Some Updates to an old Dungeon

The Seoul-based TTRPG in Korea group is gearing up for their Online Summer Con. The days haven't been decided yet, but it will be a weekend in August. I'm hoping it will be either the 2nd or 4th weekends, because on the 3rd I'll be up in Seoul for an academic conference and won't have a lot of time to get online and play games. 

Of course, the 2nd week is the final week of English Camp, so I can't play in any Friday games, but Saturday afternoon/evening, or Sunday will work for me. 

The 4th week is best for me. Nothing much else going on that weekend. 

Assuming I have time to run something, I've been working on updating an old one-shot adventure I made during my time in Yamanashi. I ran it for them so they could experience a mid-level game, with more powerful characters and enough magic items. They ran through the adventure, but I don't remember exactly how it turned out. I have a few notes from those sessions (I think we spent two evenings on it), but they're incomplete. 

So I'm updating it for the Summer Con. And if it goes well, I'll also probably run it for the Busan Tabletop Gaming Con (that's not the official name yet, just the one I prefer) that Justin, Scott and I are organizing. 

The adventure as I wrote it back then (20ish years ago) had too many monster encounters and not enough interesting puzzles/situations. I redrew the maps, simplifying them a little but also making them less linear at the same time. I took out or changed some monster encounters, rearranging a few things. I added more exploration/navigation/spelunking challenges. I've upped the treasure a bit, but since this is a one-shot, that's probably not so important aside from magic items. After the Cons, I'll probably format this and sell it through Hidden Treasure Books, though, so the treasure content may matter to players in the future. 

The basic premise is that there is a tower built by a wizard. A dragon destroyed the wizard long ago, and has laired in the caves beneath the tower ever since. A new wizard has shown up and taken over the tower, but stirred up the dragon. Both the wizard and dragon are problems for the local lord, so he's asking adventurers to deal with one or both problems for him. 

So players may decide just to deal with the dragon. Or just with the wizard. Or get ambitious (in a 3-4 hour time slot) and take on both. And of course I'm prepared with ideas for if they try to team up with one side to take out the other.  And the inevitable double crosses that may happen. 

I found a file with some pre-made BECMI characters that I used for another project. That means Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling are classes, so it doesn't completely follow my TS&R rules, but I'll use them anyway for simplicity. They were 1st level, so I updated them to be anywhere from 5th (the Elves) to 8th level (the Thieves). I had pre-made magic item packets from the time I ran this adventure in Yamanashi, so I added those magic items (with a few changes here and there) to the characters. And updated them with TS&R abilities (mostly for Fighter types, since I have rules for Sweep and the like). 

I need to finish up a few more encounter area descriptions (the wizard's lair). And for the Seoul Summer Con, scan the maps and prepare them for a VTT. I'm looking forward to running some old school D&D for hopefully some new blood.  

My first 40 years as a role player

Today, I turned 51 years old. And, as I've mentioned on numerous previous birthdays (and probably numerous "how did you get into gaming" posts), I got my Mentzer Basic Set for my 11th birthday. So I've been a D&D and other RPGs player for four decades now. 

For the first decade, 1984 to 1994, I both ran and played BECMI with my friends and family. We also ran a lot of Star Frontiers. We also played some AD&D of both the 1E and 2E variety, but not that much. And occasionally we'd play, or at least make characters but never get around to playing, lots of other games. Gamma World. Star Wars d6. Cyberpunk 2020. TMNT and Other Strangeness. Marvel Superheroes. I'm sure there are others we tried or at least sampled that I'm forgetting. We played a LOT of BECMI D&D though. Tales of this decade are labeled as The Old BECMI Group, obviously.

For the second decade, 1994 to 2004, after a bit of interruption in RPG play due to Magic: The Gathering and not wanting to associate with the campus Gaming Guild who embodied most of the negative gamer stereotypes that were out there at the time, I got back into gaming with a group that played a mix of 1E/2E AD&D. Then I went to Japan, and by the time I got a group to game with, 3E had just come out. So we dove into the world of the d20 system, playing 3E D&D and a bit of d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars. The final few years of this era, I had moved to a different part of Japan, and started gaming on RPOL.net since I hadn't found a group to play with there. These tales are under the Evansville Group (1E/2E), and Toyama Group (initial 3E stuff) tags.

From 2004 to 2014, I got in with a group playing in Tokyo. Again, we mostly played d20 stuff, including 3E, d20 Modern, and d20 Conan. But through this group, I also got to try a variety of Forge-style story games, and also it rekindled my love of old school D&D. I also got involved (finally) with some local gamers, and we played some Abberant (an obscure White Wolf game), 3E, and old school D&D. We also developed Presidents of the Apocalypse, which I know I've mentioned many times before, but no, it will probably never get released because it's so scattershot. In the middle of this era, I moved to Korea. For a few years, the emphasis was on board games, but eventually I got some old school D&D going, using the house rules that have by now evolved into Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins. I also got to try 4E and we sampled a few One Page and microlite RPGs, played a bit of Gamma World (the 4E D&D stuff AND classic GW), Pathfinder 1E, and a few other games here and there. I continued to game on RPOL, and also got to sample various OSR offerings through online realtime play (Google Meet, when that was a thing). I also developed, play tested, and released Flying Swordsmen. You can find these stories in the tags Ebisu and Yamanashi Gamers for the Japan era, and Busan Gamers for the Korea era.

My fourth decade, 2014 to today, coincides with the release of 5E D&D, and I've played it a fair amount. As a player, it's fun. As a DM? Not so much. So I've mostly stuck to my TS&R old school D&D rules as a DM. And I've been running my d6 Star Wars game for many years now. As a player, there have been a wealth of games and game systems, that are face to face, online realtime, and play by post. While I've mostly given up on 5E (except for a really good game on RPOL), my TS&R game and SW d6 game are both going well. I've sampled lots of OSR and micro-games, both in person and online. I've recently started both a Gamma World and Star Wars game on RPOL. And very recently, just joined a game of RECON. I developed, play tested, and released Chanbara, and have recently finished up releasing everything to make TS&R a complete game that others can play. I've been too busy to post about that. These last few years of gaming can again be found under the Busan Gamers tag, as will most games I post about going into my fifth decade of gaming. 

The first 40 years of gaming have been on the whole really good. I'm excited for the next 40 years!

Gaming as an Ex-Pat Part 2 Addendum

I originally was going to post both this and the main "part 2" post together, then decided not to. Somehow, I just saw, Blogger posted the draft backdated. So if you've already read this, apologies.

Gaming in Japan Addendum: Miniatures

I forgot to mention this part, which was one of the cool things about living in Japan. I mentioned that in my first location, there weren't a lot of places to get gaming material. In the second place I lived, Yamanashi, I was able to amass a sizeable miniature collection in interesting ways.

As I mentioned, Yellow Submarine in Tokyo had Reaper Minis, so I did buy a small number of minis there. But Japan has so many other ways to get fantasy/sci-fi minis that work for gaming.

First of all, there are random collectible miniatures that you can buy in many stores, including most convenience stores. In the years I was there, they had several series of mythological creatures, both Western and Eastern. So I have rubberized plastic minis of dragons, griffons, chimera, unicorns, pegasi, and Greek/Norse gods that work well for giants from the Western mythology series, and bakemono, tengu, oni, and so on from the Eastern series.

There are also series of figures based on games like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy and Pokemon, comics like Devilman, and things like that that I picked up over the years. You can find them here in Busan, in limited numbers, at places like Art Box.

Then, there are the cola promotion figures. Every now and then, there are promotions to sell Coke or Pepsi, where they have a randomized figure in an opaque cellophane package around the neck of 500ml bottles of soda. Back when the Star Wars prequels were coming out, I collected lots of Star Wars bottle toppers. The ones in the stores were from the Prequels, of course, but if you collected enough of the inserts and payed a small fee, you could send away for sets from the original trilogy (which I did, although I wasn't able to get all of those sets). In other years, there were Final Fantasy VII and VIII figures, Lupin the Third figures, Dragonball characters, and even Lego minifigs. I collected many.

If that weren't enough, in my town there was this resale shop. They'd buy just about anything for pennies and then sell it for dollars. Clothes, books, CDs, sports equipment, toys, games, and of course they had a section devoted to all of these sorts of little collectible minis I've been describing. I'd go there fairly often and add to my gaming collection.

I also got into HeroClix, and would buy lots when I was home on vacations, so if I ever want to run a Marvel or DC supers game, I've got the figures for it!

Oh, and one more thing! Daiso (those of you in Busan are familiar with the chain, it's from Japan) in Japan sells (or sold, at least) little green army men, and also similar sets of pirates, knights, cowboys & Indians, ninja, construction workers, police/fire/rescue figures. Have sets of all of them, as well. They work great as NPC figures.

So while I don't feel like minis are a necessity for RPGs, I do enjoy using them, and Japan was a great place for collecting a variety of minis for gaming.

Gaming as an Ex-Pat Part 2

I lived in Japan from the summer of '98 to the spring of '08. I didn't get into gaming until 3E came out, though. That's when I found some other teachers were also gamers, and we picked up the new rules and gave them a go. This was in Toyama prefecture, pretty far from the big cities (about 4 hours by train to Osaka, 5 to Tokyo). I picked up the brand spanking new 3E PHB when I was in the States over the summer, and used my 2E books until I was able to order the other core books from Amazon. There wasn't anywhere to get stuff locally, although some boutique shops sold polyhedral dice. I'd occasionally check in second-hand bookstores for Japanese RPG books, but never found any.

Oh, and there was this little bric-a-brac shop that sold airsoft equipment and collectible figures and stuff. I found a pack of vintage Grenadier "Knights of the Round Table" minis there and snatched them up. Still have them. For the most part, we were limited in what we had to game with to what we ordered from overseas or could access via the internet. One of those internet goodies was a free pdf game WotC released called Dragon Fist (fantasy martial arts RPG using the 2E rules). We played that a few times in addition to 3E.

In 2001 I moved to Yamanashi prefecture, just an hour and a half outside of Tokyo. Again, it took me a little time to get into the local gaming scene, because I wasn't sure who gamed and who didn't, and people were still kinda reluctant to bring up gaming in casual conversation. But gamed online with some of the Toyama guys about once a month. We tried d20 Modern and the d20 Star Wars rules, along with D&D 3.5.

Then, I got invited to a group playing White Wolf's Trinity around 2003 or 2004. After the Trinity game ran its course, some of the same gamers ended up playing D&D with me. We played a 3E OA game that I ran for a while.

Through the WotC message boards, I came in contact with a couple of guys in Tokyo and we formed a group. One of the Toyama guys was now living in Chiba (also near Tokyo) so we invited him, too. A few other players came and went. We'd meet once a month for marathon 6-10 hour sessions, mostly of 3.5, although I ran a successful d20 Future game set in the Aliens/Predator universe.

Gaming in Tokyo was great, because there's a chain of hobby shops called Yellow Submarine. They had minis, dice, rule books, modules, Dragon and Dungeon magazine, plus board games and other related stuff. Whenever I had time before or after the sessions, I'd usually stop by because the bus or train from Yamanashi pulled into Shinjuku station, and a Yellow Submarine was just around the corner.

One of the Tokyo guys was trying to develop his own Story Game RPG, so we play-tested many versions of it. And from the Forge message boards (once the home of story gamers online), he got interested in playing Classic D&D again, which got me interested. And so I discovered the OSR (Old School Renaissance) just as it was kicking off.

Before Steve got transferred back to the States, we played a few games of old school D&D. And I got my Yamanashi group to play it, too. And it was pretty fun. I also tried a bit of Star Frontiers with them.

Oh, and my buddy Paul and I developed our own "story game" type rules light system, Presidents of the Apocalypse. This became our "someone in the group is leaving, let's go out with a fun game" game. We're still not 100% happy with the rules, but eventually we plan to publish it in some form or other.

The OSR back then was all about making "retro clones" that were rewritten versions of the classic games, released under the d20 OGL. So OSRIC is basically AD&D 1E, Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game are Classic D&D, and Swords & Wizardry is original D&D. I remembered having fun with Dragon Fist in Toyama, and started thinking about how I might make a retro-clone of it. But then my wife got pregnant, and we decided to move to Korea to be near her family...

The Little Black Book: White Wolf Trinity

Some have leveled criticism at the OSR as being nothing but nostalgia. Many of them were 3E/Pathfinder fans. But well, what do you know, it's been so long that 3E is finally a source of nostalgia.

Over the weekend, my second boy (just shy of his second birthday) was opening the bedroom closets and various random drawers and pulling things out. These consisted of stored clothes, spare electronics cables and accessories, and some gaming stuff. I keep my board games, HeroClix, Magic: The Gathering cards, etc. in those closets. And among the various "finds" was this little black pocket notebook from my time in Japan, the years 2005-2007 to be exact:

 The notebook contained, among other mundane things such as notes on sister-city activities and planning things to do with my wife-to-be, lots of gaming notes. In fact, the first three pages are notes I took playing a game of Trinity (White Wolf's weird mutant street-level supers versus Lovecraftian freaks sci-fi game) with the Yamanashi Gamers.

I know that the notebook dates to 2005 because I joined this game the day after watching the movie Sin City in the theater. And my PC was heavily influenced by the film. Harlan was a big, tough, not necessarily so smart but clever private eye with extra-sensory perception (meaning he could project all five of his senses to distant locations - and yes, he spent time tasting many things he probably shouldn't have this way...).

There are three pages of notes from the sessions, and reading these does take me back!

The game was one of suspense, mystery and shifting alliances. Very noir. My PC fit right in. If I remember right, the final big battle against the abomination that was sucking psions' minds dry was pretty hectic but Harlan survived it, thanks to a rail gun and just being tough as nails.

Anyway, there are more notes, plans, and characters in this notebook, most from d20 system games with the Yamanashi and Ebisu gaming groups. I'll be sharing more over the next few weeks just to fuel that gaming nostalgia for the mid-oughts!

TSR's OA Adventure Modules

My Chanbara rules are in a playable form.  Not polished, far from being released (and I still need to finish the setting chapter).  But the rules are down.  I've got all of my work for grad school done for the semester.  Time to round up some players for a play test or five.

I'm looking at the old Oriental Adventures modules by TSR.  Most of them have a primarily Japanese theme.  I could just switch the setting to The Jade Islands (Yu Archipelago to the NE of Zhongyang Dalu), or even use Kara-Tur as the setting and just update mechanics when necessary.  It would save me considerable time and effort.

But are they worth playing?  Anyone out there have any experience with them as either a DM or a player?  A brief look through them shows they're almost all for the AD&D sweet spot of levels 5-8, if they even bother to give a level range.  Not the best for a play test, as I'd want to try out all levels of play in a short time if I can.  But if I can modify for setting and new mechanics, I'm sure I can manage to up or down the challenge level as well.  Plus, I've got a few old OA adventures from my Evansville Group days and my Yamanashi Group days that I also could use.

Finally, anyone interested in playing over G+ Hangouts?  The time would be Saturdays 9pm Korea/Japan time, 12 noon GMT, early early morning US/Canada times.

Presidents Arise! (700th post!)

In between preparing two presentations for my grad school classes for this week (one down this evening, the next tomorrow evening), what else did my brain turn to?  It brushed off the mothballs and began reworking my and Paul's super-simple, super-silly Presidents of the Apocalypse RPG.

Anyone out there remember me talking about this before?  The premise is that players run super-powered versions of Founding Fathers or other personages of (U.S.) historical significance battling a mish-mash of typical postapoc baddies (Mad Max biker punk types, mutant scum, killer robots), plus the dregs of both history and modern pop culture, all with a very silly sci-fi twist.

When I was in Japan, it was our typical "going away" game when someone left the group, and Paul and I are always tinkering with the rules, trying to get it right.  We've got the flavor in spades, we just need a rule set that supports it better.

Anyway, I've got a few ideas that just might make it work.  When I get them ironed out, I'll try to get my G+ Vaults of Ur crew to try them out.

The primary inspiration for the game were Brad Neely's George Washington and History Lesson No. 1 (JFK).  Look em up on YouTube if you don't know them.  Pretty funny stuff.  Here are some pictures that also show what the game is all about:

This one pic encapsulates it all perfectly.

A typical villain

Neely's JFK, Hyper-charismatic telepathical knight

He's coming, he's coming, he's coming.

Another villain

A PotA Mastermind level Villain

Gamer Rock

Paul and J.D. of the Yamanashi Group have a new garage band with a suitable gamer name, Critical Hit.  Here's a video from their performance last Saturday.  The audio's not so good, but oh well.







Paul, if you're reading this, tell J.D. the band needs... more cowbell!

Changes of Plan

I didn't get to go see Captain America tonight.  I wanted to.  It opened yesterday in Korea.  I had private lessons last night after work, so that wasn't an option.  Tonight, no privates.  I said to my wife, "Let's go!"

She told me we couldn't.  Her in-laws were making samgyetang, a rice and chicken stew.  There are certain times during the summer when Koreans are supposed to eat it "for health."  So we went, and ate.  It was good.  I'd still rather have gone to see the movie, though.

Anyway, my week of summer vacation from the kindergarten starts this evening.  We've got plenty of time to go see Cap.  Also, my father-in-law wants to go hiking and eat boshintang.  I'm not sure I want to.  I had boshintang once before, the day before my wedding.  My buddy Atley came to Korea with us for the wedding (we all lived in Japan at the time, he was a member of the Yamanashi group) and wanted to try it.  I thought, hey, it's an experience.  So we went.  We ate.  It wasn't bad tasting.  But it's not something I ever felt like eating again.

Boshintang is dog meat stew.  And supposedly it's a magical curative for "men's health."  My in-laws are hoping for another grandchild and they think if I eat it I'll be firing magic bullets of love and paternity.  Or something like that. 

Anyway, Korea's got plenty of food superstitions or general strange beliefs that could be mined for interesting details to use in an RPG or fantasy novel.  A lot of them are simple sympathetic magic.  Like eating eel is good for "men's health" because, you know, eels are long and tubular and so are men's...  Well, you know.

Others, though, are a bit less easy to figure out.  Like tonight's samgyetang.  You're supposed to eat it piping hot on the 'hottest days' (set by some almanac or geomancy or something, it wasn't that hot today or the day we ate it last week either).  Fighting fire with fire is more or less the logic behind this one.  Make yourself hot on the hot day and you'll be fine the rest of the summer.

Anyway, I ought to ply my wife for more of these Korean eating superstitions.  I'm sure I don't know the half of them.  But here's a cool one, especially for anyone using Vampires heavily in their games:

If Korean men can catch a deer alive (as my friend Ahna's uncle did in his company's factory building one day), the men subdue the animal, cut a small incision in the upper neck, and drink the deer's blood.  Again, it's supposed to impart vitality and good health.  And again, not something I think I'd want to try myself.

Bring out your dead!

OK, no dead to bring out, but this is the sort of post that's guaranteed to bring out the trolls.  It's funny, but there are so many people on the internet apparently just waiting for someone to make a negative comment about 4th Ed. D&D so they can sweep in on their pretend moral high horse and castigate someone for having a different opinion and expressing it.  I don't go to 4E players' blogs and complain if they post something negative about Old School games...just don't see the point.  But oh well, bring it on.  I'm gonna get negative again, although there will be some positive as well.

So as I mentioned, there's a guy here in Busan who is putting together a 4E group.  Josh's Gamma World game will be finishing soon one way or the other (only another month before he leaves, and if we don't finish it next month we're never gonna...).  As I mentioned in my comments in my last post, I'm also curious about how the game plays over a longer period than what we, the Board Game Group, tried before.  My old Yamanashi Group got a good long campaign out of it, and had a lot of fun. 

So is it just the fact that a good group of people can have a good time regardless of the rule set used?  Or are my first impressions of 4E somehow skewed?  It's possible that it's the latter.  Pat had us do a few playtest encounters, then ran us through part of Keep on the Shadowfell, a module that has gotten nothing but bad press from what I've read. 

I'm gonna give it another try.  I'm creating a Half-Elf Wizard, specializing in illusions and ice magic (having read the entire Lankhmar series recently, that may be the unconscious inspiration for my guy.  No, he won't be like Khakht (or however it was spelled), but illusions and ice are his theme.

I use the word 'create' above, and bolded it, because I can't say I rolled up a character.  No dice were involved in the creation of the character.  Point buy ability scores, set hit points, pick and choose your class, race and powers.  Not even a roll for starting gold.  Everyone gets 100gp to spend.  Now, I can deal with this, but it's definitely a lot less fun than throwing in some rolls and seeing what you get (and having to work with the consequences, both good and bad).

The next stumbling block for me with character creation is one of tone.  I just can't help but laugh when the rule books give some predetermined arrays of scores that you could create with point buy, and one of the arrays leaves that low 8 as an 8.  Then it says something like, "This character is good in a few areas, but still has a significant weakness in one area."  A -1 to a few checks you likely won't use ever anyway is a  significant weakness? 

Seriously, they've done just about everything they can in this rule-set to ensure that your character really only needs three good ability scores and the rest are dump stats.  All the defenses: AC, Fortitude, Reflex and Will, are governed by two stats, take your pick of the better one.  Most of the attack powers likewise give you a choice of two or three abilities to use for hit/damage modifiers.  And if you've got a crap stat in that ability, you can pick a different power anyway.  So, as I've done, I've dropped that 8 in Strength.  I doubt I'll be doing much melee as a Wizard, and if I have to take a -1 penalty to any Athletics skill checks, so be it.  It's not crippling my character in the least.  It's a minor nuisance at best to have a slight penalty in an ability score I don't need to use.

Finally, there's the choice overload.  I'm playing a Wizard.  I still haven't looked over enough of the other classes to know if there's something I'd rather be playing.  Seriously, there's a lot of reading to be done there to make an informed decision.  Now, if I were a high school kid out on summer vacation, with plenty of time to dive into the books, sure, no problem.  As a working adult, with a wife and kid, side writing projects of my own, and just general other stuff to do, I don't have time to read through the literally hundreds of pages worth of information on all the various character classes.

Now, the good side.  I downloaded the two Essentials character books, Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Forgotten Kingdoms, and used them to build my character.  From what I did see, especially with regards to the Fighter class, Essentials cleared up some of the suck from the original set of rules.  The Fighter looks much more playable, especially since they're not trying to make it work exactly as the Wizard or Cleric (never looked at the Rogue or the other classes enough to really judge).  No Daily powers, and several general purpose At Will Utility powers at first level so the Fighter can enter each fight with some tactical options besides when to use the Encounter Powers (and hope they hit).

That leads me to the final problem I'm having.  There are tons of errata out there, and I'm not reading any of it (don't really care), but it seems like the DM might.  He's asked me several times now to subscribe to D&D Insider so I can get whatever updates and the character builder program and what not.  Sorry, Enzo, not gonna happen.  I've got better ways to spend my money, and I'm fairly happy with the character I created who mixes IMO the best stuff I could find from the two Essentials character books and the PHB1.  There may be stuff I'd enjoy using from PHB2 and 3...there is a 3, right?...but again I just don't have the time or motivation to scour through another 50 or so pages of Wizard powers just because there might be one power that is slightly more advantageous than one of the ones I already picked (and seriously, there's often not much difference between two powers of the same level, other than what minor secondary effect it might have, or energy type).

So, 4E has not won me over from its character creation stage.  Maybe playing it will grow on me.  If it doesn't, I may be out of gaming for a while.

Project Updates

I had a bit of a breakthrough with the edits I need to make to the GM guide section of Flying Swordsmen.  I can cut a lot more of the D&D-isms that don't need to be in the game (it's the D&D chassis, but should play fairly differently than your typical dungeon crawl or wilderness exploration sandbox game).  I'm going to focus on building conflict and tropes of Wuxia movies and how to exploit them in game (hopefully without railroading players into a set plot).

In other news, Michelle is leaving Japan to join Jacob in California, so Paul made some more edits to Presidents of the Apocalypse and ran another game with some really trimmed down rules.  He said they worked really well.  I'm waiting now for an actual game report, and to take a look at what he's done.  I've been ankle deep in Flying Swordsmen so I haven't bothered to look at PotA for quite a while.  But if these edits by Paul are working well, we may be close to a distributable form of the game.

Cartography

I spent about 10 minutes yesterday afternoon doing a rough sketch of a map for Flying Swordsmen RPG's campaign world.  I spent some time this morning before my son woke up detailing coastlines, then sketching in mountains and rivers.  This evening, I detailed the mountains and rivers. 

Now I've scanned it just to put it up here and show off where I am so far.  My sketch pad is too big for my scanner, so I had to do it in two parts and edited them together roughly.  The seam is obvious, but this is just for posterity.  I'll be adding in forests and deserts next, then finally cities, roads, and provincial borders and labels over the next few days.

I only got two of my sample characters rolled up so far, but I've been having fun with the map.

Also, I've got another artist lined up to help, Jacob from the Yamanashi Group.  Things are coming along with this little project of mine.

Raw Playtest Data

Paul and the Yamanashi Crew playtested my latest revision of the Presidents of the Apocalypse.  It looks like the system may be serviceable but the presentation needs to be cleaned up.  I'm not so surprised by that, because I've been chipping away at writing/re-writing/editing it piecemeal.  Even though it's only a 16 page document, if I don't work on it for a few weeks then go back to it, it's easy to lose track of things.

Giving myself a hard deadline to get it into shape might help with that, but then this is just something I'm doing for fun.  I've got enough stress in my life without giving myself more.

Anyway, here's the email Paul sent after the game, and then follow up are some comments from players on a teacher's message board we use.

Paul wrote:

OK, we test-played PotA last night.  I will encourage folks to post any feedback they may have on the forum so you can see it as well, but the overall consensus was that it was more structured ---JD was also pleased compared to his initial foray with his 2-headed Clinton.  Of course there are still a few bugs that need sorting out.

More-or-less, I used the module I sent you, only changing up a few of the characters and tweaking a few stats.  We got started rolling up characters a bit late (7pm) so I kinda rushed through the adventure in places.  We managed to finish it at around 10pm ---so, after character creation, that left us just about 2 hours of actual play time I would guess. 

Here are some observations:

1---The big one being how to deal with combat ---what can defend against what. 

For example, if Obama's only defense is a Mind Field (Mental), can he even defend against an Eisenhowitzer (Tech)?  The answer was a little hazy, but I remember you mentioning something about defending at a level lower if the type doesn't match.  Anyhow, I basically assigned each Defense a power level for each of the 3 types in a notation similar to your Sample Opponents (I mentioned something about doing this in an earlier email).  It worked for the most part, but it made having multiple defenses a little less important ---so I've now gone and altered the numbers to more extreme levels so that one item might have a good defense in one area and a rather lousy one in another.  Of course players with more than one can switch out defenses on their turns once they realize one is offering less protection vs. a certain type of attack.

2---Next is the Offensive powers: Each President got at least one, and some two, depending on the type of character they made.  But generally, they ended up using and re-using the same power again and again.  Maybe we need to grant more variety in the initial powers and lessen the points to power things up (EP) at character creation.  Hopefully this will give more options and encourage more diverse play.

3---The election.  I was worried that it might bring things to a grinding halt, but it didn't.  Players were actually thinking about who to vote for, and they did it quickly enough.  Next time I might try to get them to do a little campaigning ---have each player briefly state why they believe they deserve to be voted for (reminiscent of White Wolf, remember?).  If the speeches were delivered in order of descending EP or something, then everyone would know where each player stood in potential votes, if that's a good thing…  

4---Anyhow, the players liked the voting thing, and I let them spend any gained points during this election time to kind of level up.  Most only tried to enhance the power(s) they already had though rather than gain new ones.

Only at the end did they realize that it's not always advantageous to vote for the best candidate as you'd be making it harder for yourself to win.  We ended with a tie between Clinton (Jacob) and Teddy Rosevelt (Ryan), but Ryan had more overall EP, and thus was elected Pres. because of the bonus 2 votes granted.  I assume Clinton then became the Vice-Pres of the Apocalypse…?

Unfortunately, we can't force people to spend their EP on new powers in order to help them diversify, so I propose that we either eliminate the EP buying thing and think of a new system, or we reduce the number of EP PC's start with and give them a free roll on any chart during an election period.

Spending EP can be a double-edged sword.

5---It could have been just the type of game I ran, but I noticed that some Utility tasks were trumped by Offense tasks. Ex: Hoover (Michelle) was faced with either trying to hack the computer or simply tack her Chainsaw to it… she opted for the latter as she had no real computer skills.  Fair enough, I found that in many situations the PC's were tempted to blast stuff, but in the spirit of the game they tried to do other stuff when possible ---Michelle talked down a rabid Barney and scared him off, for example.

Overall it was rather well balanced, though I did tweak a few things beforehand out of fear the Presidents would become too powerful---starting EP=20; cost to improve star levels also increased: 1, 3, 6, 12, 25.  This balance prevented anyone from starting with a 4-star Power.

During the adventure I "killed" various presidents about 4 times, but it was cool that they could auto-rez following each encounter.

6---Another more specific point is in the rule about character generation that says to roll once more for your Role, but not for your Class.  Following, there is an example that shows two new Powers being chosen.  Which is it?

I personally think the more powers, the better ---to diversify a character.  Also I'm a fan of the random roll over the choosing of a specific thing.

I still think we should assign a bonus of some sort to a president using a power that bears his name ---maybe an automatic star level.  Of course this can only be done if powers aren't chosen.

7---For Initiative we used a simple system: the person to the immediate left of the GM went first during the first encounter.  The next encounter we started with the person to his left, and so on...  Like how the button (dealer) moves around the table in Texas Hold'em.  It worked rather well, and kept things flowing quite nicely.  Of course the GM also eventually gets a turn to go first.

8---Some of the powers that people ended up with seemed a little broken, but since they mostly just had the one Offense Power, limitations on use were not really enforced.  Ex: Clinton had the Eisenhowitzer (which Jacob played as unzipping his pants to bring it into play).  Anyhow, it can only be used in a Medium range or further situation, so all he had to say was, everybody step back before he "fired."  And Ryan had the Fillibuster of Doom which has AOE as well as the ability to stun for d☆ turns (he had ☆☆☆=d8) ---which means it could stun up to 4 opponents for 1d8 turns each ---too powerful if it hits, especially since there are usually only a few opponents to begin with.

I know these are small details that test playing will bring out, but just thought I'd mention them.

9---AOE worked well enough though we wondered if the attacker should roll to hit each opponent as well as roll for each damage (I recommend using the D&D system: roll to hit each individually, but damage is rolled once, makes sense for AOE where it is essentially one attack).  The only change I'd make to simplify it would be to limit it to 1 plus the star level, and not allow it to target any more beyond that.

Stun and Weaken also worked out fairly well and were easy enough to follow---one of the problems with 4E is that there can be so many effects in play that it is such a pain to keep track of.  Often when a character was stunned in this game, I just said you miss your turn, and if I forgot they reminded me.

Healing on the sliding scale was pretty cool too (again, Clinton unzipped his pants in order to bring forth his healing wand and touch the afflicted).  But a few other special abilities that some of the powers have might need further explanation.  We had to look a few things up and were curious about others like how Frighten works for Ulysses Undeath when it is a Defense power… 

10---What makes up a round.  This wasn't as much of a problem as I thought it might be (even for the power gamer).  Basically, a PC could move and do an action, be it an attack or a utility action like heal or a whatever.  It was simple and easy.  Nobody questioned it.

11---I assigned EP for doing all sorts of things, but particularly for killing bad guys.  One potential problem is that if someone is using an AOE attack, he's going to end up killing more enemies and thus earning more EP than the rest.  What can we do about this?  I guess, not assign EP per enemy killed as it should be a group effort.  I put some stipulations on how much EP an encounter would grant each PC depending on whether they "died" or not, but beyond that EP wouldn't matter in the election if it was shared equally.  Hmm, something to think about…

12---I'm not sure about Amendments to Constitution because they never came into play at all during our game.  I kind of think they are redundant.  I understand that they are meant to serve a few purposes, but we should just cut them and eliminate a system that the EP could easily handle.  I mean, you can spend EP to buy AC's, right?  And at the end of the game AC's count for votes (well points, but it's the same thing).  Why not just have EP handle all this? 

At the end of our game some people had as many as 30EP left---meaning, under this new idea, they could have spent EP to re-roll up to 30 times.  That seems a lot if we think Action Points, but we could set some limit (like once a turn), or make it cost 2EP per re-roll, or make a player pay a cumulative double EP for each roll throughout the adventure.

In the end, the EP spent hurt the players chance of being elected.

The Max Double rule could just be for growth then.

Anyhow, sorry, I know that's a lot to digest ---I wanted to get it all down before I forgot.  Hopefully you can understand where I'm coming from with these points.

One player suggested that it would be fun to have the presidents battle it out in the end to decide who the real President of the Apocalypse was.

On the message board, JD wrote:

Good things include originality of abilities and enemies, a very large comedy aspect and ease of play.  Taking movement out of the equasion saves a lot of time.  The instructions need to be rewritten though, as there are several parts that are really vague and other parts that just don't add up, for example you're supposed to have 4 abilities at the start, not 5 right?  I'm also not 100% clear on the body/mind/tech attack system.  According to how we were playing, A body attack can only be blocked by a body defense, right?  But if that is the case, why is there that 0/+2/-2 section?  That makes it seem like you can block any of the three attack types with any defense.  I'm not sure.... anyway that really needs to be clarified. 

And Michelle wrote:

The same thing as JD, I wasn't sure how defense worked. Can tech only block tech? Can tech block mind and body but at a penalty? Then why do some defense powers have B/M/T modifiers? My defense power was tech, but had a +2/0/+2 modifier, making me think I could use it against all attacks. The easiest way to fix this, is to give all defense powers a B/M/T modifier.

Here's my suggestion for a normal defense-power modifier. It's like rock, paper, scissors. Body attacks are strong against Tech defense, but Body defense is weak against Mind attacks, etc.

Defense Type       Vs.          Body / Mind / Tech Attack
Body                                   0   /  -2   /  -1
Mind                                   -1   /   0   /  -2
Tech                                  -2   /  -1   /   0

Some defense powers could be stronger or weaker, like -3/0/+4 or -1/+1/0.

Also, some of the attack powers were labeled Weak or Strong vs. X. I wasn't sure how that affects rolls or damage. Adding a B/M/T modifier would help.

This may not make a lot of sense to anyone who has never read the game, but I thought putting it all here would make it easier for me to find it later.

Paul's off to India for a week, but when he gets back I'll try to get him to write up a session report.  I saw the adventure he was going to run them through, but I'm curious about what sorts of characters everyone made, and how they handled the various challenges in a bit more detail than Paul sent me in that email.

 

Presidents of the Apocalypse is coming!!

I got a fair amount of revision done on my latest version of Presidents of the Apocalypse.

For those who missed it, this is a silly little game that my Yamanashi crew put together.  The premise is that after the Apocalypse, various Founding Fathers or other famous folks rise from the ashes to battle evil.  Our original version was a modified version of the PDQ system (which I'd seen in a game called Questers of the Middle Realm).  Instead of the normal PDQ system of players deciding on their 'descriptive qualities' we made three random d100 charts: Mutations, Mental Powers, and Technology.  Players got to roll a bunch of times on the charts they wanted, then battle robots, mutants, and redcoats in the blasted wastelands.

It didn't work out quite how we expected.  Character creation was a ton of fun.  Game play was really incoherent.  We've revised it a time or two, and play tested.  Still haven't gotten it right.

Well, I'm giving it another shot.  Hopefully, this time I've got a system that is more intuitive for players to figure out what they're supposed to do.  It's still got lots of crazy random powers, but players get a bit more choice about how they create their characters and more of an idea of what sort of roles they're supposed to play in the game.

Anyway, here are some scans of the original play test.  This was Mark's last night gaming with us.  I only have 4 of the character sheets, but this will give all of you an idea what you can expect from the final product.

Andy Jackson, played by Jacob Paul

Lady Bird Johnson, played by Atley

Thomas Jefferson, played by Mark

William Henry Harrison, played by Josh

Edit: Paul just informed me that cybernetic ass Andy Jackson was his character. There's no player name on the sheet, and I thought the art work looked like Jacob's.

Presidents of the Apocalypse and other fun stuff

I've been piecing together some ideas I've had for the silly Presidents of the Apocalypse RPG Paul and I put together back when I was still in Japan.

I sent him the first bit of it, and he sent me some major revisions he'd done last year but never sent me.  I think it'll be a lot of work to fit them together, but we'll see.  Mine's a bit more 'loose' than Paul's version.

Got lots of great ideas for the video game bad guy book.  Some suggestions were things I was thinking of anyway, but some others were games I've never played, or had forgotten about.  This will definitely be worth doing.

That means Flying Swordsmen RPG will get pushed off the back-burner even.  Oh well.

I've started re-reading "Return to Brookmere" but I'm not sure if I'll get a review of it up tomorrow morning.  Might have to wait until Saturday, as I'll be playing board games tomorrow night.

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...

Game Snobs

Raggi's talking about how plenty of gamers can and do sit down and enjoy many types of games.  There's nothing inherent in 4E D&D or Exalted or Sorcerer that prevents you from also enjoying OD&D or Pendragon or Traveller (and vice versa, of course).  Just like people can enjoy both chess and checkers.  Or bridge and five card stud.  Or Twilight Imperium and Candyland.  (OK, that last one might be a stretch...)

HOWEVER

I know a few, and I know of many gamers who are game snobs.  One guy here in my Board Game Group refuses to play RPGs, and hates any sort of board game like Risk, where almost everything hinges on the luck of the dice.  A friend in Japan couldn't stand older D&D, but loved 3E and 4E (and is into tournament Magic: The Gathering, something I can't stand, although a casual game now and then is fine).

I agree with Raggi that we shouldn't cater to players of other games/editions when we're introducing our favorite games/editions to them.  You wouldn't try to come up with some house rules for Clue to make it more like Settlers of Catan just because one person really likes Settlers and has never tried Clue.  The same should hold true for RPGs.

We just need to accept, though, that some people -- for whatever reasons -- will just flat out refuse to try certain games (or refuse to like them if they do grudgingly try them).  Accept it, find someone else to play with, and move on.

How I've been using and misusing rumors

For the original megadungeon that I started and gave a few test runs with the Yamanashi Group 2.5 years ago, I actually started with a list of rumors and built from there.

It was an interesting experience, because I was just bored at work one day, and started jotting down interesting sounding tidbits on a bit of scrap paper. I added to it over a couple of days, and had some ideas about some that I wanted to be true, a few I knew I wanted to be false. Most were left up in the air.

Then I drew maps, and started stocking.

When we played a few marathon sessions with the dungeon, I worked out rumors this way:

All the rumors were printed out, cut into individual strips, folded, and put in a box.
Every PC starts the game with 3+Cha bonus rumors, drawn randomly from the box.
Just going back to town allows PCs to make a Charisma check to get 1 rumor (more if they have a Cha bonus).
Any time the group goes specifically trolling for rumors, they get 1-3 from the box, depending on how they play it.
Interaction with non-hostile NPCs in the dungeon may net more rumors.

It worked fairly well. Some players shared their rumors quickly, others hoarded their knowledge. After a few PC deaths, they started sharing more openly. And they were using that information to inform their play in the setting.

With my Silverwood mini-dungeon sandbox at the Board Game Group, I tried the same thing. I think it didn't work for a couple of reasons. One, I never varied the rumors. Certain rumors kept coming up, and I should have taken those out between sessions. But I usually forgot to do so.
Secondly, I think too many of the rumors were warnings about powerful creatures, and not enough were about the locations of fabulous treasures or powerful magic items. Warning people that they shouldn't go to dangerous places is a good thing, but then where do they go? They needed more rumors that would actually lead them to adventure, not away from it.
Finally, I pretty much already knew which were true and which were false. So I didn't get forced into improvising interesting things on the fly in those games.

So what have I learned? If I ever get this new megadungeon off the block and take it for a spin, I'll need plenty of rumors (and decide later if they're true or not), I'll need to rotate new rumors in and old ones out every now and then (although I do like the idea of getting the same rumor more than once--it seems realistic for everyone to be talking about subject X, and makes the players pay a bit more attention to it), and I'll need to make sure that most rumors lead to proactive play, rather than hindering action.

Megadungeon That Was, Level 1

A couple years back, inspired by Dragonsfoot and the OD&D Discussion Forum, I started working on my own megadungeon. At the time, I think I had too many ideas preconceived about what the place should be like. In the end, I ended up not too happy with several of the level maps.

I realize now, looking at them, what mistakes (at least from my own perspective) I made. I wanted themed zone areas, but basically gave them all choke point entrances. The first level is sort of the epitome of it. I created an entrance room with a corridor going in each of the 4 cardinal directions, but those corridors each led to a discrete segment of the first level. Yes, there were multiple access points to the second or lower levels from there, but having the first level be so confined really cramped the style.

It also wasn't really big enough. This is also a problem with many of the lower levels, if you assume you should adventure on a level multiple times until you've gone up one level, then venture deeper, and you still shouldn't have completed everything on the upper level.

My old Yamanashi group did, in a couple of marathon sessions, explore quite a bit of that first level, and a fraction of the second. We had a lot of fun, but I wasn't satisfied with the layout from a DM perspective. I don't think the players really had enough time to get a feel for it, but my not being happy with it was enough. I did retroactively add a few connections between the segments (on the scan above), but it was too little, too late.

So I redrew the first level. I still haven't stocked it yet. For one thing, my current group isn't big on the megadungeon idea. For another, I plan to lift quite a few of the encounters from the original, but it seems like a bit of a pain to figure out where they should go without a group actively exploring it. I figure I'll get around to it some day. Maybe in a couple years, when my son is old enough to play. Here's hoping!

Motivation Emerging from and through Play

I had some good, thought provoking comments to my Klondike Bar post the other day.

When I said that I think for D&D a character only needs a desire to explore the world and get rich through looting tombs/battling monsters, I do only mean that as a part of character creation.

Once the dice hit the table, characters should begin to be fleshed out by actions that happen to them within the game, choices the players make for them, and goals the players set for the characters themselves.

A few examples from past experiences I've had, both good and bad.

1. My first D&D character to make it to 2nd level, Gwydion (hence my internet alias), about the time he hit 5th level or so, decided his goal was to purchase a longship and crew so he could return to the Isle of Dread any time he felt like it. The first time we played the module, we didn't have any ships among our characters, so we used one of the provided hooks of a loaned ship. I wanted more IoD fun for my character, so my short term goal became to save enough for that.

2. My brother Tim's main character was a Dwarf named Larry, and when one day he rolled up another Dwarf as a replacement character for one that died, he named him Gary and said the two were brothers. Because of the TV show Cheers, where the rival bar was Gary's Olde Towne Tavern, Tim decided that the Dwarven brothers were going to open their own inn rather than build traditional strongholds when they hit name level. If one other character hadn't died, we might never have seen that brother appear, and this all never would have happened.

3. In a mixed 1E/2E game with the Evansville group, I was running a Dwarven Fighter/Thief. Due to very poor rolls by me in combat, compared to very good rolls by certain monsters, my guy was always getting knocked around in combat to comic effect. I ended up changing the way I roleplayed him because of that--originally he was a gruff but honorable trapspringer. He ended up being more of a willey, dastardly anti-hero just because he'd learned that fighting fair didn't work for him.

4. In one of the many short-lived 3E games with the Ebisu Group, we had one game where we started at 10th level with 2 characters each. I'd written up linked backstories for my two characters, a Half-Orc Rogue and a Human Ranger, who were half brothers, sons of a famous human Bard and members of the same Thieves' Guild. The first encounter with giants and a Pit Fiend sees my Ranger biting the dust to some uber save-or-die spell, and there went all that hard work within 30 minutes of starting the game.

5. In Paul's BECM game with the Yamanashi group, I rolled up a Magic-User who had all scores average or lower, except an Int of 13. I took Charm Person as my first spell, and lots of various equipment for dungeoneering. Using those scores, I made him an offensive braggart (low Cha) named Valentio the Pungent who lorded it over all the other characters how much smarter he was than any of them (because a slightly above Int was all he had to work with!). I never would have come up with a character like that if a) we'd been playing with a high rolling method like 4d6-L, or point buy, or whatever, and b) the way things went in the first adventure, when I was using some smarts and gear cleverly in ways most of the other players, who hadn't been playing as long as me, never thought of.