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Monday, May 5th, 2008
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10:53 am - Core Rulebooks
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4e core rulebooks are in my hand. About 2 minutes ago I walked over to Bill's office to get my copies.
Words completely fail me. I'm just going to hold them in my hands for a while.
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(46 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, April 27th, 2008
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10:01 pm - Calling Bullshit on the Zombie Apocalypse
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There is no way that slow moving zombies could possible pose a threat to the modern USA. Our entire society is basically predicated on the following pillars:
1. Getting Americans to NOT use the high powered firearms they've socked away in their homes to deal with criminals, trespassers, and Chinese exchange students who mistakenly go trick or treating a day early.
2. Preventing adults from using power tools, cars, and anything else that with moving parts to dice up themselves or others. We are a nation that slaps warning stickers on lawn mowers - do not stick hand near fast moving, rotating blade!
3. Finding ways to get kids and adults to stop indulging in sadistic power fantasies provided by video games, TV shows, and movies.
All of these things make us perfectly suited to dealing with a zombie outbreak. It'd be a freakin' national holiday, the one day you're encouraged to break out your guns, turn your lawn mower into a head slicing machine, and act out all the mindless violence that the media feeds us.
Those F-22s swooping in to bomb the Hell out of an overrun hospital? The greatest air show ever, where the planes not only zip around and look all cool, but actually drop live munitions on highly explosive buildings.
The tanks and Bradleys rolling down Main Street, pumping infested buildings with high caliber munitions? Not a symbol of fear, my friends, but the most bad ass parade ever.
Zombie movies are built on the presumption that people would completely freak out, panic, stabble each other, burn down malls, and throw themselves head first into hordes of the living dead. COMPLETE CRAP. This would be your one chance to unleash totally justified, government encouraged, mayhem. Nobody would screw that up. If anything, the one worry would be that it'd be so much fun that it'd be hard to get society to go back to normal. That's the real risk of a zombie invasion: we'd be so used to firing guns every day, we'd be unable to use lawn tools for actual lawn work, that peace would kill us.
QED
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(35 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, April 24th, 2008
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8:55 pm - The Flumph
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Everyone agrees that the flumph is stupid, yet it has outlived and grown more popular than hundreds of "serious" monsters. The lesson: dumb monsters have traction. D&D needs more "dumb" monsters.
I'm actually semi-serious here. Sure, plainly stupid monsters are a waste of space, but the monster you beat up is only one (though clearly the most popular) type of monster you can create.
Monsters are like any cast of characters. You need a bit of variety to cover all the bases. I tried doing this in MM V (Or was it IV? The past three years are a blur of working on 4e, reading about people talking about 4e, and FINALLY playing 4e) with the taunting haunt, an undead bard that would follow you around and bug you until you either beat him an insult contest or solved whatever issue was keeping him from resting in peace.
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(36 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, April 20th, 2008
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9:05 pm - More Sad Gaming News
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| Friday, April 18th, 2008
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8:46 am - OD&D Lives!
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| Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
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4:28 pm - My Dumb April Fool's Contribution
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Roper Trick
You cause an invisible, extradimensional roper to appear 10 feet in the air above you. The roper's tongue becomes visible in the material world when it extends it from its mouth, which it does when it appears. You may climb the roper's outstretched tongue to its mouth, where you may hide for up to six hours. If you do, however, the roper eats you. Make a new character.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 31st, 2008
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1:59 pm - BASEBALL!
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Man, I love opening day. MLB.com charges only $15 for unlimited access to the radio broadcasts of every single game for the entire season. This is particularly awesome on the west coast, when you get afternoon east coast games in the morning, then roll through the entire day listening to games.
So, whoever you're rooting for, let's hope it's a great season!
(And if you don't like baseball, I say to you sir, GOOD DAY!)
current music: Brewers @ Cubs
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(26 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
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1:43 pm - Greyhawk PC #1
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Here's the first PC's background. He's a human fighter:
Marken Odenin grew up among the mercenary camps that keep strongholds near Greyhawk and serve that city-state as its freelance police and paramilitary forces. He started life as a blacksmith’s third son. With two older brothers to soak up the inheritance and no stomach for fratricide, Marken joined the Iron Hawk Brotherhood as a servant.
On top of serving meals and cleaning camp, he kept weapons sharp and used the smithing he already knew to become an apprentice weaponsmith. He distinguished himself delivering fresh arrows, swords, and shields to a frontline during a battle and soon become a full-fledged brother.
After many years and much action, Marken was considering retirement when he responded to a call to arms and helped fight back demons trying to enter Greyhawk through a temple to Boccob. After that action, the governance of the city insisted on sending his unit to join the war in the Shield Lands. Unknown to Marken, the client specifically requested Marken Odenin (for reasons not given). There, a clash between the Horned Society and several mercenary units from various countries left Marken without a unit. Suspicious military actions suggested treachery, but Marken could do nothing with that information.
Rudderless, Marken drifted to the Theocracy of the Pale where he joined a unit of outsiders who performed military tasks distasteful to the blessed children of Pholtus. Barrius, a Paleite, was Marken’s commanding officer, and claimed to have put the Eye of Pholtus on Marken, enabling them to watch him. After a raid on the Shield Lands in which the unit fought both sides of the conflict(1), they came away with a treasure that was sensitive in some fashion – an amulet that means nothing to Marken. The Paleites slaughtered the outlanders, but Marken again escaped (2). Now, when he wakes, he sees Barrius’s cataract-filled eyes, as if he’s being watched (3).
(1) Marken's unit struck a stronghold besieged by a small band of orcs from Iuz, defeating both the orcs and the Shield Landers defending the stronghold.
(2) Marken is 90% sure his unit was liquidated to avoid implicating the Theocracy in the attack on the stronghold and theft of the amulet.
(3) IMC, the most devoted clerics of Pholtus stare at the sun until they are blinded.
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
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9:47 am - A Little More About the Tables
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So, I've had several people ask for copies of the tables I mentioned in my last post. They are works in progress, to say the least. The version I used on Thursday worked like this:
1. Pick one of three general categories that fit your character's vocation. The three I had were physical (manual labor, soldiering, that kind of thing), fringe (crime, arcane study, things that exist on the edge of society), and social (talky jobs, like preaching, diplomacy, trade).
2. Each player rolled three times on the category's table, with a 50% chance of something bad happening. For instance, you might be kidnapped by slavers or involved in a major battle. Otherwise, you gained some benefit relating to your vocation.
3. When something weird happened, we'd figure out what it was as a group. I used an Everway fortune deck to help generate ideas.
The system worked fine, but I think 80% of the success came from making up stories behind the unfortunate incidents that befell each character. Some of the players also felt that it was lame that they could either get a weird event in their background or a benefit relating to a vocation. The either/or element was a little lame. Also, if you never had a Bad Thing happen to you, your background was sort of dull (I studied geometry for 5 years, now I'm a wizard!).
Here's how I think I might do it in a revision:
1. Pick a vocation, and then roll on a table to determine how your pursuit of that vocation went. So, the player just selects "blacksmith" or "diplomat" and that's done. The interesting thing is to see what sort of complications arose from that work. Did you develop a rival? Did emissaries from the dark lord keep trying to commission you (and only you) to build some weird gizmo?
2. Roll twice on the unfortunate events table, and construct a narrative that ties them together. The fortune deck really proved helpful here, as it pushed things in unexpected directions. It's also a great catalyst. If you can't find a fortune deck, try a Harrow deck from Paizo or a tarot deck.
3. Roll once on the starting events table to see what just happened to you. Again, do a drawing to flesh things out.
The key, IMO, lies in constructing tables that speak directly to the setting and the campaign's story arc. For instance, I used a table that listed the 20 key Greyhawk nations/territories that will could play a role in the Temple of Elemental Evil game, along with short descriptions of each. Not only did this table yield a starting point for each PC, but I also used it to spin characters off in random directions. For example, one PC was part of a mercenary unit in the Bandit Kingdoms that was destroyed in battle. We rolled on the table to see where he ended up next. We got Theocracy of the Pale, and his being an outsider in a xenophobic, hyper-religious culture directly influenced the rest of his story in an interesting way.
I also seeded the tables with stuff that made sense in Greyhawk. For instance, there were several results for raids, characters dragged into captivity, and so on, to reflect the ongoing war between evil (Iuz, the Great Kingdom) and good (Furyondy, Veluna, etc.) I didn't use the Scarlet Brotherhood or the nations near it because I don't have plans for them in ToEE, but if I had a game in that region I could modify the tables as appropriate.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, March 21st, 2008
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9:10 am - Your Job is to Chase Characters Up Trees
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So, years ago Ron Edwards (I think) introduced the idea of kickers and bangs in Sorcerer. I own Sorcerer, read it, and thought I understood them. Here are the relevant definitions, lifted from John Kim's theory glossary:
Bangs
A term from the game Sorcerer, originally "those moments when the characters realize they have a problem right now and have to get moving to deal with it." In Forge discussion, this has become "introducing events into the game which make a thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary for a player."
And here's a good example, lifted from this thread, from a post by Ralph Mazza:
You have a character who's a priest of an altruistic diety. You have a relationship map that highlights various enemies of the priests family.
Bang: A house is burning and one of the most villainous members of the rival family is trapped inside...what do you do?
The priest chooses to: go and get help, run inside to effect a rescue, pray for a miracle, or walk up and make sure the door is barricaded extra well...even simply walking away says something about the character and most importantly each choice opens a wealth of potential following issues.
There simply is no way for the character to avoid being touched by consequences. The player's only option is to chose which consequences to take. That's a Bang.
And here's the glossary's definition of a kicker:
Kicker
A term from the game Sorcerer: "The Kicker is an event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins. It catalyzes him or her into action of some sort."
There's also a good thread that goes into some detail on the difference between a kicker and a classic character hook.
EDIT: Here's another link with more good commentary on kicker's. In particular, read Ron's first post in the thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=1321.0
OK, so a lot of this stuff is basic RPG theory and covers some now fundamental methods to put characters into motion. The big reveal for me is that, for the past few campaigns, I've been unhappy with how the story has progressed. My last Eberron campaign in Boston was a lot of fun, but since then the games have felt a little flat.
So, yesterday, to kick off my Greyhawk Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, I trotted out a set of Traveller-style rules I built with an eye toward kickers and bangs. The rules lack significant mechanical impact on a PC. Instead, they build kickers right into the character's background. We ended up with some really interesting characters with lots of reasons to push the story ahead. The kickers it produced also suggest a number of bangs that can come up in play.
The really nice part is that I designed the tables to speak directly to the setting. The characters were from a place on the map, and the events that led to their kickers were derived both from player choice ("Here's what I think about my character...") and background information ("You're from Highfolk, and during the first year of your arcane apprenticeship you were pressed into military service to repel a major raid by orcs from the Empire of Iuz. Here's what happened...")
The thing I realized is that, to mangle a quote from someone (a director?) a lot smarter than I, my job as a GM is to chase the characters up a tree and let them figure out a way to get down. The thing is, there's a snake climbing the tree, the tree's on fire, there's a mob of zombies around the tree, and the rescue chopper floating overhead is piloted by a drunk 5 year old. You've got choices, but none of them are "I sit in the tree and while away a pleasant afternoon with happy thoughts." There's peril in every direction. As Ralph said in the quoted bits above, not choosing is still a choice with interesting consequences.
Now, the tree example isn't perfect, because ideally all of those decisions are tied to the characters, but the gist of it is there.
Much of this is basic stuff for people versed in RPG theory and indie games. I find it interesting because, while I knew about all this stuff and had used it in the past, it was a good exercise to poke around and review what I already thought I knew. Sometimes we know things, but we forget to use them.
I have to check to see if the tables are something I can post (they refer to some 4e-specific rules), but there's another interesting lesson I learned from them. Players, especially D&D players, are risk averse. They don't want their characters to die. They'd rather find the safest way to get treasure and beat a villain. I think that if I used my "power" as DM to force interesting backgrounds on the players, they'd rebel. Most D&D players want a background that looks like this:
1. My character has no notable friends and family.
2. My character didn't have any major villains or real issues with anyone.
3. My character wants to... get some treasure?
These are all really safe, easy statements. There's nothing there that can pose a threat. It's exactly what the smart, no-risk gamer wants.
As DM, I don't want that. I want to chase the characters up burning trees. However, if I just toss them into a tree, I'll get resistance. That's railroading. It's not really interesting, because a GM can always just arbitrarily throw stuff at characters. Arbitrary is stupid and bad in games, because the fundamental promise of games (interaction! choices!) runs directly counter to it.
The tables, OTOH, are neutral arbiters. Nobody argues with a table. Nobody resents that the table is loading juicy, interesting, dangerous bits of background into their characters' lives (Your cleric PC... will be burned at the stake if the high priests knew what books you were reading! Your gnome wizard... was the target of an attempted assassination, and you have no idea why, but you think these guys might be from the very government you serve as a diplomat!) The table is arbitrary, but it's also random. It's an impersonal safety-killing machine.
So, that was my experience with a Trav-style system aimed purely at story rather than mechanics. It was fun, and I hope to post a human readable and usable version of it soon.
current music: "The Logical Song" - Supertramp
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(42 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 17th, 2008
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2:39 pm - Thank You
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I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my last post with Supertramp lyrics that are now stuck in my head.
Trepanation never sounded so appealing!
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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12:30 pm - My Secret Fear
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My secret fear is that I will one day wake up and decide that I like Supertramp, the worst band in existance. Only Collective Soul gives them a run for the musical championship (group division) of the Suck Olympics.
It'd be like that episode of the Twilight Zone where the "normal" dude is actually deformed. You'd be all like, "Yeah, this is normal, listening to Supertramp on a constant basis," and then you wake up one day and the madness has passed, and you're all like, "What have I wrought?!?"
I've been lucky in that the bands I've really obsessed over have all been good, or at least they allow for the argument that they could be good. Supertramp has no such argument. They are the absolute zero of the scale from suck to good.
So, basically, if you want to ruin me invent a device that turns me into a Supertramp fan.
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(32 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 13th, 2008
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3:19 pm - Security Alert!
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| Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
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10:09 am - The Kobold Victory Chart
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(Inspired by last night's 4e session.)
Kobolds are poor, abused, misused, maltreated, underdogs. The poor little sods are so beaten down that their language lacks a word for victory. The closest they have roughly translates into Common as, "The lack of understanding and realization that we're really, really going to lose again."
(Kobold is much like German in that it takes massive, complex concepts and squishes them down to one word. That's because kobolds, with their ridiculously short lifespans, believe in saying a lot with few words.)
If a kobold does manage to drop an adventurer, an intense (though invariably brief) celebration is in order. Roll a d20 and consult the following chart:
1 - 10. No effect.
The kobold lacks the imagination to do anything interesting. It might chitter or giggle, but it really doesn't know what to do when it defeats something.
11. Kill things, take their stuff!
The kobold picks an item off the fallen adventurer as its trophy. It spends a minor action next round dancing in celebration before running off.
12. Ask not what the tribe can do for you...
The kobold spends a round standing on the fallen adventurer's body, delivering a victory speech. All kobolds heal 5 hit points.
13. I attribute my success solely to good fortune.
The kobold immediately hides in its victim's backpack or under his unconscious/dead form.
14. Whoah. Srsly?!?
The kobold is stunned for one round, shocked by its own success.
15. Who's yer daddy?!?
The kobold marches off to challenge the tribe's chief to a duel for supremacy.
16. C'mon guys, we can do this thing!
The kobold lets out an inspiring whoop that grants all kobolds +1 on attacks for the rest of the fight.
17. Who's next?!?
The kobold gains an action point.
18. I worry this will only anger them.
The kobold drops its weapon and runs away. It comes back to the fight in 1d4 rounds.
19. I'm the Quidditch Hat Rack*!
The kobold taps into the true nature of its draconic heritage. In time, he will grow to become a messiah amongst his people, a herald of a new race of draconic kobolds who shall rule the world. Unless, of course, the surviving adventurers squash him. In any case, he can now breath fire, blast 3, 1d8 + his level in fire damage.
*When I saw the movie version of Dune, before I read the novel, I thought this was what Paul called himself. I think it sounds like a neat title for a kobold messiah.
20. WHO'S A MINION NOW MOTHERF****R?!?!
The kobold becomes blessed by Kurtulmak. He becomes size Large, gains 16 hit points and gets +2 on attacks, damage, and defenses.
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(48 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
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12:48 pm - The Words that Launched a Million Imaginations
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"These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!"
E. Gary Gygax, 1 November 1973
The magic really did work, Gary. Thank you so much for it.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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12:24 pm - Good Bye, Uncle Gary
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I still haven't fully wrapped my head around the passing of Gary Gygax. It's impossible to overestimate the influence his work had on games and, by osmosis, our culture. Tonight millions of people will log on to WoW, sit down at tables for a game of D&D or Magic, or put paint to metal on a Warhammer or Warmachine army, all because of EGG and the other trail blazers of his era.
Gary was like the cool gaming uncle to an entire generation. He told us about the fantasy and SF series we should be reading via his recommended book lists in the DMG. He told stories of his campaigns in the DMG and Dragon magazine, giving the game a sense of life that was a little hard to find when you were one of three gamers in a tiny New Hampshire town. He was an icon, the Godfather of Gaming, the first and original gamer.
He'll be missed.
current mood:  sad
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(17 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 3rd, 2008
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11:06 pm - 4e: The Many Headed Hydra of Gaming
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4e is simultaneously a board game, an MMO, a TCG, a miniatures game, but clearly not an RPG. When you think about it, this makes a ton of sense. What we're doing with the game is very simple. If you take all the gamers in the world and subtract RPG players, there you have 4e's audience.
Based on that alone, 4e will be, by several orders of magnitude, the most popular version of D&D ever made.
QED
(Yeah, this is a joke.)
It is interesting to note, though, that denying D&D's status as an RPG is probably the most common attack made against it. Gaming is the only arena where I've seen people who don't like something simply try to define it as something else. It's like trying to dismiss John McCain's presidential qualifications by claiming that he isn't actually a politician or involved in the election. Further, in my experiences in the early, Gaming Outpost era of indie gaming, any claim that an indie game wasn't an RPG was met with ridiculously fierce resistance, to the point that slagging a game as utter crap would get fewer complaints. Any pop psychologists want to weigh in on this?
Alternatively, do people who like RPGs really, really, really hate all other types of games? I've never heard anyone say that Halo sucks because it's really an RTS, or that WoW sucks because everyone knows it's actually a boardgame. I guess you could claim that a sucky MMO with like 300 people scattered across a server isn't really an MMO because the only thing massive about it is the debt run up in spending years getting ready to push it off a cliff.
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(54 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
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5:18 pm - D&D Experience
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I'll be in DC for D&D Experience starting tomorrow and ending Sunday. If you see me there, don't be afraid to ask a question about 4e. It's great to finally get the game out in the public eye.
See some of you there!
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(16 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
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8:48 pm - Arrogance Will Kill You
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That is the lesson to learn from the Superbowl. The Patriots had an arrogant offensive game play, refused to change it until far too late in the game, and paid the price. Until the last drive, the Pats kept trying to go deep, and again and again the Giants brought pressure. The Pats switched over to short passes and screens, the exact adjustment they made to beat Jacksonville, on their last scoring drive and for the first portion of the first drive of the second half. Inevitably, though, they turned to slow developing sweeps and deep passes, exactly playing into what the Giants wanted to see.
If they had managed to win the game, it would've been a BS, lucky win. The offense played like they deserved to lose, and they did. Belichick was completely out-coached, and stalking off the field rather than watch the final play was a zero class move.
EDIT: I'm referring to Belichick leaving the field with a second left, with the rest of the team still out there to count down the final second. That was classless, leaving the team behind so he could go sulk in the locker room.
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(24 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
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8:49 pm - My Take on Cloverfield
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