City of Sorcery by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Rare is the time when I’ve read a book with more titles and subtitles. I think this is just ‘City of Sorcery’, written by Marion Zimmer Bradely, but it’s also got the Darkover trade dress and under that The Renunciates (Free Amazons).

This copy is from 1984 and comes in at $5.99. I’m sure most paperbacks these days easily hit the $9.99 mark. I bought it from Half-Priced books, off of the dollar spinner racks. It was well worth the dollar. Looking over Amazon, it’s only available from third party sellers at this time, with no Kindle version. Now that’s a shame as one of the things I’d love to see e-books used for, is the restoration of so much of the ‘lost’ fantasy books that fail to stay in print.             

If you’re looking for a fantasy book with some science fiction elements, the Darkover book should hold your attention. If you’re looking for a fantasy book with a lot of strong female characters, City ofSorcery again has you covered.

I haven’t read any of the Darkover books in easily twenty years. I was never a huge fan to begin with but do remember reading a few of them and just never getting into it or keeping up with it. For its time I assume it was successful due to the sheer number of books in the series.

The majority of the novel tackles exploration of the ‘Hellers’, an unexplored region of Darkover. This exploration takes the form of fighting the elements, fighting against fatigue, fighting against altitude, fighting against a village where strangers are welcomed, and then drugged to make the murder of them easier.

Depending on the game system you’re playing, this could be a fun thing or a terrible thing. One of the things I loved about 3^rd edition, and the OLG, is that it allowed settings like Midnight from FFG, to flourish. There were a lot of fantastic elements in the dark fantasy game, and fighting against the elements just for survival was high on the list.

But that was my least favorite aspect of the game. I didn’t want to take subdual damage or have to keep track of it or have to keep making saving throws or customize my character just to survive the wilds.

On the other hand, games like The One Ring, do a fantastic job of providing some penalties for failure to make a ‘travel’ skill check. It uses a few roles that have to be filled and these checks can be complicated by failure or rolling the ‘eye’ on the d12. The results of failure vary but can include losing health to encountering monsters to added travel time.

This matches well with the movies where the journey is often one of the more dangerous aspects of the characters trails. In City of Sorcery, there is a ‘big bad’ at the end, but her powers and abilities rely on having those around her to carry out her will in addition to her own knowledge base and powers. While she’s a danger to the characters, she’s not necessarily as terrible as the trials that got the characters to the location to begin with.

I find that 4^th edition Dungeons and Dragons, with its skill check system, also allows a great deal of ability to customize the travel times as well as the meetings between characters and leaders of towns.  This is another strength of The One Ring where important meetings between the characters and NPCs to gather information is easy to play out.

 City of Sorcery is not heavy on action, is not heavy on sword and sorcery, but is heavy on character and exploration.

Gen Con 2013: The Games I Ran

I ran two different game systems this year and was glad of it. In previous years it's been three or more. It's certainly possible but it's easier, at least for me, when I only have to split my attention between a few game systems. Even better, of the eight games I ran, only one of them was not The One Ring.

That one was Keltia. Last year one of the games I ran was Yggdrasill. Keltia is the tales of the Celts and the original ad mentioned King Arthur. Maybe something like Cornwell's Warlord trilogy? The later is Vikings. It uses a d10 system and isn't that bad but some of the layout in terms of where everything is and some of the rules are a little wonky.

The fun thing about Keltia is that there was no book this year. Thankfully it uses the same rule set as Yggrasill so when I finally figured out that there would be no PDF even of a pre-release, I hunkered down.

The game allowed an assorted group to hunt down rumors of dark magics and fight against the supernatural. It was a fairly straightforward romp which was great compared to last year's Yggdrasill game which ran over the four hour limit for me on both games which for my games, if anyone's played in one, is rare. Like super rare. But it appeared everyone had a good time.

The One Ring on the other hand, is one I'm a bit more familiar with as I've run it before and its crunch level isn't that bad. The only bad thing about it is it's what I call "fiddy". There are all sorts of little things to take into account. Did you meet your target number? Did your roll an edge? Did you remember to roll your battle dice at the start of the combat? Did you note your starting fatigue?

The other 'problem' with the One Ring is that it's not really designed for a con game. You see characters have an attribute Hope. Players can spend them like action points but doing so makes them more vulnerable to being miserable which leads them to have bouts of madness. Chances of that happening in a one shot game? Possible if there are a ton of things dishing out shadow points but not too likely.

There are also other elements, like recovery in sanctuaries after the 'adventure' is over but again, not something that's probably going to get hit too often in a con game.

The adventure, The Wind From the South I think, was fairly straight forward. It involved several combats against a variety of enemies. With the two separate journey checks, there was opportunity for more potential misery to be heaped on the players. The best thing? The open ending where the players have a HUGE variety of things they can do. You see they must rescue a daughter of Rohan from some rogue Woodsmen who seek her cursed magic right to fight against the forces of Dol Ghuldur.

I can't recall every instance but...

In one campaign, one of the players who was playing a Woodman of a similar background challenged the chieftain to single combat. The elf sang to bolster his spirits and reduce the Hate score of the villain. The player took a good beating but with some excellent rolls on his part and the elf's part, the chieftain broke down in tears at the foot of the Fellowship realizing that his dream of opposing the 'Master' with such a meager item of magic was doomed from the start.

In another one, the players did a fighting retreat which wound up with a few of the players again taking a fair beating but managing to fight their way out with the Rohan Rider and the ring which they purified of evil.

In another, the players caused a distraction in the main hall by starting a brawl while their other comrades searched for the woman of Rohan.

In another, the players caused a distraction by singing and creating a festival mood. The men of the fort, while 'evil' so to speak, weren't at open war with the Woodmen and there were two woodman who just immediately joined into the dinner and began eating and roaring and role played it out till they were singing and doing tests to make the nose louder while the 'bard', a giant Beoring, started a 'wave' of people shouting and smashing cups against tables.

I try to be ready with the rules and had hand written a few pages of notes. In most instances it didn't matter or they weren't needed. For example, I mentioned the whole battle dice check at the start of combat? Yeah, I probably forgot that more often then not.

The good thing though, was I continued to learn from the players. Last year someone showed me how to put together a quick chart to visualize the character's stances for combat and I brought some miniatures along with me to throw into that chart so the players could easily see how they were arranged not in line order or anything, but what rolls they needed to hit or be hit.

This year was pretty good on my side and I hope my voice, which I started to lose on the first day after the first game but never fully lost, wasn't too bad When I ran, I asked every group if there were things they wanted to see or things I might want to incorporate for the next group I had to run and either they were all shy, and trust me, most of them didn't seem the type, or they had a good time. I'm hoping it's the later.

Personally, I haven't run into any 'real' problems with gamers. I keep hearing horror stories about it but its all been good for me. I hate to say it, but I think a lot of those problem players are in the D&D or Pathfinder camps. Not necessarily because those games draw those people, but because those are the most popular games.

When I ask if people were playing the One Ring, the almost universal answer was no. It wasn't because they didn't want to, it was because "this is D&D town". I know where they're coming from but at the same time, I know where the people who only want to play D&D are coming from. It's like an old familiar boot you can wear whenever.

There were a lot of great moments in the game. In one failed Journey test, the players could either take some automatic fatigue or test for poisoned water in Mirkwood. One of the woodman boasted of how everything at his pond was alright and then rolled the Eye of Sauron so of course was poisoned while everyone else was fine. The player did a good job of doing the whole poisoned stick too so that made it even better as some of the other people were like, "Man, he must've drank all of the poison because I feel fine!"

I did learn that gamers apparently don't like to be up at 8:00 AM though. Both my Saturday and Sunday games at that time slot were cancelled due to no-shows. It would be AWESOME if Gen Con could have a Check In App or something where people could see how open a game is. I say this because all of the games I ran were in the system, sold out. I think I had one game where all the tickets I collected were for that event and every other game I had some generics. If people could check an app and see that "Hey, there's still room here", these games might be able to be filled at a better ratio. Maybe something like Foursquare but for games run? Scan the specific tickets and it sends out 'alerts'?

Anyway, what did everyone else play or run? I was hoping to get in some games myself, and this may sound stupid, but when I realized my voice was going, I decided against it. Cubicle 7 was awesome enough to bring me down to run games and people signed up for them and they deserve "the full Kushner" so to speak, not some half mute guy waving his arms franticly in the air to indicate damage.

Games I Ran At Gencon Four: The One Ring

Sorry about the pause in updates there. Came back from Gen Con and had to pull overtime on the weekend both Saturday and Sunday and then some ten hour days in the last week as well, you know, end of the month push and all that. Thankfully I was still able to get into my regular Pathfinder game yesterday and because of a cold or allergies or something, decided to avoid the booze so am relatively sane this calm Saturday morning with no hangover.

Anyway, another game I ran at Gen Con was The One Ring. It's been out for a while and it's a great looking book with a fairly simple system that revolves around a target number and all sorts of other nifty bits. Cubicle 7 also had a new screen that came with some information on Lake Town, as well as a new adventure source book, all with the same format and art and style as the core book.

Despite having owned The One Ring for a while, I'd never run it before. While my friends all dig the movies and the original stories, they are all about the Pathfinder/3.0/3.5/OGL variants. So while I'd prepared myself to run, I was uncertain how things would actually roll out.

In my first two games, I had some fantastic players in terms of knowledge base. They really added to the game and helped move things forward. With their assistance I was able to kick up my rules mastery of the system very fast.

In the first game I ran, the players and I fumbled the first combat a little in terms of the stances and how they worked in terms of player going on group initiative and monsters going on their initiative. Some of this was due to my lack of actual play but by the end of the session it was under control. One of the players was such a rules guru that he had a few links for me, that of course I promptly lost, that had links to a massive twelve page index. Despite being a beautiful book, the One Ring's index is not one to make you go, "Ah, found it first try." It's a modest two pages so there was some page flipping during that all.


In this game, I didn't bring up the ability of traits to make automatic successes because I had completely forgotten about it and in their haste to play, apparently the rules guru always ran, they didn't actually take advantage of it themselves. But at the end of the game, I always ask for feedback either positive or negative and this one was one of the things brought up so I made a note of it.

In my second game, one of the players took a blank piece of paper and some prepainted minis he had and did a grid for the stances. Wow. That worked fantastic in terms of not only keeping the players in line for their initiative stances and their target numbers, but quickly and easily showing the players where they were in combat order and what they were committed to and made a great visual reference. I snagged that for my third game with no problems.

Traits still didn't get a use as I don't think the players were absolutely sure of what they were used for but I did try to go through their utility at the start of the session.

For my third game, one of the players, a dwarf, was always in the most aggressive stance and rarely got hit in return. The dice were kind to him, even as they were not kind to others.

This one traits came into their own for a few skill checks as we had several new players and I tried to make sure to point out when they could use them.

The 'problem' with a convention adventure was in full swing here though. The One Ring is a pretty rich game for home gaming where things are going to take a long time. For a convention game, there's really not a lot of fear of burning through your starting hope. There's no chance of getting blight. There are no cursed magic items. These limitations make the characters far more powerful then they would be in a home campaign because all of those things become 'real'. You might not necessarily have to conserve hope, but you're not going to be spending multiple points in multiple combats over the course of a single session.

Overall the experience for me got better and better but as it did, the adventure got shorter and shorter. The players were able to take advantage of my growing knowledge of how to run combat for example, and cut through those combats far quicker. One of the prebuilds for example, has a character with a spear that has a fairly low 'Edge' and that came up a lot and took out a lot of foes. The dwarf, as mentioned, took out a lot of foes in that third game. The more aggressive and lucky the players, the better off they were in terms of getting combat done quickly in most cases although a few did take a Wound here and there.

I'm looking forward to trying to get my players into this one again but since I'm a player in a Shackled City campaign using the Pathfinder rules and we'll still stuck in that first adventure, I think it will unfortunately be a while.

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

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.