Hill Cantons

Pre-TSR Petal Throne Releasing Shortly

2012-02-11T14:09:00.008-06:00

Big breaking news for Tekumel lovers: the eminent publication of the original Empire of the Petal Throne (the playtest version before the TSR-mandated publication changes) ain't just a sexy rumor. It's being released by the Tekumel Foundation in PDF on RPGNow and DriveThruRPG shortly.

According to Victor Raymond of the Foundation "there are some subtle and some not-so-subtle differences between it and the published version from TSR." The price is not yet set, but should be "under $20."

Above is "Mimeo EPT" pictured with one of M.A.R. Barker's original campaign maps. Click to enlarge and check out the Tsolyani map inscriptions. The Foundation is discussing how best to release the maps to the public.

Color me excited and expect more news shortly.

Beyond the Weird: an Interview with Trey Causey

2012-02-09T11:07:00.002-06:00

One of the most hackneyed of interview cliches is to introduce someone as a “man that perhaps needs no introduction.” If you are reading this blog, though, my gut says you've already encountered Trey Causey and his blog From the Sorcerer's Scroll.

If you haven't, boogie over to that link above, poke around a bit and then come back here before you read the interview. My second hunch of the day tells me you are likely to have a similar experience to what I did when bumping into his blog more than a year ago.

At that first sitting, I read through blog posts for hours immediately developing a strong appreciation for its pulpy thematic unity; the quirky (and quite funny) setting write-ups; the achingly appropriate photos; and the underlying sense that fantasy is something truly weird and unbounded—something other than a stock genre.

At the tail end of last year, Trey finally made good on his threats to publish Weird Adventures, a setting sourcebook detailing the City and matching world his fantasy Pulp-era setting. I make no pretense at an objective review. I'm generally not much of a “buyer” or “joiner” when it comes to new rpg products, but seeing bound it together in a hardcover was exciting enough to make me want to play something riffing off it again.

Curious readers can find it here for themselves in PDF, softcover, and hardcover form.

So with no introduction, ahem...

Hill Cantons: Tell the readers a bit how you got into all this. What led you to make the leap from being just a gamer to someone creating content for gaming? Where did the vision for the City begin and how did it take off? What broke in your head?

Trey Causey: It’s the fault of my friend and sometimes collaborator, Jim Shelley. We’d email back and forth during the workday as time permitted about comics, movies, or whatever. At times, I’d want to discuss setting ideas and what not better suited for gaming than anything else. Jim wasn’t (at that time) a gamer. He suggested I start a blog, at least partially so he could get out of having to listen my gaming ideas! I had also started reading Grognardia, Monsters and Manuals, and some other blogs around the same time, so they were an inspiration, too.

The kernel of the idea that would become the City predates the blog. I don’t remember when it began to come together, but it was born of consideration of China Mieville’s comment about “lancing the boil” of Tolkien’s influence of on fantasy. What he may have meant in a more antagonistic way, I viewed as just the expression of the need to open things up a bit, to expand the boundaries. Still, setting-wise, Mieville’s solution was basically to move from the Medieval to the Victorian. I felt like Steampunk had been done, too.

I wanted a fantasy setting that was going to be based on distinctly American tropes, because that we haven’t seen much of. We’ve got our own legends and fairy tales: tall-tale characters, Oz, Forteana, superheroes. I wanted to go something with those sorts of ingredients. The two eras of American history most mythologized in pop culture are probably the Old West and the “Pulp Era”—the Great Depression, mainly. To my mind, it was this latter era that encompassed more of the elements I wanted to work with.

Anyway, this was just an idea that I didn’t do anything with for some time. After starting the blog, I gave some thought to the D&D influences on Mieville’s Perdido Street Station. There are some nice quotes about adventurers in it, which somehow I missed when I first read it. The idea of making use of D&D tropes collided with the older idea of a Pulp era fantasy in my brain, and the City was born.

The main aesthetic was to be the "mean streets" of the hard-boiled detective novel. If we ignore the Western (at least for a minute), Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and their fellows, are the American equivalent to the Arthurian knights. Of course, the streets of the City aren’t just mean—they’re weird. Movies like Dark City and City of Lost Children had some of that feel. The fiction of Lovecraft, Leiber and Clark Ashton Smith played a part. So did Golden Age comics (particularly Captain Marvel and the Spirit) and more recent comics like The Goon, Sandman, and The Invisibles.

HC: What other literary/aesthetic/gaming influences went into the mix?

TC: There are a lot of influences as different parts are inspired by different things. The conception of God and the Heavens, and a bit of how the “planes beyond” work, is tonally informed by Cabell's Jurgen. The misshapen, bootlegging Ogres were born of “Faces of Meth” scare posters and "yokel horror" like The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn. The City's tax collectors emerged from a stew composed of a Daffy Duck cartoon about a frighteningly persistent little man from the draft board, Brazil and the general British portrayal of civil servants, and the fact that the SRD had a monster called an "Inevitable" (as in “two things in life are..”) that they were misusing.

HC: Circling back to the blog, one of the most interesting and compelling things about Weird Adventures is that I feel like I have been watching it unfold one bit at a time over there for more than a year. Often you get content teasers from designers about what they are working on, your approach felt much more organic and engaging.

How did you get started down the road of using the blog in this manner? Did you have your eyes on doing it that way from the get go or did it just develop?

TC: When I started the blog there wasn’t any idea of Weird Adventures. The first four months or so of posts were devoted to my then-current setting, which was the latest iteration of my D&D world that had been constantly mutating since middle school. In April 2010, I wrote a post called “Toward A Hard-boiled Fantasy Sandbox,” and from there the idea grew a lot more quickly than I let on in the blog posts. Archeology of my Google docs show that, within a week of that post, I’d written a rough outline of what I was then calling “The City Guide.” Looking back at it, I’m surprised how many elements are already there that wouldn’t make it on to the blog for months to come.

As far as the content on the blog goes, I wasn’t trying to tease (at least, not primarily). At first, I wanted to drum up interest so that there would be a fanbase for a theoretical product. Later, I had the idea that blog content and book content would be mostly the same to cut down on the writing workload. A good idea, but it didn’t work out so well. There just wasn’t always a good blog post “angle” for a lot of the stuff the book needed. Plus, I wanted there to be enough original content so people felt like they got their money’s worth. Several of the sections in WA are mostly material that had appeared on the blog, but the vast majority of the City section was written expressly for the book (though a bit of it did appear on the blog before the book came out).

HC: Let's talk a little about the making of WA. How long were you expecting to get it over and one by? How long did it actually take? What was the most difficult thing you felt like you had to overcome?

TC: It took a lot longer than I thought! I’m afraid to look back at the blog; I know that--even though I tried to stay vague--I gave tentative release dates at various points that wound up being way off. Even though I had started planning it in April 2010, the oldest actual content files I have date from September. I don’t know what I was doing in the months in between. Still hoping just writing for the blog would do it, I guess. I did start commissioning artwork, though, which wound up being a bit of mistake. I think it’s hard to know what pieces of art you might need until you’ve got a good bit written.

The hardest thing was probably just doing all the damn writing. The City section went on forever! I was getting up on weekend days at 6am like they were week days and writing for an hour or so before doing anything else. It complicated dating as well, as I had a couple of distance relationships during the period I was working on it. It was sometimes tricky to explain how important it was to me to write this thing I wasn’t getting paid for about goblins and wizards. The fact that I tried might explain why I’m still single.

HC: What's next? Any plans for expanding WA? Moving on to other projects? And if so, what?

TC: I’m not sure yet. I think there are definitely more things in the City and the Strange New World left to explore. It doesn’t seem like any consensus has emerged yet as to what people would like to see more of, so crowdsourcing hasn’t really helped up to this point. The prospect of some sort of collaboration has been raised, so that might help me decide. That discussion is in the early stages, though, so it might not come to anything. I have some other projects that I’ve thought about (like my Pulp Space posts), but no firm plans yet. I’m open to suggestions.

For now, all I can say definitively is that I’m going to be continuing to explore the City’s world on the blog—and hopefully soon in games both in-person and online.

[Editor's Note: all the illustrations above are drawn from WA, with permission natch.]

Alternatives to Metal: Plastic 28mm

2012-02-08T13:11:00.002-06:00

There is a quiet revolution going in the world of wargaming miniatures. With the price of pewter figures continually skyrocketing, in the past couple years a surprising number of hard plastic ranges are starting to break out of their 1/72 scale ghetto (that's roughly 21-24 mm in scale) into the big boy ranges.

If you were wanting to start amassing your fantasy army in 28mm scale—a nice median large scale in which you can mix in your rpg tabletop models--there is no better time than now.

Let's take a look at a few of the offerings:

HaT Industries. This long-standing German model company is just starting to break into 28mm. It's mostly Napoleonics right now, but they have a great and potentially useful El-Cid era range out. (In a side note that totally slays me having accumulated three budget-whipping armies of Andalusians, Almovarids, and Spanish Feudals totaling about 700 metal figures seven years back.)

Pro: Dirt cheap and well sculpted to boot, a box will run about $12-14 for a whopping 32 figures which works out to be about $.40 a figure. The figures are very nicely sculpted and exotic enough to have a good feel for a fantasy army. In a pinch the Andalusians and Moors could stand in for elves or some other exotic humanoid.

Con: Again narrow choices from one specific historical era.

Mail order them here.

Wargames Factory. Not to be confused with the Wargames Foundry, this relatively new company specializes in hard plastic 28mms. A scant two years ago they only carried a few lines of ancient historicals, now they have a vibrant range of Orcs, Skeletons, Zombies, Vikings (both bondi and huscarls), Saxons, Romans, Ancient Celts, and Samurai that can be drafted for fantasy army duty.

You can order directly from their webstore here.

Pro: A wide useful range with nice sculpts. The price per figure is very affordable. Most boxes run $20 for 32 figures, that's about $.63/figure. Compare that to the normal $2-4/figure of metal.

Con: Some assembly required (a phrase that makes me cringe).

Zvezda. My favorite Russian plastic soldier manufacturer puts out a fantastic range of 1/72 well-sculpted figures for a range of eras. Luckily for our purposes they have a 28mm fantasy range of equal quality under the clunky derivative title, Ring of Rule.The range has a nice assortment of skeleton legionaries, GW-like Orks, Elves, necromancers, hero-types, etc.

Pro: One of the few explicitly fantasy ranges of the cheap manufacturers (I'm not counting Games Workshop here for obvious reasons). High level of customability, lots of different weapons, arms, and heads (this is again a con for me as I hate gluing at an irrationally high level).

Con: It's harder to get the full range days (they may have stopped manufacturing them) from mail order sites. The price for the individual sets is not at all worth it (in the $10 range), so it only qualifies affordable if you manage to score a larger game box set like Return of the Lost Legion or Siege of the Royal Castle (which comes handily with two armies, siege machines and an entire castle model in scale).

Best bet is a patient wait on Ebay or from a larger mail order distributor like Squadron.

[Editor's Note: portions of this post will appear in the Affordable Alternatives chapter of the Guide to Fantasy War.]

Tormenting Labyrinth Lord

2012-02-06T13:23:00.000-06:00

I will be tying up some loose ends the next couple days before moving on to presenting design goals and playtest campaign for the so-called the Fantasy War Guide (working title mind you). Today we are finishing up our little two-week tour of UnderSigil.

Tacking on a possible Sigil undercity field trip(s) to the HC campaign just cries out for some new, setting-appropriate chrome to bolt unto my Labyrinth Lord chassis. The mini-campaign will likely include some untimely deaths—and a few new bloods from Google Plus—so I threw together some guidelines for new characters in that strange torus city in the sky.

In general, these house rules are also tailored more to reflect a tabletop version of Torment rather than the 2^nd (and later edition) canon. Since the delving tone of the mini-campaign just seems to jive better with the play experience of the computer version better than 2e canon, why not take the opportunity to make them tilt more that way?

Rules for Hill Cagers:

Clerics aren't a playable class for Sigil natives. Blood charms and clot charms giving magic healing effects will be plentiful and relatively affordable topside.

Local magic users will have access to all spells found in Torment, both the special ones of the playable NPCs and the uniquely 2^nd edition ones. Spell effects will be tailored to LL mechanics. Here's your chance to sex up your Magic Missile with a spell called Reign of Anger.

Weapons will also reflect the computer game, though not strictly. Axes, hammers/clubs, and daggers will be plentiful and cheap. Swords and missile weapons will be more rare and expensive as such (twice the price with a small percentage of availability modified by INT).

Armor will also be difficult to find and buy as per the game. Leather will be the norm, metal armors hard to find and generally more expensive (same chance as above). Again charms and other odd items to bolster AC temporarily will be reasonably easy to find.

Attributes will be 3d6 in order. However a player can draw from a pool of 6 dice when rolling each attribute. Regardless of how they are used only the 3 best results are counted for each stat.

An interesting variant mechanic in Torment is that high Wisdom gives you an Experience Point bonus. It makes a ton of sense, the ability to learn from our experiences seems to be a textbook definition of wisdom after all. In a Cleric-less world it further makes the attribute something other than a dump stat, so I'm going to run with. The chart below is taken directly from the game backend.

WIS	Exp Bonus
12 or less	0%
13	2%
14	5%
15	8%
16	10%
17	13%
18	15%

In this Sigil, factions are for squares...err...NPCs (and in the deep background in this delving centered take on Sigil). There is only three-fold alignment, though like factions it won't be strongly emphasized. All native PCs start as Neutral can be moved into Lawful or Chaotic on a session by session basis.

Now for some race-classes: Githyanki sub out for the Elf race-class (fighter/magic-users); Tieflings as fighter/thief race class (maybe use a modded version of the White Ape one in Realms of Crawling Chaos an tack an ability to cast darkness at a certain level); and my favorite goat centaurs the Bariaur (use Halfling advancement table, 60' infravision, 15' movement, STR 13 min). Of the standard demihumans, we'll have dwarves, courtesy of their underground corner of Sigil, Guirncraag.

The Complete Guide to Fantasy War?

2012-02-05T13:26:00.001-06:00

Dreaming out loud and water-testing rears its ugly head again. Between the finished fantasy miniatures rules for By This Axe, I Rule and outtake material for the domain-play sourcebook Hill Cantons: Borderlands I feel like I have enough material for something I have been dreaming about as twin-souled roleplayer/wargamer for years.

Namely a comprehensive, modular supplement for incorporating war and military campaigning into an old school fantasy roleplaying game—a certain something that would scratch a lot of itches for me at the same time.

My idea for this synthetic beast would be something that would allow you to be able to conduct a war as a series of stand-alone or interlinked mini-games under the umbrella of a unified one-stop shopping product. With it you could, for instance, use the abstract mass combat rules to play out a large-scale battle with little PC investment in one session, seamlessly dial down to a small-scale miniatures battle the next with the players pushing around their lead equivalents; run a raid in the next as part of a traditional rpg session—all the while running the campaign overall as a free-form matrix game.

The Guide would be fully compatible with pre-third edition D&D iteration and their related clones and copy cats. (Conversion would also be provided for Runequest, Stormbringer, Legend and their BRP-ilk if there is sufficient interest). In other word you keep playing with the rules you already use. A quick and easy conversion guide based on the ones currently inside By this Axe would translate your existing PCs, NPCs, and forces into system compatibility—and re-translate in-game effects back into immediately useful terms for your tabletop rpg campaign.

Features:

Abstract Mass Combat Rules. Think the paper and pencil rules of Mentzer's Companion set, minus a layer of bean-counting and with more options for pre-battle strategic and tactical choice and stratagems. Play will be enhanced by optional use of simple card or hex and cardboard mini-games (templates and materials to be included with the book).

Skirmish and Small Battle Miniatures Rules. This is the current core of By this Axe. Fast and furious rules for running fantasy and medieval-era battles with one figure being the equivalent of either 5 or 20 in-game creatures. They were des

Big Battle Miniatures Rules. A larger scale system for running the truly epic battles at 1:50 and 1:200 scale.

Siege Rules. Comprehensive rules for storming castles and other strongholds for both miniatures and the abstract combat rules. Guidelines for both the long, slow wearing down of fortifications and the sudden sharp shock of an assault.

Free Form War. Guidelines for using a simple, free-form “matrix-game” resolution for military affairs.

Battles as Adventure Locales. A chapter on how a GM can use battles, sieges, raids, etc. directly in a more traditional rpg session.

Guide to Affordable Alternatives to Miniatures. There is more than one way to get the experience of a miniatures tabletop without breaking your pocketbook. A rundown on proven shortcuts will be explored here.

Simple Campaign. A simple, abstract way to run battles, skirmishes, and raids with little book-keeping. A simple system will handle recruitment, objectives, operational maneuvers, and logistics.

Grand Campaign. The down-and-dirty granular way to do the same above. Heavy emphasis on the detailed bits that grease the sinews of war.

What do you think? Something worth pursuing? Something you'd use? Should I cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war?

Death and Dismemberment Redux

2012-02-02T10:42:00.002-06:00

The last few Google Plus Hill Cantons games have been real meat grinders, especially when compared to the sessions of their more stable, wary, and experienced table-top cousins. The mortality rate for men-at-arms is hovering around 100 percent and two PCs had their numbers called—almost.

Instead of InstaDeath I have been using the much-vaunted Death and Dismemberment chart, a veritable old school D&D Texas tradition first brought to fame by Robert Fisher a couple years back (I first encountered it the hard way in Norm Harman's Caves of Chaos hack).

Longtime readers will notice that I have posted a couple versions here before—all increasingly less forgiving then the original—the following version is the one I have been actually using in the campaign in the last year and a half.

May you never have to consult it—unless you damn well deserve it.

Hill Cantons Death and Dismemberment Chart

Roll d10 if a PC reaches 0 to -10 hit points (anything lower is an automatic death). If hit again during the session, the player must make an additional roll at -1 (cumulative for each roll on the chart). The GM can also adjudicate positive or negative modifiers according to circumstance.

With any result the character is out for the session unless magical healing brings hit points into the positive range.

1d10
0 or lower	Grisly Death. Body so spectacularly destroyed that only a resurrection or wish spell can bring it back to life.
1 to 3	Just Plain Dead. Dead as per the usual rules.
4 to 5	Fatal Wound. Character dies in 1d12 rounds unless magical healing is applied. Character is completely incapacitated and will remain an invalid for 3d6 weeks . Scarring makes for -2 to Charisma.
6 to 7	Severed or Mangled Limb or Digit. Roll randomly or GM pick for which limb or digit (can also be eyes, ears, or nose). Unconscious for 3d6 rounds. Character requires 3d4 weeks of healing before being able to adventure. -1 to Charisma.
8-9	Broken Bone. Roll randomly or GM picks limb. 3d4 weeks to heal bone. Also unconscious for 2d6 rounds.
10 or higher	Concussion. Unconscious for 2d6 rounds. 3D6 if not wearing helmet.

Further Notes from Sigil Underground

2012-02-01T14:52:00.000-06:00

This morning I compiled and synthesized more information cribbed from Planescape canon about the undercity. (Thanks to John and Chris W. for tips about where to look.)

Putting this together, I just couldn't resist the siren song anymore no matter how much candle wax I shoved into my ears. Following Micheal's lead, as of this morning two bright and shimmery gates were penciled into locales in the Hill Cantons for players to discover (or not) as a possible entry-point for field trips to that strange, cold place.

Features of UnderSigil:

The undercity definitely exhibits many of the reality-bending features of the Mythic Underworld, though of a more deliberately fabricated kind. Sigil's underground is not made of stone for example. The underground material is hard, you need a pick and shovel to tunnel through it but it crumbles like rice cake when removed from the underground. Since it's not really rock there are no natural caves or cavern systems.

Many of the passages are unstable, rare localized “cagequakes” will often bring down tunnels causing 3d4 damage (save vs. breath for only half) to anyone caught in such a collapse. Ventilation is bad, travellers can only take exerting themselves at half rate (presumably this is where the old school resting rules come in).

The complex is hundreds of square miles of tunnels and chambers, most of which are empty. The tunnels rarely get wider than 10 feet across with even narrower corridors common.

The upper levels are fairly close to the surface level and are mostly composed of sewers, crypts, and dungeons (the literal kind, the High Houses have deep and extensive ones for prisoners and slaves) . Dabus tunnels, were-rat passages, and vermin warrens connect all of these areas with passages extending to deeper levels. Darkers, mysterious exile communities living wholly without light, live in areas just off these branch-off tunnels.

There are many entrances to the Realm Below scattered through the city. The easiest entrance is through the sewers. You have to wade though the muck and filth for a few hours but you will find mysterious passages and doors leading off. These split-off passages lead downward at very steep angles (presumably long too).

Surface crypts will often lead down into the catacombs too. Cagers (Sigil dwellers) will often dig down underneath the crypts to bury their dead and will enlarge on existing catacombs when they find them. Ghouls who live in large numbers under the Hive and Lower Ward often dig up to the crypts too.

Many ruined surface structures, especially in the slums of the Hive, have entrances into the catacombs. The dwarven neighborhood, Gurincraag is rumored to have several entrances. A deep, 200-foot shaft (in the Lower Ward?) with filth-dripping walls leads straight down in the undercity. There is no visible means of descent but a maze of tunnels branches off in all directions at the base.

The rat-dominated realms have four separate—and vast—networks dominated by collective brain entities called the Four Great Minds. Sewer rats, cranium rats, and were-rats are part of these domains. Were-rat warrens are filled with traps—mostly of the sharp spikey, poisonous and blade persuasion. Entrances to these warrens mostly extend to the walls of the Ditch in the Lower Ward.

The Temple of Darkness is a major complex of sinister Eviiiil underground. It's a refuge for the scheming “yugoloths”, who have nothing to do with crappy Balkan-made cars but are a race of Neutral Evil planars we old schoolers knew and almost-loved as daemons. It's mapped in Faction War, making it one of the only major underground sites (to my knowledge) with a tabletop canonical map. But keep that under your hat this place is secret and hidden.

Pointcrawling Sigil's Undercity

2012-01-31T14:34:00.000-06:00

In yesterday's post about the megadungeon possibilities missed in Planescape's hub city, Sigil, Michael Moscrip asked very nice and polite like for a setting supplement. Since he's ill-advisedly talked about running a Dickensian-like Sigil adventure—even going as far as to create a portal to it from the Google Plus pocket universe's Castle Nicodemus–it's in my enlightened self-interest to help out.

I am way too swamped to do a great sweeping treatment, but here's a stab at a few things to get someone going on creating a Sigil underworld of their own.

First of all, we have to deal with John's good, tough question from yesterday:

“My trouble with the Catacombs is that, in a way, they're too big. On the one hand I like the idea of the entire torus being riddled with dungeon passages. But if I have one entrance in the Twelve Factols and another entrance in the skull library, ten miles away, how can I ever link them up in a way that matters? For all practical purposes they're two separate dungeons. Do I "cheat" with miles and miles of empty passageways? Weird dungeon spatial warping?”

Yes to both seems most appropriate given what we know, namely that most of the undercity was created as work and living space by the tinkering dabus and that as many inter-dimensional gates exist below as they do above. If this section is to be believed you have something as reality-defying as the Mythic Underworld:

“Nobody's ever dug so deep that they come to the 'other side' of Sigil's toroidal surface. Those who dig deep enough simply disappear, presumably stumbling into a random plane, and nobody's ever been able to figure out a pattern to it.”

So how do you run such a sprawling beast? I suggested trying to apply my pointcrawl system (John answers his own question with some interesting remarks about a hex-based solution in the comments).

Above is a pointcrawl map listing every site that gets a mention in canonical material. Underscoring yesterday's point all but two of the sites, the Gurincraag (a dwarven neighborhood under the Lower Ward) and the Twelve Factols Inn (mentioned yesterday), are drawn from Torment.

Large boxes indicate major sites, worthy of a single dungeon level or two. Green boxes indicate a site that has humans or other overworld living creatures living there, blue indicate wholly “monster”-inhabited levels. The smaller uncolored boxes indicate “sublevels”, special areas that would typically be 2-10 rooms in a normal dungeon.

Unbroken lines indicate the more normal walkable tunnels and other . Squiggly lines indicate places joined by a “teleporting” portal (all such portals have some kind of material key to them). Arrows indicate that the connection leads downward in that direction. Connections should be of variable length and indicated on the map (out of laziness I didn't).

What about stocking these places? Here's where I am going to punt. Since the vast majority of this space is treated in the computer game—many of these areas get a highly detailed treatment in the numerous online walkthroughs of the game. You will find a number of useful links to maps and descriptions on the various levels and sub-levels here at Sorcerers.net.

Eyeballing these maps they feel too cramped, too square and oddish in shape to be a perfect fit for tabletop maps—and you have to deal with the meta-gamey knowledge of those who have played through—I would strongly advise using them as a launching pad, expanding the maps and areas over longer dimensions.

End of backseat driving, now go and build.

The News from the Hills

2012-01-31T10:41:00.000-06:00

Busy as all get out today, so I have for you today two microposts.

The first—second one coming early afternoon--being news from and for the tabletop and Google Plus players in the Hill Cantons campaign. A nice pictorial account of this Sunday's slam-dunk enjoyable face-to-face session can be found here.

And now the news...

Marklankh priests pouring poppy-wine ablutions on the darkened slab altar of the City Gods Sunlorday were startled to note a loud humming from the ley line conjuncture at their feet. Sensibly running madly away they were further shocked to note seconds later a 10-50 foot (sources vary) sickly-wattled creature with a score eyes and a bulbous tongue emerge from the structure bellowing wildly.

Said creature then proceeded to stroll northward wrecking havoc among the boulevard. Tens of structures were toppled and burned and several prominent citizens consumed. Ten and a hundred riff-raff and lesser sorts were also dispatched in the rampage before the creature flew into the air toward the northern mountains.

The cantonal Rada convened an emergency session to deal with the crisis—further fueled by a mysterious skirmish in the vicinity of the Lady Szara's manse last week. The usual suspects have been rounded up and put to the question. A bounty of 2,000 suns has been set on any ruffian who can bring the council the head of the scurrilous abomination.

In other news...

Planescape's Missing Megadungeon

2012-01-30T11:19:00.003-06:00

It struck me the other day that Planescape is another of those tabletop settings that bitter-sweetly is both well loved and little played. Well...that is except for it's popular computer alter ego, Planescape Torment. Not only was that game played widely in the years around its 1999 release, it's considered a cult hit to this day.

Why the disconnect? Why didn't the tabletop version rocket into cult status too?

Undoubtedly there are many reasons: the rising primacy of computer games over face-to-face, the runaway popularity of the Bioware games of that era, Planescape's appearance at the end of the 2e setting smorgasbord, etc. But it occurred to me that part of it is that Torment managed to hit some deep D&D elements that the tabletop material glossed over in its drive to play toward being a rival with that White Wolf hooha of the time (thanks Robert and other readers for that particular insight).

Namely it made good on the megadungeon lurking under the streets of the setting's literal hub city, Sigil. Enamored by its original bits, most gameplay in the setting revolved around adventure around the planes and less successfully around political intrigue amongst the factions.

Hints at a undercity play arena were only vaguely hinted at. The original Sigil booklet has the haziest of mentions and it's only later with In the Cage: a Guide to Sigil supplement do you even get a peak at what a massively missed opportunity there was:

"The homes of the dabus [the weirdo, rebus-speaking floating worker drones of the city] are deep underground; some Cagers [Sigil citizen] say that the entire torus is a warren of dabus, and that the part of Sigil on the surface is only the face the city shows to the Ring, to travelers. The actual city is a maze of deep tunnels, storehouses, dungeons and corridors...”

That's a hell of a tease. The booklet goes on to continue to tease about the possibility throughout the book, detailing places like the Twelve Factols, an underground tavern where drunken obnoxious diners will on occasion force the serving staff to let them traipse into the deep passages that lead into the Catacombs behind warded doors. You hear a lot about the tavern in that passage but nothing about what lies beyond.

According to the Planewalker wiki this massive underground is only called “UnderSigil” by the Clueless (outworld newbies according to that annoying PS in-game cant), it is mostly known as "down below," "the Catacombs," "the Realm Below," or "the Labyrinths" according to the locals. The mention of it immediately makes me think of the romance of the giant undercities of Tekumel, where the ritual half-millennial clearing and rubbling over of the cities create layer over layer of rich adventure.

Whatever the name it is called (and I am partial to all of them as evocative titles) Torment was the only large-scale exploration of that play area in the setting. Play down underneath in the game simply rocks. Each sub-map of down below just drips with unique flavor and seem ready made for the sub-level punctuation of the sheer mass of a megadungeon.

You have a Buried Village under the heaps of the Trash Warrens. You have an entire underworld realm of sentient skeletons, zombies, and ghouls with a unique civilization, the Dead Nations. Another subrealm, the Warren of Thought, dominated by a collective rodent brain with its cranium rat and wererat minions. An animate skull library, the Bones of the Night, lorded over by a kooky wizard. Weird tombs and catacombs a plenty with talking carved heads and unique critters.

Great stuff in other words.

Play in D&D doesn't have revolve around the eponymous dungeon, but it's often at it's best as a game when the agoraphobia is kept under wraps by the comfort of a tight mortared ceiling. It's a shame that UnderSigil wasn't explored further, but I suppose that's what makes Gygax's famous parting words from OD&D ring so true yet again: “why have us do any more imaging for you?”

Indeed. Go forth and build your own undercity.

Factoids of the Hill Cantons: Unique Gear

2012-01-27T11:28:00.002-06:00

Continuing in my series of posts from the Rough Guide to the Hill Cantons, I present today a piece of the unusual items that a visitor might find in a remote stall in the more exotic markets and trade fairs of the Hill Cantons.

Rare Weapons

Poignard of the Overworld

Cost: 100 suns

Damage: d4+1

Weight:

A long, lightweight thrusting knife with a tapering, acutely pointed blade and crossguard forged from a luminescent green ore from the “falling overworld”. Because of it's properties it can strike otherworldy beings. Usable by Magic Users.

Ostrovan Luft-Pike

Cost: 40 suns

Damage: d6+1

Weight: 15

A 24-foot hollow steel pike crafted by the weaponsmiths of Ostrovo and employed in the tight phalanxes of the HC townbands. The pike breaks down into four sections and carried in a leather tube on the march. Always strikes first in first round of melee. The weapon can be used from third rank, but only with sufficient head room (i.e. a terrible weapon in the dungeon). Double damage when receiving a charge.

Petard

Cost: 300 suns

Damage: 3d6*

Weight: 20

Small conical leather and chain bounded bomb filled with the “Seed of the Sun Lord” (an explosive material whose secrets are tightly controlled and regulated by the temple hierarchy). Typically employed to force a gate or breach a wall in a siege. The device uses a 1-minute fuse. There is a 1 in 6 chance of a dud fuse, necessitating a change out.

If an “18” is rolled, the damage dice explodes, roll another 3d6 and continue rolling if further 18s are scored.

Nettled Club

Damage: 2-5*

Cost: 60 suns

Weight: 5

This imported club is made from a woody cactus. Small thorns adorn the head of the club and can easily be broken off. A roll of a natural “20” with this weapon will inject a poison that paralyzes an opponent that fails to save vs. poison for 1-6 rounds.

Bone Dagger

Cost: 15 suns

Damage: 1-4

Weight: .5

A lightweight dagger made from a single bone claw of a great beast of the south. The hollow edge beneath the claw-point makes it an ideal poison delivery device and as such is a favorite weapon of the Hashasian societies of the Scarlet Sultanate.

Misc

Greek Fire

Cost: 5 suns/ceramic jug

Damage: 2d8

Made of naptha and other materials known only to the Society of the Sanguinolent Alchemists. Substitutes for the standard vegetable-based lamp oil of D&D.

Tears of the Atramentous Lady

Cost: 100 suns/drop

Small, rounded opaque white crystals said to be formed from the embittered tears of the Celestial Lady herself.

When consumed roll d10 (add WIS modifier):

1-3 Hoax. No effect.

4-6 Heal 3 hit points.

7-9 Heal 5 hp.

10 Heal 7 hp. +1 to AC for day.

Radegast's Dark

Cost: 20 suns/stein

The Dark is a special dark-as-night ale drawn only at select feastdays in honor of Radegast, the Old God of Hosts, Fermented Drinks, and Magister Ludis. Reportedly has supernatural powers, such as the ability to pass into the “spirit realm”, when enough is drunk to become inebriated.

Armor

Half-Plate

Cost: 140 suns

Weight: 27

AC: 5

Fluted breastplate, groin protection and upper arm guards. Because of advances in metal-working in the HC, cheaper and lighter than full chainmail. The gilded version costs 520 suns.

Burgonet

Cost: 10 suns

Weight: 3

The burgonet is a steel helmet characterized by a high combed skull, brow peak, hinged ear pieces and blackened sections.

Quid Pro Quo: A Modest Proposal on Restructuring RPG Campaigns

2012-01-26T09:24:00.000-06:00

I have been intending to do a dramatic restructuring of all of my current campaigns since the dawn of this new year. Swayed by the allure of for-profit gaming models--with all their savvy ways of injecting the almighty invisible hand and multi-level marketing back into our shoddily amateur hobby--I am instituting by February 1 the following tiered pay-to-play system for players in my games:

Member Level	Donation	What You Get
Copper	FREE	Nothing, except my scorn...well, that and half your current hit points!
Silver	$50	Re-roll three attributes of your choice—with nine dice! Rename a monster.
Electrum	$100	Two levels in a class of your choice and you get to cheat on all dice in one session—and get away with it!
Gold	$500	Three free random rolls on the Misc magic items chart, gain three levels, and kill an important, setting-pivotal NPC of your choice!
Platinum	$1000	The Hand of Vecna (pick its powers), gain five levels, and receive a free T-shirt bearing the motto “Feminist Chicks Dig Me!”

Membership payment will be accepted in Paypal, Mastercard, cowrie shells, or human chattel form. The lines are open, act now.

When Murder-Hobos Attack

2012-01-25T11:43:00.006-06:00

There comes a time in every self-respecting sandbox GM's career when the players have to find just how far the boundaries are in the game. They have to walk over to the abyss and jump—or at least make the motions. The darkest abyss isn't the edge of the map, but the one that tests our everyday moral conventions.

I don't begrudge them this. I have had my own share of psycho-tunes behavior as a player, happily carving things in poor critters forehead's Inglorius Basterds-style, running grifts, and generally causing mayhem (almost always “in-town”). Kicking up the amoral-o-meter is part of the terrain that comes with player agency.

Truth be told, there is also a part of me—the same dark space in the soul that savors a right bastard protagonist like Cugel or Flashman—that digs the resulting chaos. I enjoy being surprised as a GM and these moments tend to provide them in spades.

Take last night.

To the sounds of lightening cracking down around my house and great rocking peals of thunder, I ran my weekly Hill Cantons game on Google Plus. The party--a right motley crew made up of two mountebanks, a pearl-cursed thief, a landsknecht-garbed elf, and a drunken Catholic friar—have been investigating rumors of a ostensibly-dead rogue named Kugel who has taken up residence in one of the swankiest of manses in town. They have been plugging away at plans for a home invasion for almost two weeks, last night was the delivery.

Now come the twist(s).

Kugel isn't your garden variety NPC, but the fallen PC of one of the longtime players of the home group. Seeking information about that poor sod, the G+ party reached out to the tabletop players. One player-character, Mandamus, a benign sort (if pedantic) run by the Desert Scribe wrote up a funny and inspired in-character tale.

Another of the home group players, who runs a race and class of “indeterminate origin” (one of them starts with an “a”, ahem), took a decidedly less benign approach to the overtures of the online crowd. He decided—and after grilling him there is a rock solid in-game excuse...err...reason—that he would methodically hunt them down as a GM-run NPC in the G+ sessions. It was one of those moments when your tough internal question rolls down the ethical slippery slope from “should I allow this?” to “how can I make this evil bit of player mischief work in-game?”

And when I say methodically I am not exaggerating, we had a few longish exchanges about his plan and he gave me a fairly-detailed set of written instructions about its execution (no pun intended). There were contingency plans for any number of occasions.

Disguising himself as a potential henchman fighter-type named “Patch”, he ingratiated himself into the party by promising to undercut the Guild of Condotierre's premium rates. Though they saw—said so at the time even—me waving a big ole red flag in their face, the G+ players incredibly hired him on.

Now the real fun begins.

They tromp down to the back alley behind the manse looking for ingress. In proper old school D&D party manner they order their hireling, Patch, to open the shiny, creepy brass backdoor. He refuses citing an old war wound (part of my instructions). They fire him on the spot.

To compound matters, moments later they narrowly avoid a two-headed giant dog behind said door. Courageously they suddenly decide to my utter surprise (and secret delight) “to hell with the manse, let's go kill Patch and take his dosh.”

Tromping back down the pitch-black alley without a light source--seriously, I couldn't script something this rich—they run smack dab into Patch's ambush. Perched on a wall deep in the shadows with a bow (and his strange ability to see in the dark) he starts trying to pick them off.

In the space of a surprise round he has one of the mountebanks—his erstwhile boss--rolling on the Death and Dismemberment table, narrowly avoiding an untimely death. Between the chaos and the avalanche of crappy rolls the Googlers only scratch Patch and he makes an easy retreat over the rooftops.

Off the rails? Yep. Something that may have me stepping in and stopping the probable cycle of escalation that will erupt-- the G+ party, of course, was swearing revenge last night—with a meta-game intervention? Could be.

But good, clean treacherous fun all the same? Oh, hell yes.

The Planescape Look

2012-01-24T11:18:00.005-06:00

My Johnny-come-lately exploration of 2e Planescape has gone gangbusters this week. Thanks to hot tips from you fine, but enabling folks, little brown packages from the mail order gods have been rolling in each day.

Contact has left me appreciating much of that old line with only a few tugs of dislike (nothing about that today I am in “jaunty cap” mood). One of the things that really caught me is the conscious attempt to put together a real, unified aesthetic to the products—a shocker for me really since the vast majority of D&D art became so exponentially awful and commercial year after year following the early 80s.

My interest piqued, I went out looking for why TSR had put out such a markedly different feeling and looking line at the time. Fortunately White Wolf magazine (a painfully pretentious and vapid publication that I feel dirty for having bought legally) had some interesting skinny on its development in issue 43.

Of particular interest was an article by the designer himself, Dave “Zeb” Cook, called “Mutating the Planes”. In the piece he talks about the inspiration that went into the month of figuring out what he wanted to do with the new:

“I put on my headphones and cued up Pere Ubu, Philip Glass and Alexander Nevsky. For inspiration, I read books: The Dictionary of the Khazars, Einstein’s Dreams and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. For fun, there was always...Naked Lunch to Wolf Devil Woman [on] the VCR. For some reason, all this started affecting my brain.”

How could that go wrong? Reading that I can't help but think about all my peers (and really myself too) lists of strange disparate influences in Zak's GM questionnaire meme. A right-brained approach to worldbuilding that I can really appreciate.

Now back to the actual look Cook envisioned:

“I could think and write about these things, but the setting needed a look. I already had some images in mind--the gloomy prisons of Piranesi’s Le Carceri etchings, Brian Froud’s illustrations and surrealist art. Foolishly, people believed in me, and Dana Knutson was assigned to draw anything I wanted. I babbled, and he drew--buildings, streets, characters and landscapes. Before any of us knew it, he drew the Lady of Pain.”

Aha, that's what makes it click.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi's 18th-century flights of fantasy (and note how Carceri becomes a prison plane in the setting) has been a longtime favorite from his multilevel crampedness of the prison sketches to the gloomy ruins of Rome to the grand, weird cityscapes. Look at these fine examples and you can see the inspiration points for the work above.

Brian Froud provoked the same reaction, the “Dark Crystal dude”. Just take a gander at some of the concept art for that dark muppetish fantasy flick.

Great stuff.

I like the idea of thinking hard about all your points of internal visualization and pulling them together into a more coherent whole. It beats the pants off thinking about the art as a secondary thing, at best a pretty bow-tied package to wrap up the real meat of the prose.

It seems remarkable to me given the "published setting as schlock factory” that was the bread and butter of 2e-era TSR—a departure I have only really encountered again (successfully at least) in the DIY sections of our hobby in the last few years. Bully for that.

Factoids of the Hill Cantons: Fashion

2012-01-23T13:33:00.002-06:00

Readers will note the recent appearance of my “Factoids” series. The posts are random bits taken from the upcoming Rough Guide to the Hill Cantons, an assortment of details various and sundry for players in the campaign—some of it even gameable.

Though a rough and tumble borderlands, the Hill Cantons doesn't lack for a love of haute fashion (albeit provincial and strange by the jaded standards of the Overkingdom core domains.)

Beyond the Weird, the clothes still make the man. Whilst in the HC, players will be awarded 1 exp for every 2 suns--that's gp to you otherworld barbarians--spent on his or her apparel. This bonus is above and beyond that of the exp value of that gold when acquired as treasure.

Headgear
Jaunty Cap	3 suns
Foppish Hat, unbrimmed	5 suns
Foppish Hat, long-brimmed	6 suns
Foppish Hat, ostentatious	20 suns
Burgonet, gilded	50 suns

Footwear
Boots, ghost minotaur	100 suns
Boots, frog-demon	200 suns
Sandals, penitent	2 sags
Sandals, hypocrite	2 suns
Shoes, pointy	1 sun

Otherwear
Cod piece, adequate	3 suns
Cod piece, pronounced	5 suns
Cod piece, ostentatious	10 suns
Bodice, bonelace	10 suns
Bodice, bejeweled	100 suns
Thong, chainmail	10 suns

Clothing
Landsknecht get-up, serviceable	8 suns
Landsknecht get-up, elaborate	15 suns
Doublet, velvet	5 suns
Doublet, poncy	30 suns
Gown, ball	30 suns
Hairshirt	3 sags
Pantaloons	2 suns
Robe, deo-fox	150 suns
Robe, pelgrane	300 suns
Robe, giant sable	180 suns
Robe, sackcloth	5 sags
Skirt, hooped	5 suns
Chiton, Amazon	2 suns
Toga, black	5 suns

Factoids of the Hill Cantons: Numismatics

2012-01-21T19:18:00.004-06:00

Coins Common to the Hill Cantons:

Kolo (slang “Wheel”): large white gold piece stamped with the Sun Lord's Chariot (2-wheeled) equals 10 Suns.

Ur-Kolo: rare coin only circulated by ultra-orthodox sects, same as above but Chariot with 4 wheels, slightly larger worth 12 suns and a lady.

Apricity Crown (slang “Sun”): D&D gp but 1/10th weight, stamped one side with the Sun Lord dining with the Hyperboreans during his winter repose, the other with the most recent Overking.

Celestial Velkin (slang “Lady”): D&D sp but 1/10th weight, stamped one side with the Celestial Lady chained to a brick oven (goddess worshipers file the chains off), the other with both moons as crescents.

Sanguinolent Orb (slang “Sag”): cp (made of a dark red bronze), blank except for a tiny symbolic drop of blood.

1 wheel =10 suns
1 sun = 10 ladies
1 lady = 10 sags
2 ladies = a two-fer or frowned-upon fun

Random Starting Equipment for Conan/ZeFRS

2012-01-20T09:37:00.002-06:00

It's been a while since posting about Conan/ZeFRS. I'm still plugging away at the second leg of the one-shots. I ran the first one, Mogg's Mountain, four times, even squeezing in a face-to-face game and am still very much in like with the action-packed system.

And of course that like means that I continue to tinker away with variants. (For more discussion on this game boogie over to the ZeFRS discussion board.)

Building off my random character generation system for the game, I put together a random equipment generator to supplement the simple menu choice from the original game.

What do I Own?

All characters are assumed to start with 1d10 bronze coins, plain clothing, sandals, and a large sack. Players can opt to make three picks on any chart below they are eligible to.

Missile Weapon: Any ranged or throwable weapon of your choice.

Melee Weapon: Any melee weapon of your choice.

Wealth (Merchant or Noble only)

Roll d10

1-5	3 gold coins
6-7	Ornamental gem worth 5 gold coins
8	Ornamental Cloak
9	Silk Shirt
10	Fancy Robe

Gear

Roll d10

1-3	5 torches (flint/tinder box) and backpack
4-6	100' rope & grapple
7-10	Riding horse

Light Armor

Roll d10

1-7	Jack
8-10	Brigandine

Medium Armor (Warrior or Freebooter only)

Roll d10

1-5	Breastplate
6-7	Hauberk
8-10	Shirt, ring or scale

Helmet

Roll d10

1-6	Barbutte
7-9	Basinet
10	Armet

Shield

Roll d10

1-4	Buckler
5	Spiked shield
6-9	Standard shield
10	Great shield

Jumping on Zak's Q&A Wagon

2012-01-19T13:42:00.002-06:00

Twist my arm. Here's my entry in this meme-thon.

I've actually enjoyed reading through others' entries, interesting windows into how and why people run their games.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

I invented false modesty—and it worked! I also rather like the pointcrawl thing I stole and adapted from brighter lights.

2. When was the last time you Gmed?

Tuesday evening I ran a HC session on Google Plus...well...sort of, it was a case of ludus interreptus.

3. When was the last time you played?

Last Thursday night with my dwarf Xhomar the Contumelious in “Keep on the Carcosan Borderlands” run by Roger Burgess.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

The players are in charge of a train of humongous land-barges (big giant-wheeled wagons with sails and the whole business), a caravan or group of refugees, and must cross this vast piece of virtually unknown land akin to Vance's Planet of Adventure. It's all about picaresque travel but with an edge of raw survival to it. Explore foolishly or without enough rigor and the group perishes bit by bit.

Either that or a Black Ziggarut. Dunno.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Make up just-in-time details or bliss out.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Face-to-face: sweet and salty things. G+: eat nothing, but sweet, sweet wine.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Actually the total opposite, I almost always get an adrenaline buzz after I get over the pre-game stage fright thing.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Trying to sell his party-mates into slavery in order to get access to the Keep. Or maybe it was convincing the local peasants that rubbing a dwarf's head was good luck—and that they should pay good money to do so.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

My campaigns run the seriousness gamut with the Domain Game being perhaps the most serious—but they all have big, heaping platefuls of the seriously unserious. The players tend to amp up both ends of that spectrum.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Re-skin them into something wholly else. I guess I don't do standard monsters other than giant animals and the undead anymore, nothing doctrinal about it just part of my creation fun.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

I do a crazy amount of reskinning of non-fictional sources below all the gonzo. Just read a dry-as-toast but useful-as-all-hell monograph on the logistics of Alexander's army for figuring out the real nitty gritty on how an army would actually move and what it would look and feel like for the Domain Game.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

This incident of player vs. player violence under the streets of Jakalla. But only afterwards.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Microscope by Ben Robbins (the West Marches guy). I've been trying to wrap my head around a mini-game in which players (or outsiders from the Internet ether) help co-create world-building parts of your campaign and was picking through it for inspiration.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Tough one, probably a dead Russian like Ivan Bilibin or Nicholas Roerich or in other moods Frazzeta and Jeffrey Jones (see above). But of those actually living and breathing maybe Justin Sweet or Jon Hodgson.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

No, come on. Suspense and a few chills maybe, but who has real fear in a make-believe game?

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

Castle Amber back in the day. We didn't know Clark Ashton Smith from shinola, but damn did that ambiance click for us. A nice long mini-campaign with the Averoigne sandbox part too.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

It would be like on the Hindenberg, yet without all the burn-up-in-a-fiery-explosion hydrogen and the Nazis. And like The Sword would be playing there, but all quiet so the group could hear me.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

TSR's Conan and Pendragon (perhaps the Gloranthan variant Pendragon Pass really). One makes me want to see players wrestling giant serpents with their mighty-thews and pissing their riches away before the next entirely non-chronological order; the other makes me want the steady and deep “long game”. One day I will reconcile these distant urges.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

The Hussite wars in Bohemia plus Vance, CAS and Leiber. With a touch or two of the Darklands rpg, Wodehouse, and Jonathan Swift. Lathered on with the big sweep of those grand old campaigns of miniature wargaming like Tony Bath's Hyboria and the Castles & Crusades Society.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

Clever, imaginative, easy with the laugh, who doesn't get hung up on gaming probabilities rather than just enjoying themselves explore. And must like long walks on the beaches. And dogs.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

My years living in northern Slovakia as a direct inspiration for parts of the Hill Cantons.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

A big-ass thick hardbound volume of never-published (or rarely seen) letters and behind-the-scene notes and other primary documents from all the OG pioneers: Arneson, Barker, Gygax, etc. That and the Jakallan Underworld for Petal Throne.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

I am generally in the closet, except with those I know who read speculative fiction. Game of Thrones was a good opening for those conversations.

Mandamus the Erudite Tells All

2012-01-18T11:53:00.003-06:00

It's been amusing to watch the new FLAILSNAILS players react to the newly-constituted rumor mill in the HC campaign. Particularly funny, in an inside-baseball way, has been how they have picked up on the presumed undead rising of one of the deceased PCs from the home game.

Before we had an abrupt case of ludus interreptus last night, they were duly casing the supposed townhouse stomping grounds of the risen Kugel (formerly played by Brad of Crushing Skulls notoriety).

An interesting twist was them trying to track down and get information from the PCs of the home group. Their attempt to bribe the low-down from Mandamus (aka the Desert Scribe) produced this “too rich not to post” response:

Mandamus is not a common Adventurer interested in anything as crass as Filthy Lucre; instead, he is a scholar seeking Knowledge. Therefore, after boring these out-of-town treasure-seekers with a 20-minute lecture on how trade imbalances caused by an excessive gold supply led to the collapse of the Fourth Dynasty, Mandamus agrees to share his knowledge of Kugel the Lucky in exchange for any scrolls or books they might find in the townhome of the Lady Szara:

“The Lady was very knowledgeable about History and Culture, subjects unappreciated by the common folk of Marlanhk. We had long, enjoyable conversations regarding Philosophy and the proper place of the lower classes. Her home was elegantly furnished, and she had a solemn old manservant who greeted us when we would enter. Unfortunately, after she engaged my consulting services regarding recovery of a certain Antique, she failed to acknowledge the exclusivity of our contract and sent out various Rabble on similar missions. We ultimately ended our relationship after my underlings and I had an unfortunate Incident with said Rabble. Rumors abound that the Lady is what is known as a Stirgoi--a sort of living dead similar to a vampire--but learned folk such as myself have no truck with such superstition.

“Kugel was a lucky man, and Lady Tyche blessed him with her favor. Kugel was a wonderful traveling companion who always seemed to obtain the best deals when it came to transportation or lodging. Kugel was a quite snappy dresser, clad in the latest styles from the South. Kugel was a trustworthy fellow, and other folk would often lend him horses and a wagon or a bag of gold as if he didn't even ask for it.

The Dreaded Ghost Minotaur of the HC

Kugel was a nimble lad, evading ancient Mechanisms with ease in the various ruins we explored. Kugel was a brave fellow, charging into battle and dispatching foes with alacrity. Kugel was a lucky man--he spun the Black and Red Wheel in the Hall of the Mountain King without a second thought and lived. Kugel was a deliberate man, who carefully considered all his choices before taking action. Kugel was a learned man; we would often discuss Metaphysics and the Theology of the Sun God.

"All too soon, however, Lady Tyche has need of Kugel's luck herself. One day as I directed our expedition beneath the Hall of the Mountain King, Kugel found a Magnificent Helm which he knew belonged on his head. Kugel loved that helmet so much he would wear it all the time--he even slept in it. This wonderful headgear enhanced Kugel's qualities even more, and he became my most trusted subordinate as we explored the ancient halls of the Hyperboreans. On the day Lady Tyche called him to her side, we were far beneath the ruins of the Hall. As we entered a room in search of artifacts to ship back to the University, an incredibly large specimen of Albus Tauri rared up and threatened the group.

Heedless of the danger, Kugel lowered his helmet-clad head and charged the beast. Milk-white blood sprayed everywhere as Kugel eviscerated the ghostly white man-bull, saving my underlings from harm and saving me from having to step in and save them. Unfortunately, the albino minotaur was able to get in a killing blow of its own, and fair Kugel shuffled off this Mortal Coil. Although he was lucky, Tyche herself had need of Kugel's good fortune, and she summoned him to her House.

"We brought back the body and paid for him to be buried according to the rites of the Sun Lord (reformed). Since then, I've heard those in the streets of Marlanhk invoke Kugel's name--usually in somewhat disreputable situations such as games of Chance, when trying to evade Authorities, or regarding settlement of a Debt. The cries of 'Kugel, you cheat!' or 'Come back here, Kugel!' or 'Kugel, you owe me!' never fail to bring a smile to my face."

Gotta love this game.

The Wikipedia Scab Line is Open

2012-01-18T08:52:00.002-06:00

Will someone please stand-up for the poor entertainment industry? Corporations are people too. As a well-coiffed man recently opined, just because you were born in a lawyer's office and are incorporeal doesn't mean you don't have rights.

Ya basta.

Today's vicious assault on Freedom should not go unchecked. The Wikipedia barons have decided that you shouldn't have access to vital information today in pursuit of their anti-SOPA agenda. How can one check up on the details of the Sepoy Mutiny, wombat mating rituals, Liz Taylor's second husband, and other necessary facts in the next 24 hours?

Friends, I learned one thing from my years as a union man: the awesome power of scabbing. So today I offer this vital service: ask me any question you'd normally turn to Wikipedia for it and I will answer it--110 percent accuracy guaranteed!

Hill Cantons Campaign Tidings

2012-01-17T11:21:00.000-06:00

The last few weeks have seen 15 new players introduced to my eponymous home campaign. It's been rollicking good fun and I find myself shaking off some of the inertia around the campaign and stretching my creativity more in that setting.

One of the most interesting bits about the new play is watching players start to want to dig into the layers of mysteries I am so inordinately fond of. That kind of out-of-session info-sharing and questioning is one of the most welcome development of open world campaigning.

To help facilitate that I've set up two new fronts: 1. a Google Plus page (you can find it and encircle it on G+ by searching for “Hill Cantons”) to help serve as a clearinghouse for player chatter and wheelings and dealings; and 2. a weekly feature that will appear both here and there giving the a list of fresh rumors, obfuscations, tall tales, and news from the Cantons (below being the first installment).

Month of the Black Goat, Year 42,412

The Horned Oracle has revealed that the otherworldly, mightily-armored zealot who carried off the famed bugslayer, Terminaxe, has fallen in battle in a distant bog in the Elsewhere Planes. The Order of the Brothers of the Other Mother have offered a copious bounty for a brave soul to return it back to this world—and the local Ur-Abbey of course.

Bonelace-makers, Garlmongers, and Nagsmen from all around the Cantons have converged on the town of Ostrovo for a three-day market fair. It is said that the unlikely confab of crafts is a front for a meeting of the heretical Evening Star Society. But you didn't hear that from me.

The Waldgraf vin Scadenfreude, that contumelious hothead, is this week at the Dome of Supernal Dealings reportedly hiring on at triple pay Guild rates for an expedition to hunt the dreaded Voormis beyond the Weird.

Kugel the Lucky--a foppish thief famous for his expeditions into the Hall of the Hyperboreans and his inadequate survival sense--has taken up residence at the old vacated townhouse of the Lady Szara. Strangely his death was commemorated by his one-time friend and expedition member, Mandamus the Erudite, in a one-hit wonder ballad (made famous by Thorrgrim the Skald) a year ago. It is said that he only leaves the manse after sundown.

Frantisek, also known as the Striped Mage, has raised his reward for the acquisition of the bejeweled Cod Piece of Radegast (the Old God of fermented drinks, hosts, and magister ludi) to 1500 gp. It is rumored to lie “somewhere in the Slumbering Ursine Dunes.”

Planescape oh the Torment

2012-01-16T13:59:00.004-06:00

Whipping up a batch of fresh New Year's resolutions early this month, I treated myself to breaking last year's most successful one: thou shalt not play computer games. For an entire year—with the notable lapse with obsessing about uniting the wild Orlanthi clans of Dragon Pass over my Iphone screen—it was a resolution that I not only accomplished, but thrived under.

Computer games—especially the ultra-layered and complex strategy games like Europa Universalis and its love-children—and I have a long history of love/hate. Predictably, I will load one up, getting increasingly drawn in, having great fun at first and then minutely and gradually it turns to something isolating and chore-like.

Stopping cold turkey, a relatively easy thing to do given the tendency of cprgs to become lifeless, cut-scene-dominated railroads these days, freed up more time for an activity that energizes me: face-to-face gaming (and it's close-enough equivalent on Google Plus).

What kind of gaming crack could send my packing back to a computer screen?

Planescape Torment, a game I avoided for years despite my longstanding love for the Baldur's Gates and Icewind Dales—my only real connection to D&D for decades. Never a big fan of the hokey AD&D extra-planar hooha, the setting sounded as appealing as that famous trainwreck Dragonlance to my ears.

I was wrong. Not only is it a great, mostly non-linear game with relatively deep rich layers, but I found it actually inspiring my campaign neurons rather than just glazing them over. A number of ideas intrigued me about the game enough that I want to find a home for them back in my face-to-face gaming:

Scrodinger's Character. In Torment your PC's attributes emerges during actual play than in pre-game chargen--a game concept that Zzarchov employs in Neo-Geek Revival. While not being a big fan of D&D's alignment, I did dig the idea of starting as Neutral through your own choices developing into another. It gives alignment a dynamism, more like a vector, that seems more satisfying and resonant with human character then just picking one at the beginning and staying within its confines unless you make a major transgression.

Likewise the idea of picking class during play, you start as a fighter and can move into other classes as you interact with NPCs and make choices, appealed to me. Granted both ideas I explored somewhat with my zero-level rules, but possibly something to be toyed with in later level play.

Extra-planar Hub City. With the growing energy around open world play with FLAILSNAILS and Google+ gaming, this idea has more appeal to me. I still am not a big fan of the AD&D idea of a multiverse but a cherry-picking of some of the more interesting planes coupled with gates into other campaign worlds on the prime sound like something I'd like to develop.

Spells and Gear with Flavor. This was a big one for me as it's one of the areas I feel like I have to stretch my creativity more. I want a world were magic is steeped more in the specific feel of the setting, where spell names and effects frame around a character's doctrine. Where even a re-skinned Magic Missile, Reign of Anger, drips flavor.

I also want more items like charms made from hardened blood clots and parasitic flies that melt on your tongue and weapons that hold strange backstories and an array of unusual powers and curses.

(If folks are interested I have compiled and edited two documents totaling over a 100 pages all the descriptions and AD&D tabletop mechanics of the magic items, weird gear and unique spells. Bestiary coming next. Drop me an email if you are interested.)

Curious to hear if others have been inspired by the game or another of its cousins. If you have ported back a piece or large section for your own tabletop game.

Now back to Baator.

The Mountain Top

2012-01-16T09:20:00.000-06:00

Dr. King's last speech, the next day he was gunned down as he prepared to march in support of the striking Memphis sanitation workers. Holiday gaming content to resume in a bit.

Death-Defying Feats of Wonder

2012-01-14T10:30:00.004-06:00

I am a day late. It's unclear whether I am a dollar short.

At the end of yesterday's post on GM improv, I promised an absurdly silly stunt-challenge. Here it is, I will be defying Thantos himself in a feat of derring-do. Naw, I am not going to jump Snake River Canyon, at least not today.

Here's the pitch:

I will need four volunteers from the (virtual) audience. Preferably four stalwart souls with FLAILSNAILS characters. You there, sir, with the foppish hat and black toga, you will do nicely.

Wednesday or Thursday of next week at 8:30 Central US time I will meet you in the Google Plus game arena. I will prepare no map, no encounter, no plot line, nothing. I will be meeting this challenge armed only with my home setting, the HC.

Two hours before said time—nay, a mere 20 minutes before—each volunteer will send me my clues for running the game, in order:

An adventure hook.
A second adventure hook.
Three locales (building, cave, ship, what have you) where said hooks can play out.
A mac-guffin.

Further, each will also provide me one flavor detail of high weirdness that I must incorporate into the game.

A show of hands from the volunteers.

The Fickle Art of GM Improv

2012-01-13T12:58:00.001-06:00

“Let's make it perfect, then cut it.”

That's a quip Stephen Colbert often makes to his writing staff. It shows, the program stays more funny than not.

While in blogging I settle for the merely good--the enemy of the perfect--the process feels much of the same. Often I will sit down, intending to write about one subject, get halfway through, revise it a few times and then just spike it. This started as a “GM lessons learned” rundown gleaned from running and playing on Google Plus. The problem is that the Constantcon boom is an embarrassment of riches, the lessons are too thick and many to deal with in one post.

Last night's half-assing it as an improbable dwarf, Xhomar the Contumelious, in Roger B's “Keep on the Carcosan Borderlands” game marked my 30th session. That's about twice as many games as I seem to marshal per year face-to-face—in half the time. I've run about two dozen games in four settings with as many players revolving in and out and had the fortune to play in eight other worlds.

Since I set out with the explicit goal of learning more about the art of running a game from the experience, it's a lot to wrap my head around. This post is the beginning of that process; it laser focuses on one set of lessons from the perilous art of GM improv.

I would hazard a guess that every GM worth their salt recognizes the need for improvisation. My observation is that not everyone raises from it though from a necessary evil or a stop-gap measure to an art. I don't claim to be an expert, but here are some points I feel like I am starting to grok about that art:

Explore Improv Theater. One of my legs-up as a GM is that I did improv in my late teen and early adult years. While there are a number of techniques that are not at all useful to being a GM—and some that are wholly unique to a game (see points below)—it doesn't hurt to at the least check out a few online sources. The goal is to increase your comfort level with it as a conscious exercise.

Yes and... Stop worrying and embrace player co-creation of your world. Take a small detail offered by a player and embroider the hell out of it.

Last night my huckster of a dwarf decided that since dwarves were rare in Roger's world that rubbing the forehead of a dwarf would be a luck-producing superstition that little folk would pay good coin to do. Instead of nixing such a self-serving detail, he went with it and then added his own details as the hustle played out. This is the art of “yes and...” that you will see repeated over and over in theater improv lists.

If something rubs you the wrong way, try not to veto it outright. Try to run with it or at least twist it during the “and...” part to be a further interesting contingency—or challenge.

Often if you find yourself stumped for an improv detail, try pushing the question back on the player--and then fall back on “yes and...” embroidering. “What do you think the Sun Lord priests would say in such a situation?”

No But... Later when you have mastered “Yes and...” start using a variant called “no but...”. Here again you aren't flat out saying no full stop, but are still riffing off their suggestion. I would use this sparingly, experience has taught me the more you embrace “yes and” the more your players will feel free to turn on the tap at the table with those details.

Hone in on Detail. For every NPC, setting description, magic item, etc. you pull out of your rear, try and attach 2-3 concrete, free-associated details about it from the get go. Don't just think a “sword”, think “a sword that is umm...bent badly at the tip...and a hilt wrapped in some kind of skin.” Let the players explore those details, use that exploration as a stall and start to fill in the blanks of how and why such and such thing is that way. Usually their questions will lead you to the answers even if they are very different from their assumptions.

Bag of Tricks. The first thing out of many GMs mouths when it comes to improving is random charts. It's a good point, but I take it one step further. I keep a spiral notebook with stock lists. Whenever the mood hits me out of session, I will make a number of rolls using those charts. I then free associate quick details to spice it up or give it a likely set of game contexts. Keep it sketchy, the point is to have little pieces to jog your memory for the point above when that wandering monster roll tells you something terse like “Newhonian Ghouls 1-6”.

Visualize It. I have made this point before in talking about the places we “see” when using our settings. Flip through relevant images before the game. It can be ones you have collected for your campaign, or it could simply be favorite inspiring ones in print or on online. Don't spend a lot of time fixating on it (this defeats the purpose) but just soak through it for 10-20 minutes.

Make it Perfect, Then...There is one big pitfall for GMs that value player agency in regards to making things up at the table: the need for meaningful, informed choice. If you want a game to be truly off the rails, don't get hung up on pushing that brilliant thing you just came up with right then and there. Even if those three details of that wicked letch of a priest sound awesome to you, don't be afraid to let it go if the players have zero interest in interacting with him. Similarily always provide at least a few routes or solutions to relevant things you improv.

If you become good enough to shake one thing out well in the moment, chances are you will be just as good making up more. Let it go.

Write it Down. I have learned this one the hard way, if you make up a detail on the table, damn well make sure to write it down. Consistency is all important and if situations become by default arbitrary it undermines both the quality of your campaign and the point above about player choice.

Don't break the flow of play, but write down a line or two about it right then or close to then (player bathroom or snack break is always a good time). After the session fill it out if necessary—and above all build off it between sessions.

Practice. Don't just pull out when the players wander off the reservation, try to work in some practice at the table. Nothing teaches something quicker than experience, so when you feel comfortable with it start with a handful of likely situations that you can try out your mad new skills. Say you know they are going to be exploring a vine-choked dark forest for the first time. Don't fill out all the encounter sites, leave two or three blank. Maybe have a sketchy idea of what's there, or none at all.

Use your techniques and see what you learn from it. Do I need to bone up in this area or that? Ask your players for constructive criticism even.

There are points and lessons I am quite sure I have omitted or never picked up on. Drop a comment if there is something you feel like you have picked up on about the art yourself.

And if you are still around the Hill Cantons later today, wait for the set-up for my related (and likely absurdly silly) stunt-challenge.

Again with the Dunes

2012-01-11T10:50:00.004-06:00

For the third time in as many weeks, the Google Plus wormhole has dumped a motley crew of scalawags, rogues, and hucksters into the Hill Cantons. Local savants opine that the fell land that spawns this carnival of mischief lies inside the Bizarro world borne on the shell of the Anti-World Turtle, but more worldly men care only for the mountains of swag and strange, rousing tales flowing back into these hilly borderlands.

Here you now of last night's tale from the journal of Ba Chim of the New Hampshire elves (as translated by the scholar of matters litigious Allandros):

Three days ago, as my wreckers and I prepared to wrest open the Third Sanctum of Riix, I mistook my footing and tumbled through a strange portal within the temple. Though I beheld it for but a second, it was glowing a pale azure and encrusted in runes of a particularly irritating magic.

Particularly irritating, in that I missed out on all the success that we would inevitably have enjoyed, for this portal stranded me in a dusty town Marlankh. I know not where Marlankh lies, for the sun shining down upon me is not that of my homelands.

Marlankh is a sprawling and decadent town. I arrived, along with a few others (victims of Riix as well?) in the center of town as their grand festival reached its apex. Grand chariot races, the losers to be hanged, the usual. After enjoying the ambiance of the festival for some time, I encountered a group of like-minded comrades, friendly in demeanor yet poor of purse.

We numbered five:

Father Jack, a priest of some outlandish deity. Garbed in black and perpetually drunk.
Manzafrain the Mirthful, a rotund trickster. Quick of mind and a terrible shot with a crossbow.
The Slip, a young street thief who knew the land well. He bore a green pearl emerging from the flesh of his hand, claiming that it whispered to him.
Taurus, a warrior who wore some strange ghastly pale makeup and stringy hair dyed red.

After brief consultation, we elected to band together and investigate a barge that The Slip told us of – bedecked in gold, abandoned and run aground, with its cargo ripe for taking. He had visited the barge before, but poor planning forced his group to withdraw without much success. We vowed to do better.

We made a brief stop to the Guild of Condotierre, Linkboys, Roustabouts and Stevedores to secure two assistants–a man at arms by the unlikely name of Ool, and a feckless linkboy whose name I cannot be bothered to recall. Having accomplished this, we journeyed onwards. After spending the night at the house of a rambling and foolish old man, we journeyed to a vast desert, which Manzafrain informed us was the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. The fabled golden barge lay beyond these dunes, only a few hours travel.

After an arduous journey, we reached the sea, encountering a majestic barge. Two wyvern-shaped prows flanked a vast ramp, which lay amidst the sands. The barge itself shimmered with a translucent gold material, and a series of onion-topped towers peeked above the barge’s deck.

Casting caution to the winds, we boarded the barge and opened one of the twin doors directly in front of us, leading to the first tower. These, and several other doors aboard the barge, were wrought in an ornate manner, with a wheel in the center of the door, serving as both lock and handle.

As we entered the tower, we found a tarry black substance coating the floor....

[Editor's Note: sadly dear reader, the following pages seem smeared with what looks to be tears, rendering portions unreadable.]

...this door led to a horrendous scene–a series of cadavers arranged as meat stood there, along with a large wok to prepare the flesh. Apparently the creature we had slain had chosen to “liberate” its victims in such a manner. Shuddering, Father Jack administered the rites of his strange deity (something called “Final Unction”) and we proceeded onwards...

...we entered another room nearby, housing a large pool of water in the center. Above the water, a long pipe was suspended, with a large claw housing a strange pearl at the end of the pipe, above the center of the pool. On the far side of the pipe, a brass lever lay at the level of the pipe.

The Slip compared the pearl above to the one embedded in his hand. Noting a distinct similarity, he concluded that he needed to acquire the gem. Climbing the pipe, he grasped the pearl and claw in one hand, while cutting away at the claw with his blade. Severing the claw, he climbed down. As the Slip had been doing this, we had noticed movement in the water below–a vicious beast of some sort. We tossed items into the water to attract its attention away from the Slip, and distracted it while he returned to the ground.

Yet we had not investigated what function the lever played. I urged my compatriots to trigger it, and they acquiesced. Glory to the swirling Entropy! All such opportunities must be seized. Throwing my grappling hook up, I pulled the switch down, and heard a vast commotion, as though a mechanical contrivance had begun to wreak its havoc.

The water in the center of the room began to rise rapidly, and I exited in a similarly alacritous fashion. After sealing the door to the room, we daubed it with pitch. Our man-at-arms then inscribed a message in ancient Hyperborean instructing others to leave the door shut. O, fortunate that we did these things!

After this successful enterprise, we explored further onwards, finding a room with an ornately carved wooden floor. Disquieted by the floor and its intricate depiction of worms writhing beneath our feet, we nonetheless rejoiced in the comfortable pillows present there. Taurus shot one.

At this point my head began to swim–perhaps a result of the strenuous climb we had made earlier in the day. I cannot tell exactly what transpired next, but when I came to, I was quickly informed that four other gel-covered skeletons had approached, and that silver-tongued Manzafrain had lured them towards the now completely flooded chamber, promising them that beyond lay great quantities of flesh to be liberated.

After speaking glibly and quickly, the mountebank convinced the creatures to open the door. The resulting flood into the corridor allowed the strange vicious beast to devour half the abominations before the remaining two forced the door closed and resealed the hatch. During this time, the mountebank had fled, seeking to avoid the wrath of the remaining creatures while they were distracted.

Angered by the death of their fellows, the abominations charged towards us. I held the line with Taurus and our man-at-arms, while the Slip quietly emerged behind the charging foes and eviscerated one of them while it was distracted. Meanwhile, Father Jack, in a drunken stupor, threw pillows, hoping to entangle the creatures’ feet.

After a brief melee, the remaining creature was dispatched. As the sun was setting, we merely explored a single further room, discovering a chest of ancient silver. Buoyed by our success and noting the waning hours of the day, we withdrew from the barge, but vowed to return and secure its wealth for our own.

And then we had to climb those dunes again.

Crawling Without Hexes: the Pointcrawl

2012-01-10T08:56:00.004-06:00

Despite spending 1-2 hours a day sinking psychic energy into this here rpg blog, I am still as much or more of a wargamer as I am a roleplayer. There have been too many years of pushing little lead men and cardboard counters to deny it.

Hexes literally come with the terrain in both worlds. Yet as much as I love that old six-directional organization in my wargaming--where relative position is a top priority--I have to admit that I find them not terribly useful in running day-to-day wilderness exploration in my games.

Don't get me wrong, I still use hex maps, but they have been relegated to only one of several layers of maps I use in campaigns. Right below a top level “symbolic” map (a map, often shared with players, filled with out-of-scale markings and illustrations distorting things by their relative importance) is often a large-scale map of six-mile hexes.

Neither layer of map is what I actually use at the table.

What I actually use at the table are two kinds of hexless map systems: the first being a point-to-point system (the second a “vector” map akin to the West Marches that I may discuss tomorrow).

What's point-to-point? Simple, it's a map that replaces hexes with locations and connectors only. Fortunately I didn't have to invent another wheel, but looked to some old favorite wargames. Take the map from the Civil War classic A House Divided pictured below.

Why bother switching? Because a hex map places “empty space” areas, the countless hexes that may contain nothing much of interest, on the same semiotic level as interesting locales (and by interesting I mean a wide latitude of things from minor curiosities/landmarks to settlements or adventure sites, any point that is worth more than a cursory description). It reduces the amount of information I can see at a glance and the paper shuffling between hex map and gazetteer becomes a stage management nightmare for me when I run a game.

Secondly, hex maps tend to play down the fact that most overland travel is rightly conducted along some kind of track or road. Pathless travel is exhausting, massively disorienting, and dangerous to the point that even something as rough as a mule track or a game path is usually preferable.

Hex maps also tend to not be able to show impassable terrain on a granular level, cliffs or peaks that prevent a line of travel or wetlands areas where the water gets too deep. Note how paths bottleneck in mountain and coastal wetlands areas in the House Divided map. I want to be able to portray the situation where an area maybe be close by how the crow flies but involves a circuitous route by foot. I also want those bottlenecks—places of “strategic” importance to find or hold.

This is what my typical PbP map looks like (click to enlarge).

The squares represent the sites of interest and are color coded with map pencils for ease of reference. In this case, dark blue equals a settlement a town or larger (sky blue is for smaller ones), green is a landmark, and brown is a potential adventure site with its own sub-map.

I always draw in terrain as background under the grid (note the bands of hills and mountains) roughly to scale from the higher-layer hex map. This reminds me exactly where topography begins and ends if I need to use it in-game—and what type of encounter or weather chart to use. I use a wide range of terrain and vegetation type, so this is especially important for me.

Now let's look at the all-important connectors. Solid lines represent roads, double solid lines Roman-like roads with sturdy road beds. Broken lines represent tracks. I will add letters if I need to code the path further, “S” represents a secret or hidden path, for instance, “G” stands for a game path that the party will need an outdoorsman-type to find and use. Rivers and creeks can also be used as connectors.

The dots on connectors play a big role in simplifying things, they are the units of measurement between squares. They typically represent about six hours of unencumbered walking and three hours of normal riding time. If a connecting path is shorter or longer or more difficult I note it directly on the map. The typical foot time just happens to correspond to my encounter checks. The system lends itself to wanting to minimize too many dots, so I tend to brainstorm lots of green-coded minor landmark boxes to both give players more choice in direction and make travel seem more colorful.

The last thing you will note are random notes to myself (the chance for finding on a d6 the stairs to a cave system under the Old Tower square, for instance.) This on-map notation plays a big part in helping me run the game at the table and my actual maps will get very busy with them. Again I can't emphasize enough how helpful this is ease to play flow.

That's one of my systems. I know you devious people have your own. What's up your wilderness-running sleeve?

Absolutely Nothing About Fifth Edition

2012-01-09T19:36:00.003-06:00

Zero interest in talking about it here, until we actually know something concrete about it.

But in the meantime here's The Sword, our hometown power-chord heroes, to abide the time. Series on hexless wilderness crawling to begin tomorrow.

Flailsnailing the Hill Cantons

2012-01-06T10:44:00.002-06:00

I have been missing the lonely, wind-swept hills of my home campaign as of late. Holiday madness and adult life schedules have played merry hell with our face-to-face games. Lacking “quorum” we have had more luck getting together for miniature battles, Conan one-shots, and even Search for the Emperor's Treasure than the actual campaign.

I expect that to change shortly, but to get my fix in I recently opened up the Google+ extra-dimensional gates of the HC and starting running some FLAILSNAILS sessions.

It's been an interesting and useful experience. When you run a long-standing campaign you get comfortable with how things are, after a while some things inevitably shift into cruise control. Parts of the setting drift into the background as they become overly-familiar to both the players and me. The new blood keeps me on my toes.

To date, we have had two late evening sessions in a week's time introducing 10 new players (in three countries) to the massive, undulating Slumbering Ursine Dunes and the town of Marlankh/Maarlinko.

A number of players have been visitors from other planes: an upright Paladin of Mitra (whose patience seems to have been severely tested by the morally-flexible denizens of the HC), a dwarven thief/rat catcher (mistaken as a bearded midget by the locals), and a drunken, booby-dreaming priest from Wessex. Time Bandits-style they fall out of the sky, which seems to not phase locals overly much.

Interestingly, though these are all open-world hands, a number of players have rolled up some indigenous characters under the guidelines of the HC Compendium (yes, Jeremy that is another flogging). A few even indulged me by using my quirky background generator.

The fact that there were no less than three Mountebank characters chosen—and a thief or two--have been rolled up should give you an idea of the moral fiber of the people I play with—perfectly appropriate for the setting. (Peter R. bucked the trend and went with a Lawful and Good mage, albeit with a sinister past.)

The Paladin described his new comrades (full report here) thusly:

“It was strange, the place was odd, and the men I met were of that queer, stealthy persuasion. At first I trust them not, but, slowly I came to find them amicable fellows; with stout hearts and clean souls. There was 'Sliper' a most resourceful Expert Locksmith & Listener, the Ever Clever "Gaunilo Mountebank", Oh? and a hedgemage Eva Gorassospiri. I was told of their need, queer indeed; a Silver COD Piece of some weird and wondrous value or power.”

Mike D. from Sword+1 blog (and Ruins and Ronin fame) finally allowed me to open up the door's on using the Realms of Crawling Chaos LL supplement. Choosing a fish-smelling Sea Blood (doomed to eventually turn into a Deep One at later levels) was pitch perfect allowing me to place his point of origin in my oh-so subtle homage sea-port of Muth.

That's Mike's nifty pictorial account of the exploration of the “Glittering Tower” in the Dunes above, click to enlarge. For accuracy's sake I note that the Great Chair Massacre is not depicted.

That's the report from the HC.

In proper open world fashion the various explorations could possibly the effect the home game—and vice versa. I chuckle and rub my Evil DM hands over the possibilities. Catch over in the pocket universe on a good free evening and perhaps you can take your own turn.

Better Fewer, But Better?

2012-01-05T12:08:00.001-06:00

I have been noticing traffic flowing to the HC from Big Purple for several days now. The RPGnet thread that is spawning the page views is—for a refreshing change—near and dear to this blog's heart, posing the question: when did domain-level play drop out of D&D as a major play area?

The various responses are uneven, but interesting. The most interesting dropping (perhaps not surprisingly) from Michael Mornard aka the Old Geezer, one of the most OG of the hobby's pioneering souls having having hit the trifecta as a player in the original Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Barker's Tekumel campaigns.

I could spend several posts parsing his comments in that thread and linking back to thoughts about Borderlands and domain-level play in general. But one somewhat tangential one stuck out for me. He answers some of the out-loud wondering about what was particular about play groups back then that more readily supported his concept by saying:

“Remember that 'the group is one, solid, and indissoluble' was not a concept. We were all roving adventurers who would band together at times, but the highest form of play was to play solo. So once strongholds were built, one player might be a wizard staying in his tower and sending minions out to gather components for spell research, one might be building a mighty army, one interacting in the political intrigue, etc.”

The FLAILSNAILS experience developing on Google+--an ongoing series of mostly old school D&D dungeoneering linking by my guess a 100 or so players to more than a dozen different campaign worlds--seems to model more and more the open world feel of the big tent original campaigns. Players float in and out in mostly ad hoc combinations between the various campaigns, maps and magical items are bartered between sessions.

While I have been running the hell out of my Hyborian Age, Petal Throne, and Domain Game II campaigns in that pocket universe, until this week I have been merely a player and not a GM of these games. Last week I finally threw my hat in the ring and ran two open world sessions in my home face-to-face campaign in the eponymous Hill Cantons (session report from the foray into the Golden Domed Battle Barge coming later).

All tremendous fun, but I keep thinking about the second part of that middle sentence “the highest form of play was to play solo.” Big tent type of play, lots of players moving between worlds, was part of my own experience of the game even as late as 1981, but more frequently were the near-daily games we ran for several years with small groups.

As our early characters ramped up the power arc more and more there would be these sessions with one player. Back then it would have taken no effort to pull in at least another smallish group, but it was something of a prestige thing. Indeed it was a badge of “making it” as a player to be tough enough to tromp around the Suss Forest, either alone or with a private army of few NPC henchmen and men-at-arms.

And as a DM there was a certain quality of play that I enjoyed about those solo forays. You didn't have the rollicking camaraderie of a group, but you did get this laser-beam focus, a certain deeper intensity of play. And yes, as name-level crept in there was the stronghold building, the wilderness clearing, the army raising, and all the elements—come to think of it they were always in those intense me with the player sessions. Building plans would be drawn, great menaces to the freehold dealt with, mass battles run with small hordes of Heritage and Ral Parthas.

I find myself yearning for that “quality time” again as much as I do the big tent. Two of my current campaigns really lend themselves to it in fact.

Some of my best experiences playing and running Conan/ZeFRS have come with only two players, the system with its focus on high action, swashbuckling like the genre it emulates really lends itself to a smaller cast. And given what raised the question, the Domain Game II is also crying out for at least a session or two of such play (of course, most will still be the bigger "y'all come" sessions.)

Is any feeling this too? Or running or playing in solo games out of choice or necessity that you enjoy? Why so? What do you get out of them (or hope to) then you don't get in the troupe sessions?

The Furious Din of Battle

2012-01-03T12:48:00.003-06:00

A battle royale raged over my kitchen table yesterday.

Fear not, it wasn't a domestic squabble, but the first large-scale, non-solo playtest of By This Axe. Two longstanding pillars from the eponymous HC campaign, Desert Scribe and Brad, locked forces to the furious din of clashing lead.

Much was learned and I stayed up to the wee hours cranking out version 0.5. A mini-game for dueling sprang out of it and a general overhaul seemed to fix a number of rough patches (if you ask real nice like and will actually use them drop me an email and I will send you a copy).

Here's the blow by blow of the battle proper.

The action opens with a gratuitous scenario backstory. Pierre and Gaston, lowly miserable extras from Beau Geste, find themselves lost in the whirling Algerian sands outside Fort Zinderneuf. Stumbling through a mysterious bronze gate in the ruins of a cyclopean temple, they find themselves surrounded by untold riches—in another world.

Little do they know, but ranging scouts from two warring lands have noticed the sudden flash of light—and mountain of treasure--in the Temple of Radagast lying in no-man's land. Arriving at dawn to claim the swag, two armies face each other across the field: the fearsome Knights of Bradd and the scurrilous Scarlet Scribes of Set.

Knights of Bradd roster

2 Knight Hero/Leaders

1 Amazon Superhero with Were-Leopard Hero

2 Priests (who add to saves and morale of units from a dice pool)

1 Mage (who use a dice pool to shoot offensive and defensive spells)

1 unit of Knights

1 unit of Squires

2 units of Longbowmen

1 unit of Heavy Infantry

I unit of Medium Hobbit Infantry

Scarlet Scribes of Set roster

3 Hero/Leaders

2 Imams (Priests)

1 Sorcerer (Mage)

1 unit of Giant Snakes (fight as heroes with Tough Hides special ability)

1 unit of Noble Medium Cavalry

1 unit of Nomad Light Cavalry

2 units of Light Spearmen

1 unit of Heavy Crossbowmen

1 unit of Gladiators

The opening moves seem almost decisive, the knights impetuously ride forward and are met by a hail of crossbow bolts. The Scribe rolls extraordinarily well making hits with the entire unit, the Knights roll phenomenally low and they losing a whopping five figures (from a unit of eight).

Javelins hurled by the nomad light cav further takes half of the squires. (Missile combat is simple, range is checked and a d6 rolled for each shooter. Hits are made on rolls under the figure's fighting capacity number and hit figures roll saves by armor.)

The opening rounds look grim for the knights. Fortunately for Brad, both units survive morale checks (a streak of luck that keeps both decimated units on the table until its bitter end).

Meanwhile on the left flank the amazon and were-leopard supported by the hobbits advance through the tree-chocked ruins. The giant snakes and sorcerer move to stop them.

In subsequent turns, the sorcerer dumps 10 of his available 12 dice from his spell dice pool on the head of the superhero, killing that mighty figure instantly. The snakes (backed by the last two-die spell) make short order of the were-leopard. A few gobbled up hobbits force a morale check, sending the luckless halflings fleeing off the map. The flank side show though does keep the Scribe's most powerful unit out of the main action for the rest of the game.

Back in the center, the remaining knights and squires bravely (perhaps foolhardily) charge into the untouched ranks of the opposing cavalry. (Melee is conducted much in the same way as missile combat with longer weapons striking first in the opening round.)

The swirling melee there will last the entirety of the game costing all but one knight figure. The stubborn squires manage to take no other losses. The Scribe's light nomads flee in terror from the fight leading the nobles to deal with.

That knockdown fight eventually costs the knights all of their priests and two leaders through duels and melee as they keep shoveling in forces to the fight.

Slowly the tide of battle—which was looking like a drubbing for the knights—starts to turn as the longbowmen and heavy infantry come to bear on the Scribe's infantry. As the desertmen's weaker infantry begins to rout it begins to cascade over into other units (units within 6” of a routing unit must make morale checks).

Though their leaders keep riding over and rallying them (you roll under a leader's value), the knights exploit the breakdown in the lines and start making a number of flank attacks. Though it's touch and go for a few turns, inexorably they start to break most of the units on the board.

With more than half of his units, routed the Scribe's is forced to flee the field, leaving the victorious knights to finish off the legionaries and grab the loot. With most of it's elite forces and heroes slain though it is a bitter, pyrrhic victory.

Special thanks to Scottsz for his gifts of statuary and leopards that supplemented my 28mm mixed armies of El Cid-era Andalusians, Hundred Year War medievals, and fantasy flotsam and jetsom.

Duels in By This Axe

2012-01-03T11:20:00.002-06:00

Playtesting is not only vital design work, it can be—nay should be--fun.

At least I thought so yesterday with the playtest battle (session report later) of By This Axe I Rule that see-sawed over my kitchen table yesterday. Besides the inevitable clarification, vetting, and streamlining, I came out of the experience with some add-ons: notably a mini-game to simulate more of the flash and dance of the kind of mano-et-mano combat one would associate between Swords & Sorcery heroes.

Posted here in lieu of emailing the myriad folks who have the 0.4 playtest pdf.

Duels

In the Duel Phase, any player's character may challenge any opposing character within 9 inches to personal combat. A character can refuse a challenge, but must suffer the penalties below. A challenging character can also force a duel on a roll of 1, 2, or 3 if both characters are in units in contact.

The first time a leader declines a challenge, he loses all leadership value for that turn only. He may not participate in an attack that turn. The declining leader may neither voluntarily move to a new unit, nor may he rally a unit during that turn. Thereafter, during the game, the declining leader may refuse personal challenges without penalty.

Duels are played in rounds until one (or both) characters are defeated or run away. A character may attempt to flee a duel on a d6 roll of 1, 2, or 3 beginning on the second round.

Each round the player secretly allots dice from his character's dice pool into three maneuver areas: attack, parry, and dirty tricks. Only one die can be allotted to dirty tricks. At least one die must be allotted to attack and parry. All maneuvers are considered simultaneous.

Character	Dice Pool
Hero	4 dice
Superhero	8 dice
Champion	12 dice
Priest, Mage	3 dice
High Priest, Wizard	6 dice

When the round begins each player reveals the number of dice they have in each area.

Dirty tricks are resolved first. On a roll of 1-2 the player's opponent must forfeit two dice from their attack and/or defense pool for the round (3-6 has no effect).

Attack maneuvers come next and the player rolls the allotted dice. Each roll of 1-3 is counted as a hit.

After attacks, all parry dice are rolled. Each result of 1-3 negates a hit from an opponent. If a player rolls more parry successes than incoming hits they are allowed to roll one counterattack die (hit on 1-3, no chance at parry).

Armor saves are conducted as normal for all hits, but with one exception: the +1 modifier for Heroic status is ignored.

2012: Year of the Hydra

2012-01-02T10:00:00.000-06:00

“Turn back, ye dog, the Sun Lord still lives among the Hyperboreans in his three-month exile,” the Pythia snarled as an answer to my beseechments. “But I have brought a fine heifer for the sacrifice,” I retorted.

“Yeah, yeah,” came the cryptic answer from the sibyl as she hurriedly entered her trance, “2012 will be the Year of the Hydra.”

I shuddered as I parsed the meaning of the oracle. “I must ready my ready my plans for the ordeal ahead,” I thought to myself.

Yes, I have been reading entirely too much Mary Renault over the past two weeks, but who am I to deny the voice of a god? Dear reader, I thus posit my Big Kahuna goals for the coming year:

The Hydra Cooperative. I have been quiet the last couple months about the project, in the main because we have been doing some sorting and reorganizing after a number of passionate discussions and debates about the vision and structure of this foul beast.

Long story short is that we will have two “heads of the Hydra” as we trundle into the new year. The first of which will remain the loose, mostly unstructured network of projects under the banner. The second will be a more formal (but democratic) non-profit publishing cooperative. See here for more news as we get closer to that point.

Hill Cantons: Borderlands. Time to let go. No more rewriting, no more finessing and obsessing the big goal is to get that weighty tome of domain-play variants and rules for classic D&D out the door by February 1.

By This Axe I Rule. Thanks to many of you I am starting to get some playtest feedback coming in, better yet I will meet across the field of painted-lead battle with the Desert Scribe in a few short answers. While this will be less of a priority than the back monkey above, I expect to put final touches on it by mid-February.

REH, the game. No title yet, but I have been working on an open content game with some fine folks that will be taking cues from an elegant and fun, if incomplete and somewhat abandoned Swords & Sorcery rpg.

Play More Face to Face. Self-explanatory. The holiday chaos and adult scheduling have played hell with the HC home campaign, I hope to get a more regular rhythm for that in the coming year. Hopefully I will get a chance to get in as many mini, board and other games with my compadres here as I started to do at the end of last year.

Play Broader. One of the great advantages of the Google Plus boom is the opportunity to play all kinds of obscure games. Games I want to play (or replay): Runequest, Small But Vicious Dog, Pendragon, Boot Hill, Top Secret, Hawkmoon, etc. And so I don't look like a total reactionary may be a few of the new boys like Microscope—and what ever weird and wonderful things some of your cooking up out there.

Those are the big ones, undoubtedly more will grow out of the ground as the year rolls on. What's coming in your new year?

The Request Line is Open

2012-01-01T10:12:00.000-06:00

Repeat failure has taught me one thing about New Year resolutions: pick out things I am already down the dark road on and say “I am going to do more of that.”

Of course I am a terrible hypocrite, I have already filled up a page with new project ideas (more on that later), but here's one from the heed-my-own-wisdom category. One blog goal for 2011 was to engage readers more directly and honestly, slough off the prejudices of two decades of journalistic business as usual. The success of the various contests, challenges, direct queries, and deliberate provocations has been uneven, but on the whole I am satisfied.

Here is a very direct leap inspired by Zak S's recent query in the G+ ether, a request line. What would you like to see more of here in the Hill Cantons in 2012?

More interviews? If so with who? More (or less) focus on certain game systems? More game tinkering or setting who-ha? More analysis/exploration of the early days of the hobby? More Tekumel? Half-assed literary criticism? Or what?

Leading questions all, feel free to answer, ignore, and definitely, definitely pose anything that strikes your fancy. I welcome the engagement even if, nay especially if it demands I stretch a little. Challenge me, friends.

2011: The Rear View Mirror

2011-12-31T12:54:00.002-06:00

I have been watching—from my woe-is-me sick bed—my blog roll steadily filling up with my blogging comrades' retrospectives for the year. Having ended the year much less of a contrarian than I started, I'm jumping on that horse.

2011 was the year of riding the smilidon here at the Hill Cantons. I could regal you with page view bar charts or some other tedious piece of bragging rights, but I would hazard a guess that you care even less about that than I do (which is little, really).

Like the games we love it's more about the road--the exploration and the camarderie along the way--than what lies at the end of it, the silly fleeting gratification of accumulating readers quantatively. In that way it's been a highly successful year. For me it's mostly been about driving down on the these arcing themes and game ideas, the little ideas that nag. And playing of course, lots of that.

Looking back here the theme arcs that I felt best about in the year:

The Personal Connection

This was the year that I loosened up on my long-standing revulsion against that kind of preening self-indulgent stule of the age—you know the one that has cranked up memoirs and tell-alls to a major section of the dead tree industry in the last decade. Writing more about my own deeper connections to the game helped me develop a stronger writer's voice—and let me talk about a surprising range of broader themes and how they relate back to the game.

I wrote about my father, and how the Vietnam War just might have something to do with the phrase “fantasy fucking Vietnam”. About my grandfather's storytelling and the oral art ofgame-mastering. About the otherworldly ruined pile of a house I lived in for a time when I started playing as a lad. About the ranch we would hole up in during college days in Conan Country.

About how our religious worldviews can be a distant mirror to those we have in our fantasy world. And about the deep sense of place that I (and apparently the rest of you) associate with our campaign worlds.

The Domain Game

In 2011 the blog remained a place that didn't just endlessly editorialize about games—and please sweet Crom, I pray for a general reduction in Opinion Only content of my fellows—but hothoused play right out of it. The one with the greatest legs was (is) the threads around domain-level play in D&D.

It was deeply satisfying to not only write the Borderlands sourcebook (which should be out by the end of the next month) about an area that I always wanted to see explored in that way—but to do it from the ground up by chucking out all the rules expectations and

That exploration started here and continued over a long arc (in the link on the subheader)--and then game back to life on Google Plus with Domain Game II.

The Interview Series

One of my goals for this year when it was still a pup was to crank up my interview series, I was very happy with the ones cranked out. It makes me very happy to step back out of the bully pulpit and listen to the voices of some truly interesting folks out there.

We had the mammoth feather-ruffling one with Rob Kuntz and the interesting one with King of Dragon Pass creator David Dunham that revealed the connection of that classic computer game to a tabletop Pendragon variant campaign. I swung back to talking to Jeff Berry, the HC “resident Tekumel expert” about the exciting passing of M.A.R. Barker's collection into the public sphere.

We talked with former TSR artist and hard-working game designer Jeff Dee. I explored the long, strange trip of the German world game Magira and some other new worlds with our DIY brethern.

Maps

Readers, especially those anonymous hordes from Google searches seem to eat up the series I wrote on what makes for a great map. That series started here and was explored more here.

There were several other major themes (Tekumel, Matters Vancian, Early RPG Experiments, Non-Traditional Sandbox Mechanics , Game Tinkering and of course Actual Play) I may save them for another day—or likely just move on into the flush of the new year.

But that, my friends, was the way it was. I hope that next year, tomorrow, I find you reading, discussing, debating, and playing alongside me again, there is an even greater year to come.

Victory Lap for the Point of Light Winners

2011-12-27T14:06:00.000-06:00

The judges have consulted, tough decisions made from the sick bed—and now the envelopes are ready for the Point of Light contest.

A mighty drum roll please.

Best Secret Society, Barry Blatt with the Priesthood of Bakham:

Chief among the disasters was a collapse in farming and the fertility of the soil. For centuries now the Priesthood of the Underworld god Bakham has had charge of embalming and funerals - except they have been secretly making bandaged effigies of the corpses for relatives to bury and recycling the real corpses into vitamin supplements (the Sacred Dust of Bakham to be added to bread) and fertiliser (the Seeds of Bakham without which nothing will grow).

According to the secret sect of Priest-biochemists the long prophesied day has come, the vital minerals, amino acids and vitamins embodied in the biomass in the valley are running out and the radionuclides are becoming more concentrated. One faction says cull the already cretinous and crippled populace directly, another says let them wander, perhaps there is useable nutrient out there their natural urge to feed will locate.

Runner Up: Robert Parker with Obelisk of the Electric Brain.

Best Adventure Hook, Zzarchov with Gold Hoard for Weddings:

What is moving people to go outward? Weddings. Specifically that a religious need to have gold bands to get married and become an adult. Thing is when they sealed themselves in the valley they didn't anticipate how big their population would grow over time. They are out of gold and have been for a generation...

Going with the reason (gold), one old thousand year relic. A deposit receipt to a banking house, with an address. If it is still there, the gold found could make the PC's virtual kings back in the valley (able to extort concessions from "children" looking to marry.)

Runner Up: Jason Sholtis, Mineral Depletion and Barry Blatt with the Bakham hook

Best Something Out There, Robert Parker with Fecund Mounds of the Toxic Hive:

Even a vast repository of knowledge such as the Electric Brain has limits upon its imagination, and over the centuries it grew weary of the various permutations of vat-spawn it could conceive. In its insane quest for novelty, the Brain labored to shape a creature that would produce genetic marvels that would surprise even it. Hence, the Magna Mater, Chalice of the Gods, was born.

A titanic series of interconnected mounds of ebon flesh, like a series of living hills, Magna Mater is riddled with cave-like orifices where a shocking variety of monstrosities dwell. Known as the Thousand Young, each of these unique spawn spill from the titanic womb that exists in the center of the Magna Mater's mass, loping, hopping, and squirming through the redundant series of "caverns" that comprise its internal organs until they crawl hideously into the world beyond.

Runner Up: Jason Kielbasa for the Mundaneum

Supplementary Kudos

Best Written But I Couldn’t Figure Out What The Hell Category to Put it In as a Winner, Jeremy Duncan with "A Ramble in the Ruins":

Of those that yet remain within the city, or what remains of it, I can report the following: They are a strange folk, pale and wan, inclined to thinness of hair and a certain fleshiness which, though not of such grossness as to provoke disgust, nevertheless inspires uneasiness in the lone traveler. There is a certain oily sheen to the skin, and an aspect of dulled hunger in their eyes -- as if they longed for rich fare and fine wines, but had long ago resigned themselves to stale bread and bitter dregs. The effect is disquieting enough when they are at their ease or at table, but it is alarming when, on those rare occasions when they speak directly to one another, or to strangers, to find that same ill-contented gaze meeting one's own.

Best Sneaking in of Vagina Imagery, Robert Parker

Winners please drop me a line at kutalik at the gmail dot the com and choose a prize from our pool.

Point of Light Contest Prizes and a Request

2011-12-26T12:51:00.000-06:00

For about two days now I have been moving the printed-out entries around and around from the victors pile to the runners-up column to to the sad "almost ran". Truly tough as there is not an entry that I wouldn't use.

My once-a-year dust-up with cold-inducing viruses (invariably sometime around the holidaze) is not helping me adjudicate matters with a clear head. So I am granting myself a reprieve and will be announcing the winners tomorrow morning instead. Whew.

But as to not waste your time with a post only about my public hand-wringing, I do have two items of business.

Firstly here is the prize pool that winners (and possibly runners up) can pick from:

1. Two very nice copies of William Hope Hodgson's classic 1912 The Night Land, a book which several commentators have mentioned (rightly) being very close in spirit to the campaign seed.

2. A nice Avon paperback copy of the Moon Pool by A. Merrit (seen to the right).

3. A laminated copy of the Darlene Greyhawk maps.

Secondly, I wasn't exaggerating about wanting to use all of the entries--and my recent fever dream of synthesizing all of them into a crazy-quilt setting. I am requesting permission from all you fine folks who threw their hats into the ring to do so, with full credits, of course. I have no idea what exactly I may do with it, but I promise that it will be used in play somewhere.

Holiday Freebie: By This Axe

2011-12-23T11:09:00.002-06:00

Last year I posted my medieval small battle rules as one of my holiday freebies, this year--while I am not quite finished--I have a revised playtest version of its fantasy cousin, By This Axe I Rule!, available for your Tin God lead-pushing pleasure.

If you are one of the 30 who received the last version a couple months back, there have been a few changes: a cleaning up of vestigal/unclear rules and expanded sections on how you can run monsters and make your game classic D&D compatible.

A big thank you to Patrick W at Bugbears for Breakfest for his cool, firm hand as editor.

Email me at kutalik at the gmail dot the com for the 18-page PDF file.

Also a reminder that the Point of Light contest will be closed very shortly as it hits noon here. The entries are all quite awesome and I urge readers to check them out here.

Contest Reminder and More Art Inspiration

2011-12-22T15:53:00.000-06:00

I just printed out and (re)read all the entries from Tuesday's Point of Light contest. I have been wont to say in past contests how blown away I am by the imaginative richness of my fellow madhouse inmates, a sentiment underscored with a big hefty thick black marker this time around.

My head has been positively swimming with schemes of how I could synthesize all the entries into one crazy quilt of a setting. In other words your generousity has given me a lot of pleasant holiday rumination time.

A quick reminder that the contest officially ends tomorrow at noon Central U.S. (I believe that is -6 GMT for the rest of you). Feel free to leave new entries in the comments here or on the last post.

Also there will be prizes for the winners (even if there is a tie): a range of pulp fantasy books (A. Merrit, REH, Moorcock, and others) and a number of gaming products that I think will be of suitable interest to readers of this blog. I haven't exactly picked the ones I am going to offer, but winners will get a choice from the pool.

To keep up the "last human bastion on top of the world" mood, some more art inspiration courtesy of yet another of my favorite dead Russian painters Nicholas Roerich. (If you have some other aesthetic inspirations you'd think fit with this, share away.)

Point of Light Contest

2011-12-20T12:33:00.002-06:00

No need for a long set-up. It’s been a good half year since the last Hill Cantons contest/challenge and near (enough) the year anniversary of the first. The time is nigh.

I need another campaign and setting about as much as I need a hole in my head, but I have found nothing helps me survive the holidays like having something creative to ruminate on. Why not roll around in my head a pleasant sideline creation of a new setting in this case the half-formed Point of Light idea from the other day?

And I am looking for your help with this contest.

First thing is what we know about the last bastion:

A number of cataclysms befell humanity and its allies a millennium ago.

Human civilization is clustered in a high, narrow mountain basin roughly 90 square miles in area.

Roughly 10,000 humans live in the valley. About a third live inside the only remaining quarter in the ruins of a former great city. Life there, though a shadow of what came before, is highly refined with a tendency to rumination on the abstract and cerebral doctrines—and sensuous vices of the flesh. The rest of the valley is more rough and tumble, there the population holds on in semi-fortified villages dominated by wild religious rites.

Centuries of inwardness, fear, and the lasting effects of a great purge of remnant books and other intellectual artifacts have limited the bastion’s knowledge of the outside world to what can be surveyed from the surrounding peaks: jagged foothills, vine-choked forests, giant fungus groves, ash wastes, and the hints of a green-stoned cyclopean ruin.

Beyond the horizon lurks a vast wilderness haunted by bands of inhuman reaver bands and the truly monstrous.

Something has shifted in the valley in the last decade, the rulers of the land have finally opened up that last safety valve to keep their control of the last bastion: permission to explore beyond the peaks. The insane, the maladjusted, and restless dregs of the citizenry answer the call.

Contest Categories:

A Secret Society, Cultural Movement or other Social Quirk that either accounts for the inwardness and decadence of the valley—or what’s motivating the new outward-looking attitude..

A Sandbox Adventure Hook. Now that someone has answered the call to adventure, what is it?

Something “Out There”. Some site of mystery: a geographic area, structure, bizarre creature, or what.

Contest Rules:
You can provide entries in any or all of the categories in the comments section. The winner for each category will receive a smallish prize TBA. Contest ends Friday at noon CST.

Campaign Seeds: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2011-12-15T12:11:00.001-06:00

A follow-up from yesterday's picking over of my draft box rejects for campaign ideas. Today I offer you the even worse ideas (hold your nose)--and some ideas that come to think of it might not be half bad.

The Good

Mook Island. A mini-campaign akin in spirit to that flawed 0-level AD&D module Treasure Hunt. The players are all classless 0-level nobodies with no alignment and not much of anything in their possesion. Unlike the module the island would be completely free of lead-you-by-the-hand plotting and be much more of a self-contained sandbox.

Play focus would be first and formost on survival—with a big emphasis on the little mundane resource management that even first-level characters take for granted. Special (and simple) rules for weapon/equipment breakage, foraging, weather nastiness would underscore this. Eventually players would start to focus on attaining first-level status and getting off the island.

I probably could have revived this idea when I started working on my zero-level variant rules months later, but got stuck on getting it around making it something other than “we run from the single kobold armed with a mound of wet toilet paper” or “we spend the session making fire-hardended spears and gathering tubers” kind of inanity. DCC RPG's (whatever happened to that?) “character funnel” concept would also be handy in making this work.

The Point of Light. One (of very few) things I think 4e D&D got right was a return to the concept of “Points of Light”, that human civilization is a very fragile and far-flung surrounded by howling wilderness. Isolated settlements/environments have always held a deep fascination for me, this campaign would take it to its logical extreme.

To the players' best knowledge there are no other “points of light” in the world. The home area is a lone land surrounded by vast stretches of non-human infested wilderness. The map is completely dark outside the civilized zone. Unlike Gamma World there might not actually be any human civilization at all in the great beyond.

Lots of long thought-trains to be dealt with this one to make it a go: how big does the home area population have to be to not just sink under inbreeding? How do you balance all the presumed massive influx of player-found swag into a closed economy? How much technology could they retain without any trade partners and other resource bases. Etc. Etc.

Some of the tropes were recycled into the Colony of Domain Game II.

The Bad

The Ugly

Y-Camp D&D. Another one for the “this started as a joke”column. Made even worse by the fact that we actually discussed running it. Since some of my resolution mechanics revolved around true-to-the-time preteen stupid arguments-- up to and including such things as punching the GM in the arm—one of the worst ideas I have ever come up with.

Fantasy Football-like Fantasy. Players would draft an imaginary team of their top five favorite game designers than try and conceptualize various products they would come up with. Then each imaginary product would face off against another team's product and a ref would rate them. Teams would advance through the season to a championship.

Might have been only an “intellectual” exercise-type post, but inside baseball codified in such a way--painful.

Terrible Campaign Ideas

2011-12-14T11:33:00.005-06:00

One thing I have noticed about creeping middle age is that milestones leave me increasingly asking, “when the hell did that happen?” Recently I ran over the 400 posts mark (really now 420 but why quibble).

Even more astounding has been the continued march of my unpublished draft posts—hitting 300 this month also. That's a lot sitting idle on the cutting floor. Granted about a quarter of that yawning hole in my draft folder are just plain technical misfires, another fifth of them are good, healthy, interesting posts that I just ran out of time in my two-hour window for gaming-related writing I ration myself each day.

The rest...well the rest...live on the Island of the Misfit Toys; stunted little dwarf posts that either were too clumsy, too polemical, too badly-timed, or too just damn weird for me to release them into the light of day. Of course these I secretly love.

A for instance, these I group under the title of Malformed Campaign Seeds (and this mind you is only the coherent half of them):

Evolving System World. This idea evolved out of discussion of the familiar rules-detail/crunch arc—that is you start playing a rules lite game only to want more and more layers of rule complexity to the point that you actually start either jumping systems or creating Frankenrpgs. In a nutshell the campaign would codify this.

The PCs start playing with a completely free-form game with few formal options. Each campaign year we would port the game to a new rules system of varying complexity. So after the faceless mooks in grey jumpsuits storygamed their way through that year they'd go on to be OD&D characters the next year would add Greyhawk so on down the line until they were playing Rolemaster or someother bat-shit complex system.

A truly stupid idea, somewhat akin to saying: “I hate smoking. Too get it out of my system I am going to start smoking five Camel Lites a day eventually working my way up to a carton of Pall Malls.”

Literary Tower of Babel World. A variation on the last one, really. In this one each “land” in the campaign world is dominated by a single theme heavily based on a particular fantasist's work. So you are booging around in Zothique with a bleak range of S&S-like options and then the next day you crossed the mountains and were tooling around Gondor with yet another. Each land would have totally different emulative mechanics for it. Oh it hurts.

Polish “Time of Troubles”. Campaign set in the vast borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the 17th-Century. Cossacks, feathered hussars, sabre duels, empty steppes, spooky wetlands, all the works. I planned on converting the Polish RPG Dzikie Pola still sitting on my desk for the project.

It's the last part that makes it a bad campaign idea—any idea that involves you learning a new language and then doing a translation of part or all of a 318-page book is a truly, truly terrible idea.

Pan Chakan Defiance (or Jews with Guns..In Tekumel). A recent joke that almost became a post. Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber lead a band of Jewish partisans through a nexus point into the vast jungles of the Chakas in Tekumel. Guns ablazing they hold off the combined military forces of the Petal Throne, the Red Hats and the Pe Choi. Bad in-jokes makes for worse campaigns.

Now I know very well that many of you have harbored Bad Campaign Ideas (I read your blogs after all, ha). Let your hair down, here's your chance to share. What's lurking in your closet?

Nireus's Tale

2011-12-13T14:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I mentioned in passing that one of my favorite parts of classic-style gaming is the “emergent story” that happens at the table (opposed to say the newer habits of heavy pre-layering of GM meta-plots). Dice fall, combats are won and lost, jokes made and in all that chaos a “story” is made after the fact.

David Rollins playing the “pretty boy” ministrel-gladiator (a strangeness made possible by my Conan/ZeFRS random gen system) Nireus in the second one-shot composed one of the better (or at least amusing) first-person accounts I have read. I present his mighty ballad here for readers.

(And if you are in a kindly mood today why not stop over at my earlier post and help me crowdsource the next scenario in this trilogy.)

The Tale of Nireus and the Foul Sorcerer Mogg

Hark! Gather close and hear the tale of how the great Nireus of Argos came to save the people of Ifar from the terrors of Mogg and the temple on the blue mountain.

It is a tale that begins, like so many, with a betrayal. Betrayal that lead to the destruction of the fierce company of warriors known as the Free Companions. With the rest of the Companions scattered and hopeless, Nireus gathered a small group of stalwart warriors to him and struck out across the steppes.

It was a journey that would purify their spirits with hardship. When they finally drank deeply of the pure waters of Ifar their minds were clear of purpose and their souls full of mercy and determination. Aye, such men as these could do naught else when the warrior princess Larissa beseeched their aid in the protection of the sacred village of Ifar.

Long had the foul necromancer plagued the good people of Ifar but lo, of late he had taken to capturing the fair maidens of the town to sacrifice in his diabolical rites.

Nireus, moved by their plight, gathered his men: Galbor of the Steppes, Iago the Zigaran and his faithful retainer Virain the Poet and bade Larissa lead him to the fell, blue mountain of the necromancer and priest of unmentionable gods, Mogg.

She lead the courageous troupe over dangerous mountain paths filled with harrowing heights and fierce creatures without number. Still, the men of Nireus won through with little trouble. When they reached the mountain the fair warrior maiden gave them three choices for the assent to the foul temple. The first was far in the distance, an easy trail up the mountain which they could see was clear of enemy and danger. The second was closer and offered a simple walk up a mountain path cut by a lazy river. The last was closer still; an arch that lead into the darkness beneath mountain and into the lower levels of the temple. Surely the enemy lay there in wait for the heroes that the gods would provide to the good people of Ifar!

The trials of the journey had done naught but wet the appetite of Nireus for battle. He chose to immediately grapple with the darkness of the temple and plunged into the inky uncertainty of the archway.

He ordered Larissa wait at the entrance for their inevitable return but she was noble and brave and would stand with her saviours, come what may.

The first door was a simple puzzle which Nireus had open in a mere moment but they were forced to walk in single file through a narrow corridor. Keen-eyed Iago took the lead, ever wary for the foemen of the terrible mountain while Nireus came behind him leading the beautiful Larissa by her hand.

A heavy door slid out of the wall and struck a terrible blow against Nireus; though he kept to his feet. Even so, while Nireus regained his balance an awful creature of the grave came from behind the door to tear poor Larissa from his grasp! The creature returned to the darkness with Larissa in tow and the heavy door began sliding closed behind him. With no holds or rings upon the door to grasp, the determined Argosian jammed his trident into the narrow space left and levered the stone door open with a might unmatched in these times.

While he held the cyclopean portal wide his men dashed into the secret way to give chase to the foul creature and his fair prize, Larissa. Understanding the will of their leader, Galbor and Virain quickly dashed through the door, though Iago was distracted by the decor of the room and had to be commanded to follow. The great door slammed shut behind Nireus as he followed his men but alas, they were slower than the preternatural creature and soon lost him in the maze of tunnels beneath the mountain.

Their trials as they searched the mountain for the fair princess Larissa were many and unnatural but there were a few battles note.

In a great cavern two demonic creatures, horrific blending of bats and men, descended from the darkness to harry the courageous band. Iago and Galbor fell upon one and tore at the thing's wings. Nireus shrugged off the pain of the fiend's claws as the larger creature raked his muscular flesh. He struck it to the ground with a sweep of his trident. Virain, with no martial skill of his own but a great loyalty to his friend and master, grabbed at the demon's wing to keep it from escaping Nireus' wrath. With a single blow, Nireus transfixed the the foul thing with his trident and sent it back to the hell from whence it had come.

Soon after the cavern, the bold band of heroes entered a great hall filled with pyramids of bones. What suffering these corpses had to endure the heroes could not know, even so they steeled themselves to avenge each and every one of the multitude strewn before them. They did not travel far when they were confronted by a terrible ghoul such as had taken the fair Larissa. Quick witted Iago pulled an ancient tapestry from the wall and wrapped it about the creature. Nireus leapt upon the bones of the fallen to prepare to deliver the final blow as brave and sure Virain touched his torch to the tapestry. The foul creature writhed widely in the flames but it was for nought as as a mighty blow from Nireus' trident brought it low forever.

Galbor and Virain turned to face two more ghoulish horrors as Iago ran from the battle to tear another tapestry from the wall. Galbor fell beneath the savagery of his foe while Virain stumbled out of reach of the blows meant to bring his own death. Nireus bellowed and dipped his trident into the fire of his still burning foe so that it might know the heat of his rage and struck Galbor's killer squarely. It too knew the heat of his fury as it burst into flames and died it's final death in screaming agony. While Iago swung from the second tapestry in his efforts to dislodge it, Nireus delivered another mighty blow to the final ghoul and laughed as it too suffered a flaming death of righteous fury.

Their thoughts on the peril of the fair Larissa, the heroes quickly cremated Galbor's remains over the burning bodies of his vanquished foes, praying his soul would rise upon the smoke of vengeance to the heavens.

Climbing upward through the gloomy halls of the temple the heroes came to a room with no floor. Housed beneath the scant and narrow beams, a creature of shadow and malice approached the three companions. Furious at what the delay might mean for the fate of fair Larissa, Nireus brandished his fearsome trident, Tribrand, and prepared to deal the hellish fiend a mortal blow. To the surprise of all, as he shook the fell weapon, a flame shot out of the fork toward the darkness of the creature. It recoiled from the furious light and cowered at the entrance to its lair.

Iago, emboldened by the creature's cowardice sauntered across the narrow beam with only the gentle sway of his hips to hold his balance. With the sure feet and powerful gait of a mountain lion Nireus also crossed the chamber. Virain followed with a watchful eye on the shadowy evil below.

The heroes then came to a chasm so deep it seemed to be without a bottom. Though a red glow far into the depths promised a fiery death should one of them fall. Even so, with the Ifar and Larissa depending on them, they did not hesitate and swung across the deep wound in the earth on a rusty old chain that hung from the ceiling.

A dark and twisting tunnel lead them to the decayed temple on the mountain peak. As they alighted the heap of rubble at the entrance they saw the evil Mogg chanting and preparing Larissa and another daughter of Ifar for sacrifice to his foul god. With a bellow of challenge, Nireus charged across the distance to bring Mogg's unnatural life to an end with Iago on his heels. Virain scuttled behind the rubble and made his approach to the fair victims with all speed that he safely could.

Mogg dispatched a lion's corpse, bound by unholy necromancy and strengthened by it's unnatural attachment to the mortal realm, to intercept the two valiant warriors. It was a worthy challenge for Nireus' skill and Tribrand twitched in his hands at the creature's approach. Still, he knew his duty was to rescue the the women and rid the world of the sorcerer Mogg's evil so he dug the butt of Tribrand into the rubble and vaulted over the beast so he could continue his charge.

Iago's twin blades flashed and struck the beast like lightning striking the steppes. He hacked chunks of dead flesh from its carcass and still it clawed vainly at him while they danced their fearsome duet. Iago leapt upon the great creature's back and plunged his daggers deep into its eyes and rode it until its spirit returned to the land of the dead for its final rest.

While Iago fought heroically against Mogg's hell-spawn minion, Virain struggled to cut the bonds of the Fair Princess Larissa and Nireus rained mighty blows upon Mogg in an effort to cancel his horrific magics. Mogg's chants evoked a terrible vortex of blood red mist above the alter. A dread creature from beyond entered the vortex and slapped vainly about the heroes with a multitude of tentacles.

Virain freed Larissa but was struck down by the dread god's tentacle before he could reach other fair maid.

The titanic struggle between Nireus and Mogg raged as the storm rages. Nireus cast aside the bindings of Mogg's magic like so many cobwebs. He struck a mortal blow, driving Triband deep into Mogg's chest. Even so, the bond between the sorcerer and the monstrous creature of the vortex remained unbroken. Nireus gripped his great trident in two hands and tossed Mogg into the air as a farmer tosses sheaves of wheat with his fork. Still he chanted, invoking the dread god alight upon the mountain's peak. Once more Nireus struck the sorcerer, Tribrand biting into his neck and chest. With heaving of his mighty arms he tore out Mogg's throat and collar bone, forever stanching the flow of hellish filth from Mogg's mouth.

And so it was finished. The mist cleared and the dread creature of the abyss disappeared. Virain recovered quickly from his wounds and Iago sauntered sexily down the mountain trail weighing double by Mogg's treasure.

A toast to the mighty warrior and hero: Nireus of Argos!

Crowdsourcing the Next Hyborian Romp

2011-12-13T10:50:00.002-06:00

This weekend's face-to-face game marked the third time I have run the Conan/ZeFRS one-shot. There must be some twisted, soul-shriven social scientist buried in me as one of the most enjoyable things for me is the game as a comparative exercise.

It's absolutely fascinating how all three groups of Hyborian neerdowells when confronted with the same range of choices would at some points 100 percent of the time take the same one (always the tunnel) and at others come up with a wild range of divergent action. I will probably run it one more time this month if I can squeeze in a game before the holidays blot out the sun.

Which leads me to my work on the second linked Hyborian adventure coming in January. It's always fun to see what the unwashed Internet hordes come out with in a brainstorm bull session, so here I am throwing open the gates. Please help me throw some paint on the canvas and we'll see what sticks. (If your idea gets worked in there, you'll get full credit.)

Here's my ballpark for the adventure:

1. I am not doing straight adaptions of Conan stories, but I am trying my damnest to keep them in the spirit of the actual REH stories and not the later pastiches. So all's fair in terms of taking small elements from the stories: a situation here, a character there and the like. The closer in feel to real Howard material—even if it's from another story cycle (hell I've already thrown Bran Mak Morn and Kull in there) the better. Any choice bits you'd love to see scattered in there for color and texture?

2. I need to get it out of the dungeon as the main adventure site (though it certainly can contain some underground exploration as a sideshow). Suggestions for solid Howardian places to perform brave acts in?

3. I really want to do a mass pitched battle. It could be an affair like the Battle of Shamla Pass in "Black Colossus" or something wholy different. I would likely use the mass battle rules that came in the third TSR Conan module so that the outcome is actually variable—and can be heavily effected by the actions of players. Suggestions on who's battling, why the players are involved, or what kind of cut-scene/action points I can throw in there?

4. I want to have a small city/town/social “scene” which can test more of the civilian skills and especially the character-chosen weaknesses (like Weakness to Men/Women, wine, gluttony, or gambling). Any suggestions there?

Anything else, my friends? Wild, crazy, and off-the-wall welcome.

Playing More, Feeling Good

2011-12-12T15:28:00.001-06:00

Deep in my cups last night with my visiting buddy, Red from Redbeard's Raving, we came around to talking about the post-game “GM high.” Just out of running a spontaneous face-to-face third run at Mogg's mountain featuring Desert Scribe as the mighty axe-cleaving Kull and Red as the Zamoran rogue Shevatas, I was feeling that familiar and addictive spike of adrenalin after a good session.

Undoubtedly, part of the cycle begins with the jitters of stage fright. (And quite honestly I feel it before every single session even with friends near and dear.) It's an old feeling—much akin to what I remembered of my time decades ago of doing theater—the conquering of which invariably leaves me amped up to 11 afterward with the flush of “performing.”

Feeding it as been a lot of the between-session chatter of the involved players. Each session tends to bring me into contact with new players and all kinds of quirky little “emergent story” by-products have bubbled out of the at-table chaos (more about that Hyborian and Domain player-written madness later).

Even when my evening Google+ sessions run into the wee hours of my much coveted sleep schedule I have tended to keep trying to ride out my buzz around the meta-bull sessions that Zak S. has been hosting under the “Let's Fight about RPGs” banner.

Taking stock, I am a bit taken aback by how deep I have sunk in. Six months ago most of my gaming activity mostly revolved around the once every 3-4 weeks tabletop Hill Cantons campaign. These days between the Google+ Petal Throne, Domain Game II, Conan one-shots, and of course play in other people's worlds, I am playing roughly twice a week: a six-fold increase.

It's a surprise to busy real life me—doubly so since it's been very sustainable. Cutting out the less emotionally satisfying, black hole of computer gaming altogether and the sudden flexibility of being able to virtually run or play in a game whenever I have a few idle hours have opened up more play windows. And with that high back there I keep returning like someone jonesing for black tar heroin.

Point is, I am not trying to beat on the drum again about G+ gaming; it's more of a sudden, broader recognition that there are benefits to this hobby that I just don't get it out of other interests. There is some indeed method inside my own obsessional madness and that method is something that has felt good and healthy.

I have a feeling that I just might not be alone in this.

Welcome to Ma'arb, the Land of 500 Graces

2011-12-10T11:31:00.002-06:00

The uncouth barbarian scum that make up the zrne-share of players in our Jakalla Petal Throne games on Google+ are said to be refugees from the obscure southern land of Ma'arb. Observing the Discrete Etiquette of Background Facts that Mean Little to Players, not much is known in the Five Empires of that distant, dusty place.

Ma'arb lies mainly on a thorn-tree covered hilly plateau punctuated by grassland prairies and labyrinthine box canyons. Around the two rivers draining it there are fertile bottom lands where most of the population resides in teetering fortified steads made from jer-dun, the mortar of the shells of gargantuan sand mollusks.

The capital city of Ber'jef, the Classical Ma'arbyani word for “Sanguinolent Fortress That Wraps the Sky in Apricity”, was founded as a remote Engsvanyali military cantonment and trading concession with the local hill tribes. In its heyday a millennium ago it was a flourishing trade center, but as the continent-wide demand for hu'uz (an allegedly-madness producing liquor brewed from Zibraan, the underparts of a local grub) shrunk so did the fortunes of the city.

The isolation and decline of Ma'arb in recent centuries was compounded by an incursion of the Kazs, an obscure branch of the dreaded Ssu that now lay claim to vast, cycolpean ruins near the single mountain pass off of the plateau--passes that would otherwise connect Ma'arb to the other nations of the so-called Southern Continent. The local Foes of Man are hunchbacked, mauve in complexion, and reek of stale cardamon.

Ber'jef today is but a dusty shell of its once glorious self.

Religion in Ma'arb is dominated by a Manichean system split between two god-heads, one symbolizing “Stability”, the other “Change”. The seeming unity of this doctrine is marred by an internecine factionalism.

It is said by wags that for every five Ma'arbyani there are six competing cosmologies--and in truth much of the nation's cultural and intellectual life is consumed by fervent debate of these matters of religion (questions such as whether Tekumel was created from the Top Down or Bottom Up or if life can be described as a fast-moving game or a loose, but grand narrative for example) .

Each school of thought is called a “grace”. One such grace is the Equipollent Idolaters, a school of thought that maintains that the deities of Pavar are in fact not just major aspects of the twin god-heads, but separate divine beings in their own right. Refugee priests of this grace seem to have little difficulty--once their atrocious barbarian uncouthness is overlooked--fitting into the local temple structures of Tsolyanu.

Clark Ashton Smith Fans: Which Cycle?

2011-12-09T14:20:00.003-06:00

I am told that good things come to those that wait...or something and the other...really I am too restless and impatient to listen anymore to these kinds of homespun adages.

Though recently it did ring true. After a year of patient (and disciplined) bidding, I won a sweet and affordable lot of those Ballantine paperback collections of Clark Ashton Smith's work.

Though I had read several of the entries in the Hyperborean cycle (including my favorite, flawed CAS gem “The Seven Geases”) it was pleasure to get a chance to read them all in one sitting.

But even more than the stories; the introduction, hand-drawn map, and geographic walk-through by Lin Carter—really someone should have had a tough love intervention with that man to limit him to this kind of editorial core competency—really fired up my imagination.

I instantly wanted to plop that time-forgotten lost-isle straight down into the Hill Cantons. (Since I have had vague allusions to the lost Hyperborean civilization all along not a terrible stretch).

So here's my query of the week to you in the echo chamber: if you had to pick one of his story settings/cycles, which would you base a game setting on and why?

Zothique? Hyperborea? Averoigne? Xiccarph? Something else? (If you are going to cherry-pick from several, you better defend that position, pal.)

Random Character Generation for a Hyborian Age

2011-12-08T16:55:00.000-06:00

I just couldn't leave well enough alone. Give me a game, even one that I love and mostly works for me and within a couple weeks time I am already bolting on flashy bits of chrome or trying to kit out his engine.

I swore great blood-sealed oaths to grim Ymir that I would just play Conan/ZeFRS straight out of the box, but here I am doling out some variants. It's probably not a great surprise to longtime readers that the first thing I would take a sharp chopping instrument to is the point-buy system (a particular and persistent dislike of mine), and that I did.

See below for a random character generation system to be used with TSR Conan rpg or its lovable, free clone ZeFRS . Because it spills out over a few pages, I will only present part of the subsystem blogside. You can find the full PDF download here.

As always this is a work in progress and I would greatly appreciate feedback (no seriously, please drop me at least a line about it). Does it work? Is it clear?Tweaks? Or do you just want to hit it with your axe?

Design Goals:

Speed up character gen. Should take 5-15 minutes with the subsystem.

Reduce min/max dithering. Characters will have a decent, sensible spread of talents. And removing the min/max impulse means that players can be surprised by what they may get. Some choice still exists with the election to take rolls on the weakness charts (any talent points there can be freely assigned).

Provide color. The background charts provide some decent REH archetypical characters with a light touch that allows for them to figure out most real details of their character at the table.

Bolster the power range a tad. Characters generated here get an extra talent point and five extra talent points per weakness to compensate for being bound by the almighty die.

Mastering Mogg's Mountain

2011-12-07T15:31:00.002-06:00

Late Friday I managed to host the first foray into Hyborian mayhem on Google Plus. The muscled moody Pict, Bran Mak Morn (Jeremy D), the crafty Zingaran rogue Belvis (Michael M), the Northman Angnar (Jeffery O), and some Shemite pirate-chick "born under a Stygian catapult" (Steven G) all took the first run against the Mountain.

There was the mighty wrestling of beasts, there were gems stolen the size of a grown man's fist. There was eldritch evil and the rending of flesh. There were deaths both glorious and ignominious.

In short it worked. Mostly.

Crafting one-shots is a tough business. Especially ones that aim at: 1. being wrapped up completely in three hours; 2. building in at least a few meaningful, non-railroady choices; 3. providing a brisked pace, action-oriented romp with some diversity of adversity; and 4. concentrating on the literary flavor and themes of just one distinct (if powerful) element in the stew that went into our old favorite fantasy game. A tall order.

I agonized over the parameters. The number of rooms and encounters that can reasonably be explored in an hour. The ratio of empty rooms to stocked; the questions of whether or not you can really have something with real non-linear choice in something so clearly delineated. Finally even deigning to crowdsource.

(The peanut gallery opines from 4-10 rooms—including empties--can be explored in an hour, while my gut says you can present anywhere from 2-4 branching paths without breaking a scenario altogether).

I learned a lot from the writing, much more from the playing and the gracious feedback of the players. The aim is to play this scenario at least two or three more times—fine-tuning as I go—and then run two more linked (if only episodically in fine REH non-chronological, geography-denying order) scenarios the same number. By the end perhaps I will have finally gotten some window into this difficult art.

Switching gears back to organizing the current games, based on feedback I tried to frontload the exposition more. It cuts out a set-piece that had a non-linear array of choices behind it, but hey that just cuts your time down getting to the real meat and the bigger choices when you are staring up at that solitary peak.

The new full version of the prologue can now be found as a PDF file here (see “King of the Mountain” file). And if your mind—like mine--just naturally skips over the italicized purple prose of such creatures, the ADD version is neatly numbered and served to you in happy meal-sized bites below. Amphetamine salt optional.

The ADD version:

You are motley crew of destitute fugitives from the Free Companions, a mercenary band destroyed a few weeks ago on the steppes.
You found Ifar, an isolated, down-on-its-heels mountain town, facing a sinister evil in the shape of Mogg, a sorcerer-priest, taking the town’s wealth—and now taking its women as sacrifices.
Roped in by the exhortations of the warrior-lass Larissa, you have set out to take Mogg down from his lair high up on Mount Ged.
You have three avenues before you for the ascent (see illustration, forget about the jingling sound of keys).

Jakalla and Nowhere: the Player's Perspective

2011-12-02T14:44:00.001-06:00

I have noted elsewhere my phobia/disinterest around session reports.

Said pathology doesn't extend to my players. I always get a kick out of seeing the game as it is viewed through their eyes. On my better days even reading them I learn something about how to tailor games better to what they pick up on--and what they filter out.

A number of session reports have been coming back out of the Petal Throne and Domain Game II sessions on Google Plus as of late, so how about a little show and tell.

Tekumel fans may enjoy a quick account by the “high-functioning autistic” hunter-barbarian played by Jason K on his sojourn through the Jakallan Underworld here. Related through my EPT co-DM, Jeremy, is an account of last night's session by Evan on the happenings on that haunted isle just outside the City Half as Old as the World here (while you are at it you can pick up Jeremy's nice EPT character sheet here as a free download).

Finally back in Nowhere, Peter Robbins has a tale of frontier life to relate:

Jathur Ol Kadim slowly works his way around the fort on horseback, taking note of defenses that need building up. The recent attack by the hoard of undead white apes has left the newly settled community on razor’s edge. Nerves are palpably shattered amongst the settlers. They all share a simple but nervous greeting with Jathur as he makes his way through their rank and file. Each member of the community are seen pitching in--digging for new crops, clearing brush, removing chopped down trees; any way to keep their minds off the looming chaos spire still creeping into their thoughts.

Jathur himself looks with trepidation towards the previously “humming” apparition of a spire in the dark distant woods. If he listens closely, he can still hear it’s echo from recent past. A tell tale heart of darkness, pulsing their brains in the night’s sky.

Jathur finishes his rounds, returning to the fort, hoping the weight of his new leadership role to this garrison will soon dissipate. The “Vermillion Lancers”, a rag tag group of mounted mercenaries supplied to Jathur and company to help buttress the garrison fort are far from professional grade.

Over the past few days he has attempted to whip them into shape, using the skills he learned as a warrior of the Desolate Isles. Constant drills, day in and out : making charges at looped rings on horseback, letting arrows fly to target from mount and foot, and stabbing at large bags of unusable grain stacked and tied to stumps or low-lying trees. They’ll make good soldiers, some day, just not today.

Jathur settles in, leaving horse tied near the barracks. He looks in on a make-shift hospital area setup in the large barracks area. Several settlers have taken on illness, or hurt themselves with a loosened axe head; nothing critical. Needing shelter, Jathur allowed them to be settled into the fort instead of the budding encampment, for it cannot be called a “village” in any shape or form yet.

Jathur moves on from the barracks, passing through the smells of the unmanned kitchen, the dinner from last night still lingering in the stale air. He then makes his way into the previous warden’s office. Jathur still is not used to having his own room. He is not used to ordering men around either. He prefers the company of fellow warriors ; equals, under night desert sky to this predicament. Call them the Desolate Isles all you may, but at night, in the summer sky; a warm curved woman by your side - the freedom you felt cannot compare to these ‘civilized’ lands.

Jathur sits down to practice his recently acquired writing skills. Bringing ink to parchment....

The 20th Day Of Summer, Fort Va‘rok

Summoned to the Jade Quarter of Lyk Ku’tah, along with fellow explorers Hasan and Betkin.

Received new title Warden of the South Reaches. I will receive a 2000 LB (Large Bronze) stipend/budget yearly to garrison the fort.

Traveled back from Lyk Ku ‘tah to Duke Mraz’s Southlands holdfort. Attempted to discuss the new promotion with the Duke, but was summarily told to “bugger off, the Duke is busy!” by his attendant.

Re-provisioned the caravan, containing Hassen and Betkin, along with roughly 40 settlers and 7 mercenaries of the Vermillion Lancers.

Caravan traveled to Fort Va‘rok to begin establishing Hassen’s sub-sub-barony, and build out a village for Betkin and his fellow colony settlers.

The group notices that a previous mass grave of indigenous White Apes, very large 4 armed apes roughly 8’ in height, is now empty. The previous smell of DEATH in the area surrounding the fort is now gone. The humming of the nearby glass Chaos Spire however, still rings in their ears. Even more so then in past expeditions to Fort Va’rok and it’s surrounding area.

The group decides to start immediately to clear the forest in the two square miles south of Fort Va ‘rok, which was bestowed to Sub-Baron Hasan. Betkin takes the lead in helping the settlers split up into the infirm and the spriteful, taking the able-bodied folks to help hatchet their way through the mixed brush and trees nearby.

I establish the Vermillion Lancers into the main tower of the Fort, allowing the settlers to temporarily take the larger barracks.

That night, during second watch, an alarm is raised. Panic ensues amongst the settlers and warriors alike. A dozen great white apes, undead in nature, attack the fort. A long battle ensues, many of us injured.

One beggar, now known affectionately as “Beggarman”, acts heroically during the battle, taking on several white apes on his own, with little to no skills at his aid. Surprisingly, he survives.

All parties act heroically throughout the battle. The undead white apes were all killed, without loss of warriors or settlers.

It is noticed that the previous humming of the nearby glass-like “Chaos Spire” has ceased. It was determined that in the morning, the group would venture out and see what if anything is currently going on near the spire.

Hasan, Betkin and I, travel to the chaos spire to investigate. Hasan investigates the spire, prodding and poking about. Soon a ghost-like apparition appears from the nearby woods, the same long lost general of the Southlands Satrapy that the group prior had seen. This time, Hasan is able to take his anti Chaos amulet, and force the apparition to retreat. Throughout, Hasan nobly asks the apparition to leave willingly, to no avail.

Several days have passed without further attacks or activity of note...

Signed, Jathur Ol Kadim, Warden Of The South Reaches

Hyboria. Game. Tonight.

2011-12-02T12:50:00.000-06:00

We are on for tonight for the first romp and rampage through Hyboria (by way of Google+).

If we have three willing canaries in the mine for the CONAN/ZEFRS one-shot, it's a go. Proposed playtime 8:30 CST.

See particulars and scenario backstory in yesterday's post. Just tell me if you: 1. want one of the three seats, and 2. if you are going to send me a custom character or want a pre-gen.

The Kettle-Drums They Beat

2011-12-01T13:12:00.000-06:00

The steppe winds howl kicking up great billowing clouds of dust. Your hand draws back over your face shielding your eyes and black cracked lips.

Aeons seem to pass before the eerie stillness returns, as does that gnawing hollowness in your stomach. Your companions shoulder on next to you in that endless march toward the beckoning mountains shimmering in the purple distances before you.

You were the lucky ones.

Once each of your were of a band of dissolute rogues, the Free Companions, who burned and looted their way along the borderlands. Five thousand strong you were, from a motley score of the dregs of Hyboria, serving as mercenaries for a rebel prince in eastern Koth. When that cur made peace with his cursed sovereign, the Companions were out of gainful employment. By fire and sword you took to plundering the outlying dominions of Koth, Zamora and Turan alike.

In command of your company was a mighty-thewed Cimmerian. Blue of eye and black-maned, he was a demon on the battlefield of which he was said to be born on. Though mighty in battle, his tactical range fell on the short side.

A week ago Shah Amurath trapped your band near the banks of Ilbars with fifteen thousand men. Mitra! The skies were black with ravens that day. When the lines broke, after a whole day of fighting, some tried to break through to the north, some to the west. The steppes were covered with horsemen riding down the fugitives.

High above you a vulture calls.

Broken of your reverie, you halt suddenly. Far out under a lonely peak a flash of metal glimmers through the heat...

The first one-shot (of three planned) for Conan/ZeFRS is now rearing and ready to flex its tree-trunk arms against the untutored, man-beast hordes of Google+.

Titled King of the Mountain (unless we can crowdsource something better), it will take your would-be conquering hero/heroine up a blood-drenched lonely peak in a harrowing race. You and your companions have three and a half hours tops to best the horrors of that haunted place. Tarry once too many and you lose your moment in the sun.

More Particulars:

Possible Play Windows. As I said before the game will run “whenever”, that is some floating time period in which I have the spare hours and we have a critical mass. I will be traveling to the sun-swept wastes of the desert this coming weekend for work but I do have a few possible windows where I could run a game: Friday night after 8 CST, and/or Sunday or Monday sometime in the early day. Insomnia may make for some spontaneous late night sessions too.

Three Player Limit. I am trying to keep the action quick and the feel less like the small army of D&D parties, thus I will be limiting parties to only three players maximum.

Making your Own Character. Again look here for a free copy of the rules, make up your character and email it to me at kutalik at gmail the dawt com.

A few house rules (it was inevitable as the dawn rising of the sun):

1. You have 35 free talents to spread around as per the rules. The rules contradict themselves by stating that you get 5 talents per weakness you opt in the rules and 10 for each in the reference guide. Though the second reference for 10 is likely an editorial error, we will use that. Three weakness max.

2. You can have up to 7 points in any particular talent.

3. Pick or roll a d100 on the following chart for your nation of origin, note the bonus talents for each:

Roll	Nation	Bonus talents
01-06	Aquilonia	3 points any Knowledge
07-11	Argos	3 points any Knowledge or Medicine
12-16	Asgard	3 points any Fighting or Strength
17-21	Bossonian Marches	3 points any Endurance or Bow
22-27	Brythunia	3 points any Perception
28-30	Cimmeria	3 points in Animal Reflexes or Fighting
31-36	Corinthia	3 points any Knowledge, Pike or Halberd
37-42	Gunderland	3 points any Endurance or Pike
43-46	Hyrkanian Steppes	3 points any Prowess or Bow
47-49	Iranistan	3 points any Perception
50-52	Khitai	3 points any Knowledge
53-60	Koth	3 points any Knowledge
61-64	Kush	3 points any Prowess
65-72	Nemedia	3 points any Knowledge
73-78	Ophir	3 points any Knowledge
79-80	Pictland	3 points any Prowess
81-82	Poitan	3 points any Knowledge or Broadsword
83-86	Shem	3 points any Knowledge
87-89	Stygia	3 points any Insight
90-92	Turan	3 points any Prowess or Bow
93-94	Vanaheim	3 points any Fighting or Strength
95-98	Zamora	3 talents in Acrobatic, Climbing, Pocket Picking or Observation
99-00	Zingara	3 points any Fighting

Onwards and Upwards. If you survive the scenario your character (all pre-gens will be unique to the player) will gain experience and be eligible to run in the second, linked scenario.

G+ Ephemera

2011-11-29T12:59:00.006-06:00

From time to time readers will note some inexplicable content here: strange chicken-scratch drawings or long laundry-list rosters.

There's a simple reason. This blog began life as a campaign hub for players, and while it's taken on it's own life as a vehicle for other things, from time-to-time I use it simply as a place to drop a link to.

Be forewarned as I seem to take on more and more G+ sessions, I think you'll see more of it. We make heavy use of Twiddla, an online whiteboard program with some limited functionality. Among one of the handier features is the ability to import images with the paste of a link. That's what's going on here and with such things as the Rough Guide to Nowhere.

Campaign Intro for Domain Game II

The epics make out entering The Gate Between the Worlds to be as simple and as glorious as stepping through the Jewelled Door of Imyr. For you the Exiled it was something entirely less grand—more like a forced march than the easy, pomp-filled entry of heroes.

The rough, low-hanging tunnel beyond the verdigris-encrusted bronze doors of the the portal seemed virtually endless. No amount of light seemed to penetrate the haze hanging like a funeral shroud from the walls. Innumerable hours were passed putting one weary foot in front of the other until finally caravan members were hanging their hands in exhaustion out on the shoulders of their comrades in front of them.

Finally, one merciful moment many hours later, you stumbled into the sudden sharp shock of daylight. Catching your breath, a few minutes slipped by before you could really take in the full effect of being in this brave new world of Nowhere.

The scene in front of you seems jarringly both familiar and not.

The sun shining above you for one is not as yellow as you remember your own being. Larger, redder and filled with a sense of melancholy and ancient memory, it casts longer shadows much like late afternoon though it sits just a little bit past its zenith in the sky. The few trees around you seem almost familiar as those at home to be a comfort, though the darker, blacker hue of the trunk and the grayer cast of the leaves give the impression of something just a bit off. Their limbs sway a little too lazily in the stiff, cool spring breeze.

Stranger still is the basalt obelisk standing directly in front of you. Five man-heights high the monolith stands in silent testimony to some forgotten eldritch race's hand.

Taking stock, you notice the wave of nervousness spread through your caravan—disturbingly even among the trusted, solid faces of your long-time companions and followers. Each face silently asks, “what now?” as you are approached by the silver-masked, tight-lipped officials of the Colony.

Player's Map to the Southlands Satrapy

Player's Sketch for “King of the Mountain”, the Conan One-Shot

Fort Va'rok

Fort Va'Rok, Week Three

The Down and Dirty on the Conan Pick-up Games

2011-11-28T18:38:00.003-06:00

A few details on how the Conan/ZeFRS G+ pickup games are going to work now that I have heard back from people (mostly on G+):

1. The games will be run “whenever”. If I have a window of time and there is critical mass (2-3 players), we play. They will tend to be later at night, past 8 pm Central US (-6 GMT). Insomnia should push that to some late runs at time. There could be a few day windows on the weekend and on some of the days in December and January when I am not working the real job.

I will post a heads up on G+ from anywhere up to a day in advance or at the drop of a hat. So it's all about the spontaneity.

2. The games will be first come, first serve on who answers--with preference to those who have raised their hands all nice and polite like today. I will probably run the same scenario 2-3 times before moving to a second one, so obviously those who played before are bumped off the list for that scenario.

In theory, the scenario—which will be original with some heavy borrowings from REH--will be a self-contained episode that can be “won” in one session.

3. Players can either custom make their own characters beforehand or pick a pre-gen when the game is announced.

All characters are built straight by the book (go here to find the chargen rules and here to pick a fitting nation from Hyboria to be from) . Pre-gens may have a few quirks that give them some unusual features. (That one's for you, Eric.)

4. There will be winners and they will be those who grab the glory. The player that earns the most fame points in a session is the “victor” and may be awarded a small gift (likely a book). Players will receive extra fame points for loot (I will announce what at the end of the game) and for upholding your own personal code.

Google+ Pickup Games (And Getting Some Conan On)

2011-11-28T14:26:00.002-06:00

Back in my days behind a coffee-stained editor's desk in the smoking post-industrial hole that is Detroit, I would frequently pack six solid days of jagged stress around the high-tide parts of the editorial cycle.

As soon as that unremittingly bleak long winter would break even a bit on a morning off I would jump in the car cleats in hand and drive over to the freakishly great soccer fields erected for the city's brief World Cup moment in the sun. Without fail there was always enough critical mass of other stir-crazed players to get a full-teamed game on. Those games went a long way in keeping me sane those eight years.

Plugging away this morning at a balance-sheet analysis of the Google+ gaming boom, one of the greatest strengths (for me) just jumped right off the page: the ability to drop in or run a game at just about anytime of the day or night with less than a couple hours notice.

I don't think I need to spell out the advantage of that to this audience over much, I would hazard a guess that the single biggest X-factor holding many of us back from playing tabletop rpgs as much as we is that ugly beast called Adult Life Scheduling interfering at each and every turn. Having the ability to waltz into a pick-up game, not surprisingly is just an amazing boon, another perhaps unintended, but welcome outcome of the energy around Constantcon.

The only wrinkle I have encountered is that we are still fumbling around with how to actually run these games. To date, the sessions I have played in have been campaign-like games where the GM is clearly trying to spin out something less fleeting and ephemeral. I have had a blast playing them, but with my own standing commitments to running the Domain Game II and EPT Jakalla sessions really make me a kiss-and-dash-on-the-first-date kinda guy.

Punchline: it would be really sweet to have actual one-shots hand-tailored to be played at a moments notice.

Here's my part, I am going to put together 1-2 one-shots specifically designed around the TSR Conan rpg. A game that seems pitch perfect in supporting episodic, action-packed, lite sessions with a small cast (say like 1-3 players).

Here's your part, tell me what you want if you were going to play in said pick-up (better would be design some pick-up games of your own, but I am fresh out of pithy exhortations for the morning.)

Namely:

1. Show of hands of people who want to play. Good also to say your rough windows of opportunity if you know them. Encircle me on Google+ if you haven't already, or set up a dummy account and do so if you are all shy like.

2. What would you prefer playing: pre-gens (based on actual REH or imaginary characters) or swaggering S&S ne'er do wells of your own?

3. Would you prefer playing a session based on actual REH stories or something completely original? (The question really is whether you think you'd know them to well for them to work with a few twists.)

Game on?

Nostalgia

2011-11-27T10:57:00.002-06:00

Nostalgia began life in the Baroque era as an entirely different animal than how many think of it today.

Apparently desertions, suicides, and sudden deaths were so common among the many homesick Swiss mercenaries who fought their way across Europe that it was called the “Swiss Illness”, a disease that supposedly came on with a preoccupation with strong feelings for the mountains of home. Nostalgia, a Greek compound formed by adding algos (pain, grief, distress) to nostos (homecoming) was coined in 1688 by a physician to describe the malady.

Later it would get mixed up with Romanticism in particular with it's connections to natural landscapes and spiritual senses of homeland.

As a rpg blogger who steers toward the moldy oldies, I bristle at the charges of nostalgia that get bandied from time to time. Bristle, not because it's not true, but because it is. I bristle because it's confused with shoddy old sentimentality, the sugary sap we have all been trained to by our maudlin, self-obsessed culture. We fetish youth and the new, to the point that we are encouraged to piss away later years basking in an afterglow labeled at your local Walmart as “nostalgia”.

But when I look at my own return to the hobby the welter of things I brought back with me are just more complicated than that. Truth be told there were indeed hefty doses of golden-edged memories, and the joy of reconnecting with the physical artifacts of the game. That sudden charge when flipping to that first page of the Holmes book, undeniable.

But if you have followed this blog—and have winded through all the wool gathering and yarn spinning of my more personal entries (self-indulgently the ones that made the blog experiment truly worthwhile to me) and some others—you'll note a preoccupation of mine to try and pick at the all deeper feelings and thoughts that swim around these games of fantasy.

On some days the game really is just a game, a folded up board and some dice that I pull out to have a good time. On others, the quiet moments when I am designing some new piece of the setting or just day dreaming it goes over to that thought train. How do our thoughts and feelings about religion color our fantasy pantheons? When is D&D?

Much of it is tinged with that older nostalgia, a longing for some other place both real and imagined that was close once and now feels far. Isn't that one of the essences of fantasy as much as the Weird? That bittersweet holdover of Romanticism? Cyclopean crumbling ruins, the seeking of long-lost treasures, the vanquishing of ancient evils?

It's my birthday and as I walk into the first years of so-called middle age, these trains come naturally. The hell with it, let's game.

Search for the Emperor's Treasure

2011-11-23T11:28:00.005-06:00

Desert Scribe's wrap-up today of our Search for the Emperor's Treasure game session reminds me that I have been remiss on my own post.

Back in the hoary day, I was a complete sucker for any game Tom Wham signed his name to. I played the crap out of every single game of his I could get a hand on. Admittedly some of those game were profoundly silly--and dare I say crudely simple--such as Snit Smashing or that one whose name eludes me where you play gods literally dropping sentient critters onto a planet to see if they go splat or stay alive to sing your praises.

But others were all around great games—rollicking beer-and-pretzels game fun, always touched by the whimsy of Wham's illustrations and quirky design. For me Search for the Emperor's Treasure, tucked into the center spread of Dragon magazine issue 51, was the best of 'em, a slam dunk.

Basically it was either OD&D or B/X-flavored D&D (depends who you ask) on a board. Each player takes the role (and in a great Whamsian touch the most experienced player picks first) of a fighter, cleric, magic-user or elf, complete with goofy backstory.

Each player is ostensibly questing wilderness and dungeon crawl style to find the treasures of the Emperor scattered and hidden around the handsome Darlene-drawn map by Evil Sorcerers (tm), but in suitably D&D grubbing form that's only a fig leaf for the real object of the game: Treasure full stop. The player who ends with the most swag wins.

There are options for making the game cooperative and party based or even more competitive with player vs. player killing. The former ruins the point, the latter--while Wham explicitly warns against using--actually adds some game balance by helping curb players from exploiting the game's biggest design flaw, the tendency to just march over to one of the sites that give higher odds for treasure finds and just camping there turn after turn.

(I would also recommend mucking around with some kind of house rule that limits either the amount of turns or total treasure that can be mined out of a particular site).

Making Your Own Copy

Thumbing through a super cheap Ebay win of that issue—affordable because hair-tearingly it was missing the game section—made me hungry to play it again.

Fortunately, I found that putting together my own copy was surprisingly easy. Here's how I did it.

I started from a PDF copy of that issue of the Dragon (drop me an email if you want to know how to get a copy, legal of course) and then explored some print-on-demand options. Office Despot has a service (Kinko's offers a similar process) in which you can upload a PDF or other file here and they will print to specs at your local store.

After you upload the files, only select the three full-color pages for the maps and counters. Blow these up to 11 x 17 inches (this will make a larger play surface, though you will lose some resolution) and choose full-color copies.

Now I didn't do this but in retrospect would have made the game much more attractive, select a durable card stock paper to print on. Send it off to your local store and definitely, definitely make sure to call that location to make sure they don't muck it up—I assure the copy-monkeys will do so 6 out of 10 times if you don't. Typical turn around time is a few hours.

When you get the copy, cut out the margin on the maps first aligning them to fit over the overlapping half inch of duplicated images, tape them together. Cut the counters, play cards, and other bits sorting them by type. Throw the encounters, arms, and treasure counters into separate coffee mugs, dixie cups, or whatever you have handy for drawing of chits.

Et voila, you are ready to play.

They look surprisingly sedate for people in the process of
repeatedly siccing a dragon on my poor Elf.

Expanding the Game

If you want to expand the game with a few more options, mosey over to Wham's site and find a reproduction of the play cards for the dwarf and “hairfoot” characters added in the Best of Dragon Games version. Boardgame geek has a few rules variants and other freebies worth downloading here.

If you prefer the alternative map in that second edition--a non-Darlene hex map that could be cut up and moved around a la Settlers of Catan--an enterprising sort could use the jpg image here and print up a copy. (While it looks fun, I couldn't forgo the aesthetic and nostalgic appeal of the original.)

A Brief Interruption of Business as Usual

2011-11-21T09:31:00.001-06:00

Under a rock? Look here then.

Editor's Note: the wonders of the Internet, there is already an entire blog dedicated to this meme.

Conan: TSR's Lost Game

2011-11-18T11:06:00.003-06:00

Two days journey, north of Kulalo, off the Black Coast....Up the river Zikamba...through the Valley of Darkness you'll find a Ruin, ancient and nameless. Whatever cult of man lived there, they are long vanished and only dead men guard it's treasure. In my youth when I still had eyes to see, I worked as a sailor on a ship that went into the Black Kingdoms bringing back hoards of Ivory.

A jade crocodile with emerald eyes as big as a man's hand. The natives talked of in whispers after their tongues were loosened on our skins of fortified wine. The ruins are thought to be cursed by the locals and are forbidden entrance. A village lies just to the south of the ruins along the River.

So went the lead up up for the one of the more rocking—and rare—chances to actually play a rpg, in this case an obscure “Silver Age” entry, the Conan rpg designed by Dave “Zeb” Cook. Between that evocative opening set up by my buddy and GM Scott in Seattle (aka Scalydemon), the chance to play the brooding REH Pictish hero Bran Mak Morn (pictured above in that Jeffrey Jones cover), and the fast and furious fury of the session, I was impressed by the game.

It was a grudging respect admittedly. I had quite simply never heard of it and when Scott floated some barebones description at first I had a fair share of skeptical internal groaning. A color-coded Marvel Superheroes-like unified resolution system? Groan. Skill-based system with point buy? Groan, groan.

It felt also strange to think that TSR could have put an entirely new fantasy rpg game in 1985 without me ever noticing. My first thought was it must have been as big as a steaming pile of offal as that other TSR turkey of the time, the Indiana Jones rpg.

Back then, even with the drift that would lead me out of the hobby picking starting up, I tended to still be highly focused on things revolving around that ill-fated company. Dragon magazine was the first periodical I ever had a subscription to and receiving that rag in it's porn-like plain paper wrapper was a cherished monthly ritual.

But that's exactly what happened. Sure I remember the release of the much disdained (even by my friends at the time) modules featuring the muscle-bound Governator of California, but the game itself until last year I had heard nary a hide nor hair about. This morning I (virtually) flipped through all the issues of Dragon from that time, outside of a short blurb in upcoming products in a single issue not once did it grace an article—let alone a promotional ad. Strange.

Perhaps TSR decided that it didn't need to create a competitor to its own monolithic entry into fantasy roleplaying game; ran afoul of IP restrictions; or simply got lost in the mismanagement and excess of post-Gygax TSR. There is a backstory there that I have yet to hear. (And would be worthy the telling, shot-in-the-dark plea to the Internet cough cough).

Cover art from Boris Vallejo

The tragedy of its obscurity is that it's a fast-paced, mechanically-elegant, mercifully-lite Swords and Sorcery game. It quite simply played very well--and had any number of elements that jived with my prissy sensibilities.

Although it has skills, called “talents”, they are thankfully short, immediately sensible, and completely lacking the subjective mental skills that I tend to grognardly despise as cheap substitutions for player skill. (You know the kind, the “Persuades” and “Sees” and others that were replete even in my favorite Chaosium games of that time).

The sorcery system is dangerous to its user (magical talents increasingly raise an “obsession” score), open-ended and mysterious in a satisfying way. To gain spells you must not only design your own but must quest through Hyboria for scraps of time-forgotten eldritch books and arcane objects to make it happen.

And best of all is that it supported a wider range of crazy Howardian action antics. The system quite naturally lends itself to kicking over tables, grappling/tossing ape-beasts down yawning pits, jumping over the backs of opponents to stab them from behind, etc.

In other words, some good shit.

You will note the frequent use of the present tense back there, it so happens thanks to the beauty of this free-wheeling age that this game is not only kept alive, it's kept alive as a virtually untouched freebie. Called Zeb's Fantasy Roleplaying System (ZeFRS) it's pretty much the most faithful retro-clone around as it's virtually the same system verbatim only lacking the explicit Conan IP property (still owned by anyone but the Howard family, Gigantacorp...err Conan Properties).

If you haven't acquainted yourself with the system a quick mosey over here to the ZeFRS website can set you up at the right price.

Woodgrain Box

2011-11-17T11:01:00.005-06:00

With heavy heart I note that my erstwhile friend and co-designer, Brad of Crushing Skulls, has released pages from his “perfect” retro-clone game, Bludgeons & Flagons aka the Woodgrain Box, a project we have been working on diligently for upwards of half a week.

Why the sadness?

While my nom de guerre and artwork grace the pages of that "game", a wholesale and ruthless attempt by that jackass has usurped that great and open-ended enterprise developed in my mother's basement.

Do not be fooled, Gentile Reader.

You will note the heavy hand of his soul-crushing, anti-OD&D agenda—and the fact that he has released this game without my permission and explicitly stated that he will drop my credit and all royalties in future editions, merely adds to the scurrilous nature of this so-called “game.”

Please stay tuned for the release of Adventures in Firetrucks--a true roleplaying experience not to be missed, one that reflects the fun and creative energy of the original Ebonheath campaign.

News from the Petal Throne

2011-11-16T14:58:00.000-06:00

I have been sitting on several juicy bits of news about projects coming down the Tekumel Foundation pipeline for a few months now. Seeing confirmation bubbling out of the Tekumel fandom circuits I am guessing it's kosher to start gushing enthusiastically about them.

First the biggie, a digital edition (PDF I assume) of M.A.R. Barker's pre-publication, playtest Empire of the Petal Throne is now “forthcoming”. Yep, that's right the original green-covered mimeographed, pre-TSR tinkered manuscript passed out on a hot, humid Minnesota night in 1974 to the first players. Rules nerds and rpg archeologists rejoice.

Remember back in June when talked with Jeff Dee about his Tekumel related projects? Well looks like he and others in the Austin crew are deep into a playtest of Bethorm (the Tsolyani word for “pocket universe”, a clever wordplay as it's intended for the rules-lite Pocket Universe system) and a contract/licensing deal being worked out with the Foundation.

In related news it looks like fellow Austinite artist Talzheimer is getting the Imperial seal of approval for some commercial strength versions of her wonderful paper miniatures for the setting. (Which I made use of in our New Braunfels mini-con.)

There is more news still out there that I won't comment on until we here more confirmation. But that trifecta of thumbs up should at least get your enthusiasm up.

Speaking of Petal Throne gaming, I have been a bit in the weeds going forward with the Jakalla G+ games as I have been running two groups through the epic swords & sorcery-inflected shenanigans of the Domain Game II this last month. But we will begin again running a fortnightly game again--likely after Thanksgiving. If you are interested drop me a line.

Will the True Grognard Please Stand Up?

2011-11-16T13:56:00.000-06:00

Preparing a series of posts on Heritage and Ral Partha minis--and my pre-D&D childhood lust for all things lead and 25mm from foot to head--I stumbled on these vids.

Note that all the figures are individually based still, not even on stands or movement trays, meaning that for all the hours (days?) spent setting up there really is no way to even conveniently move them around, let alone use them in a tabletop.

There really are times when I truly miss the bat-shit obsessiveness of historical miniatures.

The Hydra Cooperative is Abornin'

2011-11-14T10:28:00.000-06:00

The rpg publishing coop is a breath away from lifting off—no, no that's not right it fired up engines and left a stream of mist days ago as it roared away.

Co-op membership is now a little over 40 and covers a wide-range of some of the most creative people I know in the hobby. Game designers, artists, editors, writers, programmers, bloggers and many wearing several of those hats are now all pitching in on over 15 projects.

And what a mind-bendingly cool assortment of projects are lined up including such things as a Stormbringer first edition automated generator (to be fitted to my hack project), an Oriental Adventures retro-clone, boardgames, miniatures rules (By This Axe I Rule), hexcrawls, megadungeons, automated gaming tools, and even a number of full-fledged games. We even have one or two possible large-scale projects in the hopper.

Formal organization is scrambling behind all that activity trying to keep up and make sure we are on the path to become a coop that is more than the sum of its parts. We do officially have a name, the Hydra Cooperative, and now several very nifty logo variations to be voted on.

Over the weekend the first formal proposal of our organizational structure and timeline was floated. Which is all to mean that in the next few weeks you are likely to see it cohere as a bona fide cooperative.

We still have room inside our big tent. If you missed the first push, but are still interested in such a project, drop me a line at kutalik at the gmail dot the com and tell us why you'd like to be a member and what you think you can bring to the table. Onwards and upwards.