance I myself accidentally cut into the line as one person was asking someone else for help while assembling his pile and expecting to stay in the line as the next person to check out even as he pulled more stuff. I didn't realize that's what he was doing and told the lady at the register I was ready to go so she took care of me. Man, I hope they get paid well or tipped or something because that booth was a disaster.

There were some other good deals on the floor, but the time limit thing kicked my ass. One booth was selling a product I'd bought the other day for like $5 cheaper so I'm going to buy the other company about that. Worst they can do is say no right? But at the War Store, another one of those 3rd party sellers I was talking about there being a lot of, they had a ton of Micro Art Studio bases on sale so I picked up quite a few of them.

The Archai booth was still running theri special where it was buy two graphic novels and get three free. As I read the two Okko novels they had, and they were both solid, and I've read some of their other material, including Mouse Guard, I figured I've get Secret History and got the Killer and Revolution in Silver.

My game at the hotel of Primeval went quick. Probably too quick. These guys are paying $4 for what's supposed to be a four hour game, but I'm not the type of Game Master whose going to provide the scenario and if they players short cut it, throw more stuff in there on the fly. I suppose I could to try and insure maximum value if you will, but at the same time, the further you deviate from the 'script' or pregenerated adventure, the more unfomcortable I'd feel. This was my first time running adventurers here though and I thought that there were some elements of the pregenerated material that could have been handled a little better.

In the postive aspect though, the players weren't short cutting the adventures through bad maneuvers. Rather, every group I had, the players got along well. There was no fighting to see who was going to be in charge or be the boss. They didn't seperate the group. They didn't back stab each other. They listened to me and I didn't have to repeate myself save for when outside conditions prevented them from hearing me.

They listened to each other. They made logical and well thought out moves that well, the modules don't take into account. For example, in the Laundry adventure, there's a hidden element that can cause some issues in relation to a haunted house. The hidden element is outside the house. I ran this adventure twice, and each time, the characters made a full and complete circle around the house and noticed the well and investigated it. Why wouldn't they when looking into a haunted house? Primeval had a few similiar situations where it was like... why would they do X when Y is right there?

Overall though, it appeared that the players had fun. One of the other guys running Primeval, John, made some buttons, so I handed those out, as well as the rule sections I was referring during game play to try and make up some of the potential loss.

It was certainly a learning experience for me though and I'll be making a LOT more notes and customizations and reprints prior to any running. It's not that the material was heavily flawed or anything, but when running material off of PDF, the more that I can put directly onto the character sheets and have the players reference themselves, the better.

After that, I went and grabbed some lunch and some high end chocolates for the girlfriend and it was on the way home.

In terms of the convention, running the adventurers can take a lot out of you. On the first day, I ran three and on the second, two. My voice was hoarse and hurting a bit but I had a good time so it didn't bother me. More painful though, were the blisters. Mucho blisters. Still have them. Using antibacterial bandages and some wraps. Can't pop the bastards as that skin provides a layer of protection.

I stayed at the Hilton. It was a nice set up with two rooms. One room was a fold out couch. I took that because it had a hook up for a laptop. The other room had two bedrooms and immediate access to the bathroom. the bathroom had a poor design. The door didn't lock and there was a seperate door for the toilet itself.

The shower though was great. The shower I have at home sucks. Being a tall bastard at 6'6", I have to constantly bend over to wash out the old hair. Not so here! It was great. Water pressure was solid as well.

There was also a microwave and a mini-fridge. I used the fridge to freeze some kit-kat bars that I picked up during one of my many trips to the CVS drugstore... oops... lost the water bottle... oops, didn't bring hair gel or a comb.... ooopps.. feet are killing me and need bandages... etc...

The food in Indianapolis varied. There was a pizza place across for the Hilton next to the Downtown Comic store. Their pizza and soda was like $8 for two slices and a drink and it sucked. Mind you, I'm from Chicago so perhaps it's just me. There was a bbq place though, that had decent brisket. The place I went today to pick up the chocalate had a decent chicken maranaria sandwhich, but also, heavily overpriced. Champs wasn't bad as I had another chicken variant there. Another place had pineapple and spicy mustard chicken sandwich variant. My first day there I ate at the place with the train station and had a burger. It was not good.

The food prices weren't outrageous or anything, but I felt that there were generally too high by a few bones each times. If I can beat a few of the amigos over the head and go next year, I think I'll try to take advantage of the fridge and microwave. I've done that before though and it's a balancing act of too little of this, too much of that.

The other viewing pleasure of the area was the homeless. And I'm not busting on the homeless here, but there were two separate groups that I managed to listen to talking about their 'game plan' to try and maximize their 'take' of the convention goers talking about where they were going to set up, what signs they were going to use, etc... I gave out $1 to a guy who was friendly and pointing out the various bits in the town on my second day here because he didn't ask for anything. I also found that when I didn't ware the badge, I didn't get bothered. Strange eh?

The downtown area itself... well, the mayor should be beaten. Construction was the key word here and it was everywhere. Why the hell you'd want so much construction when you've got a convention going on with thousands, if not tens of thousands of people (anyone got any numbers?) is beyond me. Either the guys doing the job lied to him or Gen Con getting bumped up screwed with some time lines or the other conventions coming down the road are more popular. At any rate, that was another contributing factor to the tale of my blister ridden feet.

In terms of "weird", prior to going to the dealer's hall today, I made a pit stop into the auction hall. Gee, it's closed on Sunday. Only pick up. Shakes fist angrily at air. Hopefully if I go again next year I can remember to go there early and look for old miniatures from the old Grenadier line and others.

Traffic on the way home was a breeze outside of oh, the three storms I ran into. One of them had a few lightning strikes and one of those was very close and scared the hell out of me. Sounded like a bomb went off across the way and it all became very bright. Fortunately at that point the whole of traffic was going very slow.

The other problem is that as a dumb ass, I got off at the wrong stop so instead of being home, I was on the old South Side by China Town! The old Thin Lizzy song kept playing in my head even as Sevendust was on the radio.

Overall, I enjoyed it. If my feet weren't so tore up, I would've done more though, especially in terms of checking out the movies, paint and take, and pick up games. There were a few games I wanted to bring along, like the card game Nuts, as well as the build your board, Forbidden Island, but they, along with my dice initially, and other bits, were left at home.

In terms of technology, the laptop stays home next year. I thought I was going to die carrying that and the tablet around as well as all the damn chargers. The tablet proved its utility when on Thursday, having to run a game at 8:00 in the morning, I was able to download a dice app. I'm sure I would've found one for the laptop, but having both of them meant I could reference the adventure on the laptop and just roll the dice on the tablet. That aspect worked but I'll sacrifice that visual ease for the back ease.

I've still got to hook up my camera. I took a bunch of pictures of stupid things, like the old buildings and what not and I'll be talking about the whys of that when I ping them up. Like I mentioned before, dozens of people have done up the troll, drizzt, the privateer press stuff and other goods so I didn't see a need for it.

In terms of Gen Con news... I think the internet has spoiled us. There was a pod cast or something about the new products coming down the line for 4e and I could swear all of those products were known qualities. Sure, more information about them was doled out as well as more releases for the fortune cards for 4e but I didn't find that newsworthy.

Cortex getting the Marvel license was big but... comic licenses are tricky. Take Green Ronin with their DC line up. I don't think they've even got the whole thing done and hey, DC has rebooted the line. It was a similar problem with Mayfair had the license and I'm sure it will continue to be a problem. Is Green Ronin going to have to do a reboot? Are new fans of DC going to pick up the RPG and wonder what the hell it is and why so much basic information is wrong? Some yes and some no I'm sure.

I was personally more excited by the upcoming random dungeon rolling dice by Inkwell. I was also glad to see that Paizo is doing an anniversary edition of Rise of the Runelords converting the whole thing to the Pathfinder system, updating some of the information, and making the whole bit run smoother.

The One Ring sold well. Burning Wheel Gold sold out. Not sure what else was moving or selling though.

So that in a nutshell is my observations of Gen Con. If you don't get a chance to go, you really should at least one year to see what the fuss is about. It's more expensive then ever I admit but it can be a great time.

Gen Con 2011: Day 3 or the Day of Wallet Bloodletting

2011-08-06T18:13:00.000-05:00

No games to run today so I brought out my check list and wandered the hallway. I made two trips as I convinced myself to buy some goods that I probably didn't need and weren't on my list but on well.

Wyrd Miniatures: Pupper Wars. It's a board game with goofy looking puppet miniatures and I'm hoping it's a big hit with my g/f. If not, I've spent a lot of money on a group of tokens that will go into the closet. I also bought the Dead Justice limited edition convention set. If nothing else more undead are always handy to have.

Coolminiornot: I picked up the preorder special edition dwarf berserkers regiment for Avatars of War as well as a painting DVD, Miniature Painting Secrets with Jennifer Haley. I was going to buy another fig but it was $40 for a medium sized figure due to its limited edition status so that sucker went back to the shelf.

Dark Age miniature gaming. I don't play the game, but one of the factions has some fantastic monsters in it. This was another unplanned purchase but the big resin brood howler, broodhound pack (2 of 'em), and mandible are mine.

Tablemaster: They have various base flocking material and if you bought the whole set it was fairly inexpensive so that's what I did. Another unplanned miniature purchase.

Mouse Guard boxed set. I'm hoping I can talk the g/f into some rpging if it involves some cute, battle axe using mice. Don't know how that'll roll as she wasn't tricked into it with other games, but she does enjoy some card games. By the way, the guys here had great bags, regular bags with good handles that you can use at your local grocery store.Archai I believe, same people who do the Artesia book.

Burning Wheel Gold and Bloodstained Stars: The guys doing this are right next to the Artesia both. When I first came there, I asked for Burning Wheel, but was on the Mouse Guard side. So pick up some graphic novels because Archai is running a fantastic deal there (bought the Cycle of Air and got the Cycle of Earth free for Okko) but then went to buy Burning Wheel Gold and Mouse Guard and couldn't get Mouse guard because that was the guys I just bought the graphic novels from. Argh! But nonetheless, cool bags. Bloodstained Stars and the graphic novels were unintended purchases. I'll have to check online as there's supposed to be another Okko novel and the books look fantastic.

Masks and Eureka: Both sounded like good all purpose gaming supplements. The former was on my shopping list, the later not but in for a penny...

Cthulhu Gloom: Speaking of card games my g/f likes... She's a big fan of Gloom so I'm blaming her for this purchase.

Maps of Mystery: I picked up the three for Deep Vistas and received a free adventure with it. Unplanned purchase but I'm a sucker for maps and miniatures as may be coming out here...

Gamemastery Map Pack, extra dimensional spaces and Swallowed whole, along with Faiths of Balance, Faiths of Purity, and Malevolent & Benign, a Pathfinder Bestiary. I didn't buy the extra dimensional spaces when it first came out because I wasn't tuned into the use for it despite something similar in say, Wheel of Time. However, after beating Dungeon Siege III... well, suffice it to say I'm at least a little motivated to have the map pack. Also received a free convention exclusive miniature that will probably be available on the website by Monday if it isn't already. All unplanned purchases.

Kings of War: I went there to see if they had Mhorgoth the Necromancer. I like the figure. The faceless necromancer with energy shooting out of his hands and playing about in front of him. So I did pick him up from my check list but... Abyssal Dwarves... I picked up an 'army deal' with a huge boxed set and the lord's war conclave and received a box of 20 undead as a bonus. Mantic will get my business again.

Dungeonmorph Cards and Font by Inkwell Press I believe. I wanted to buy the dice but they were not available so I gave him my information so that I'm on the list when it comes out.

That's the stuff I've got in front of me. When I get home tomorrow I'll open the other bags. Mostly Gale Force 9 products I'm 99.9% sure as well as stuff I bought with my store credit at Cubicle 7.

General notes...

There was at least one booth that only took cash. The guys who make the high end RPG dice and have done so for Cthulhu as well as the Pathfinder adventures. Listen, it's the year 2011. Most of the places I made purchases were using phones to run the credit cards. There is absolutely no reason NOT to be able to accept credit cards.

Year of the Smart Phone. Okay, not necessarily the year of, but man, at least the Gen Con of. I've had my phone over two years. It's a first generation G1. I keep wanting to upgrade but the data package is killing me. While there were lots of people with cameras, I think most pictures posted online have come from the phones.

Tablets... not so much, but still in presence. Interesting enough, it looks to be a mix of both the ever popular iPad's and well, everything else. Got my hands of a Kindle and man, that sucker is light compared to a tablet, it's also easy to read, and holds a charge very well. I'm very interested now in the kindle if only I hadn't spent all of that money already... argh...

Costumers... I'm not one to judge in terms of quality, effort, etc... but some general notes, as I've already said. Some of these fans are punishing themselves tremendously in the name of fun and I salute that. The humidity here is some of the worst I can recall in my time here. It's also hot but I'm from Chicago and it's hotter back home. Next, and this is for the women, the time to be pulling your skirt or tattered tassels or whatever, down below your ass is when you first put it on. It's not every five feet of the convention hall as you realize that darn it, gravity is not going to pull that sheer material past your ass. If you're going to show your ass off, go ahead. Just don't put together an outfit that you constantly have to be messing with. It can't be fun to do so and its gotta be annoying.

Dealer: No problems. Usually I have a smart ass or two that loses a sale or has me get in their face and ask them to repeat that but seriously, all dealers were awesome this year. All friendly, willing to talk, etc... The only real problem? Not enough people on check out, or in general, not enough people manning the booths. They were so busy running demos that when customers were ready to check out they had to halt the demo, run the bill, and then get back to the customer.

Technology: This should probably be filled under the year of the smart phone bit but... wi-fi is everywhere. Hotels have it, the food courts have it, the posh restaurants have it, etc... and with that, comes a freedom for charging people for internet access. I can't tell you the exact number of dealer who did NOT pay for internet access this year because the prices were stupidly high, but it's like how hotels used to charge for access to Wi-Fi. Get with the times or go home I guess is the message. Or something along those lines maybe?

Author's Alley and Paint Exhibit: Both of these were actually IN the dealer's hall. It was kind of neat and there were a lot of great pieces of art. If I owned a house or had someplace to display the art, yeah, that would have been me spending even more money I don't have.

The only thing that I am personally bummed about is the lack of my own inner circle amigos. One of them died in April of cancer. The others don't leave the state and pay to play. In the past they've come out for the dealer's hall, but as the tickets for just all around purposes are $48 a day, they are not driving 200 miles for that. It's always fun to hang out with your crew and shoot the breeze and see what other people you know think about things. Maybe next year I can talk a few of them into coming out for the whole convention and try the paint and take and the free movies and pick up games, etc... probably not. As much of a home body as I am, they are far far worse.

Anyway, that's enough rambling. It's time to read some Okko!

Gen Con 2011: Day 2

2011-08-05T19:00:00.000-05:00

Today I went to the dealer's hall. I picked up one of the convention books with all the details in it as well. I didn't have a lot of time to look around, nor a lot of time to take pictures so no in depth reviews or notes here.

Then why was I in the hall? Picking up shirts for my girlfriend. She enjoys some of the shirts they have of dragons and faeries and undead Hello Kitty variants and what not. While picking up her shirts, some odd six in all, I did come to a few conclusions.

Parents need to start beating this children more. This isn't to say that everyone at the convention is universally rude or stupid but there were several instances where I had to remind myself that people probably aren't being deliberately rude when they bump into me. However, the people who are standing like three people's length away from a booth to look at the items and just standing there? Just my opinion mind you, but they are stupid and I pushed past them with a quickly muttered excuse me.

In some instances, the rudeness was almost a tangible force. When I came to an intersection of two major arteries, an elderly woman in an electronic wheelchair was moving from one direction to the next and the people behind me were jostling me trying to get me to cut her off. I worry about this planet sometimes...

In terms of general crowd, massive in size and scope. A lot of people in costumes of various ages. One woman in costume was busy pushing her baby along in its stroller.

In terms of the booths... and remember, I didn't get a full look around. I saw a lot of booths that were third party. Places like Half Priced Books, Coolminiornot, the Warstore, Games Plus and others. This doesn't count the hordes of places specifically selling 'geek ware' of various types ranging from the shirts I hunted down for my g/f to Celtic style clothing to the various weapon stands. There seemed to be a lot of those.

WoTC big D&D release seems to be Neverwinter Nights. I'm glad that they had banners and were making a contest of it but as a long time fan of the 'old' Forgotten Realms, allow me a moment of "get off my lawn" here eh? The whole thing does nothing for me with its heroic structured campaign and the only reason I'm getting it is the blade singer variant build in it. But I'll get it later for a better price than WoTC is selling it for today.

I did pick up some miniatures as one of the booths I passed by had some strange looking beasties, a few of them quite 'Skaven' or Rat Man to your non-Warhammer players and some huge boar or pig men that look like they would be good alternatives for the Farrows or whatever they're called in Hordes.

I then ran my two games; Primeval and the Laundry. I thought both games went well. I even had a fellow reviewer in that first batch of games, Kurt Wiegel, and encouraged him to run some games for the convention next year. The second game seemed to stall a little bit and one of the players quit after a few moments. My bad Zedd, hope that it wasn't my interpretation of the game that threw it off for you.

I do enjoy some of the buildings around here. They have an old feel to them and would make great setting pieces for almost any era game. I'll try to take a few pics of them before I leave to show what I'm talking about.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm free and don't have to run any games so hopefully I'll be able to snag some pictures. I can guarantee that I won't be taking any of the 'standard' pictures. I've seen the troll in the hall dozens of times online already, as well as the Privateer Press both setup with its awesomeness. If it's a static moment, chances are its already been shot.

Hope everyone's enjoying the convention!

Gen Con 2012: Day 1

2011-08-04T14:12:00.000-05:00

So I arrived at Gen Con yesterday. Coming from Chicago, it was a nice drive out. I had already seen a few warnings about state troopers out handing out the dreaded $1,000 tickets so made sure to obey all posted speed limits. There was a lot of construction coming in but I felt that I still made good time. I managed to listen to a lot of newer bands or at least newer releases that I haven't given the attention to that they deserve like the Vaccines, Cults, (not the heavy metal group The Cult), Two Door Cinema, and the new Bon Iver among others.

On the way in, there were two things that struck me. The first was that there were a lot of blown truck tires strewn along the highway. And when I say a lot, I mean thousands. It was a little worrisome seeing all that burst rubber scattered throughout the highway. I couldn't help but think that the best way to prevent accidents is to you know, dispose of such refuse before another vehicle hits it? The other thing that amazed me were the number of wind turbines. These were huge monstrous things and most of them were in full motion. The space they took up seemed minimized as they were well off the ground in order for the blades to clear the land. Hopefully this is providing some useful renewable energy to someone.

I am here this year running games for Cubicle 7. You may have heard of them. They are bringing out The One Ring, the RPG based on the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. That's not what I'm running however. I'm running Doctor Who, Primeval, and the Laundry.

The Doctor Who game is based on the newer versions done by the BBC. Primeval is an upcoming game based on the television show by the BBC that uses a very similar system. The Laundry is based on the BRP system from Call of Cthulhu and has its own take on the mythos. I'm certainly no expert on any of the games and have been reading them via PDF which can be useful but can also be slow at times.

I've already run two of the games and they both seemed to go quicker than I would have anticipated. The schedule was supposed to be a four hour slot but the players in the first managed it in under two hours and the latter in under three. I don't know if that stems from my lack of familiarity with the system, not wanting to push conflict on the players when they're playing exploratory types or that the players used, for the most part, good common sense, solid ideas, and were very liberal with their spending of story points to make rolls and avoid conflict that way.

The players seemed to have a good time and a few of them even recognized my name. An interesting side effect of, you know, using your actual name on the internet I suppose.

I have another game tonight and three more to run before the convention is over. The only thing I'm uncertain about is how the game on Sunday will go because it starts at 12:00 and I believe I have to be checked out of here at the same time.

So far the city is very friendly. I spend a lot of time walking around yesterday looking for some speakers for an iPod so that a podcast could be played at the Cubicle 7 booth. It was interesting but way too long. I was also tired from the drive. I know it sound stupid, but driving can take a mental toll on me after a few hours. I'm also six and a half feet tall so that doesn't help in the comfort department either.

I'm fortunate in that my roommates are normal people. I keep hearing horror stories from others but the gamers I played with in both games were good and the room mates are normal. So far it's all win. I still have to check out the exhibition hall. I might do that later on today but after running the games this morning and having another tonight, I may just relax and bum around a bit. Maybe check out the paint and take or watch some movies if they still have them running this year.

So far so good.

Vampire Wars by Steven Savile

2011-07-25T22:02:00.000-05:00

Onto some rambling now about the actual book as opposed to the evolution of the beasts in the Warhammer setting eh? Spoilers will follow so those who aren't interested in Steven Savile being spoiled for them, read no further.

There were monsters. Real monsters. he had grown numb to fear. A life of seclusion in the temple, of births and naming days, marriages and funeral rites, such mundane things they somehow combined to turn the monsters into lesser evils and eventually into nothing more than stories. He had forgotten that the stories were real.

One of the themes of many fantasy books is an old evil returning. Something that showcases the old adage about those who forget history being doomed to repeat it. And often, it is the shorter lived races, such as humans, that are the cause of this conflict. When you have races that can live for hundreds, if not thousands of years, if not in fact, effectively immortal, the burden of being the most populous race also seems to come with the tag of being the most ignorant. Try to switch things up every now and again. Have it be the elves who long for a return to their former glory. Have it be the dragons who decide that they've given humans long enough to get their act together and are unimpressed with them. Don't have it be humans being stupid doing stupid things unleash the great evil. More to a different venue to unleash it.

Would that it was otherwise, but I am not the law-maker. By accident of birth you came out... female. With no sons your father's line ends, and mine, as eldest surviving male begins. With your betrothed coming to such an... untimely end... well, that is just the way it is. You can't tamper with tradition, after all it becomes tradition for a reason.

The above statement may be true for the background characters. It may be true for the characters who've come before. But say in this instance the character being spoken to was a female player who was a character of no small power herself? Yeah, be prepared for players to do things that go against tradition and roll with it. If the characters are high charisma, good looking engines of social marvel in addition to being powerful figures in their own right, or at least have numerous friends who are powerful figures, their ability to directly impact a setting should be much higher than some traditional princess.

Isabella joined him at the broken window, linking her fingers with his, slick with her uncle's blood. But for the blood the gesture might have been mistaken for an intimate one. Instead it hinted at the darkness inside her: by taking his hand she was claiming him and the life he offered every bit as much as he was claiming her and the power her heritage represented.

Adventurers are a funny lot. I've mentioned it a few times, but in essence, many adventurers are like the main characters from the movie, "Hobo With a Shotgun.", dangerous, homeless wanderers out to set what they see wrongs to right. Individuals with few hesitations about using their physical power to effect the world about them, even if the higher social powers aren't too crazy about that.

But what happens if they marriage into politics? Into the higher social realms? Do they change their ways or use that as a stepping stone?

"The loss of anyone so young is a tragedy we can ill afford to bear. It was only a token, and it cost me nothing."
"Truly, but few would have taken the time to pay their respects to a stranger. It is the way of the world, I fear. We forget the suffering of others all too easily, especially those left behind."

By providing the players some set scenes, encounters where the things going on around them do not involve combat, you can see how they react to more mundane conditions. This allows you to customize further encounters more suited for their behaviors and attitudes. What do they do when they see a wedding? What do they do when they come across a funeral? What do they do when it's a holy day and celebration is full on? These events don't have to have thieves or strange events at them to see the stuff the characters are made of, they just need to present them opportunities to flex their roleplaying muscles should they chose to do so.

The pair had been in Leicheberg for a week. They had rented a small room in a seedy tavern off the central square called The Traitor's Head. The name more than suited the establishment. It was a den filled with iniquities galore making it the perfect place to gather rumors. People's lips loosened when they drank. They talked out of turn. Spilled secrets. Skellan was not about listening to the drunken ramblings of braggarts and the pillow talk of prostitutes.

One of the standards of most fantasy games is the bar as a place to gather information and to gain work. The above passage shows why even in a setting like Warhammer, where the streets run with rats and grime, the tavern is still a useful place of employment. While some struggle mightily against the tavern as a gathering ground for adventurers, don't be afraid to embrace it when its useful. When the players are in a new town and need to know what's going on. When the players are looking for a place to get out of the rain. When the players are looking to lay low in the seedier parts of town. These are opportunities for the tavern to shine with its host of myriad characters.

'Always...too late...' Fischer spat bitterly. He was trembling as the adrenaline fled from his body.
'Not always,' Skellan

The old one too punch relies on the setup that the players have done their absolute best to save someone, but have failed. And then the second punch is that even though they may have failed at what they thought they were doing, they have helped others, perhaps others not as fortunate, out. It sets up the down beat, and then follows it with an up beat.

The further north they travelled the worse the condition of the roads became.

It's a simple sentence, but it carriers weight. Roads and other public concerns, like waystations or road markers, are kept up by taxes. If the taxes are not being used to keep the roads in standard fare, what then are happening to the taxes?

There are more bits I'll quote later but that's a good start. Vampire Wars starts off with a viewpoint of normal characters who are striving to avenge an old wound done to their families by seeking that vengance but in doing so, move onto something far worse. If you're looking for some light popcorn reading about Vampires in the Old World, Vampire Wars is a good palce to start.

Vampire Wars: The Von Carstein Trilogy by Steven Savile

2011-07-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

As long as I can remember, Vampires have been part of the role playing game. Mind you, back in first edition they would level drain you instead of sucking your blood. TSR was quick to put out their own take on the classic version of the vampire through the old Ravenloft module that has spawned its own setting and various updates on the adventure. White Wolf has several brands of Vampire to investigate. The media loves Vampires and TV loves them through such shows as the Vampire Diaries and True Blood.

Warhammer has its own history with the vampire. I'm not real familiar with it mind you as I generally only toe dip into the tabletop side where much of the RPG side originated from. For example, one of the first books I recall with Vampires in it isn't Vampire Counts, its Undead. Vampires were just another monster that could be added. Vampires seemed to go the White Wolf route with the first Vampire Counts book where various bloodlines were introduced; Lahmians, Von Carsteins, Blood Dragons, Strigoi, and Necrarchs. The latest batch focuses on the Von Carsteins but still allows variety.

So far I've blathered on quite a bit about Vampires and mentioned their evolution and current status in the Warhammer setting but what about the book Vampire Wars? Well, my copy has a price of $13.99 on the back and I picked it up at Half-Price for less than the cost of a single paperback. The book features three eras of Vampires from the Von Carstein line and does a fair job of showcasing the strengths of the vampires as well as how hard they can be to fight. For someone looking to see the Vampire as a military leader and vastly powerful spellcaster in the Warhammer setting, its a good read with a lot of potential for adventure ideas.

I'll point out some specifics but note that if you find a series in the Warhammer fiction line that looks good, its probably best to wait on the collections before plunking down the cash. At $13.99, it's a steal.