Gamers' Common: A Manifesto

Of Dice and Men brings up the concept of Gamers' Common. Originated by Frank Mentzer, it is an idea designed to get around the Edition Wars and bring all roleplayers together, regardless what game they happen to be playing. What it means is writing game supplements using terms that are common to most games, or at least understood by all gamers; things like Rounds, Hit Points, Experience etc. It then falls to the game-master (and players!) to choose what rules set they want to apply. This might seem like a bit of work, but isn't any different than trying to convert a really good adventure that might not exactly fit your current game, edition or preferred OSR. More importantly, it leaves things open-ended enough to allow for GM improvisation and adaptation. I don't believe that you should play anything straight out of the box.

Two of my all time favourite role-playing supplements are The Chronicles of Talislanta (available all free and legal here) which outlines the continent of Talislanta, the primary setting for the game of the same name; and Titan which describes the world of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy and Sorcery! gamebooks. Neither has a single rule in them, but both are utterly bottomless in terms of ideas and inspiration.

I thought of both of them when I came across of Mentzer's idea of rule neutral supplements. I've been struggling to find a focus for this blog for a long time and my own game writing has been all over the freakin' map.

I find the D&D Edition Wars to be tiring and pointless* and my own pet favourite games (Talislanta, TWERPS and WEG D6) are a little too esoteric to fill out a regularly posted blog. Homebrewing is fun, but again appeals only to a very small niche market (basically, myself). Still, I want to share my ideas, or at least put them down in one place so I can refer to them later. Writing in Gamers' Common allows me to do this, and I don't have to cross reference anything to make sure I converted the THAC0 correctly.

So I am leaving the rules behind and embarking down the GC path. I might occasionally dip into a rules specific post from time to time (if I ever bother to finish that TWERPS GI:JOE supplement, for example), but otherwise I am going to concentrate my energies on being as general as possible.

*For the record, I am an OSR Grognard at heart, but I am a believer in playing the game in front of you. If the GM puts the time and effort into running a 4thE game, play that and don't bitch how AD&D or the Red Box or Labyrinth Lord or Pathfinder does it better.  

Adventure Time! Icelops

Icelops are giants who inhabit frozen and high mountainous regions. They often adorn themselves with elaborate camouflage that imitates plants and even animals and gives them an 80% ability to hide in snowy environments.

A cold climate relative of regular Cyclops, Icelops look fearsome but often have a more child-like demeanour than their cousins and can be easily distracted by sweets, toys or boisterous play. With the lack of depth perception penalizes them with -2 to all attack rolls. Blinding them reduces the roll by -5. They rarely use weaponry but can hurl rocks and snowballs up to 200’ and 3d6 damage.  

Icelops

Labyrinth Lord

No. Enc.: 1

Alignment: Chaotic

Movement: 90’ (30’)

Armor Class: 5

Hit Dice: 13

Attacks: 1

Damage: 3d10

Save: F14

Morale: 9

Questamundo

Rank: 6-11

Body: 17

Mind: 2

Spirit:  5

BP: 50

Alignment: Neutral

Damage: +7,    Thrown Snow-boulder +10

Armour: -7

Special Abilities: Hide in snowy/mountainous environments. Q+10 to Spot.

Stealing Critters for Old Campaigns.

Darkling

As a DM there can be limited options for low level encounters, especially when you’re starting a whole new campaign with long-term players who yawn in the face of kobolds and laugh in the presence of giant rats.

However, my buddy, Blade (not his real name) who is running a D&Dpi game had an excellent idea for making low level monsters a little more interesting.

Back in our college days we played a lot of different games, all depending on what we’d picked up on our last visit to the LGS. My favourite was (and is) Talislanta, and over the years, I played the group through a few adventures.

Thrall

Blade remembered the pseudo-alien world while setting up his new campaign and instead of the usual suspects, he used Talislanta beasties instead; Darklings instead of kobolds, Ferrans instead of goblins, Thralls instead of Orcs (which is just plain mean) etc.

It’s a freakin’ brilliant idea! My advice to GMs, plunder every Bestiary, Monster Module and Critter Catalogue you can get your hands on and anything that strikes you as interesting or different, apply liberally.

The nice thing about Talislanta is that you can get all the books for free HERE, including the OGL Bestiary.  

Dungeons and Dragons 3 Trailer

According to Topless Robot, this is the film that offically shows where SyFy draws the line, takes a stand and says, 'Yes we made 'Mansquito', but this, this is to horrible to unleash even upon the nerds of the world'.

Personally, I think that as awful as this is, it still looks more D&Dy than the first movie. If this was a fan film, it would rate a 'nice try'.   

On Being Off Line and Bandit Pie!

I didn’t intend to go off line for that long, but life took a rare swing towards the pleasant for a change and I decided to take full advantage. Nothing earth shattering, but a few good positive pieces of good news and the reminder that good friends can go a hell of a long way (in this case, close to 1500kms).

It's filled with Pecans!

One of those friends is the GM of his own D&D3.14159 (D&Dpi) campaign and he has run the party into an area plagued by bandits. However, the party has a few battles under their belts, has gone up a level or two and is pretty confident they can take regular bandits, so he asked me if I had any ideas on how to make the bandits more of a challenge.

1)         Cannibals: A nearby wild magic zone, or ancient artefact has infected a nearby village, turning the residents into mutant cannibals.

2)         Merry Men: A band of outlaws fighting against a corrupt Baron/Shereiff/Prince.

3)         Cursed Beastmen: a vindictive sorcerer has cursed a nearby village, something the party does not discover until they kill a beastman and watch it transforms back into a child.

4)         Lepers: a group of plague victims left to die have teamed up to rob travellers

5)         Starving farmers: A drastic crop failure has turned a once peaceful town starving and desperate.

6)         Conan and Company: a band of skilled mercenaries (or a group of deserters) who have fallen on hard times.

7)         Cultists: A nearby town has fallen under the sway of a dark cleric and the cult of the Obsidian Tongue. A night a band of cultists go out hunting disguised as bandits, but are actually looking for sacrifices for their depraved ceremonies.  

8)         Knights: Bandits normally don’t have plate armour and destriders. These bandits are actually a group of knights on a quest.

9)         Monks: A group of students from a local dojo/monastery have decided to use the skill they have learned and use them for monetary gain by ambushing travellers (or possibly, are told to do it by a corrupt Master).

10)       Backed by some serious firepower: The bandits have recruited a powerful, but drunken mage who will sling fireballs at whoever they tell him to, so long as they keep plying him with delicious boozes.  

Musings on Magic

I recently realized that I’ve never played a D&D Wizard and reading through Labyrinth Lord and D&D5 lately I’ve begun to realize why … the magic system is not my bag, man. Though it claims to be ‘Vance-ian’ , it is actually not. Yes, in the Dying Earth, Vance’s wizards had pre-loaded spells but that is as far as it goes. (If you’re keen, read through the Dying Earth RPG or Talislanta 4e for MUCH better interpretations of Vancian magic.)

D&D reduces spells to bullets and Wizards (at least higher level ones) to heavy artillery. I’ve seen attempts at making it seem a bit more ‘mysterious’ or adding complications such as material components, but nothing in any form that anyone would actually want to play.

There is nothing actually WRONG with the D&D magic system, if that is the way magic works in the D&Dverse - then that is the way it works in the D&Dverse. At least it is internally consistent. It just isn’t to my taste.

The hang up for me is Saving Throws. The more powerful the character, the better their chance at resisting magic. That seems wrong. No matter how powerful Conan became, he ALWAYS feared magic and Superman’s second most exploited weakness is his vulnerability to magic. Yet in the D&D system, both these guys would have saving throws up the whazoo.

The thing is, that from Merlin to Gandalf to Doctor Strange, Zantanna, Harry Potter and Ponder Stibbons … I’ve never seen a magic system work that way. In almost every other interpretation of magic that I have come across if a spell fails it is because the wizard screwed up, not because their target was somehow able to shrug it off. If the spell gets casts, it works.

So for my own homemade system, I’m developing a system where the wizard must make a series of rolls over a couple of rounds to ‘weave’ a spell together. If they make all the rolls, then the spell is successfully cast and there is nothing the target can do about it. I think I could make this work for LL/D&DBasic as well, but it would take some heavy tinkering and I’m thinking that it must have already been done by someone.

Adventure Time! Snow Golem

I've redone the Snow Golem because I wasn't happy with the original D&D stats. Now they are Labyrinth Lord compatible.
Snow Golem
Snow Golems are sometimes created by wizards inhabiting high mountains or Polar Regions to be used as guardians to their lairs. If their creator passes away or forgets about them, the golem will eventually become autonomous, at which point their alignment and temperament will become randomly determined.
Snow Golems can only be harmed by magical or heat/fire weapons. They are also completely immune to cold based attacks, though they can be temporarily blinded by a well-thrown snowball.
If they are in a snowy environment, Snow Golems can repair themselves by packing in new snow, and have even replaced heads and limbs. If attacked by Fire/Heat, snow golems melt by getting smaller (half damage at half hit-points). Snow Golems are the enemies of Fire Wolves.

Labyrinth Lord
No.Enc. 1
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120’(40’)
Armour Class: 5
Hit Dice: 6
Attacks: 2 (Fist/Snowball)
Damage: 2d6 / 1d6
Save: F6
Moral: 4
Treasure: None
Questamundo
Rank: 5-10
Body: 15
Mind: 2
Spirit: N (equal to rank if autonomous)
BP: 40
Alignment: Neutral
Damage: +6
Armour: -6

Because you're all dying to hear my thoughts on the Next Edition, right?

A couple of my players have expressed an interest in taking the D&DNext playtest for a spin, while I am leaning more and more towards converting the D&DBasic campaign into full-on Labyrinth Lord.

New Editions have always bothered the crap out of me because it is like trying to convince someone else to love bean casserole. You might LOVE bean casserole and could eat it six days a week, but if someone else thinks it tastes and smells like an old, lumpy gym sock, nothing you do or say will ever convince them. While it might be fun to debates the merits for a while or tell them that your homebrewed version tastes better, in the end you are just going to have to let it go. Just because they prefer tuna casserole doesn’t make them an asshole.

Nor do I like new Editions because of the cost. My carefree days of disposable income are long behind me, sucked away by mortgage payments, medical concerns, hungry animals and lots and lots of bills. There is no way I am shelling out $100plus dollars every few years to add yet another Player’s Guide/GM Manual/Monster Manual to my shelf next to all the other editions.

And whether you play the new edition or not, suddenly everything else on that shelf is now obsolete. You’re now driving a Desoto and its damned hard to find parts. If you insist on clinging to your diesel guzzling ways, soon you’re reduced to scavenging through files of Raistlin/Tasslehoff slashfick, hunting for homemade conversion guides on a wayback’d geocities sites.

Not to mention that it is this sort of idiocy results in things like edition flame wars, OSR self publishers and copycats like Pathfinder. They all have their merits (except edition flame war trolls), but they all lead to dissatisfaction and degradation of the original product and causes WotC to shed customers like dandruff off a Con-goer.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Hasbro/WotC releasing* miniatures, computer games, board games, apps CCGs or whatever else they want with the D&D logo stamped on the front. Come to think of it, I’d LOVE the idea, because I think that in the end it would help bring proper (imaginative) role-playing back to a whole new generation (lost to ‘passive’ computer rpgs like WoW and Skyrim). Sure they’ll probably use tablets and interactive cards or figures, and who know what other tools to play. Some old schoolers are going to bitch about how the new kids ‘don’t play like we used to’, but those old schoolers are now in their thirties, forties or more. The game MUST evolve or it will die, and I’m not afraid to say that I have caught the whiff of gangrene settling in. Nor do I believe that D&DNext is anything more than a temporary bandage.

But please WotC, for us old school guys pushing forty, the guys who care enough to write bullshit pieces like this for a blog that no one reads, stop fucking with new editions and give us a game we can all rally behind! No more total reboots or attempts to be clever (Next!) or cribbing from MMORPGs. Just give us a straightforward (backwards compatible, or is that too much to ask?) game and STAND BEHIND IT. You give us that, and we’ll stand behind you.

*I can’t help but wonder if Hasbro isn’t promoting D&D harder more because of the wingnut Christian climate in the States right now. Maybe they are afraid of another ‘Mazes and Monsters’ style backlash which could lead to a boycott of other Hasbro products. Just a thought.

A Fighter, a Thief and a Mage Walk into a Tavern

This is awesome. BFX is running The Third Level Tomb of Horrors Challenge with his players. I can't wait to see how far they get!

The Enchiridon

I’ve wanted to do this for a while; systematically going through each Adventure Time with Finn and Jake episode, and generating stats for the fantastic creatures, items and people in the series. I’ll be doing it for three different systems!

Questamundo (my homebrew system)
TWERPS (The World’s Easiest RPG) and
D&D Basic (Red Box)

Hey, it’s not the kind of stuff that works in everyone’s campaign, but it certainly works in mine.

Episode: Pilot/Adventure Time
Sweater

Any character wearing a sweater is immune to effects of normal cold. They still take full damage from magical cold.

Snow Golem
Snow Golems are sometimes created by wizards inhabiting high mountains or Polar Regions to be used as guardians to their lairs. If their creator passes away or forgets about them, the golem will eventually become autonomous, at which point their alignment and temperament will become randomly determined.

Snow Golems can only be harmed by magical weapons. They are also completely immune to cold based attacks, though they can be temporarily blinded by a well-thrown snowball. They take double damage from heat/fire based attacks.

D&D Basic
Armour Class: 7
Hit Dice: 50
Attacks: 2
Damage: 2d10
Number Appearing: 1
Save as: Fighter 5
Alignment: Neutral

Questamundo
Rank: 5-10
Body: 15
Mind: 2
Spirit: N (equal to rank if autonomous)
BP: 40
Alignment: Neutral
Damage: +6
Armour: -6

TWERPS:
STR: 15
-Strong. Immune to cold based attacks.

The Death of Genre and the Stagnation of Geek Culture.

This goes on for a lot longer than I intended and may not make a lot of sense, but the thoughts have been rolling around in my head for a few weeks now and I wanted to get them down on paper.

Two books I’ve read over the past couple of weeks have had a major impact on how I’m looking at genre and geek culture. The first tried to stuff dragons; and as many semi-colons; as physically possible; into the Napoleonic wars. The second was a sci-fi love-letter to 80’s pop culture that involved everything from Atari video-games, Dungeons and Dragons, Matthew Broderick movies, Super Giant Japanese battle robots, and a whole lot more into one big glorious ode to geeking the hell out.

The books made me realize three things: 1) genre is officially dead. 2) geek culture has become creatively bankrupt and. 3) authors who abuse semi-colons should be consigned to a special hell where all they do is come up with plots for reality TV-shows.

Have we run out of ideas? The last real development in genre was cyberpunk in the 80’s and since then all it seems we’ve been doing is mashing existing stories together to see if we can come up with anything cool.

Steampunk is arguably the most popular mashed genre going at the moment. Plus you have things like Weird West, Chuthulu is popping up everywhere, zombies are invading everything, gods/clones/monsters in high school and a thousand more examples. These are not bad things and I’m certainly not having a go at mash-ups; Ghostbusters is one of my all time favourite movies of all times and its sci-fi/horror. Mash ups can be awesome and I always like having the possibility of a ray-gun in my D&D campaign.

But even two and three tier mash-ups are getting tired and there are now anything goes, whole-damn-kitchen-sink approach in movies like Spy-Kids; TV shows like Community, Adventure Time and the Mighty Boosh; and in RPGs like RIFTS and GURPS.

In the meantime, nothing truly NEW is being created. When was the last time you’ve been to a movie, read a book or watched a show and truly said, “I’ve never seen that before!”? ‘The Matrix’ maybe? but even then I can say it was beaten by Red Dwarf’s ‘Back to Reality’ episode by seven years.

And whose fault is it? Ours: thirtyish, primarily males (more on that in a moment) who have been submerged in pop-culture since Star Wars and have never come up for air. While we are incredibly good at coming up with variations on a theme, the truly original seems to have eluded us.

Much of what we now hold dear was not created by geeks, but by television execs, movie producers, toy marketers, artists and overworked writers, all of whom were working for a paycheque, not for love.

Getting back to gender for a moment, let me ask you this; not counting Game of Thrones, what were the last three major book (series) to make a real impact in the spec-fic category? Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and (like it nor not) Twilight, and three were all written by women. Maybe because women are exposed to Geek Culture but rarely suffer from the over-exposure suffered by guys like me allows the room for some original, or at least outside ideas to filter into their imagination.

Yes, I am aware than all of the series are just their own variations-on a-theme, but they are variations on a theme that caught the attention of the muggles, which is rare enough to be astonishing.

Which brings me back around to the second book I talked about, ‘Ready Player One’. First, I’d like to state that the book is a LOT of fun and I heartily recommend it to fans of eighties minutia.

However there are two major problems with ‘Ready Player One’. My wife picked up on them almost right away, but took me longer to puzzle out. It may be because she’s just smarter than me, but it may be gender differences coming into play again.

Firstly, in the book, the hero literally shuts himself off from the world to immerse himself completely in the virtual reality of the game. The story does contain a mild warning against that kind of behaviour, but like ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Scarface’ my wife and I believe that the book will be imitated more than heeded.

Nor does the book go too far to in condemning the behaviour. In the end, the hero is richly rewarded for his efforts, but suffers none of the negative side effects that befall Don Michael Corleone or Tony Montana.

Secondly, and to drag this rambling essay back to my main point, RP1 is set thirty years from now, but the characters are essentially all running around inside the head of an eighties obsessed, autistic shut-in (insert St.Elsewhere joke here). The characters spend all their time interacting with Atari Video Games, debating old Matthew Broderick movies (Ladyhawke is AWESOME), playing classic rpg modules, flying Xwings and listening to music that is already thirty years old.

Seriously, has nothing NEW has been created in the coming thirty years to occupy these kids’ inertest? The book revels in its obsession for geek culture from Star Wars to Firefly (1977-2002), and that is absolutely fine in a bubblegum adventure book, but I couldn’t help but close the book and think, ‘Jeez, geek-culture of the future is really sad’.

Then I remembered that this year we're seeing the release of yet even more Alien, Spiderman and Batman movies. Maybe it isn't just the future that looks sad.

One of my martial arts instructors told me once not to worry if it felt like I’d plateaued in my training. That was when I was truly internalizing the techniques and when that happened, I would naturally progress to the next level.

I think we’ve seriously plateaued. The question is, do we have what it takes to make it to the next level?

Question, Comments, Complaints?

Tomb of Horrors/Ready Player One Challenge & the Epic Fail

Armed with their own reference copy of the module, can a simple third level, Basic D&D Fighter survive the infamous adventure, 'Tomb of Horrors'? As postulated in the novel Ready Player One.

Warning: Contains Spoilers to the Tomb of Horrors Adventure Module.

Character

Thacko II, Son of Thacko!
Level 3 Fighter
Str 17 (+3)
Dex 15 (+2)
Con 17 (+3)
Int 9
Wis 8(-1)
Cha 8(-1)

HP: 29
AC: 3

Begin Again the Quest!
Thacko II, Son of Thacko, continued the quest that claimed his father by ignoring the false entrances and moving directly through the teleport gate to Room 11. Since this time I am allowing for automatic Secret Doors finding, he proceeds through the tunnel to Room 13, taking 14hp total damage from traps and falls while retrieving the Ring of Protection +1. He also steals the crystal box (worth 1,000gp). He now has 15hp left, but has fulfilled one Condition of Victory!

Proceeding down the next tunnel, he enters the Chapel of Evil and loots the pews, collecting all the coins. He decides to leave all his loot here since it too heavy to carry now and he will have to back-track to collect the Gem of Seeing anyway.

Unfortunately, he must sacrifice his Ring of Protection to trigger the secret door and leave the chapel. Easily passing through the pit-doors, he ignores the sounds of music and … here we come to an insurmountable end for young Thacko.

Conclusion
To proceed in any direction from this point in the Tomb requires at least one of the following A) The Gem of Seeing, B) some sort of Magical Fire and/or C) Detect Magic a Dispel Magic spells. Since it is impossible for a third level Fighter to have any spells, and he has no gems to go back and collect the Gem of Seeing, he is essentially stuck here. Even getting out of the tomb means facing the Mutant Gargoyle, which means any third level fighter is now effectively dead.

Therefore, I must declare that without some serious tinkering, the premise of the book is declared untenable! A lone, 3rd level fighter with basic equipment cannot hope to defeat the Tomb of Horrors.

Conditions of Victory Met: None. You can collect the Ring of Protection +1, but you later have to destroyed it. And it has been a long time since I’ve bothered to convert silver and electrum pieces, but I don’t think he’s collected the full 20,000 yet.

So Now What?
I'm going to reread that section of Ready Player One to see if there are any further clues as to how the character manuevered through the Tomb, but by this point we are wandering farther and farther away original spirit of the module.

Speaking with BFX, we've come up with two ways to modify the premise to make it gameable:
1) A party of third level characters finds a hand drawn map of the Tomb. Some of the dangers are marked, but certainly not all of them.

2)One night in a tavern, the third level party plies an old, half-mad adventurer with ale to tell of the time she and her friends braved the tomb. Allow the players to read over the module once, then take it away from them. To be especially devious, make them read it the week before.

Tomb of Horrors/Ready Player One Challenge: Attempt 1

Armed with their own reference copy of the module, can a simple third level, Basic D&D Fighter survive the infamous adventure, 'Tomb of Horrors'? As postulated in the novel Ready Player One.

Warning: Contains Spoilers to the Tomb of Horrors Adventure Module.

Character
Thacko: Level 3 Fighter
Str 17 (+3)
Dex 12
Con 13 (+1)
Int 9
Wis 10
Cha 12

HP: 19
AC: 5

Saving Throws
Poison/Death 12
Wand 13
Stone/Paralysis 14
Dragon Breath 15
Spell/Staff 16

Equipment
Short Sword d6
Leather Armour AC 2
Shield AC 2
Torch(es)

Conditions for Victory
While in the Tomb, You Must Collect:
-20,000 (or more) gp!
-A Bag of Holding
-Flaming Sword+1
-Ring of Protection +1
-A Gem of Seeing,
-a full set of Full Plate +3!
Collect all of the above and make it to Room 25: the “Pillared Throne Room”.

Begin the Challenge!
Room 3
Ignoring the false entrances, Thacko made his way past the pit traps and went through the archway to Room 5 with the glowing stones pressed On and was transported to Room 11.

Without any gems, he could not yet get the ‘Gem of Seeing’ (needed to complete the Conditions of Victory) from the broken statue. Moving into Room 12, he ignored the false doors and moved into Room 10. Since he needs the Ring of Protection in Room 13, he goes through the hidden crawlspace, but the hidden door will not open (roll failed) and he is forced to turn back.

Going through the second crawl space, he cannot open the secret door here either (roll failed).

With no way forward, Thacko’s quest is effectively at an end. To return to the entrance he will have to negotiate through the Complex of Secret Doors and if he survives that, face the mutant gargoyle in Room 8.

RIP, Thacko, First of your Name.

Conditions of Victory Met: None!

Thoughts: Ready Player One must make the assumption that the character is able to open Secret Doors if they know they are there. It is something I’ve allowed in my own campaigns (depending on the door), but haven’t really encountered it in any pre-made module before, so I’m not sure exactly how to proceed.

On one hand, there are some very definite rules in TOH for discovering Secret Doors, (1in6 or 4in6 chance), and finding them is very much part of the adventure. But on the other hand, there is now only a 1 in six chance of any Ready Player One Challenge making it past Room 13.

Given the premise presented in RP1, I suppose I’ll have to allow automatic Secret Door discoveries, but it feels like a fundamental cop-out to the meatgrinder spirit of Tomb of Horrors.

If anyone has any strong feelings on this one way or another please let me know. Tomorrow I shall attempt it again with Thacko II, Son of Thacko!

Ready Player One: Tomb of Horrors Challenge!

I have just started reading Ernest Cline’s dystopian love-letter to 80’s Pop-Culture, “Ready Player One”. I want to finish it before commenting further and its reflection on geek culture.

What tickled my OSR fancy however (minor spoiler warning) was that the book postulates that a third level fighter, working solo can get through the infamous D&D meatgrinder adventure, ‘Tomb of Horrors’, provided they have a copy of the module in-hand to refer to while they did so.

Challenge accepted, sir!

The Rules
-You may play Tomb of Horrors with any Edition. (RP1 is heavy geeky, but not geeky enough to mention what edition of D&D the adventure is based on. Given the context it is pre-1985, which means Basic D&D or AD&D1.)
-UPDATE: Retro-Clone games such as Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, etc are permitted as well. -You must play by all the rules of that Edition and abide by all rolls of the dice.
-Characters must be third level, basic classes only.
-No multiclass, homebrew or prestige classes permitted.
-The only permitted character races are Human, Elf, Dwarf and Halfling, regardless of edition.
-Character begins with basic, non-magical equipment only. What the starting level, base character equipment is, is all you get.
-True adherents will start with a third level human fighter, equipped with a short sword, a bronze shield, a suit of bandied leather armour and a torch.

While in the Tomb, You Must Collect:
-20,000 (or more) gp!
-A Bag of Holding
-Flaming Sword+1
-Ring of Protection +1
-A Gem of Seeing,
And the big prize, a set of Full Plate +3!

Conditions for Victory!
Collect all of the above and make it to Room 25: the “Pillared Throne Room”.

No one reads this blog, but I’m really curious to see if anyone will join me on this mighty quest!

And if anyone has ever came up with rules for/played out a scenario where they have played classic arcade games with a demi-lich, let me know. Or better yet if anyone can whip up a quick jpg, becuz it would make for a bitchin' van painting!

The Problem with Kickstarter

via Mightygodking.

Though he is talking about boardgames, I wonder how many of these problems carry over to RPGs? Certainly they raise money to get some wonderful projects off the ground, but how are they are generating sales after the project is released, or better yet, at generating NEW players?

Given that the bulk of players are in their thirties and forties, I see tabletop RPGs facing extinction in ten-to-twenty years, much sooner if D&DNext flops. Even now they are more of a cultural artifact than active concern. Getting back to Kickstarted I hear about campaigns mostly through other Blogs, which are only read by people already interested in the hobby.

Gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy are getting a semi-revival by moving into electronic devices and I'm frankly amazed that I haven't heard more from Hasbro about doing this with Dungeons and Dragons. There will always be people who want to hear the dice rattle across the table, I'm one of them, but I'm old enough to know that I'm old.

Quickie Adventure Idea

Sorry for all the movie posts, but on Doctor’s orders, I’ve been convalescing which means sitting on my ass and watching way too many bad films.

-Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz was pretty funny.
-Gulliver’s Travels is bad, bad, bad, badbadbadbad!
-Drive Angry is similarly awful, but at least it wasn't a cold-corporate attempt at a ‘blockbuster’ written by the ‘scriptotron-3000’ and featuring an almost lethal combination of product placement and Jack Black. Drive Angry was at least attempting for gonzo and I thought that “The Accountant” was a fun character that I would definitely co-op for the right kind of campaign.

I did see one movie that was much better than I had anticipated and had an excellent RPG plot.

Background
A Lord’s son is banished for crimes unspeakable, but he vows to return and conquer the kingdom. He then disappears into the east.

Adventure
-the Party learns that a group of bandits have been raiding villages and stealing all the metal they can lay their hands on.
-In a nearby village, the Party encounters one of these raids, and an observant Hero will note that the “bandits” are organized and wearing uniforms.
-The Party proceeds to the city where the rightful rulers are imprisoned. In the city’s main square, there is long furrow of destruction and a makeshift memorial.
-Rescue the city’s rulers by breaking into the city’s dungeons- they have sneak through the city and into the dungeons where they will face the city guard, the strange soldiers and a maybe a monster or two.
-Finding the ruler’s in the deepest party of the dungeon, they find that the ruler’s refuse to escape. Stating that if they do so, the city will be destroyed by the banished Lord.
-He has a powerful Weapon that he brought back from foreign lands … (a cannon in a fantasy campaign).
-The Party then has to ascend the Lord’s tower and defeat the Weapon
-At the top of the tower they confront the Lord and defeat a Weapon, only to have the Lord escape and learn that he has many, many other Weapons that the then uses to destroy the tower.
-Then they have to break into the Lord’s fortress filled with smelters where they are smelting down all the metal they’ve stolen to make more cannons.
-If they fail to defeat the Lord there, he builds a fleet loaded with cannons to conquer the entire Kingdom. The Party must stop him and his fleet before they leave the river and enter the harbour.

Kung Fu Panda 2.

Spear of the Peacock
Damage: d8+2
Powers: Once every five rounds, the spear can be caused to flair in a blazing 'fan' that will distract and disorient any opponent.
Save vs Wand or suffer -5 to all rolls for d4 rounds.

This has D&D monster written all over it...

It does not pay to steal from this tree. Imagine getting spread eagled and devoured alive by millions of ants.

Adventure Time!

by Fred Weasley, Deviant Art
I became aware of this show through a piece of swag my wife brought home from a TV conference a couple of years ago, Her hat is AWESOME! but I haven't really started watching it until I remembered to plug it into my DVR.

Having caught up a bit now, I have to declare the show MANDATORY watching for any OSR roleplayer, especially if your tastes run a little gonzo. Each episode revolves around Finn, last human in the Land of Ooo and his magical dog, Jake as they have a seriously surreal adventure. A GM you can't pick out a good idea or two to use in their game is not paying attention. Already I've got notes in binder on how to use things like;
The Wall of Flesh
Crystal Guardians guarding a crystal apple tree
A giant Lich Lord

The show's wiki is here.

April Blogging A to Z

Cutting it close, but I've officially signed up. Yesterday I tried to sit down and do some work on my RPG stuff but found myself having a tough time pulling it together. Then this morning I remembered this contest and it occured to me that it might be a good way to focus my wandering chemo brain.

I’m going to officially work on The World of Nood, which is the current setting for my D&D/Basic campaign entitled “In Search Of”, but I’m toying with duel-streaming it with the Clawed Lands, a more serious setting I’ve written about here once or twice.

This year's OSR challenge hosted by "The Other Side Blog".

Game Log III: Escape from the Unknown

New Character: Sokrates the Barbarian. Heralds from the Land of Barbonia and worshipper of the God Koom. Played by Mikey

After looting the Barrel Golem, the Wild Stallions found a door heading north that lead to a natural cavern with an opening high on the cliff wall. There they found a grappling hook embedded in the ground, with someone climbing up, or possibly down…

Thinking it was the Halfling Harb, they readied to cut the rope and carefully peered over the edge, to find themselves face to face with a young warrior named Sokrates climbing his way up. Sokrates had heard of the treasures of Rogaine and Zell, and had come seeking his fortunes.

Happy to have another fighter in the party, the Wild Stallions accepted the young barbarian with an apparent speech impediment and went father into the dungeon, where they were nearly squeaked to death by a swarm of bats lead by two Mobats.

Fed up, wounded and nearly out of supplies, the party headed back to the cliff face and saw, in the fading sunlight, a red glow surrounding a white castle far down the valley. They spent the night in the cave, climbed down the next morning and headed back to Bastion.

After a quick resupply and hearty dinner (mobat and carrion crawler, specialty of the Twig and Berries Inn), they deliberate their next course of action; go back to the Caves of Questeron or seek out the White Castle?


Girdling their loins, they decided to set off to the investigate the White Castle, effectively ending their journey In Search of the Unknown, and opening the way to investigate the Palace of the Silver Princess.

After bravely making their way into guardhouse, they bravely killed a half starved giant rat and were stumped by a portcullis.

The End (for now).