Looking Ahead

Happy New Year, everyone! I know it's a little early to wish everyone this, but if you look at my posting rate this month, it shouldn't be a surprise. 

2024 wasn't a great year over all, but gaming wise, it was pretty good. My TS&R Jade campaign is going well. Everyone is enjoying it. My side campaign of Star Wars d6 is also going well. We just played it yesterday, and had a good time. The Call of Cthulhu game was pretty fun, and hopefully it continues into next year [This one isn't actually a campaign, as we make new characters for each scenario]. And here and there, we got to try out a few smaller games as one-shots. 

In the realm of play-by-post, the long running 1E game had a reboot, with new PCs starting at level 1. It's not so bad, when the other option was the DM shutting the game down. I really enjoyed playing my primary PC in that game, but at times I was thinking it was time to retire him anyway. The one 5E game I still play there has been pretty slow due to the DM's real life schedule, and honestly, I keep forgetting to post there. I got into the ground floor of a RECON game, but different player styles/expectations frustrated the GM, and now maybe one of the players will take over. We'll see. 

The two games I'm running there, Gamma World and Star Wars d6, are moving along just fine. 

Looking forward into 2025, I see these trends continuing. Well, hopefully the 5E game picks up the pace a bit. Otherwise, things seem to be going well gaming wise. 

On the game design front, I'm plugging away at Flying Swordsmen 2E. Over the weekend, I made some character templates as the equipment chapter was kinda boring me. I'd been somewhat reluctant to get into the weeds of templates, but so far, it's been kinda fun trying to figure out the basics of different martial arts/wuxia stock characters within the framework of the game I'm creating. 

The other thing that's been on my mind lately is an idea I've had of converting the Isle of Dread for my TS&R Jade campaign. It would be a fairly superficial thing, but at the same time it would take a fair amount of rewriting. I'd want to change the Isle's native culture to be less Polynesian and more SE Asian in nature. And of course the wandering monster tables and a few of the encounter areas would need to be reworked to include more SE Asian style monsters along with all the dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. 

But do I really want to put the breaks on the local campaign to send the players off to a multi-session arc on the Isle of Dread? I mean, it's a fun module, but I'm not so sure it's the right thing for the group. Maybe I'll make some notes and then throw a few rumors/hooks their way. If they bite, I'll finish fleshing out the idea. If not, then I'll drop the idea.

When to Hang Up the Hat

One of the best play-by-post DMs I've played under, old school forum-goers will know him as "Jeffery St. Clair" (DMJSC), announced yesterday that he's got to shut down his games. He's been running his AD&D game over 17 years now, and I've been playing in it for exactly 13 years (my request to join was April 26, 2011, and today is April 25th, 2024). 

He's also shutting down a much shorter lived Mazes & Minotaurs game that I was in, that never quite found its footing. He also, over the years, ran a great Star Frontiers game until we ran out of his prepared adventures, and for a short time he ran a high level AD&D game. 

His main game, called Mines of Nemrac, was actually two campaigns, as he ran an Oriental Adventures game on the other side of his campaign world (there were connections/portals between the two game zones, but they were rare to stumble upon). This is the one I was in for 13 years, and I had four characters in it, two in each zone. 

Wehostan, Son of Bardolph (Halfling Fighter 4/Thief 6) was my main and longest running PC. He had some great adventures over the years and got to do many of the things players dream of when playing D&D. He helped slay a dragon, battled an evil wizard while his party was paralyzed, got the snot knocked out of him by an ogre-sized bullywug, and lots of other fun stuff. 

Gwire (Human Cleric 7) was my attempt to run a cleric not as a holy crusader but as a Van Helsing/Solomon Kane/Simon Belmont type monster hunter (which was the original impetus of the class in Arneson's campaign), and he also had a lot of great adventures over the years. Starting out penniless, his first two forays earned him no treasure, but in the end, he was slaying demons and whatnot. He amassed a huge pile of treasure and magic items. 

Chie Enokido (Human Kensei 5) was my main character in Pingbo Lake. She was the daughter of a disgraced landholding family, and specialized in naginata. She was racking up fame and honor in the campaign, and was trying to avenge her honor on an ogre-mage (or full oni?) who pretended to be a kensei but wasn't. She was very upset about that. 

Five Dragons Xiong (Human Sohei) was a fairly new addition, still first level. He managed to help his party overcome some bandits, and that was his career. 

I'm actually sad that I won't be able to continue the careers of these characters. Well, not so much Xiong, who I was just starting to get a feel for. But the other three were well developed and fun to play. And sure, I could maybe take these characters to another campaign if there's an opening, or remake then in a new campaign some day, but it won't be the same. A lot of the fun of the characters were the way they interacted with their parties. Especially for Wehostan, as his group, known as Gang Green after the green dragon they slew, were just the most rowdy, scruffy-looking scoundrels you could ever find, and a blast to game with. Especially in the OOC, when certain other players would get seemingly very offended that we were pretending to run a protection racket for new players in the game. 

Nemrac players, if any of you read this blog, feel free to memorialize your PCs in the comments!

And to get back to DMJSC, he's had some family issues, and some health problems recently, but he says he's actually in a good place these days. In fact, he's just too busy to keep the game up. And I don't blame him. Nemrac has 75 PCs (yes, 4 of those are mine, and other players also run multiple PCs, but not all!). I'm not sure how many players, exactly, there are. It's a lot to manage. It's impressive that he kept it going for so long and managed to grow the game as large as he did. Most of my attempts at PbP have ended abruptly in failure. [Fingers crossed, my current Gamma World game will keep going.]

To thanks to Jeffery St. Clair/DMJSC, for all the years of gaming. And to all the players in the game as well!

I've been banned!

Yes, I have been banned. This is not an exaggeration to get clicks. But what I was banned from and why is pretty funny. 

I know I've mentioned it before, but I play play-by-post games on Role Play Online (RPOL.net). My new Gamma World game is there. 

So there's this guy who's been for years trying to get new players into his d20 Star Wars game. Years ago I sent him a request to join, but it was ignored (first red flag!). But he kept asking for new players to join, so recently I decided to try again.

This time, he responded, but he was pretty condescending towards me, thinking my request from three years ago (which was still there) was my current request to join. Three years ago, he was looking for a level 3 or 4 character to join an existing game. Now, he was starting over at level 1. I figured hey, no big deal. He may not be a native English speaker, and gamers can be quirky anyway. We got past that when I explained that he'd ignored me before. (This was the second red flag, but I pressed on.)

So he says he is basing this Star Wars game at the end of the Clone Wars, off of some video game I'd never even heard of. Dark something or other. It's Star Wars. The enemies use The Dark Side. There are Dark Troopers. Dark Jedi. Dark this, dark that. Pretty par for the course. I didn't bother to Google the game.

So he posted that he wanted players, and specifically, the party could use a Jedi Guardian, a Soldier, or a Fringer. 

My first idea was to play a Fringer (Outer Rim survival/tinkerer type class). He said a Guardian or Soldier would be better. 

So I thought, how about a Mandalorian soldier? He said no, because there is a Jedi in the party, and as far as he knew, Mandos and Jedi are old enemies, so they wouldn't fit together. I suggested that there's plenty of precedent in Clone Wars, Rebels (the whole series has two Jedi and a Mando as leads!), The Mandalorian... He hasn't seen any of that. He's seen the movies, and played some games. That's his Star Wars. Well, fine. No worries.

He suggests I play a Jedi Guardian instead. I don't really want to mess around with the d20 Force rules (which are clever in a way, but kinda suck in actual play) and just not in the mood for a Jedi PC anyway. I tell him that I'd rather stick to a Soldier. So he suggests I play a Wookiee or some other big strong alien type. 

I've never played a Wookiee before. I think, not being able to directly communicate with the others and having to use descriptions of my gestures/mood might be kinda fun. So I make a Wookiee Soldier, and I'm accepted into the game. 

But then he says, hey, why not play a Wookiee Jedi Guardian? Wouldn't that be cool? No thanks.

Then, I've made my PC. I take one of those useless but flavorful +2 to two skills feats. He's like, hey, why not take a combat feat? I say I'll get plenty of feats as a Soldier. This gives me a bit of flavor. He is dismissive, but whatever. Then he's complaining that I'm playing a Wookiee but didn't take a bowcaster. Honestly, the d20 rules for them are a bit suboptimal, and NOW he's worried about me going for an optimization choice instead of a flavor choice. Weird, but OK. 

Remember, I'd wanted to play a Fringer, a sort of jury-rigging rogue type PC, in the first place. 

Then I find out that EVERY PC and the DM PC (yeah, another red flag) can speak Shyriiwook (the Wookiee language). So my idea to have to play this guy who understands everyone but has trouble making himself understood is out the window.

So, my Wookiee is introduced, having been captured and frozen in carbonite, then rescued by the PCs. So I'm blind at first. Luckily, that doesn't last too long. But we're on an abandoned Star Destroyer (Venator I guess?) and there are bloody trails and remains of clones everywhere. Our DM PC is trying to lead us here or there, but players being players, we're trying to explore and investigate this. 

We finally get the GM to allow us to move where we want to go, and we're attacked by clone zombies. 

I am instantly turned off. I wanted to play Star Wars, not zombie survival horror. But I press on for a bit. 

First round of combat, one of the zombies bites my PC. It's a critical hit, meaning it goes to my Wound Points (actual damage hit points) instead of my Vitality (luck/wits/skill hit points). It's only 2 damage, though, and I'm a big tough Wookiee with 14 WP. But the GM is asking me, "Hey, you could take the 2 damage, or you could lose a limb. Wouldn't that be cool? You could get a cybernetic replacement."

Really? He wants me to gimp my character in the first round of combat, in a format where just getting through a round of combat can take days, in the off chance that some where down the line I'll be able to get a cybernetic replacement? Instead of just taking 2 damage? Weird. 

I didn't post for a bit because I was busy (it's a pretty slow game, the other players are equally slow to post), but he made a comment to me asking if I was still interested in playing. And I decided I'd had enough. I posted (publicly so everyone would know I was leaving) that I wasn't really interested in playing a zombie horror Star Wars game, and than I think I'll politely bow out. 

He replies in a derisive manner, saying that I must have known it was a zombie game because whatever Dark Something game he'd based this on is a zombie game. Remember that? Yeah. Still have no idea what that game is, and still no desire to Google it. And he was complaining that I'd wasted his time. Remember how he'd been trying to get players in this game for a long time? I replied privately that no, actually, I didn't know the game he was referencing, and that there was no hint at all in the game advertising he'd made that it was zombies in space. I tried to stay polite, and even thanked him for giving me the chance to play in his game.

This morning, I saw there was a private message reply. But I couldn't read it, because he'd banned me from the game. 

No loss there, though. I probably should have bailed during the weird demands of character creation. But I can say I've been banned from a game!

A disputed saving throw

Recently in a PbP game I run (house ruled Classic D&D), this situation happened.

Context:
The player in question is no stranger to older editions of D&D. He's been playing longer than I have (says he started in '79), and he's played most editions of the game although he mostly plays 5E now.

The game is set in my megadungeon.

To speed up PbP gaming, and to get a bit of rivalry/competition like I read about in the old days, each player runs their own party through the dungeon.

I make no bones about it being deadly. Only one person who signed up to play the game has managed not to lose a character, and that's because he quit as soon as he had his first encounter.

The Situation:
The player in question has his party (all still level 1, with 2 hirelings) exploring the ruins above the dungeon. There's a tower in part of the wall that opens up on two different courtyards at different elevations (it's a hilltop castle ruin with a sprawling dungeon beneath it). The party was at the middle level but didn't know that.

The party thief examines the door for traps, listens and hears nothing.

The player then says that his two fighters "barge into the room" and that the NPC hireling "is on their heels." This is even though, as I said, they heard no sounds from inside and had no reason to expect a creature inside. But if there was one, I guess they were hoping to surprise it.

What was really inside was a 3' wide landing (with no railing...it's a 400 year old castle ruin!) and a 20' drop.

My Ruling: 
If this were real life, there would be a good chance that they would not be able to halt their movement and plunge over the side. But I'm usually generous about these kinds of things. The clincher was that the player said the NPC was "on their heels."

If three dudes are charging through a doorway and there's only about 1 or 2 steps they can take inside before they fall, it seems logical to me that the third guy in would crash into the first two who had just managed to stop short. So I gave them all saving throws with a +2 bonus. Seemed fair to me.

The Result:
One Fighter made his save. The other failed. The NPC hireling failed. The PC was uninjured (9hp), but when I rolled 2d6, of course I got a 9! 0 is dead in this game. The NPC had 4hp and I rolled a 6. Also dead!

The Controversy:
Now I'm OK with how I ruled this situation. It's comical and sad that the fates did this. And it's not the first time this player has lost a PC. It's the third time. But he was apparently surprised and a bit upset at how the situation had unfolded.

My Take:
But really, he could have phrased his PCs' entrance to the tower in so many different ways that wouldn't have required the PCs to make saves to avoid falling. If he'd just said "We open the door," then I would have described the landing inside. He was careless in his orders IMO. And since this is Play-by-Post gaming, he had all the time he could want to decide how to phrase his post.

He seems to feel that I was setting up a "gotcha" moment, and not treating his characters as if they had any common sense. Well, I do make a lot of assumptions for the players in this game. I assume that thieves will be checking for traps when time allows. I assume that everyone in the party is trying to be as quiet as possible unless the player says otherwise. I try to assume competence on the part of the PCs. But in this case, I think an assumption of competence doesn't come into the picture.

Or maybe it's just that I'm a "Mel Brooks" sort of DM. He called it a Three Stooges moment. Either way, it's slapstick. And I'm fine with that. I guess he isn't.

He's not too terribly upset, though. He's still in the game, and rolled up a new Dwarf Fighter to replace the Human Fighter he lost.

Crafting a RIFTS character

God help me, Alex is finally getting a chance to run the RIFTS game he's been wanting to run for a few years now.  And yes, I'm playing in it.

Yet another reason I haven't been blogging much this month!

Anyway, I had a concept I wanted to try out (a cyborg commando), but it wasn't nearly cool or overpowered enough for the game Alex wants to run.  This game will be the sort where we're taking on demi-gods and alien intelligences and demonic ancient vampires and whatnot (so I'm told).

So after looking at the sheer number of titles available for options to sift through...yes, just literally only looking at the number of  books available for RIFTS (not to mention the Palladium system as a whole, from which things can easily be ported/grafted on), I gave up in frustration.  As the meme-makers like to say, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

Well, turns out Alex actually DOES have time for that.  He's graciously stepping in and helping me.  He scoured various sourcebooks for something close to my concept, but at the power level of the game.  He gave me some options.

I sorted through the options, and I've got my character basically sorted out.

I'll play an Oni Ninja (from the Phaseworld Sourcebook) who is also a Mystic Ninja (from RIFTS Japan) to boost his psychic powers, and who practices the version of Ninjitsu found in Ninjas and Superspies.  So I'll have mega-damage martial arts along with awesome psionically powered ninja skills.

Close enough to the Solid Snake meets the $6 Million Dollar Man concept I started with, and I can play a pseudo-Japanese culture without breaking a sweat.

HOWEVER, now I've got to sort through the Oni Ninja special abilities, Mystic Ninja abilities, Ninjitsu abilities, and also decide if I want magical or technological equipment (and what, of course).

Oh, and reacquainting myself with the Palladium system, since I haven't actually played a game since I was in high school.  P.E. and P.P. and all these acronyms...  There's definitely something to be said here about system familiarity and ease of use.  Luckily, this game will be a PbP game, so I'll have plenty of time to look up rules if they become relevant.

Alright, I'm off to read through some character options before my next class.  Excelsior!

Next, please

Well, for over a year now I've been occasionally (not too persistently, but from time to time) trying to get the guys around here to try out the D&D Next playtest stuff.  Mostly because I'm curious about what they're doing with it, not so much because I think I'll buy it.  But who knows, I might...

Anyway, I finally am getting the chance.  It may be a while before I can pass judgement, though, as the game will be a play-by-post game on RPOL.net.  But it's D&D Next, the Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle module, and the DM started out with BECMI (same as me) and mostly played that back in the day, although from comments he's made he is/was big into 4E. 

So far, character creation wasn't too difficult.  Of course, I was rolling up a Fighter, so that's usually a little simpler than some other classes.  The process was fairly painless.  While every class in Next has a boat-load of special abilities that they gain as they level up, the removal of feats speeds things up quite a bit, and simplification of skills (at least in the most recent packet) into "fields of lore" also speeds things up compared to 3E/Pathfinder/4E.  Still not as simple as BX, but not too time consuming.  Even considering the time I spent debating whether to play Fighter or Rogue didn't take that long.

So, eventually, I may have something more to say about Next.  But due to the slow pace of PbP games, don't hold your breath.

What exactly does it mean to explore a character?

Once I started up a PbP 3.5 game on RPOL (is it .net or .org?  Don't remember.)  Most of the players were friends, but I left it open to others.

One guy, one of the others, wanted to play.  He was enthusiastic.  I said OK.

He wanted to play a Druid.  Fine.  We were starting at 1st level.  He came back to me with a whole huge back story. 

His PC was the son of a High Druid Priest, who was also a merchant in a caravan, and he had wandered all over the world and seen all sorts of sights in his wanderings.  Now he was coming home to take his place as a druid initiate, and loot tombs for gold, as druid initiates are wont to do.

I could see what he was doing.  It was blatant.  He didn't want to get called out if he tried to wild shape into a python, or an emu, or an unladen African swallow, or whatever.  He wanted to be able to say, "sure, I saw one when I was traveling in the caravan."  No way was I, as DM, gonna screw him over on that!  So he thought.

Then he gives me his goals for the character, vaguely disguised as his 'take' on who this guy was.  He was a natural shapeshifter, more than a spellcaster.  He was in tune with nature, and animals and stuff.  And because of this, he naturally wanted to take the 'natural spell' feat, which was one of the few I'd said at the start I didn't like and wasn't going to allow. 

For those of you not well versed in 3E, Druids don't get Wild Shape (ability to change into animal forms) until 5th level. 

And I repeat, this was a PbP game (S......L.......O......W......!), and we were starting at 1st level.

More recently, in my long prepared but short lived Maritime Campaign, Alex, at character creation, wouldn't be satisfied with the starting options I'd given him.  He wanted more.  And more, and more.  He wasn't satisfied with a +2 sword for his 5th level Fighter.  He thought it was lame.  Maybe I should have given him a max. Int, max. Ego intelligent sword with a bevy of awesome powers (detect minerals!), and just had it control his PC at the first opportunity.  But I'm not that much of a dick.  Anyway, then he wasn't satisfied with the small sailing ship they were getting for free.  He wanted a large sailing ship, or a warship, or preferably a large warship. 

Getting that sort of stuff from the beginning, I wondered, what's left to adventure for?

Now, I've had my share of characters who I came up with the concept first, rolled later.  Or even a few where I've been asked for, and provided, a few pages of back story. 

But I don't have many interesting stories about those characters.  Not the way I do about Belrain, the Chaotic Elf with a penchant for fireballs (especially from wands, or his Staff of Power), or Skarp-Hedin, the Dwarf Fighter-Thief who ended up on the wrong end of too many monster beatings but always managed to pull through.

Long story short, I find that exploring characters is more fun, and more memorable, if it happens in the game.  Doing all that work before hand, then having to hog the limelight during the game to get all that exposition across to the players?  Not so much.  Not being satisfied with the starting conditions of the game, because it doesn't match the idea I've got in my head of who I want this PC to become?  Definitely not. 

I find it similar to the way I don't enjoy 'tournament Magic: The Gathering.'  I always found the game the most fun when waiting to see what I'd pull out this round, what my opponent would do, and the randomness of it.  Having a carefully constructed precision deck where I've got a plan of how I can beat anyone in 8 turns or less?  Boring! 

I enjoy the action and response, the way my character interacts with the other players' PCs, with the DM's world, and with the results of the dice.  In other words, not knowing exactly who this character is--maybe I've got a few ideas, but nothing is certain--does it for me.  Besides, the whole point of 'character exploration' is seeing how that character will change and grow. 

If you've already 'grown' that character before play starts, what is there left to explore?

Your mileage may vary. 

Play by Post idea for a Megadungeon

I've mentioned before that I'm one of the players in the online play by post Megadungeon game being run by David of Tower of the Archmage. 

I've had plenty of experience with PbP games in the past, both as a player and as a DM.  One thing I've learned about them is that because they go slow, they tend not to last long.  Lots of people just can't hold their attention to the story that long.  So as posts slow down because everyone's waiting for that one person to post, others start to lose interest, too.

This is not a slight on David in the least.  I'm enjoying the game he's running, even if it is slow going (and Renee has apparently stopped checking the site and is instead having her husband Rick surrogate post for her).  Even though we've just barely begun to explore the place, we've already had a memorable encounter and seen enough to make us curious about the place.  I'm at least eager to keep going with it.

But the pace is slow.

I was thinking that if I ever run a PbP game again, I'd likely limit it to just myself as DM and one player.  Maybe two if I knew they would both post often.  I get the feeling that that sort of game would progress a lot faster.  And I'd have no worries about that one player actually running an entire party.  Heck, back in the old days, we often played with just two of us, one DMing (and bringing a few of his own PCs along for the ride) and the other playing several of his characters.  We had a lot of fun that way.

So no big revelations here, nothing ground-breaking.  Just me thinking out loud that if I ever start running my Megadungeon online, I'd likely just try to recruit one player to play through it.  That way, we'd never really have to wait for posts.  As soon as I post something, the player will be able to post.  And as soon as the player posts, I'd be able to post a response.  No need to wait to give everyone a shot to give some input, then waiting extra long just in case they might feel like giving some later.

I'm a PLAYER again!

David over at Tower of the Archmage has kindly started a new play-by-post game in his megadungeon.  I'm his first guinea pig, and I invited my friends from the Yamanashi Group to join us. 

My character in it is Findlug the Anchorite, a Lawful Cleric with a twisted body.  He's in the dungeons searching for a magical fountain that can cure his deformities. 

I never would have thought up a fun character like Findlug without the fun of 3d6 in order.

Str 13
Int 10
Wis 14
Dex 4
Con 7
Cha 11

That's right, folks, a Dex of 4, plus Con of 7.  So despite his great strength, this guy is slow, clumsy, and wooden, and none too healthy, either.  Kinda like Quasimodo mixed with Doc Holiday.  Except a Cleric who spent most of his life sequestered on a small subarctic ocean studying religious texts.

He's likely to die soon (with only 50 starting gold, half of which went for his holy symbol, he only has leather armor meaning he breaks even at AC 9!), but I'm hoping he doesn't.  Maybe one of these days, if he lives, he'll find that fountain that will bring him up just a bit higher in the Dex or Con...