We're On...Texas Old School D&D Mixer July 11

Looks like we've hit a pretty good critical mass of interest for our old school mixer idea. So with no further ado, I'd like to formally throw down a "save the date" for folks interested.

The mixer itself is set July 11, 6pm-9pm at Scholz's Garten, a famous watering (and eating) hole for politicos, newshounds, students, and other motley Austin elements. Look for us at a big table in the middle room.

We're also organizing some one-shot or drop in games early that afternoon at Dragon's Lair, so you can actually get some gaming in if you come out.

If you want to come please email me at kutalik at gmail dot com and I will send you the formal invitation and other details.

Hobbit, the Musical

After reading Troll and Flame's recent post on movies for gamers, my head suddenly inexplicably was filled with a tune from childhood. You know the kind, it plays over and over in an annoying loop until you just have to roll with that. That song would be from that great (and eminently scary) scene from the cartoon version of the Hobbit in which the warg-riding goblins chase the wee ones up a tree.

Hunting down the vid on YouTube, I was struck by how much this cartoon and its bad/good brother "The Return of the King" had an influence on my own idea of what fantasy was as a kid. For years I thought of D&D elves as somewhat sinister-looking gray-green creatures; dwarves as skinny somewhat mischievous obsessives; and orcs as oppressed draftees.

Where there is a whip, there is a way...

Revised C&C variant combat rules

My friend and co-tinkerer, Jon from Seattle (aka Redbeard), has released a revised version of his Castles and Crusades variant combat rules based on feedback from many of you fine folks. I'm pasting his latest greatest below (for more discussion about it, mosey over to Dragonsfoot here.)

Why a Grid? To enjoy combat as a tactical mini-game. Tumbling, flanking, pulling an Errol Flynn. To give the melee types the ability to protect the squishies, define simple “Attacks of Opportunity.”

1.Defining the Grid: Go with 5' squares and round to nearest.

2.Threat Range aka Reach
*Threat Range is how far you can reach and smack someone with a melee weapon if you've got one (or if you're trained in unarmed combat) and you're currently able to defend yourself.

*Most melee weapons for human sized critters will have a threat range of 5' – one square

*Polearms have a threat range of 10' if you've been trained with them (see Class Abilities).

*Weapons like nets, whips and chains may have larger threat ranges.

*Larger creatures will have larger threat ranges. Add 5' for each size greater than medium.

*Extraordinarily small creatures, such as Pixies, may have no Threat Range at all.

*Some creatures like snakes or creatures with long appendages may have Threat Ranges larger than their size would indicate.

3.Threat Attacks
*You get to make a Threat Attack on an enemy when it first enters your threat range. The Threat Attack is resolved immediately, before the enemy gets to make another action.

*Most combatants only get to make one Threat Attack per round.

*The CK can allow Threat Attacks when an enemy is unable to defend itself. Beg your CK.

4.Position
*Aware combatants are assumed to be able to adjust their facing as needed during a round (as usual, the CK applies commonsense to this rule. This is to keep people from simply running around behind someone who sees them coming.)

*Flanking: When two (or more) attackers are on completely opposite sides of a target, all such attackers are considered Flanking and get +2 to hit. Rogues qualify for backstab.

5.New Combat Maneuvers for the Grid
Push: A successful Push pushes the target back 5' in the direction desired by the attacker, who moves into the vacated space. The target number is 10 plus the to-hit bonus and size of the defender (+2/-2 per size difference). The attacker rolls a d20, adds strength and base to hit for combat trained classes (CK's discretion.) An attacker using a shield adds a +2 to the die roll.

Body Blow: a big hit (19 or 20 on a successful to hit) from a melee attack (determined by CK) can push a target back 5' and enter the vacated space. Defender gets a strength saving throw against 10+damage inflicted with -2/+2 for each size difference.

Tumble: Avoid a threat attack by making a Tumble check (dex check, + character level for rogue, assassin, monk). The target number is 10+ the base to hit of the Threat Attacker.

Dodge: a defender can increase their dodge bonus against one attacker from +2 to +4 by giving ground and moving 5' back in the direction specified by the attacker.

6.Class Abilities (which class gets them)
Hold the Line (Fighter): When a character with the Hold the Line ability succeeds on a threat attack, the target must cease movement in that space.

Combat Reflexes (any character with strength prime): A character with Combat Reflexes may make one Threat Attack per opponent entering Threat Range, not one per turn.

Potent Charge (Fighter, Knight with Lance) - if the character with Potent Charge is being Threat Attacked by the target of a charge, the charge is resolved first if the charger's weapon can reach its target (instead of the threat attack being resolved first.)

Uncanny Dodge (Barbarian,Monk) Can't be flanked except by attackers of higher level.

Mixing Up the Old School in the Lone Star State

I've been cursing the Deadline Gods as of late. These dark minions have thwarted not only a number of posts here on the HC, but, more tragically, my attendance at that marvelous confluence of old school forces that mustered recently at the North Texas RPG. The former will be fixed shortly as I finish up all the neglected half-written posts saved behind the curtain here. The latter...well...that's got me thinking about an idea.

The journalism world is lousy with social mixers. Seems like one can't go two weeks before another invitation to live up to the liver-destroying stereotype of boozy, hard-bitten newshounds pops up in your inbox.

In a second, yet related thought, I've been pleasantly surprised by the sheer number of people I've found online running, playing, writing, and/or pontificating around old school RPGs in the region. Even better, I have been greatly relieved to find that many of them are actually people I quite like.

Punchline: why don't we organize some low-key social soirees for old schoolers around here?

Here's the meat of my modest proposal:
1. We start by meeting one pleasant evening in my hometown in Austin and pick a nice, convivial spot downtown (preferably one with margaritas, mexican martinis, fajitas and other wonders of this fair city).

2. Like a good proper sandbox campaign, we'll have a casual "who ever shows up" kinda attitude to the whole affair. I'll make use of the plethora of social-networking thinga-mijiggys out there to get the word out (Meetup.com, forum posts, blogs announcements yadda yadda), but not sweat outreach overly much.

3. People will be encouraged to bring whatever campaigns, dungeons, house rules, half-crazed ideas they are working on for some good old "show and tell" (minus the frowning old witch of an elementary school teacher hanging over your shoulder). If more gaming comes out of this, more power to us, but we'll start with the casual and social.

If the idea catches on perhaps we can organize another one down in San Antonio (where we have a second HC now going) and further on down the road if others are interested.

So what do y'all think?

The Discreet Charm of City Ruins

Up until my move back to Texas last summer, I lived and worked in the post-industrial train wreck of a city called Detroit. Early on in my seven-winter tenure there, a colleague at the magazine I worked for gave me some half-baked advice about coping with the Motor City: try a positive re-frame and embrace the city in all its ruined charm.

I never managed to get my head around the human misery factor enough to ever quite make that full embrace, but I did fall in on occasion with a peculiar, brave crowd of urban explorers who have.

The covert tours of magnificent hulking buildings (such as the old main train station downtown pictured here), always managed to evoke inside of me the lost-glory awe of Howard-esque ruined cities. The implied sense of danger that came with trespassing in a rough place added to that dramatic tension in a way exploring old West Texas forts or castle ruins in Europe never managed to do. Calling on those memories at times have helped me draw a mental picture of the forbidden dungeons and sunken cities I populate my campaign world with.

Still I have yet to fully capture the totality of that feeling. My maps and scenery descriptions just have never quite hit the mark. They miss something of the scope, adrenalin edge, and pathos of those walking tours.

Travelling back to Michigan in recent months it hit me what I was missing: I wanted a large, sprawling setting that was not quite a full, monster-inhabited ruin, nor simply a run-down fantasy metropolis.

Pulling back to memories of the works of the great medieval historian, Steven Runciman, I suddenly remembered his sad, yet beautifully eloquent description of Constantinople, before its fall to the Turks in 1453. He wrote of the city, which had shrunk from a population of a million in the 12th century down to about a hundred thousand at the time:

"Of the suburbs along the Thracian shores, once studded with splendid villas and rich monasteries, only a few hamlets were left, clustering around some ancient church. The city itself, within its 14 miles of walls, had even in its greatest days, been full of parks and gardens, dividing the various quarters. But now many quarters had disappeared, and fields and orchards separated those that remained. The traveller Ibn Battuta counted 13 hamlets within its walls...In many districts you would have thought you were in the open countryside, with wild roses blooming in the hedgerows in spring and nightengales singing in the copses."

Re-reading that passage cemented it for me. I wanted a city that had a vestiage of human civilization surrounded by an internal wilderness--a "point of light" in the confine of a large-scale urban setting. Why not a once-great metropolis with a valiant human garrison manning sprawling long sets of triple walls beset both internally and externally? Why not a mega-dungeon of sorts sprawling horizontally above ground and here and there punctuated with hard-pressed human "wards"? And best of all, why not plop this mini-sandbox right down on a time-forgotten border of the Hill Cantons sandbox...

Old School D&D: the Subjective Argument

More Good Jack Vance News

A little bird tells me that Songs of the Dying Earth is not the only limited-edition volume of Vancian virtuosity coming out of Subterranean Press this summer. Apparently the Michigan-based publisher is also releasing Vance’s autobiography, This is Me, Jack Vance (complete with the pure-awesome editorial geek subtitle Or More Properly, This is “I”) , and a collection of short stories Wild Thyme, Green Magic. The latter will include a Dying Earth short, so it’s a two-fer as far as I am concerned.

Also yesterday doing a little digging for Vance’s influence on Gary Gygax and early D&D I found the following gem of an essay in which Gygax himself explicitly lays it all out. What more to say on this then?