Some Stuff You Should Know About

Good stuff happening on the blog-o-sphere lately. But you knew that.

• If I was willing to deal with fiddly, 3.5-style character abilities again, I'd probably follow Zak S's lead and tie them to specific areas of the campaign world. Cool of an idea as it is, I can't see myself doing that any time soon. Though I do I know I've enjoyed the handful of odd powers that my nixie has, so maybe.
• JB's got some really interesting observations on poison in Moldvay/Cook. I've got only this to say: Poison should be guaranteed, will-definitely-kill-you death, and shouldn't do it immediately. Got a great moment in the solo game out of something like that.
• Alexis's ideas on running the "end game" are basically how I'd always assumed that something like that would go down. Or how I hope my DM will run things if I ever get to that point with a campaign. But I'm all about the politics, backstabbing, and deal-making.
• So it turns out I'm not actually the only old-school-ish college-age gamer blogging right now. Ian of Swashbuckler's Hideout got into roleplaying with AD&D, and Nick Crayon of Lawful Indifferent started out with BECMI, got into 3e for a while, and these days is all about Labyrinth Lord.
• Roger the GS is working on a color system for D&D magic. It's nifty.
• Jacquaying the dungeon
• Help out James Raggi's long-suffering wife! Get a LotFP Weird Fantasy Role-Playing Box Set out of his living room!

Industry, Armor, and Divine Bards

A couple of things have popped up in blogland lately that deserve a response of some kind, but that I haven't been able to work up a full post for. So I figured I'd do the blog o' links thing, and hit them all at once.

Where the Pros Are Trollsmyth posted a very thoughtful response to my post on industrial irrelevance, pointing out that there are some real benefits to having a healthy industry supporting a hobby, but that the one we have right now isn't quite doing what we need it to, and may even be actively detrimental to play. I'm still not sure how to square the issues he brings up here. Is there a way for industry to remain useful and still make money? The only response I've been able to come up with is that this seems to be something the Old School Renaissance (or parts of it, at least) is trying to answer. It's got it's own specific variation (Is what happened to TSR an inevitable result of selling D&D and D&D supplements, or were there some specific mistakes that, once identified, we can avoid?) but if there's a general answer to that question, that's one obvious place to look for it.

The Failure of the Industry It's not exactly a response since it's really a continuation of what he's been saying for a while, but James Raggi mentioned my post in one of his own, and gave his own answer to what the industry can do to enable play: make adventures. I've never had much use for published adventures, but now that I've got a little more experience with site-based gameplay, I'm beginning to see how they could be useful in an otherwise homebrewed campaign, and he makes some excellent points in that regard. (I particularly like the idea of adventures as models for design and as touchstones for discussion.)

The Foundations of Medieval Europe and The Warrior's Kit in Medieval Europe They're what they sound like: Trollsmyth explains medieval history for the gaming inclined. Pretty anyone who runs D&D-like games should have at least a passing familiarity with the topic, if only so you know what you're ignoring. So go read them.

D&D Armor and Weapon Weights Somewhat less helpful, but entertaining, godlesspaladin rants about armor and weapon weights and how they're all screwy in various D&D editions. He completely misses the point (naturally) but the post is worth a look for the illustrations and the reenactment video. We have a fairly good idea of how fighting in the middle ages worked because the guys doing it wrote it down, and it's not quite how it is in the movies. (It's much, much faster. Less fencing, more "stab the other guy before he stabs you.")

The 4e Divine Bard, Divine Bard Character Sheet, Divine Bard Fluff, and Divine Bard Additions MacGuffin has a very interesting project going on in using alternate power sources for classes. Unfortunately, I'm of limited use in critiquing it due to my relative unfamiliarity with the latest-and-greatest as far as 4e goes. Those of you with more experience with the system, or just an eye for game design, should head on over and have a look.

Gnome Stew

Gnome Stew is up and running!

I don't read as many GMing help-sites as I used to, but Treasure Tables was one of my favorites back in the day, and if Gnome Stew ends up half as good (and so far, it does look very good) it's worth checking out.

I'm not a huge fan of the layout right now, with all the text way over to the left--looks fine above the fold, but once I scroll down it gets a little disorienting. But that's a massively minor nitpick.

The community features intrigue me. If they end up getting used, it could end up as a pretty powerful game blog hub. I'm not aware that we really have one right now. There are some sort of hub-esque things, blogs big enough that most people know about them, but nothing like When Fangirls Attack that keeps everyone talking to each other.

The take home message: Gnome Stew. It's cool. Go there! Do it now!

Look! More Internets!

Wizards of the Coast plans to bring back old settings. Never played any, always been fascinated.

Plausible Deniability possesses, among other things, an article on Geek Social Fallacies. I've suffered a sort of reverse #4, "no mixing of groups because this one is magic!" I got over it.

Qwertyuiopasd is posting again. About Batman villains. I approve.

Doctor Cataclysm

I mentioned Doctor Cataclysm, and his blog A Villain's Life, in sort of an offhand way, but it really deserves a full, proper post. If you haven't read it, go read it now, so far it's very short. (I further recommend that you add it to your feed, and if you don't have a feed, to get one, but now we're shading into irrelevancy.)

I'm really quite taken with it. I have a mild obsession with non-standard storytelling, and I've been interested in the idea of fictional blogging for a while. And, of course, superheroes are cool. Supervillains even more so--especially mad scientists.

That's all certainly part of it. But Doctor Cataclysm himself is really quite charming. He's a super villain, but he's not psychotic. When he's not engaging in (excellent) supervillainy, he occasionally stops muggers, and worries about being "too much of a moocher." The villainy is entertaining, but it seems like a cross between a job and a hobby, (love your work, I guess) and less like destroy-the-world craziness.

Which is good. It's relatable. And, at times, very sweet. (Though I recommend running through the previous posts before hitting that last.)

My favorite thing about this is that it's not fiction in blog form. It is, in fact, a fictional blog. In addition to recounting his villainy, he blogs about movies, politics, and YouTube videos. The politics and the videos are fictional, which is probably necessary, (though the videos might make an interesting project) but the movies are real, which is excellent.

The only trouble is that there's not very much of it, yet. Which is great for me, and you, and everyone getting into it right now, because there's not much to get into before we're up to speed. But I sure hope it keeps up, at the same level of quality, because it sure is a lot of fun.

(I can think of one other nitpick--the most generic of the generic blog templates. But in some ways, that adds to its charm, and I can't fault a brand new blog for not having figured out it's look yet. I still haven't really figured out mine.)

Oh, and a thank you to Neitherworld Stories, for linking to A Villain's Life in the first place. From there I have also learned of Velvet Marauder, but haven't yet had quite the chunk of time I'd like to get through it.

Japan Travel Blog

If you've an interest in Japan, take a look at I (topic marker) something (destination). My friend Karen is spending the summer there, and she's blogging about it.

Cool Happenings: Duranmas Duranmas, Contests, and Crosslinking

As a purveyor of fake modern awesome holidays myself, I heartily approve of Duranmas Duranmas. You should approve it too!

ChattyDM has an adventure concept contest. The catch: 10 words.

I finally figured out what Trollsmyth is trying to do. It says right up at the top, "I’ll also link up with as much good stuff as possible for your websurfing convenience," and even expanded on the idea further. But it didn't really click until he linked to a comment about plot and story in a Grognardia post. Then I realized: he wants the game blog-o-sphere cross-linked.

This is an excellent idea. Something I should do more, too.

Going All Web 2.0 On My Campaign

This post-all-the-campaign-notes-on-the-blog project is starting to give me ideas. Crazy ideas.

Build-a-campaign-on-a-blog ideas.

Jeff Rients is already kinda doing this, with his World of Cinder project, and to a certain extent with Beyond Vinland. But I was thinking, just do the same kind of thing I'm doing with Is This Fair? except post the material before the campaign runs, instead of after.

I'd have an incentive to do at least a little work on it every day, and occasional internet commentary from random internet people wandering through. There would be the possibility of players getting spoilers, but there would also be the possibility of the players actually knowing something about the campaign world before the game started.

And, of course, there's the possibility of collaborative campaign building, but things of that nature never quite seem to work out for me.

Mostly it'd be about incentive. Keep it small, make it part of my routine. Harness that statcounter addiction towards something productive.

What These Players Wanted

Here's an example of the technique I (sort of) described yesterday.

I wrote down these notes a few days after the first session. Roughly two-thirds of this material stayed valid through the last session.

Soern (the name is misspelled in the original document) would basically go wherever he heard their were magical items of interest to him, or interesting kinds of arcane power. Later on, he started collecting one of the magic item sets in the Magic Item Compendium, making him incredibly easy to motivate.

Sigrid (again, misspelled) dropped the justice motivator, partially because it was causing problems with the other characters, but mostly because it was more interesting to her player to be internally conflicted over her own motivations than to have the kind of clarity that the justice thing was best suited for. She later developed an attachment to one of the main NPCs in the campaign. That's something I didn't really mention before, but it turns out that a character who really cares about a particular NPC is incredibly easy (and fun) to motivate.

Rellik, on the other hand, is sort of a case study in wasted potential. I never really could figure out what was interesting to him, mostly because I was too busy with Sigrid and Blank to focus on him. Which I deeply regret.

Xerxed only showed up in the first session. He was retconned/replaced with Blank, because I thought he was too similar to Rellik and potentially destructive to the campaign, and because the person who played both of them thought being a pirate sounded fun. Thus was born Captain Blank, one of the best things to happen to that campaign.

Blank had a lot more handles than Xerxed, being interested in pirating and interaction as well as being cool, and he lacked the potential for psychopathic behavior. He later developed a personal vendetta against a nemesis, a subplot that was both very fun and somewhat underutilized.

Things That Amused Me Today

Wicked sweet.

All kinds of incredible random generators. Names, treasure, nonsensical swearing, you name it.

The only trouble with this site is that I can see how it might be easy to get distracted.

In other news: Clinton Airs Attack Adds . . . Targeting Herself

This Talk of Climaxes Intrigues Me

Today's edition of Treasure Tables got me to thinking. Maybe I should actually write up adventure notes, or at least do some thinking along those lines.

It'd be interesting to actually try to get some dramatic structure out of a session. I tend to do that only on a campaign level, ratcheting up the tension until we get to the big villain fight. It might be worthwhile to actually pay attention to how things are going in an individual session, and try to give it just a bit of structure.

Distracted by THE FUTURE

Pondering post-apocalyptic science fiction as a game setting. Whether I should put the work in, whether I should go for something fairly straightforward or totally oddball. Either way could work, and I've never really done either. Outlaws really wasn't properly post-apocalyptic.

If I go serious I'll want to get d20 Future. Very cool book, I once borrowed it from a friend. If I go with something fantasy/bizarre, I'll have enough material that I won't feel a strong need to go out and buy it. Probably. Chaositech has rules for mutants, I can hack together rules for robots, and I hear BESM d20 has a pretty nifty set of SRD rules for mecha.

I'd really like to put together a feat-tree type system for mutations. Actually, I could just use feats for that--maybe with a class that grants bonus mutation feats. Hrm. That would take work, but it might be worth it.

If I was going to run a post-apocalyptic game.

Superheroes & Sorcerers

Someday, I need to run a campaign that actually uses these ideas. Or just get a copy of Mutants and Masterminds.

Though I think there is something to the "Dungeons and Dragons rules, superhero attitude" idea. This may be something to try with The Book of Nine Swords.

Or--actually--with Iron Heroes. Though I have a suspicion that the two systems may work fairly well together. Might take a bit of tweaking.

I wrote those notes during the two weeks I thought Exalted was "totally awesome." And the six months when I accosted people with Batman factoids on an hourly basis. Can you tell?

Ominous Rumblings On The Horizon

Hrm. They're seriously ditching the Great Wheel cosmology? One of the absolute number one things that makes me think, "Yeah, that's D&D?"

Didn't see that one coming.

Not that I've ever used the Great Wheel myself. I haven't run enough core D&D for it to have come up--and the setting I'm working on now doesn't use it, either. But I always enjoyed reading about it. It's in that same classic D&D category in which I place beholders and gelatinous cubes.

The new cosmology sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure it sounds like D&D. That's by no means a bad thing--I am of course a major fan of Arcana Evolved, Iron Heroes, and Tome of Magic. But I can't help wondering if the off-beat flavor isn't best left to supplements and third party source books. Why can't the baseline be our dependable, slightly goofy, orc-hacking standard D&D goodness?

Goodness that has a lot of history behind it, I might add. That's not a thing to be abandoned lightly.

Also: they appear to have changed the Wizard Implements article since I first laid eyes upon it. There was originally no mention of "Iron Sigil" or "Emerald Frost." Again--this sounds cool, but it doesn't quite sound like D&D. And it had better be, at the least, tweakable, and preferably easily expandable. I don't want to be stuck with someone else's named fluff leaving great muddy footprints all over my game.

A Few More Random Generators

Turns out I posted too soon. Behold: Serendipity! Source of many fine random generators. The interesting site generator is exactly what I need: a spark for an interesting location-based encounter.

Also handy is the Barrel, Crate, and Sack Generator from the Tools section of the Wizards archive. I find it particularly handy for generating treasure captured from merchant caravans and the like; sometimes one needs trade goods rather than gold and jewels, and this utility provides an interestingly unusual assortment.

My Hex Map Is Not Nearly Weird Enough

"This humble mountain republic was noted for its advanced art. It was destroyed by a neighboring country because of the people's extreme perversion, leaving behind only methods of transportation and political theories."

Brought to you by Seventh Sanctum's Lost Civilization Generator

This is going in the hex map. Don't know how. Don't know where. But it needs to be there, and it needs to be there soon.

I really like randomly generating content. I've been doing a lot of it lately, because I want this project to have a kind of wacky scope that I can't achieve independently.

So far I've mostly been using the aforementioned Seventh Sanctum, Slack'n'Hash, and a few of the charts in the Dungeon Masters Guide and the DMG II. Because I haven't yet gotten a copy of the 1st Edition Guide.

Anyone else have any favorite chart sources? Untapped mines of wonder of which I have not yet heard?

Direct! From The Trenches

Preliminary report: Risus-mediated play-by-post roleplaying is awesome.

Naturally, this is mostly a function of the GMing. She knows her material, and she's taking advantage of the form.

But the form! It exercises some mental muscles roleplaying doesn't normally use. Writer-type muscles.

An interesting challenge: how to get across what my character is thinking without using any internal monologue?

It's also interesting, being able ask the GM questions in the middle of a game. I tend to try to discourage side-talk in tabletop play; time spent one-on-one seriously subtracts from everyone else's play time. I can do that kind of thing out of game, but that discussion takes place on a strategic level.

In this game, if I come up with a question that I think my character would know the answer to, I can fire off a quick note the the GM and the other players are none the wiser. And it works the other way. I can come up with information about my character as the GM needs it.

Which is how I like to work: incrementally. Come up with an idea and spin off of that.

This is a style that fits with me. Writing, collaboration, time to think. It'll never replace tabletop, but if it stays this good I may have to make it a regular part of my gaming diet.

On the other hand, the waiting is going to drive me insane.

A Handy Resource

Something else I'm doing with my hex-map: working in the free Wizards adventures.

They're short and to the point, with one or two locations and an interesting opponent. Exactly what I need for this project. The map is still mostly original material, but these help to get a bit of variety.

Adventure Notes

So I was going through my notes for the Arcana Evolved island campaign, because I was thinking that I might post them on the blog in response to the Treasure Tables request. What I discovered is that I really don't have adventure notes, exactly. I have some notes on NPCs, locations, and the plots that are afoot, but I didn't write down much along the lines of "this is what I expect will happen in this session."

I don't know how other people handle their notes, so I don't know quite what to make of this discovery. Are these "adventure notes" some different variety of beast than what I do? Or are they more detailed versions of my "the players will probably run into this at some point, so I will describe it" system?

On Villainy: Some Random Advice

Robin D. Laws is (as always) saying some interesting things today, and I thought I'd chime in, because it links up with something I've been thinking about for a while.

Some of the best single sessions I've ever run revolved around PC failure. There is, I think, a technique to it, that I stumbled across by accident, but I've found it to be very powerful when used properly. Those of you who have played games I've run before will probably recognize it; I wasn't using it intentionally then, but it's been handy enough that I put thought into how to repeat it.

First, set the PCs up as fairly competent. This is important--it's no fun to just start losing and never stop. The players need to feel that they and their characters are equal to most challenges you're going to throw at them.

Then, have a villain just barely get away. Success mixed with failure is key here. Have the villain escape just as the players have foiled the evil plot. Or let the players learn the identity of the villain, or that there is a villain, even as the villain's plans go into action.

Another handy trick is to have the villain take something important to the PCs--they haven't been killed, and they've technically got the villain on the run, but damn do they want to get the bastard.

This is the absolute best way I know of to get a party interested in taking out your villain. Ideally, there should be some kind of action they can take against said villain. Even if you'd rather they not totally foil the evil master-plan, giving them something to attack or some direction to start moving in will help keep them from throwing things at you.

Because the goal of this trick isn't to have the players despair, with cries of "Blast! Foiled again!" It's a way to get them very, very motivated, in a way that you have control of--and as a benefit, it's a way to get them invested in the world, and making plans. Because they will want to make plans. Plans as only wronged players can make.