Character Design: Podon the Summoner

Our household has decided that we're going to play a Pathfinder campaign consisting of Kyle running the campaign with myself, Jessie, and Noah as players. This will be Noah's and Jessie's first real introduction into the world of Role Playing Games and I'm pretty excited to see them designing their first characters. We decided to use Pathfinder since Kyle already had most of a 3.5 campaign setup and just had to change a few things to get us up and running.

Kyle gave us free reign to create characters in the high fantasy setting he's designed and let me loose with the whole of Pathfinder available to me. In his setting Monstrous Races are more common with less racism so I could have worked out to be a half-gnoll/minotaur bard-monk who uses oversized nunchuku guns he might have allowed it. It really made me think hard about what I wanted to play.

I haven't had a fresh character concept in quite a while and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I started off thinking about character classes I enjoy playing a lot and almost ended up going with a gunslinger. A dodgy and swashbuckling gunslinger. I almost kicked myself for going right back to playing Karrak again.

Every single character concept I came up  with was something I played before. Echoes of Karrak, Erik, Ramses, Talos, Nolan, and a host of others came up and I couldn't shake the idea that I was just out of creative juices and was completely out of practice with character design. It was pretty disheartening. I used to be able to pump out a new character and a basic background or concept in a matter of hours. Nothing was inspiring me this time around.

Eventually I was just going through the Pathfinder SRD while ranting to Clint about my lack of ideas and I came across the Summoner class. I've looked at them before but never really gave them much thought. It felt like a class a much younger and less experienced me would have wanted to play and maybe I unconsciously avoided it because I still feel like I'm sometimes still trying to play the same stereotypes I used to back in my high school days.

I decided to read through it and really liked the idea. It's a pretty cool class, creating your own special summoned monster, supporting combat through a combat class that you can change the strategy of on the fly based on the critters you bring to the table. My inner collectible card gamer nerd may have squeed a little bit thinking about the possibilities.

So I tried to think about what would cause someone to become a summoner and I had a hilarious idea pop into my head. What if a summoner came into his power because he really didn't want to touch things himself? Like he was a little germaphobic, didn't like to get dirty, and wasn't always "there" with everyone else unless his Eidolon (his special critter) was there with him in the material plane. He'd be a guy who could end up being stuck in an unlocked room because he couldn't touch the latch on the door. I immediately laughed out loud and decided that this guy could only be a Gnome.

The concept started to come together after that. Clearly this guy doesn't have all his faculties there, he'd need some type of people there that he trusts that will open doors, carry things, and handle everyday tasks while his mind is lost in the ether. I figured he'd need a bodyguard and a manservant. I also thought about making his eidolon a butler, but I couldn't entirely justify the meta loss of combat capabilities that would result from taking a bipedal form over a quadruped.

The character was pretty well set at that point. Now all I had to do was plot out the per level character progression and to fully design the eidolon. The eidolon proved to be a bit of a challenge for me. Again it was because there are so many options. I didn't have any idea what I wanted to accomplish with it. Looking through the options and a couple of guides gave me an idea of what directions I could take it.

Meta-wise a quadruped base form gives the best options for a "Striker" style summon. Biped seemed thematically appropriate, and Avian seemed kind of cool. I ended up selecting the quadruped base because I felt it would end up giving the play experience I'd enjoy the most. I just had to figure out what it looked like now. So... off to Wikipedia!

After about 2 hours of falling down that rabbit hole I finally started narrowing down the choices. I felt like basing the look off a real animal. I didn't want to use a wolf or a big cat. Too obvious, too easy. I didn't want a fantastic reptilian beast. It also felt too typical. I started to look at other apex predators. Atypical canids and felines. I ended spotting the Maned Wolf of South America and looked into that a bit more. Digging deeper they turn out to be related to African Wild Dogs, which then made me look into other African predators. It became pretty obvious to me what fit what was becoming my vision. The Hyena.

So the germaphobe Gnome summoner and his extraplanar Hyena monster have the framework I needed to throw a few finishing touches together and he'd be ready to play. I was pretty happy with how the character has turned out. I'm looking forward to playing him more and developing his personality. He'll be an interesting challenge to play. I haven't played a Gnome, I rarely play magic users, and his personality is so very different from one I've played before.

Warmachine Musings

Recently I've begun getting back into a game that was one of my passions. Back when I was in the navy I used to play a decent amount of Warmachine. For those who don't know Warmachine is a miniatures based wargame that takes place in a type of steampunk world. (Although they don't like the label steampunk, they prefer Full Metal Fantasy.) I enjoyed the game and was pretty okay at it. I could even hold my own in most competitive circuits.

So like I said I'm getting back into the game again, with some gusto. I'm finishing up painting all of the things I've had sitting around for the last 5 years and I'm relearning the game so I can start picking up the competitive game again. The last time I played they had just introduced the official second edition of the game which brought about huge changes and add in my six year hiatus from the game you can see a need to find a way to catch up fast. So I've started listening to some podcasts about it.

Today I listened to an episode of the Chain-Attack podcast. Specifically Episode 215 where the last half of the episode was dedicated to the opinion of one of the competitive players of the four man group they normally have on the show. He's a very skilled player with a firm grasp on the meta-game and theory behind it, definitely someone who's opinion is worth a listen. I disagree with the somewhat elitist attitude taken by this particular group of players, but that's always a complaint of mine with the way certain circles of competitive players talk about their chosen game.

Anyways, the last half of the podcast was about a valid complaint about the competitive circuit of Warmachine. The tournaments can have a rather random feel to them because of the haphazard way tournament brackets are created by Press Gangers essentially by pulling names out of a hat. This can lead to the final pairings in a tournament to be lopsided depending upon how the first brackets lined up. If the two most competitive players in an 8 man tourney face off first round you essentially know who is going to win the overall.

The player wanted a different way to approach competitive play. His primary suggestion was creating an Elo style ranking system to determine matchups better. Elo is a system that essentially ranks a player based upon their skill levels and attempts to take that into account when determining matchups and how valuable a certain win is vs an opponent. Your number of games played and your win-loss ratio is what helps determine this ranking.

Which in theory sounds great from a competitive standpoint. He gave some wonderful examples of other games that use these types of systems. Magic, Chess (where it originated), Poker, and League of Legends were mentioned specifically. All of which have very strong competitive structures. There are a few problems with translating this to a wargame though.

In Chess every single move in competition is written down to make sure theres no cheating, League is a PC game hosted on servers controlled by the company and monitored for fairness, Poker and Magic have some very strict conduct rules and similar measures in place to ensure that no one is cheating. Every single one has very strict judging criteria, professional, or semi-professional judges, and a code of conduct as well as ways to ensure fairness.

In order to ensure fairness in a wargame you'd have to have every single move able to be measured and recorded and have official ways of measuring outcomes like officially built, weighted, and measured dice. There'd also have to be a professional judging staff rather than the amateur volunteers that make up the entirety of Privateer Press' tournament staff.

Another major difference between those other games and Warmachine (and really wargaming in general) is the size of the player base, especially in competition levels. Warmachine probably has less players in total than what Magic alone has that play in competition. It doesn't have the literal centuries of time that Chess has had to build up a player base, or the ease of access and large financial backing that any of these games have.

To be completely honest there's not enough money in the entire game to really make implementing that type of system worthwhile even if it weren't for the fact that it would change the way people play the game.

And oh boy would that change the way people play the game.

I don't play MOBAs like League or competitive Magic specifically because of the player communities. Magic was no longer fun to play one I got into the competitive play (my attitude towards it got even worse when I had to judge Friday Night Magic as a DCI *shudder*). It draws a different crowd to the game and really affects the way the meta is presented and the attitudes of the players at the tournaments.

All in all I feel that a change like that will make it an even higher entry barrier as the elitists in a game that's already tough to get into even harder for new players to get interested in.

Back into the swing of things

So it has been quite a while since I've updated this blog on the regular. Real life seemed to take over everything for the past year or so making it very difficult to even play games, let alone find time to write on this random little exercise that I had started.

In the past year my life has changed significantly. I am now divorced and dating very seriously a wonderful woman who has integrated her life with my own following the split my ex-wife and I had. She's and her son have joined with myself and my two kiddos. It has been a grand adventure for us all.

My children are either uninterested or too young at the moment to enjoy gaming, but her son is very interested. So whenever my two kids are off at their mother's the remaining three of us sit around and do some geeky activities. Mostly it has been enjoying video games or a geeky movie, but last week I introduced her and her son to Dungeons and Dragons.

This has helped to make me feel inspired as life begins to settle back into place after a year of hell. I have things to write about again, some things to finish, and some things to start). It's time to continue back on the path I set upon when I started this blog. Soon this blog will again be filled with my insane rantings and ravings and minor gripes about systems and such while also relaying the stories and adventures of my family and friends as we go into this rabbit hole.

Crafting Karrak in Fate: Magic Systems

As part of an exercise in boredom I’m converting Karrak Seaborne, my character from the Orcanraytrel campaign, into a Fate PC. This requires me to know some things about the setting in the context of how they affect game mechanics and character creation before I attempt this. Part of this is knowing how Nel Gifts work in a narrative sense so that a system can be built around them that will represent them for what they truly are rather than the bastardization that a D20 system forces them into. Along the way to developing the Gifts I realized that it makes sense to also just go ahead and do Sorcery and Psionics as well since they share some major similarities from a mechanical standpoint. So here’s my collection of thoughts on the subject.

Psionics:

Psionics are a more measured and practiced form of magic in Hekinoe. The power of psionics comes from within the body of the manifester and is built up through training and discipline. It is also an extremely stable and reliable form of magic. Psionics is a skill that people train themselves in, it takes effort, but is really in the end and exercise of the will. The stronger the will, the stronger the effect.

I’ve already come up with a system for dealing with psionics before on my blog so I’ll basically just transcribe that and give it a bit of Hekinoe flavor.

So first off, Psionics in Hekinoe are currently based off of Pathfinder’s rules. So you have a ton of things that are very codified and laid out into classes and spell lists and all that. I hate that crap. It’s too rigid and it doesn’t feel right for Clint’s setting. I can break the basics of Psionics down into two effects.

One type of effect is the physical manifestations of psionics. Physical effects are things like throwing bolts of energy, telekinesis, creating force shields, creating giant crystal swords, teleportation, and so on and so forth. This is kept general to allow the player to have complete creative control over his character’s manifestations. It allows him to get creative with what he needs and not just rely on a spell list. This will be governed by a skill I’ll call Psionics: Physical for now.

The other type of psionics that you’ll see in Pathfinder are the mental based effects. These are your mind reading, mind control, telepathy, future reading, scrying, and such. Again, I’m just going to keep it general and lump them all together just for simplicity’s sake. The skill governing it will be called Psionics: Mental.

Both of these are based off their governing skills. These skills and powers can be enhanced with the use of stunts and possibly the Dresden Files RPG style “spells” where you basically just have a numbered amount of pre-written effects ready to go that gain a free boost. (I think it is governed by your skill rating in Dresden and I’d probably do the same here.

So mechanically speaking here’s how all of this works. You can use one of the Psionic skills to perform one of the four actions that you can use a skill for in Fate; Attack, Defend, Overcome, and Create an Advantage. Psionics is a tool like any other skill, and being magic it is a tool with a lot more uses. Basically you can use it in place of another skill by describing what you’re doing with it. Need to move a boulder but your Athletics skill sucks? Use Psionics: Physical instead with an Overcome action to telekinetically move the boulder out of the way. Fighting enemies at range and you don’t have a crossbow? Use it as an Attack to fling objects at people, or slam them into objects, or just hit them directly with something Pathfinder would describe as a Force Effect. Need to get past a guard? Psionics: Mental can allow you to have a bonus to convince them you’re not a bad dude, or you could just overpower their brain and take control of them for a bit. Fighting a big group of enemies? Why not force them to feel fear and panic at the sight of you? Or you could totally make them think you’re a dragon in disguise! The possibilities are endless.

I’m also a big fan of casters having the inherent ability to supercharge their spell casting by sacrificing something. Typically this is done via exertion or sacrifice of some type. For Hekinoe Psionics in Fate; what makes sense for me is inflicting Mental Stress in order to gain a boosted number of shifts. So similar to what I designed for Makass, a Psionic Manifester can take 1-shift of Mental Stress to gain a number of Shifts to their next spell up to their casting skill score. So say the character has a Psionics: Mental skill of 6; if the character takes 1 shift of Mental Stress he gains up to +6 Shifts to his next Psionics roll, which would really be a 12-shift baseline for the roll. (That sounds impressive, but we don’t know what the spell specifically is or what his opponent may have to counter such an action so it isn’t as broken as you might think initially)

Psionics is meant to be stable so there isn’t really a failure associated with it and I’m going to keep it that way as best as possible. It will also be limited to those races that have some type of psionic affinity… however I figure the races out…

Sorcery:

Oh Sorcery, you are a harsh mistress. I’m a fan of there being consequences for magic being used. It’s one of the best aspects of Hekinoe. I love reading about the spell backfires from some of the other campaigns that changed the course of the campaign world. Unfortunately D20 systems don’t like unreliable magic, it makes it necessary to have tables and a bunch of extra dice get rolled as you’re trying to cast and it has the potential to slow down gameplay along the way. Don’t get me wrong, I love the extra tables and dice. I’ve got an addiction like that. But it can appear intimidating to people unfamiliar with that type of thing.

Fortunately Fate is far more forgiving to an unreliable system.

So my vision for Hekinoe’s unreliable Sorcery starts off simply enough. Sorcery is more of an instinctual and “natural” form of magic. It can be used instinctively by certain races because it flows in their blood. In Pathfinder you have Spontaneous Spellcasters like Sorcerers and Bards who can cast their spells without any real training. Therefore there isn’t really a need for a split casting stat. So a single Skill of Sorcery to control the power and scope of spells seems appropriate to me.

Sorcery is a physically corrupting and unstable source of power. It is available to those who wish to learn about it and those whom are born with it. Being from a more instinctual and natural source and being physically corrupting tells me that in order to enhance the spells a person wielding sorcery would take Physical Stress in the same way a Psionic Character would take Mental Stress. These physical issues would manifest themselves in the typical ways, usually bodily corruption of some type.

“But what about the failure system?” you ask. Well, in order to cast a spell without some type of backlash affecting your character you probably need to roll some type of skill check to prevent the magic from getting out of control. A Control Skill would be the most obvious route to start with. This Skill would be useless for everything but allowing you to cast spells without destroying all of the oxygen in the room. The way I envision it working is that whenever you use the Sorcery Skill to cast a spell you have to roll a second time using your Control Skill. You need to get an equal number of Shifts with your Control Skill as you did on your Sorcery Skill otherwise “something bad” happens depending upon how badly you failed.

Basically you think of it as something like a reverse of the way that Fate’s successes work. If you get a higher Control roll than your Sorcery roll, nothing bad happens. If you Tie the roll I’m going to go with nothing bad happens but the spell may be lessened in effectiveness (for now). If you miss by only one or two shifts something bad happens, but it isn’t big, maybe the spell goes off but fails in a spectacular, but undamaging way. If you miss it by 3 or more shifts, then your spell fails and/or backfires in some way that’s nasty to everyone around you and is a perversion of what you were trying to accomplish.

How would these backlashes be determined? I don’t know, I’m going with GM caveat and whim right now. Maybe the tables could still be used, but that seems like a cop-out to me. My White Wolf background says that each backlash should be unique and cater to the nature of the spell and the person casting it similar to the way that Mage the Ascension dealt with Paradox.

I think I’d allow for Control Skill Checks to be enhanced in the same way that Sorcery Skill Checks are with similar effects.

I may want to enhance the core of Sorcery more using the Dresden Files RPG as a baseline to give it an advantage over the other two forms of magic to make up for it having a failure rate. Maybe I can add focus items and magic item slots to it. I’m also thinking of giving some type of extra boost, maybe when you boost it by sacrificing a stress level you gain an automatic +2 shifts and then add in your score, so that it is always just a little bit overpowered, but is also always a bit unstable as you pump more power into it.

Gifts:

Gifts are the ones I’m most concerned about since Karrak is kind of infused with these now.  From the descriptions I’ve received about them, Gifts are essentially potential. They are will and desire given form and pour directly from the life energies of the Nel. The form they take is directly related to the Nel that is using the Gifts. Each has its own flavor and it will always take shape in a way that the Nel is connected to. (E.G. Andorian is all about Cold and Lightning and Storms and such therefore his Gifts manifest like that because it satisfies him at a level we can’t fathom.) There’s a lot more to it than that but I’m not comfortable going into the details without permission.

Gifts are a part of the being of those with them. They are truly instinctual and don’t fail the way Sorcery does. Gifts will have to use a single Skill in order to represent their use and there is no counter stat because they don’t fail like the other types of magic. There are catches though.

Gifts are tied directly to the Nel, first you must have sponsorship of one or be one yourself. It must be an essential part of your nature, so it seems like your High Concept would have to reflect this. Secondly, they are tied to the very essence of the one using the Gifts. They must take the form of things directly related to who the caster is. For example, Andorian is an Utenel Lastborn. His mind, according to descriptions his mind is a storm. It is a wild, swirling vortex of lightning, cold, wind, and such. Therefore his Gifts take the forms of lightning, cold, wind, and other such things. Potentially he has the ability to use any elements or styles of magic that he wishes, but that takes real effort and goes against his nature (which would probably be represented by forcing the use of a Fate Point to even make the attempt).

Gifts manifest themselves to those that can sense them as a general “feeling” of some type. Whenever they are used near another Nel, or those infused with the Gifts of one and they can sense each other. Each one has a unique description that shows the true essence of whom they are. The gifts within Karrak began themed around Andorian’s flavor of gifts. The cold and windy mountain peaks of Andorian were there, but something different was brought by Karrak. The mountains turned to gold and there were hints of other things coming as Karrak gained more power. Keroen remade his Gifts with a blank set that changed the flavor of his Gifts to Karrak’s own nature.

(This is just the description of what his Gifts currently feel like. They evolve as he gains more strength and absorbs more power:

There is a ship upon the sea. The smell of the open ocean, a hint of powder recently spent, and a light, brine filled mist. The ship is filled with life. A crew of indeterminate races, all of them looking brutal, animalistic, and savage; drunkenly sing and sway as they cheer their recent victory. Monkeys chatter and screech from the rigging, providing much entertainment to the crew. The ship plows through detritus floating on the surface. The remains of the enemies the ship has crushed, all the valuables stripped from them and now filling the hold. A lone figure wearing a Captain’s tricorn hat stands at the bow staring ahead, determined. Before the ship lay the Waterfall at the Edge of the World. There is no fear, only passion and determination as the winds suddenly pick up and carry the ship forward to its destiny.)

Looking at Karrak’s nature determines that his Gifts will be Pirate-like and based around what would be a sailor’s desires or essential being would be. Each of those lines in the description is based off of an essential piece of who he is. Each piece can be tapped to give him something to use against his foes.

Anyways, back to the mechanics. Gifts will end up working exactly like the other two categories. They just have more restrictions on how the effects take place. They must follow your character’s themes. If the GM determines that the effect you desire isn’t consistent with your character’s nature it will require a Fate point to attempt it.  The caster can shape any thematically appropriate effect though by using said gifts. Stunts may enhance the specifics of the casting as well.

Because of the nature of Nel and their ties to their Gifts I think allowing them to use both Physical and Mental Stress tracks for boosting their casting ability seems appropriate to me.

Casting Restrictions and Stunts:

Now this could just be the game balance guy in me talking, but each of these sets of rules really seems to be very open to interpretation and potential abuse, especially Sorcery and Gifts. Maybe they need some type of restriction built into them, or maybe they don’t. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. For the time being I think I’m just going to keep it simple and freeform. Restrictions of some type could come later as required.

As for ways to enhance the casting of each of these types of magic I look towards Stunts to be the best way to do it. Generally speaking, a Stunt is used to enhance something that already exists, let you use a skill in a different way, or a whole variety of crazy things. I’m thinking we start with simple things, like Fire Magic Specialty: +2 to Sorcery Checks when casting fire based magic.  Stabilized Sorcery: +2 to Control checks. Mind Control Expert: +2 to Psionic: Mental checks. Simple things like that are easy as hell. It’s when these turn into Stunt Trees that we’re going to have to put in the effort.

Maybe a character like Karl, the gunslinging mage who can cast spells through his gun, could have something like “Spellslinger: May use Sorcery instead of shoot skill for an Attack action when using his specially crafted revolvers. Normal Control rolls still apply, but with a +2 bonus.” Maybe one called “The guns give me a focus: +2 to control checks for spells/attacks cast through his gun”. A good one to start with as the basis for the Stunt tree might be “Gunslinginging Sorcerer: Karl may spend a Fate point once per scene to allow him to cast spells through a gun, giving him +2 to all sorcery checks with spells cast through said weapon for the remainder of the scene.”

So Karl’s Stunt tree would look like this: 1. Gunslinging Sorcerer => 2. Spellslinger => 3. The guns give me focus.

The first one on the tree, Gunslinging Sorcerer, basically an invoking of his High Concept combined with his magic and weapon. Mechanically it’s just a scene length bonus to his spellcasting abilities, but flavored to be through any gun. In my mind I am picturing that he’s investing whatever gun he has with some Sorcery, granting him temporary extra power due to the gun becoming an easier channel for him. Plus this can only work if he’s got a gun of some type in his hand.

The second one, Spellslinger, acknowledges that Karl is a craftsman and likes to cast spells through his gun. This lets him use any gun that he or someone like him has crafted specifically for casting spells through as a spell focus. This gives him the ability to work his attack magic through his gun, making it more stable in the process. Mechanically this is just giving him a specific item that boost his control skill for Attack actions using Sorcery, but thematically it adds flavor.

The third one is a thematically appropriate stacking effect on top of the previous two abilities. It implies that he is able to focus and maintain his magic because of the guns though.

Let’s say that he goes into combat and does what he’s supposed to do, which is shoot things with magic pistols. He spends a Fate point on his first turn to charge his father’s revolver with Sorcery and then shoots someone with it. He gets to take the shot using his Sorcery skill (let’s just call it a baseline of +5 for now, as opposed to his Shoot skill which is only a +2 or a +3), which is boosted by +2 now because of the first Stunt. He rolls his Fudge Dice and gets a +1, for a total of an 8 shift attack. Because he used his Sorcery skill he has to roll a Control check (we’ll say his control is a +4 baseline), so he starts off with his +4, adds in +2 for Spellslinger, and then an additional +2 for The guns give me focus for a baseline total of +8 prior to rolling the dice for the Control check. He has to not roll a -1 or below which gives him a 62% probability of success. Not bad at all.

And this isn’t even scratching the surface of the possibilities.

Truth time...

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a Speciest. In RPGs I am very partial to playing a Human to the exclusion of almost everything. When I create a setting or run a game I prefer to have it in a 90+% human population setting. I dislike Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes and pretty much every single playable race in tabletop games. (Except for games in Sci-Fi settings for some reason)

Why is this? I have no idea.

In most settings I will only play a human, or something that very easily passes for human. There are some rare exceptions, but in the end it will primarily be human. This may stem from myself entering gaming through the Everway/World of Darkness route rather than DnD. Those settings are without out a doubt Human-Centric settings.

There’s also the fact that in DnD/D20 humans start off with a major advantage, and extra feat at first level and extra skill points. That’s pretty huge in that system. Plus there’s also the fact that it’s far easier to relate to the thoughts and feelings of humans because of familiarity with their way of thinking.

If I don’t count the various things that aren’t human but take human form from the World of Darkness as not being human (Garou/Werewolves, Vampires, etc.) then I’ve only played a handful of non-human characters. Blarg the Orc, an Elan Psion, I think there was a minotaur and a gargoyle back there somewhere, and possibly one more that I can’t remember. Not one was a memorable character or had very much effort invested in them.

The other races just don’t appeal to me, especially the Elves. Screw Elves, they suck. Nothing but haughty assholes.

My current character in the Orcanraytrel campaign isn’t human, but he’s the closest thing possible to it in the setting. Being of Fell Human decent with an “Inert Bloodline” racial trait really makes him statistically speaking a Human in Pathfinder terms so it’s good enough for me.

I don’t think there’s any real point to this post. I just wanted to say that humans rule and all other PC races suck… maybe?

Generic questions

So found this online, figured I'd fill it out for funsies. I didn't have a good answer for some of these so I just wrote something in to fill the spot.

I'm currently running (at home): Nothing

Tabletop RPGs I'm currently playing (at home) include: Nothing

I'm currently running (online): I ran about 1/3rd of the Tomb of Horrors a month or so ago

Tabletop RPGs I'm currently playing (online) include: Clint's Orcanraytrel Campaign (I have wanted to do more of the ones I've been invited to but my schedule sucks)

I would especially like to play/run: See my last blog entry

...but would also try: Pretty much anything that I can get

I live in: Western Massachusetts

2 or 3 well-known RPG products other people made that I like:

2 or 3 novels I like: Ender's Game, Monster Hunter International, Dresden Files

2 or 3 movies I like: Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Howling

Best place to find me on-line: Facebook

I will read almost anything on tabletop RPGs if it's: Interesting to me

I really do not want to hear about: Gender politics and other major socio-political issues unless they have something directly to do with the game at hand. Real modern politics in my adventures are a big no-no.

I think dead orc babies are ( circle one: funny / problematic / ....well, ok, it's complicated because....): It's complicated and problematic

Game I'm in are like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOUksDJCijw but there's also a lot of variety based on who I'm gaming with and the tone of the setting.

I talk about RPGs on Facebook

Wasted Potential or How I Wish I Had a Local Group

Current list of RPG Campaign Ideas that are actively running through my head or have been partially written out:

1)      The Eternal Seas campaign, my 3.5 and now being converted to Pathfinder high seas campaign/setting

2)      The Savage Plain, a Pathfinder campaign idea I had after seeing a picture. Basically Magical City, bunch of warring tribes, dinosaurs and unknown horrors beneath

3)      Dresden Files RPG, a San Francisco based campaign that I have a concept fleshed out for

4)      Werewolf The Apocalypse Chronicle that I’ve posted on here about before

5)      Werewolf The Apocalypse, Our Apocalypse with our group from high school. Sigh… I wish I could play in this one…

6)      FATE RPG, Geinrich The City of Merchants campaign I recently put together

7)      Star Wars (D20 or WEG D6), a campaign set in the New Jedi Order era centered around a young Jedi named Caleb Undertowner

8)      D6 Adventure based Mighty Morphin Power Rangers campaign. ‘Nuff said.

9)      D6 Space campaign that I’ve been playing around with.

10)   The Plague Campaign idea that just cropped up this past week

11)   A run through of The World’s Largest Dungeon.

12)   An Exalted Campaign based on our old dabbling in the setting back in high school.

13)   X-Crawl, because it’s awesome!

14)   A couple Iron Kingdoms ideas.

15)   A Werewolf/Dresden/FATE/whatever campaign idea that just needs to be “injected” into a system. Supernatural experiments are fun times.

Yeah, I really need a gaming group that meets up more than once a month in my life because these stories must be told dammit. At the very least I can see how awful they actually perform so I feel better about them not wasting space in my head anymore.

The Plague Campaign

A discussion on a Facebook group about Plague Campaigns piqued my interest. In it there were people talking about how they’ve run plague campaigns and the usual discussions of how societ will break down and blah blah blah. I gave my typical opinion and viewpoint where I don’t believe that a magical society really has to worry about these types of things because Magic and centuries of curative spell items and so on and so forth. Numbers were thrown around, references were made, and a grand debate was had. It was a wonderful discussion. It also inspired me to have another spark of an idea for a campaign that will likely never see the light of day. I also have an Pathfinder Adventure Path to look into called “Curse of the Crimson Throne”, specifically the 2nd book because it apparently breaks down the numbers in a very meaningful way. (Something like a city of 18000 people might have between 12-20 Clerics capable of casting Remove Disease at a time and maybe 180 Divine casters total)

The idea has to exist in a high-fantasy world like the Generic DnD/Pathfinder world. The specifics don’t matter much, but it must be a D20 based system for this to work. The society is a properly outfitted and prepared society where magic exists quite as clearly as science exists to us. This is because humans act like humans and recognize useful tools, even if they don’t fully understand the tools they’re using they will continue to use them and find new ways to improve their lot in life. In my opinion this means that humans will do everything they can to ensure that they can do the best they can to prevent bad things from happening (more or less). In this case it means that someone will use magic to prevent plagues from breaking out.

Imagine if you will a world where magic is real and there is a deity along the lines of DnD 3.X’s Pelor who is dedicated to healing people and preventing outbreaks of disease. The god grants people very real and very measurable amounts of his own power that his faithful can directly use to influence the world. They can fashion magic wands, rings, potions, scrolls, and various other implements that have the ability to help stave off diseases, bolster people’s immune responses, or just remove the disease entirely. They can create wondrous magical fountains that could be capable of performing these deeds for them too and provide it to those who come to their temple. This is in addition to other magics they’ll have at their disposal, like scrying magic that would allow them to detect where a disease is about to strike, or detect who is infected and who isn’t.

Some people countered my thoughts on those with “these are higher level clerics that would have to do this” “there’s no way there’s enough of them to do that” “why would they waste their time, money and spiritual energy (read: xp) on those things”. Which are legitimate points if you’re talking about people thinking rationally about their own benefits; not a millennia old religious order dedicated to the prevention and curing of disease. You look at real world example where our religious leaders aren’t able to coat themselves in glowing magical armor by reciting a prayer and what real humans sacrifice for their religions based upon faith alone. We argue about the existence of deities because we don’t see real, measurable results like “Remove Disease” “Call Lightning” or “Animate Dead”. Imagine what people in the real world would do if their god rewarded their faith with access to a couple 0-level spells. Hell, Jesus displayed abilities equivalent to an 8th or 9th level cleric in a 3.X setting and we proclaim him to be the son of God imagine the world if your region’s Catholic clergymen could perform that stuff on a daily basis.

My point is, that when I look at a potential for a plague campaign there has to be more wrong than there just being a plague that exists. Religions like those dedicated to Pelor would have stockpiles of items with Spell-Trigger completion (that would allow lower level casters to use a spell like Remove Disease) while constantly making a new supply, active plans for dealing with outbreaks, Scryers and Healers working around the clock watching for plague, permanent magical artifacts at their temples that provided some type of healing or disease resistance, monthly cleansing rituals at the temple, and countless other measures that we might not be able to comprehend because we live in the real world. In order for a disease to cause a plague or have a major outbreak would require something different to happen with the disease.

If a disease is to cause an outbreak it either needs to be unusually virulent (Bubonic Plague is “only” a DC17, easily within the power of a low-level caster to help out with), magical in nature (very possible because microbial evolution is a thing. Just think about MRSA and other treatment resistant diseases), or allowed to spread in some way by nefarious people for nefarious purposes.

And now that this groundwork is established, here’s where things get interesting. The campaign idea starts with the PCs being members of one such religious order. They are tasked with taking care of a potential outbreak of some disease. They are sent off by their order into a district quarantined per their standard rules, but something is wrong. Maybe the disease is spreading in an abnormal pattern, or its resists all magical treatment, or maybe something is actively trying to stop them from curing the sick. Eventually the disease will have to escape from the confines of the quarantine and maybe something else is discovered about the situation. Maybe the order’s stockpile of Remove Disease Wands was stolen, broken, or disenchanted. Their magical fountain may have been smashed. Maybe their god disapproves of the city and is damning it for its sins. Is it the work of a doomsday cult? A lich? A mutated bacterial infection that has gained hive-mind sentience? SO MANY OPTIONS!!!

The PCs don’t even have to be just Clerics and Paladins either. Churches have use for all kinds of people with a variety of skills. Maybe a nun used to be a rogue in her pre-convent life. The paladins may be supplemented by regular Fighters and Knights. Oracles and Bards could be there performing their normal functions. Alchemists could Easily supplement the healing supplies. The trips out to cure diseases and help the down trodden could easily be construed as pilgrimages and evangelizing. What better way to convert people than by performing good deeds and curing people of The Plague and promising them further protection by attending your sermons?

For the first time ever I think I actually would want to play a Cleric…

PS: Upon further reading it appears that the spell Remove Disease grants no future immunity to a disease. So if you catch a virus it appears that Remove Disease will cure you but doesn’t allow your body to produce anti-bodies against future exposure to the disease. Interesting but useless trivia!

Power Rangers The Campaign; Season 2

I’ve been thinking a bit more about that Power Rangers setting and playing with a few concepts since the last time I posted about it. I looked into a couple of systems, a few mechanics, and some narrative structures that I could use for it. Here’s the fruit of that labor.

First off I’d want to use the West End Games D6 Adventure system. It’s a versatile and easy to learn system with the mechanical crunchiness that such a setting would require. I’ll have to design each piece of equipment myself and that’ll take some balancing work, but in the end it won’t be that hard because even if things turn out to be overpowered or even underpowered it can easily be dealt with in a Power Rangers style fashion. Which is of course to say that it ends up never used again, only used against specific enemies, or the enemies get some type of immunity or strength boost from that point on.

I really like the Charge Point economy concept I came up with and will definitely be using that for this idea, I just have to come up with the specific costs and a table for the players/GM to follow. The actual Morphing and power-up structure is going to be a little bit tricky to initially build but should be easy to follow in game. Rangers usually follow a pretty standard pattern for the escalation of their fights in an episode/series: Pure Human, In-between form (think of the Ninja forms they got in MMPR), Morphed, Power Weapons, other special power-ups or vehicles, Zords, summon allies, Megazord/s, and finally the Ultrazord. This pattern makes it easy to setup the escalating costs and what power-ups will be available with certain amounts of charge once I figure out how much that charge may cost.

Character creation should be relatively easy. You make a teenager with attitude, or 20-something with attitude, whatever. You get the standard pool of resources for character creation and make a person. Each character should have a unique set of skills and everyone’s characters should know each other in some way. When they morph into their Ranger forms the characters will get various automatic boosts to their abilities depending upon their ranger color. Some will be generic boosts and some will be specific to their role on the team. Remember, each Ranger is specifically selected for their role based upon compatibility with the color they wear. Oh, and there must be 5 players. That’s a requirement

Now as for how the Narrative will play out, this one is easy. Treat every single session as a single episode of the series, including Theme Music and an introduction of the cast at the start every play session. If the plot of the episode isn’t resolved before the end of game session the GM is required to end the session on a cliffhanger and give a recap at the start of the next session before playing the theme music. The game is based off of a TV show for kids so the sessions will kept lighthearted and cartoony in some ways. Evil is evil, the only gray area villains will be the ones who can change sides or who are under the influence of a spell/plot device. There will always be something that has some type of moral lesson about teamwork that the rangers must overcome.

This shit writes itself!

Villains and monsters are going to be a little bit difficult to visualize without me being an artist, but I can probably find a way to photoshop some things together or find good visuals on the internet.

Now, what would the plot be based around? Each generation of Rangers has a command center and a theme they follow. I’m thinking of reaching back into the Power Rangers lore vaults and pull out some of the unused ideas for the TV show, specifically the Hexagon concept.

The Hexagon was an idea that was being built up to while Power Rangers was still under the control of Saban. It was a new type of command center that was publicly funded and well-defended. The idea was that Tommy Oliver (the former Green, White, and Red-Zeo Ranger) helped to found an organized resistance to the evil in the universe that kept finding its way to Earth. The Hexagon would be the command center for multiple Ranger teams and would be modeled after the Pentagon. Except, y’know, full of giant supertech/magic research departments. It was really going to be a way that they could just use multiple series at the same time, sell more toys, and not worry too much about a constantly consistent plot with a single season of stock footage. It was never used because they decided to go a completely different direction with the series because they were under the assumption they were ending the series.

For me, the Hexagon represents a great alternate timeline option that allows me a stepping off point for the “series” I’d be running. It can be its own thing without running into dealing with canon issues and all that crap. Plus, Tommy Oliver as the equivalent of a Chief of Operations for a military branch.

Of course I could also go with the ultra-realistic interpretation of everything including what access to that tech means for humanity, the death and destruction of such battles taking their toll on the world economy, and all the fun stuff that goes along with that stuff. I’d rather keep it a light-hearted and campy romp with people abusing the shit out of the word “Morph” in more exotic and unlikely ways though. We have enough darkness in all the other settings I pay attention to that this one should be allowed to be enjoyed for what it is.

Power Rangers, the Campaign

I’ve always had a typical for my age and gender reaction to the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers; I watched the episodes religiously, I wanted all of the toys, and thought the entire concept was really freaking cool. I’m a boy who loves his cheesy, Japanese inspired (okay, stolen footage from Japan), shows and movies with people in ridiculous outfits fighting people in rubber suits with their own rubber suited beasts and models.

If you look at the original show while ignoring the extremely cheesy… um… everything… about it, you can see the makings of a really deep setting begging to be exploited by the creative. The original Power Rangers were just some kids with some exceptional talents recruited by a powerful interdimensional being. The Interdimensional being grants these teens access to their Power Coins and Morphers. Each of the 5 members receives a power coin with a totem that complements/is complimented by their own abilities. Each Ranger also has a “DinoZord” of their totem animal for when they have to face down gigantic threats.

The Power Coins seem to have some type of mysticism in their origin while the Morphers, Zords, and other bits and pieces of the command center seem to be based around alien/super tech. The command center has faster than light communications, matter-to-energy teleportation, interstellar starships, advanced sensor technology, and many other examples of super-tech. The Rangers themselves use a combination of technology and mysticism in their weapons and abilities as well. None of it is specifically explained as to why these things appear to be a combination of magic and technology, but who cares. It sold toys.

The lack of explanation was probably really done for the ease of writing convenient plot devices that appear out of nowhere from the original Japanese footage and to pad episodes with unnecessary drama. You would hear references to things like “The Morphin Grid” (Yes, the proper spelling is without a “g”, did you expect any different?) or the Rangers would go on a quest for some weapon they might only use once.

So anyways, the point of this rambling is that I’ve been convinced for a very long time that the Power Rangers would make a wonderful RPG setting. You have a team of people thrust into greatness by powers greater than themselves. They have to struggle against the seemingly endless forces of evil while protecting the innocent. Evil is constantly growing in power and ability which requires the rangers to go on quests for more powerful artifacts or abilities to fight the forces of evil. They also have magic powers and giant super-tech robots. What else do you really need for an RPG?

I’ve been playing around with this concept for quite a while and the biggest thing stopping me from running it was the lack of a way to effectively engage players during a megazord fight sequence. What would you do? Just give the controls of the megazord to a lone player while the others watched? Do you have each of them coordinate a different limb? Do they all have their own turn? Do they have to vote on each move before they perform it? The answer to the question escaped me until yesterday (or a few days ago depending on when this gets published.

The idea is to give a specific role to each of the Rangers when they’re in the cockpit. One ranger controls one of the following stations; sensors, defensive/power, ranged weapons, melee, and the pilot. Each Ranger gets to make a control roll/skill challenge or something similar and depending upon their success or failure can generate what I’m calling a “Charge point”. The charge points can be kept in a pool until the team decides to use them for one of their many uses. Maybe calling the Power Sword requires 15 Charge Points or they can spend a few points for extra attacks and a free ranged attack with some extra damage. Maybe it allows the Dino-Megazord to call up its Shield, or allows them to summon an ally like Ninjor, Titanus, or the Dragonzord. I’m still working out the specifics, but the general concept is sound and now it’s just a matter of refining it.

These charge points can be added to every aspect of a Power Rangers episodic adventure. It helps maintain the pacing of the show and forces the players to mechanically follow the stages of escalation the rangers would have to follow in a story. Why don’t the rangers immediately whip out the Zords against the regular sized opponent? Because they don’t have the Charge points built up yet of course! Fighting the monster with blade blasters first? Not enough points to summon up the power weapons yet. Why is the red ranger not using the Dragon Armor? Lack of Points! Why are Bulk and Skull here? Because your GM hates you. I also think that the Rangers should be able to tap into the Morphin Grid if the need emergency charge points, but it should carry some level of danger and it should be a limited pool.

This pool wouldn’t just be limited to the Rangers though. Obviously the villains have their own pool as well. I was thinking that each of the different levels of villains would have their own ways to gain these points and use them.

You could have minions like the Putty Patrollers sent in to soften the rangers up in the first place be capable of earning charge points, but they can’t use them. They would create the initial pool of points for the Episode Monster to use. The Episode Monster would generate a certain number of Charge Points every turn based upon how powerful a creation it is. Minor Villains (like Goldar or Scorpina) would earn a certain number of points per round and be able to generate/use them in similar ways to the Rangers. Main Villains (Rita or Zedd) would generate their own points and/or suck off the power of the Villain Pool in order to generate their own energy for casting spells, using magic items, sending in minions, monsters, and etc to generally make life far more difficult for the Rangers.

I’m envisioning 3 Charge Point pools, the Ranger Pool, the Monster Pool, and the Villain Pool. The Rangers fill and draw from their own pool. Minions, the Episode Monster, and Minor Villains add to/willingly contribute to the Monster Pool which can be used by the Episode Monster to unleash hell upon the Rangers. The Villain pool is held by the Major Villain and is essentially a tax upon the Episode Monster’s pool, maybe a MV has a Siphon rate or some other specific rate at which their pool increases. The Villain Pool is used by the Main Villain to bring in more minions, monsters, magic items, etc into the battle.

Man, this system sounds awesome… okay, now I need to work on the charts for the things charge points can be spent on.

This charge point system is just a secondary system though. It can really be slapped onto any game system out there to allow a power rangers campaign to be run. The next question is, what system do I use to run the game? This is something I’m going to have to think about. Two immediately come to mind though, FATE and D6 Adventure. Before I can choose though I need to look into a few more systems.

Space Opera 33 and 1/3

So this Sci-Fi thing won’t leave my head. So I found a ton of D6 Star Wars Resources free on the web that I can peruse at my leisure now. That’ll make the possibilities for personal gear, weapons/armor, and starships much easier to get a baseline to use. (Unrelated tangent: I find it really interesting how humans are typically the ones depicted as the individual classes in these WEG books while different species are typically represented as their species and not as a class. Humans are depicted in the entries like “Smuggler”, “Bountry Hunter”, and “Diplomat”. Meanwhile aliens are depicted as “Wookie” or “Mon Calamari”. Just an odd way to do things in my eyes. /Tangent)

I started thinking about the way this star cluster could be setup and how things would run more. First off we should have an idea of how many Stars are in the cluster and how many are inhabitable. [Rolls a D20 + 10] So 27 stars in this cluster, we’ll make half of them habitable which puts us at 13 or 14 systems with habitable planets. Let’s go with 13 because that number is far cooler than 14. The other 14 stars may or may not have planets or useful resources and they may even quite possibly have some people living in stations or other such things, but they will be few in number and living/trade will be hard for them. We’ll keep those areas uncharted and mysterious for the time being because no one in the habitable worlds are really going to give much of a damn about them.
Okay, so 13 solar systems in the cluster with habitable worlds. One of these systems will have a world that is a stop for Star liners and will be the primary trading hub/consumer of goods/tourist destination in this particular star cluster. Every other star cluster is going to primarily be exporting their goods and services to this system to be able to fetch the best price they can from their labor. I think I’ll use the Guild Council/Mercantile Republic style government I came up with for the Geinrich setting to run this main planet. The planet should be earth-like for the most part, nothing to make it difficult to adapt to over long periods of time for people who are visiting. What might make this a desirable tourist spot? Well, let’s see… how about vast, untouched swaths of natural Earth-like biomes, a very strong (for the area) and poorly regulated economy, and a unique set of rings surrounding the planet that make the night sky amazingly beautiful.

Every other system I’ll generate randomly using the planet generation charts included in the D6 Ships book and write them up separately.

How does this cluster deal with the two neighboring interstellar governments? What is their relationship to them both? Does either side give a rat’s ass about these systems? Does the cluster actively fight against annexation, incorporation, or any other versions of adding the planets into their government structures? What does each side call the area? Is it under any type of political contention?

These are all questions that need to be answered at some point. Maybe after fleshing out these new planets it will become super obvious how some of these will be answered. Here’s to hoping…

Some filler

So I never got around to writing something ahead of time this week so this is coming out later than I wanted it to.

Last night I ran the Tomb of Horrors for our regular group, well sort of the regular group. I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly had a blast running the game. It was fun to do some classic dungeon crawling with that wonderfully sadistic module.

They were only able to get as far as the.Colorful Sphere Room and the Evil Temple in the time we had.

Some thoughts on the session itself. Lance had his girlfriend playing for the first time,  which was very nice to see. It has been a long time since I've seen a complete noob at a table and there really isn't anything like that experience.

A few times my lack of practice showed itself when I screwed up a few traps and a couple descriptions. There were a few times where I had to improvise some things and I was probably more generous than I should have been, but overall I think I did okay. I've got a list of what I think I need to improve upon and I'll probably ask around a little for other people's opinions. It's been a few years since I last ran anything and I need some pointers.

Lastly, fuck that stupid complex of secret doors. That's a poorly described section that was boring for all of us. I'll have to try and figure something else out with it.

Starting a What!?!

So I had an awful bit of inspiration the other day. I want to create and publish a true tabletop campaign setting for commercial sale. I have been doing research into how I can do this on the cheap and think I have a pretty good grasp of the budget for such a thing. How that money is going to be raised is a different issue that will be worked out later when we have a product to work with. For now though I want to concentrate on producing the setting.

The first thing to go through my head was that I immediately need to involve Clint, the DM for the Pathfinder Campaign I’m playing in, because he and I have been talking about designing a campaign setting together anyways. We have similar design philosophies when it comes to mechanics and settings and have been bouncing ideas back and forth between each other for various RPG related topics for a while now. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to collaborate on a project with him and give us both a chance to take a step into the industry we both love.

Right now we’re working on figuring out what type of setting we want to create. We both have campaign settings already created that could be published, but I want to create something new with him from the ground up. If we can’t come up with any ideas we will probably flesh out and publish one of our existing settings first. In the meantime I’m going to type out some of my brainstorming and the thought process behind the creation of a setting that I go through when I create something like this.

Normally I’m inspired by something I watch, read, or see and then write down that idea in a margin, notebook, or the back of a piece of paper and come back to it later when I have enough ideas to flesh it out. This is different than normal though. Now I need to do something that will force some inspiration. I’ve been looking at legends, watching some movies, and delving into Wikipedia over the past few days searching for inspiration and I’ve had a few things pop up.

First and foremost though I need to decide what type of unique things will make up this world and what potential systems we will use to create it. This has to be a commercially viable product so we need a hook and we need to apply it to a popular system. I think the best system to use will be Pathfinder. It is popular in the community, we can use the Open Gaming License to link our book to it, and we are both pretty familiar with the system at this point. Clint and I have some issues with the system that we’ve discussed at length before, so we will probably want to alter the system a little to fit our own tastes, maybe a couple of simple, custom systems that are potentially appealing to other people.

Clint and I are also fans of firearms in fantasy settings, magic systems that have built in catastrophic failure systems, and unique/different races. So I’m pretty sure we’ll end up with some type of firearms and a magic system along the lines of each of our magic failure systems from our individual campaign settings (both of which are using a variation of the Taint mechanic). The unique/different races thing will be hashed out more when we’re closer to defining the actual setting itself I think.

So starting from the ground up…

Any world I build I start with a grittier, low magic setting. Typically I think of an Everway style setting. Magic exists, and you might see it in use every day, but it isn’t (always) world shattering stuff and everything comes with a price or potential for failure. So we’ll start off with that type of assumption. We can discuss the potential existence of deities, dragons, and odd-ball races later.

The night I sprung this on Clint the wife and I were watching a Jimmy Stewart movie from the 60’s called Shenandoah. Great movie, depressing as hell, but still great. It’s about a family from Virginia that gets dragged into the Civil War against its will and gets screwed over by both sides and other people. It’s a good look into some of the issues of the day. This immediately inspired me. A good setting should always have some type of brewing or active conflict. It gives you a lot of things to work with. Just like the civil war, there’s got to be a lot going on under the surface so that no side is clearly good or evil.

There was a lot of things going on during the American civil war other than slavery (which despite the arguments to the contrary, it really was mostly about slavery even though the South tried to dress it up as more than that). Both sides in the conflict weren’t doing good things and weren’t necessarily fighting for the right reasons. I won’t get into the specifics here, but both sides were doing bad things and both also had good things. It is a very complex situation and both sides are shades of grey. Sounds like the perfect thing for me to use.

So a big civil war type situation is all well and good, but it needs more. Obviously it requires two sides of a larger and stronger nation. What else can I add though to make it more than just an analogue for exploring the issues of the civil war? Obviously more drama is always a good answer. What if we expand it? What if this civil war is fall out from the collapse of what used to be a larger empire? Like, say the Roman Empire or the United States collapsing into 3 or more chunks. Maybe this former empire broke up into 3 major chunks and a few smaller minor kingdoms/city-states.

What if two of these major chunks didn’t agree on whether or not they were one or two nations? One remnant claims that this other one is part of it and demands taxes, conscripts, and resources while the other claims it is independent. The third chunk is remaining entirely neutral in the matter. To make matters worse, this empire used to be a stabilizing influence across the entire continent and with their collapse and being on the brink of war with itself it has freed up the other powers of the continent to do what they want. Maybe this empire was more of a bully than police, maybe a meaner Roman Empire.

Maybe there’s an “evil” nation starting to amass their own armies to attempt conquests upon their neighbors. Oh, there could be an extremely well-defended city-state somewhere that is considered a Freeport type city with massive monetary influence. Kind of like a Singapore or Tortuga. (I really like these Freeport city ideas for some reason, that might be my politics influencing me.). [after popping in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust] OH! Dhampier are awesome. Maybe we can use them somewhere, like that “evil” nation!

Wikipedia led me to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures… again… the thought of a Mesoamerican style culture with sacrifices and elaborate ceremonies is always a fun thing to contemplate being an influence upon a Western European style culture.

A viewing of Howl’s Moving Castle made me think about an idea I had long ago for an Arcanatech style setting and a class that a navy buddy of mine helped me design (the Articifer, a base class that was all about making constructs and magic items. Mostly constructs). Might not fit with the low magic/magic with consequences though.

What types of traditional fantasy tropes exist here? What types of ancient secrets are around? Potentials for dungeon crawls? Can we develop an item creation system outside of the normal magic item system, maybe with alchemy, unusual materials and superior craftsmanship instead? What type of geographic landscape are we looking at here? How many traditional races are there and where do they live?

What I’d like to see is about 80-95% human coverage of the continent with the rest split up between the rest of the races, whatever they are. I hate elves so can we make them real jerk-offs? I’d like to see them as xenophobic, racist assholes. It just seems appropriate.

Maybe there’s a place where there’s just a cubic ass-ton of minor kingdoms and city-states that are constantly at war with each other. This could be a great place for a Kingmaker style game to take place. Maybe there are some vast swaths of unclaimed territory on the continent, at least not claimed by any of the important nations. This could be where the remains of a great and ancient magical empire was and the landscape is dotted with magical beast/mutants and ruins that are extremely dangerous to go after. Especially when there are easier ways to make your fortune in the constantly brewing conflicts elsewhere.

There is of course that Mercenary setting that Clint had me help him out with. That was neat. It could be adapted to its own setting outside of Hekinoe but that is pretty well established.

Hmmm… That’s a pretty good list of random things to work with so far. Maybe after I read Clint’s ideas (and he reads these) we’ll be able to hash some more out and start laying down the foundation.

Neat Campaign Idea

So I saw something pretty cool pop up on one of the Facebook groups the other day. A guy was talking about a really cool concept for a campaign that he and his group ran.

His group created characters in Unisystem: Armageddon (a gritty futuristic setting) and then they took those characters with their specific skills, abilities, powers, and tech and translated them as best they could into Old World of Darkness, Shadowrun, DnD 3.5, Boot Hill, Marvel Super Heroes, L5R, Savage Worlds: Deadlands, Savage Worlds: Rippers, and 7th Sea. He started the game off in the Unisystem world in an office building. The story of it was that the characters were going about their daily lives in this office building when they ended up too close to a magical experiment that went wrong.

The characters got shifted around the Space-Time Continuum by a process they called “Jaunting” and had no control of when or where they would end up. They used this as an excuse to pass off GM duties to the next person at the table at the end of a story arc and switch systems. Typically they would get drawn into the events in the universe they showed up in by being told about someone/something that might be able to get them back to their world. Meanwhile the guy who setup the experiment (a thief who was using it to steal artifacts from these alternate realities to get rich) was stuck going through this with them and they were trying to catch/stop them (after discovering the truth of what he was doing).

So each of the characters was who they were in their home reality with translated stats and abilities, they weren’t transplanted into a reality as their alternate selves. They were themselves stuck there trying to survive. Each character wasn’t limited to their stuff from their own reality though. They were granted a few powers, abilities, etc from the universe/system they arrived in. The powers would slowly manifest themselves as the previous system’s powers faded.

Each of the 5 players got to run a whole system at least twice before they stopped playing it and they each got 3 to 7 session in under their belt. He was saying that it was an absolute blast though and I don’t see how it couldn’t be. Just from his brief description of it I was shocked at how much fun it sounded.

I’ll probably never get to do that anytime soon, if ever, but at least I’ve heard the idea and can file it away on the off chance that the opportunity presents itself.

I have no class, and I like it.

A thread on a Facebook group caught my attention, and one comment in particular got me a little riled up. The subject was on how you prefer your character creation system. Do you prefer Iconic Classes, Homebrew Rules, or Classless systems (e.g. GURPS)? Good question and a neat thing to think about and see what other people say just to get a peek at the way other people think.

I of course mention that I prefer systems that don’t use classes and that I feel that Iconic Classes (and classes in general) restrict the player unnecessarily when crafting their characters. That got a few likes from like-minded individuals and it was all pretty benign discussion until one person decided to disagree with my statement. Now, I’m all for disagreement, but when you don’t address me directly and say something that’s philosophically incorrect it bothers me in a pet peeve kind of way.

Anyways, the response was directly regarding what I said with an underhanded insult. Basically he said Iconic Classes are only limiting if you lacked imagination. It got a little bit nastier as it went on. There were accusations of requiring Labels and Mechanics in order to be able to design a character. Some type of implication that the only way to interact with the world is through dice rolls. I’m sorry for being the butt hurt guy going to my blog with this but, WHAT!?!

Seriously, that’s insane and doesn’t make sense. A character class automatically is a restriction on your imagination. It is designed to give you certain gameplay bonuses based on a set role. A fighter is a weapons master, typically refining their ability to use a single type of weapon to the point of insane mastery. A Wizard studies spell books and is able to cast spells. A Rogue sneaks about, does precision damage, and is an extremely skill-based character.

In a game like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder you select a class to be granted a set of bonuses, abilities, and powers related to your specialties that give you bonuses based upon particular rules situations. When you create a character you must funnel their personality and backgrounds through the filter of how it brought them to whom they are when you start playing. Their abilities are restricted to whatever the class says they are unless you’re allowed to multiclass. Even then you are still going to see restrictions on what you can or cannot do based upon what classes and archetypes are available to you.

I am very strongly in favor of a system that isn’t based on classes and allows complete creative control of the design of PCs. It might be because I grew up playing Everway and how spoiled I was playing such a simple and liberating system. You don’t realize how spoiled you are until you try to design your first character in a class based game with a non-class based mindset. This was something I struggled with for years. I never could get it quite right.

Take a character like Shem the Forsaken. Shem is a fallen paladin. Not a Blackguard, a fallen paladin. His story was that his knighthood and powers were stripped from him by his order because he tried to protect non-believers and violated the orders of his superiors doing so. He married one of them and was living a simple life with the people he saved until some new evil-infused power raided his town. He fought as bravely as he could, but he didn’t have his old powers and was eventually overwhelmed. Most of the people in his town were captured or killed while he was unconscious and left for dead. He awakens to see the evil god that was the nemesis of his order’s god before him offering him power to go forth and find and rescue his wife and his people. He was given a magic sword, some magic, and “shadow creatures” that would help him on his quest. The shadow creatures were things coming from his own shadow that mostly only he could see that would make strange noises and would tempt him down the darker path at every opportunity. He doesn’t want to be lead down these paths of evil and tries his best to resist, but the more he uses the powers, the more he is tempted and converted.

Shem is a character that doesn’t fit anything in the DnD/PF system. The closest thing available is Pathfinder’s Anti-Paladin who shares a couple of the proper powers. Unfortunately, as always, the requirements to be an anti-paladin are pretty restrictive. The requirement of being forced to perform evil deeds and embracing evil to its fullest just doesn’t sit right with me. I’d have to alter the concept more towards the embracing of evil rather than the attempt to only use it when necessary to prevent corruption for as long as possible.

Meanwhile in a game like Fate or Everway all I need to do is generate these powers using the rules with the DMs help designing and we’re good to go. I get exactly the narrative and mechanical items that I as a player want and we create a character that will be beholden to his high concept as a reluctant agent of evil who is trying to do the right thing. We have a man walking the path to damnation while trying to redeem himself and repent for his decision, but only attempting to drop the mantle when his quest is complete. If you attempted to do this in DnD/PF you’d be having far more difficult time playing this character in an RP heavy game.

Essentially all I’m saying is that I like it when I have no class.

The World's Largest Dungeon, Part 2

So it turns out that the internet has plenty of conversations already about The World’s Largest Dungeon (TWLD) being converted into Pathfinder.

Most of it requires nothing more than just running it as written or using the Pathfinder version of a critter. Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense can generally be estimated and is really the only important difference between the 3.0 and the PF versions most of the time anyways. Anything that has PC class levels though will need some conversion, but those aren’t all that much to worry about, other than some possible spell selections being altered.

Overall my biggest difficulty is going to be using Roll20.net to run this. It is a wonderful program for the price that it is (free), but I haven’t directly messed around with it to map out something this intensive. I don’t know if my initial concept of just loading the map files I have is going to work. I may have to individually build each room as its own encounter map.

That’s a totally legitimate solution and everything, but it’s a lot of work. There are 800+ pages in this book and most have 2-5 rooms a piece on them. It can get confusing and painful very quickly if I act like my normal lazy self. I’ll ask to potential Co-DMs if they wouldn’t mind helping out with it. That might make it tolerable.

The next thing to worry about is how to handle the building of characters and the drop-in drop-out nature of this game that’s taking place in a dungeon that’s meant to be a one-way trip to the exit with all your supplies gathered from inside. If the players are different from session to session, how are you supposed to be keeping track of things like Power Points or Spells per day between each section? How do you justify new PCs suddenly coming in with fresh supplies when the party may not have anything customizable available?

These are the some of the questions I really need to figure out answers to. It has the potential to throw off the balance of the game.

I think the best way to handle the swapping players will be to end each session with a full night’s rest for the party in a guaranteed “safe room” so that each session we start off with freshly rested characters. This way we can swap out characters and no one is at a major disadvantage. The supplies thing might be an issue though. I might have to just say that there’s an interdimensional immortal merchant that can offer most of the basic supplies as found in the Core Rulebook between sessions. I’ve got to read through some more to see where there are other merchants available throughout to see if this is potentially game breaking. (Maybe we can justify getting some items by “finding previous adventurer parties’ remains” after or during a session.)

Now, as for what PCs are available. That’s going to be a tougher question. I think sticking with a Point Buy system for stats is the fairest way to do that portion. Races would best be your standard races, maybe a few of the +0 monstrous humanoids/templates. Maybe a few ECL type characters. Everything must be approved though. Starting gold will be the class maximum or appropriate starting wealth when making a higher level character. HP will either be rolled or max, probably max. This dungeon was not designed with gunplay in mind so I think having Gunslinger classes in there might be inappropriate. There may be an allowance for it though in a very limited capacity with very simple firearms and a good build. Other than that potential Gunslinger issue, I’m thinking everything is fair game.

There is a thing about long distance/interplanar travel and summoning in TWLD though. Officially it is designed as a prison for celestial critters and prevents anything from escaping it except through the single exit. So because of this prison status the dungeon doesn’t function well with spells or abilities that call upon extra-planar creatures and abilities. This means that Summoners and Summoning spells might not work right, or that the creatures aren’t banished at the end of spell duration or the summoner loses control of them afterwards. I don’t think that works for casual atmosphere that I’m trying to encourage though. So maybe we’ll not deal with that concept unless someone really wants to be designing someone that would test the limits of TWLD.

I’m not sure how harsh I want to be with carrying capacity because I’m not a fan of it, but in a hardcore, save or die, style adventure it seems like a bad idea to just hand wave it away. So it means we probably will have to give a rat’s ass about it just to be practical and fair.

Now, magic items, rewards and such are going to require more research and an answer to the immortal merchant question.

I think that’s a good start. We’ll see if this one goes anywhere…

The World's Largest Dungeon

Upon finding out that the maps for The World’s Largest Dungeon are available online for free I just about made a mess in my pants.

For about 9 years I’ve had a copy of the book The World’s Largest Dungeon (TWLD). It is a supplement by AEG for Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. When released it was a $100 book with over 800 pages, 16 full color poster sized maps, and it even came with a couple miniatures from Reaper. The thing is a work of art. It is designed with the express purpose of taking up to 2 years real time to get through from start to finish. During one of the many moves I had while in the navy, all of the maps for this book were lost and I was really upset about it. It has sat on my shelves waiting for me to find a use for it ever since. At least until now.

The book also claims that it uses “every monster” in the 3.0 Monster Manual. Which is partially true, it doesn’t use regular animals and it doesn’t use every single version of things. For example they use a single Sphinx in the entire dungeon and you will never see the other two types. There are also a lot of things that have odd templates added to them as well. I haven’t read all of it over the years because I want to keep it a surprise, but from what I hear they are at least interesting.

The whole concept for it is really neat too. The Dungeon that the PCs wander into is essentially a completely sealed prison for celestial beings forgotten for an untold number of millennia. It is filled with some of the most dangerous creatures in the game and has been reshaped from its original design by countless beings and natural disasters. The dungeon is designed to take a single party on a one way journey (because the entrance is a one way wall of force and the entire thing is sealed against interdimensional transportation) starting at level 1 and taking you to level 20 at the end.

It is rough, difficult, and unforgiving. This thing is one of the most brutal endurance tests of the gaming world. Oh how I wish I could play this. I haven’t met many gamers who haven’t wanted to take a crack at it. It is a challenge that we all have wanted to take on at some point just for the bragging rights. No one ever does though because of how big of a commitment it is. Plus, outside of my high school gaming group, I don’t think I’ve ever had a gaming group that I’ve had 2 or more continuous years with gaming on a nearly weekly basis. I think the group we had on board the boat is the second closest and we were getting interrupted by that whole “deployment” thing every once in a while.

As much as I love the campaign I’m currently playing in it just happens far too infrequently due to a variety of real life factors to satisfy my relapsed addiction to tabletop gaming. I also want to practice my GM skills to hone my very dull instincts. Then there’s also the want to try out many different and bizarre character builds that have been running around my head for a while. I also want an excuse to be gaming more often; enjoying the great nerdy gathering that is a game night. Mostly I just want the company of fellow nerds on a regular basis, oh how I miss it.

So, as much as I’d like to run TWLD I know I can’t realistically get a dedicated and enjoyable group together to run it. Not without making the game flexible. Plus there will always be the inevitable GM burnout that can kill a game as well. If I were to run this I would need to have a rotating GM, a flexible player base, and a regularly scheduled session with casual requirements for who is playing and who isn’t.

While thinking about those requirements I remembered something I had thought of back when I first picked up the book. It could be run in an X-Crawl campaign. Then an idea started forming in my head. If this was used in an X-Crawl style tournament or marathon, then we could just do it in a completely casual and semi-goofy style. Maybe X-Crawl isn’t necessary, but it gives us a viable story-like reason to justify it. Basically I just want to run a 4thcore style gaming group every couple of weeks using TWLD as the primary module.

I want to play some good old fashioned dungeon crawls with no real storyline and/or run some classic modules in addition to using the world’s largest dungeon. I want some min-maxed powergaming with a flexible group of people who are there to kill some monsters and take their stuff.

I guess X-Crawl isn’t needed in all reality. We can just do some hardcore dungeon crawling on a virtual tabletop in non-sequitur dungeons while enjoying silly game mechanics. I think I might explore this concept a little bit more.

More on this later. I've got some numbers to run and things to look up. There might be some conversion issues because of 3.0 vs Pathfinder, but I doubt that it's much of an issue.

Campaigns that will never happen: Werewolf

So here’s an Idea I had for a Werewolf the Apocalypse chronicle that I penned up in about 2007. It took about 8 months or so to fully flesh out the idea and put together the outline of the overall storyline. I statted up the major NPCs, broke out a bunch of my supplements and made notes based upon what differences had come about in the published stuff from what had transpired in our high school gaming groups version of New York (I was basing it inside the same continuum because that’s what I knew and I liked where it had gone). I started talking to people about wanting to run a Werewolf chronicle and everyone in our group gave a collective “No” and demanded to do everything under the sun but Werewolf. Which of course this led to an extremely undeveloped and poorly conceived “Zombie Apocalypse in the World of Darkness” that I threw together on a duty day and didn’t really give much of a crap about that I royally screwed up on due to being so far out of practice in Storytelling that I had no business running a game. (Okay, maybe I’m just bitter and ranting right now)

Anyways, the Chronicle I wanted to run has been sitting dormant and waiting for over 5 years now and I’m pretty sure I’ll never get to run it. I liked the idea of the story too much though to give up on it entirely. I think the story is a solid idea and I want to share it with people. Unfortunately due to the difficulty of getting people together to play anything is next to impossible, let alone playing a system like Werewolf so I’ve resigned myself to only being able to share the idea of it via this blog with an overview of what I wanted to do. If you think you’d want to play a Werewolf campaign with me as Storyteller and think it’s an actual possibility that it could happen don’t read the rest of this entry because I’m going to give away pretty much everything that was going to happen from a major plot standpoint.

So to start off this Chronicle we would have a new pack being formed in New York City at the Sept of the Green. This pack will be the new wolves getting ready for their rite of passage. These would be the PCs. One of the requirements of this campaign is to have one of the PCs have a close female family member or the Merit: True Love (and I’d try to help set them up as someone useful with an important skill or connection and as a female) which will be important later. In general the characters would go through their normal early paces for a newly formed pack of werewolves. Hunting down Fomori (Wyrm-tainted humans), Banes (Wyrm spirits), and generally carrying out basic errands for the Sept.

The goal was to not have the real plot start until about 5 or 6 chapters into the Chronicle, just before anyone in the group would make it to Rank 2. They would be given the opportunity to really show themselves as useful members of the Sept by taking out a Wyrm tainted Garou who betrayed the Black Furies tribe and became a Black Spiral Dancer. [Name and description of the character here] In the end the players would eventually track her down after a long, drawn out chase and tracking sequence and would be forced to either kill her there or they would be able to take her back to the Sept for the appropriate punishment rites to be performed. They would also get some valuable information about the Black Spiral Dancer’s current operations and goals in the area that they would pass on to the Sept’s leadership. There would be a grand celebration and an automatic promotion for them to Rank 2 following this. They would get to lead the raid on the first BSD stronghold/operation after this.

A couple more sessions would go by with the pack joining other packs in the area for more successful hunting. Nothing here would be extremely difficult. It would mostly consist of Banes and Fomori with one or two nameless BSD wolves that they’d take out and ruin the machinations of the Wyrm forces. Things are going great until they come across the Elder BSD in charge of these things. She was [Black Furies’) lover and is here for revenge. This is [Black Spiral Dancer leader and her pack’s description]

Her pack is far more experienced, is empowered by the Wyrm, and in a much better tactical situation than the PC pack is when they meet. Basically the situation can’t be won by the PCs but they do have a clear route of escape. If the PCs did what PCs like to do and try to fight their way out I’d let them get almost slaughtered, and then drop a deus ex machina pack on the scene to get them out of there (which would probably be the pack my all-time favorite character Epithail was a part of because they were some of the most experienced and capable Garou in the area at that point in time). They would make it out alive, but defeated.

[Queen] would then become their bane for the next few sessions. Making their lives hell by using corporate and political contacts to screw with the Sept (which is located in Central Park) by arresting Kinfolk and various Garou by having the police crackdown on the “homeless” and “gang” population in the Park (which are mostly the Garou). A few of the higher rolling Glass Walkers within the Sept (mainly Epithail and Simon) would be running political/financial cover as best they could but would also be put under investigation themselves eventually. This would require the pack to use their heads and try to obtain either evidence to exonerate the Glass Walkers (getting it to the right people in the right way so as to not compromise it) or deal with the arrests of the “homeless”/”gangs” somehow. These sessions would be intentionally frustrating and would be tailored to the specific non-combat skills of the pack. It would be to set them up to get pissed off at [Queen] more and more. There would also be a few combat related sessions having to stop Fomori and Banes from hurting the Park.

Occasionally the members of [Queen’s] pack and [Queen] herself would be at some of the sites and would repeatedly get away because of better planning or bad luck. Following this shitty set of circumstances the PCs would eventually catch one member of her pack and be able to kill them or turn them over for punishment rites. Before their death though, they’ll reveal that the True Love/Family member of one of the PCs is being kidnapped as they speak. A call or investigation to said person reveals that this is the truth. Nothing can be done to stop it and the trail has basically been magically covered.

Eventually they get some clues based off of some of the information put together from the various sites they’ve been to and are able to piece together what’s going to happen. It’s some type of ritual that will be happening very soon. They are able to track down the location of the ritual to an abandoned chemical processing plant in New Jersey. There they find resistance and are able to fight their way through just in time to see the ritual being completed. The ritual tears the spirit of [Black Fury] out of whatever green Balefire ridden hell she is burning in and shoves her spirit into the body of the True Love/Family member, granting it a mortal body once more. The spirit being attached also allows her to shift into Crinos form (although that’s it, nothing else). It isn’t a normal “painless” transformation though.

This transformation, being unnatural and from the unholy scriptures of the Black Spiral is unbelievably painful. The body shifts and boils beneath the skin, eventually growing larger while the skin painfully tears apart over it, the nightmare beast standing there with everglowing green eyes that look like they have balefire pouring out from them. (I think I was watching Van Hellsing’s werewolf transformation when I got the inspiration on that one, the flaming eyes are just for effect though). They are forced to fight the reborn [Black Fury] but when she goes to deliver a vicious and brutal blow to the PC to whom the NPC is attached, she stops and the flame in the eyes dies off temporarily as the Crinos form shrinks back and grabs its head. Obviously at this point it is clear that both souls are in the same body and that there might be hope to save her.

The rest of the chronicle revolves around preventing [Queen] from kidnapping more Kinfolk to use in this ritual as the PCs gather more information on the ritual itself to see if they can reverse it. They kill off most of [Queen’s] pack and start to undo most of the damage she’s causing around the city. The chronicle is setup to allow the PCs to reverse this ritual and give her some semblance of her old life back (although the permanent effects of this were still up for debate, and the psychological scars she would have from it would require intense therapy and treatment). Eventually the PCs are able to capture [Black Fury] and use the reversal ritual upon her if they so choose. They then get the last bits of information they need to take down [Queen] and show up for a final confrontation with her.

The final confrontation would be a true final showdown though and PC death would be possible. [Queen] would be at her full strength and prepared with an unknown number of possessed Kinfolk at her command. How this battle turned out would depend upon PC prep and dice. The next chronicle would deal with the fallout of all of this and would involve a search for all the places where this ritual could be learned again in an attempt to eliminate them. Likely it would also end up leading to the Garou asking themselves if they would use the ritual themselves in preparation for the Apocalypse.

Needless to say, I’m sad that I don’t think I’ll ever get to run this campaign and tell the story. I can’t even write it as a piece of fiction because of how heavily tied to the old World of Darkness it is without getting major permissions from White Wolf themselves (which considering that old WoD is long out of print, that seems unlikely).