Firearms in the Maritime Campaign

I'm allowing personal black powder weapons in this game. It just wouldn't be a pirate game without guns. Cannon, however, are getting left out. I didn't find any cannon rules (let alone ones I liked) aside from rules for field artillery for mass land combat. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I've got no problem allowing pistols and blunderbusses (blunderbi?) while not allowing the big guns.

I have stats for pistols, dragons (pistol blunderbi), muskets, blunderbi (okay, I'll stop now), hand held bombs and large placed bombs. Gamma World 4 and d20 Past were my primary sources of information/inspiration for this.

Pistol -- damage 2d4 -- rate 1/3 -- range 20/40/60 -- price 100gp -- enc. 40cn
Dragon -- damage 3d4 -- rate 1/3 -- range 10/20/30 -- price 150gp -- enc. 60cn
Musket -- damage 2d8 -- rate 1/3 -- range 40/80/120 -- price 300gp -- enc. 100cn
Blunderbuss -- damage 3d6 -- rate 1/3 -- range 30/60/90 -- price 400gp -- enc. 140cn
Hand Bomb -- damage 3d6 (10' radius) -- rate 1/2 -- range 10/20/30 -- price 50gp -- enc. 50cn
Large Bomb -- damage 5d6 (20' radius) -- placed only -- price 250gp -- enc. 250cn
Powder and Shot (10 rounds), any type -- price 25gp -- enc. 25cn

These weapons misfire on a natural 1 on the hit roll, resulting in a) an automatic miss, b) necessity to clean the weapon (1 turn) before use, and c) Save vs. Wands or take 1 die of damage of the weapon's die type.

Any of the four gun types can be used as a club (1d4 damage) and the musket only can have a bayonet for 1d6 damage.

The dragons are here!

I posted a while back that I had ordered some of the Safari dragons.

They arrived the other day, and I had a chance to take a few pictures of them with an adventuring party from my minis collection. First we have a group shot with all of my dragons at this scale (3 Papo dragons, 1 Japanese dragon from a set of Buddhist icons at a Toys 'R Us in Japan, and my 3 new Safari dragons)



Here's the adventurers vs one of the Papo dragons.



Vs. the Japanese dragon



Vs. one of the Safari green dragons



And two shots vs. the big Safari mountain dragon

Hoist the sails!

On Saturday night, we met up at Josh's house and rolled up characters and fitted out ships for the Maritime Campaign.

Lucy came, which was a surprise to me. Dave couldn't come. We've still got a bit of work to do on Lucy's characters. She has one complete and ready to go, but still needs to decide on equipment (I'll likely work on that for her) and her specials. I'll also try to get Dave to roll up his guys before the next game as well (we've got two weeks).

Alex was pretty unhappy at first because he started gaming in the late 2E era, and mainly played Palladium games where there's more selection and min-maxing. He wasn't happy with rolling down the line 3d6 for stats, but I relented on the by the book 'only change your highest roll into your PR' stance I had hoped for and let him make one switch of rolled numbers. That way, he was able to have a Half-Orc captain, something he had wanted to do. It wasn't that big a deal for me, and it was better than a full on 'place your numbers where they'll do you the most good' option that Alex wanted.

Anyway, by the time he got to the 'select a special' and select some potions and scrolls section, he was happier. He did complain that his Fighter's magic weapon was only a +2 bastard sword (they're starting at 10,000 xp, so that's a 4th level Fighter). But when I allowed him to upgrade the party's small sailing ship to a small war ship instead of taking another boat for his captain option, he was happy. Another character took a special mount, and he spent most of the rest of the evening doing comparison shopping on the best monster to take (ended up with a hippogriff). He was min-maxing, but he was doing it with an eye toward strategies that would keep them safe in combat or allow them overwhelming odds, which I applaud.

Alex sometimes has trouble thinking outside the mechanics of the game, but at least he does well using the mechanics in creative ways.

Josh, on the other hand, was done relatively quickly with his characters. He also chose one captain, with a longship, and spent all of his characters' gold on kitting it out. Another took a special mount as well, and decided on a giant squid. Alex had taken 'aristocrat' as his final special, so he had extra gold to spend, and still has some, but his ship is full of reserve provisions and water, and a small complement of marines.

Lucy's Elf is the only one so far with a special decided, and she took a Wand of Petrification.

So far, Alex has a Fighter, Half-Orc, Illusionist and Cavalier. Josh has a Thief, Illusionist, Barbarian and Bard. Lucy has an Elf, Thief, and two Fighters. No idea what Dave will come up with.

The highlight of the evening for me was probably Alex considering taking a Living Rock Statue as his Cavalier's mount, but instead of riding it afixing it as the figurehead of the ship, so it could attack other ships with liquid hot magma.

I can see this turning into a really fun campaign. Everyone's pumped for it, and it will take minimal prep from me from the sounds of what they want to do--mostly freebooting and some trading, with only the occasional quest or search for fabulous treasure.

Have you seen these monsters?

I picked up this set of 54mm monsters with ring-hands and detachable weapons and shields back around 1984 at a supermarket. They were in a plastic bag and sold for a dollar or two.

There are 5-6 each of the lizard men, skeleton guys and furry guys with laser guns. The other three were singles (I call them, left to right in the top picture, the Beast, the Demon and the Phantom)

Around the same time, my best friend Todd got a similar pack of human warriors with the same weapons.

Stamped on the base, it says "Marty Toy 1983 Made in Hong Kong"

Marty Toy seems to have gone tits up years ago. Anyway, just wondering if anyone had ever seen similar toys--or even had them. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on the human warriors if I could, but it looks like I'm more likely to win $1,000,000 in the lottery.

Update from Ze Bulette: Yes, those are the guys I have. M Toys Warriors of the Galaxy. Thanks, now I know where to look for the other set.

Update from Todd, in regard to the guys he had:
As for the little plastic dudes: Yes! After seeing the picture, I definitely remember those. The guys I had were a goldish color and did have the same types of weapons. They almost seemed like some kinda crazy space gladiators. I think they all had matching helmets on and maybe some shoulder pads, and various leg protection, but I think most of them went bare chested and wore speedos. Also, I'm pretty sure my dudes were all human. Not the assortment of races like yours. Sadly, I have no idea what became of my figures. If I ever stumble across them, I'll let you know.

We're getting the band back together

I've got Josh and Alex confirmed for tomorrow night. We're finally getting the Maritime Campaign going. Dave may not make it, but he said he'll be there if he can.

So I'm pretty pumped about that, and I'm going through all my stuff to make sure I've got enough prepared. I never do, but at least I have enough that I can make it look like I do...

Anyway, getting back to gaming with the guys has gotten me nostalgic about my old gaming groups.

The original group: Todd (best friend #1), Ben (best friend #2, and 2nd cousin), Tim (little brother) and myself were the core. Bridget (my little sister), Josh, Adam & Jacob (Ben's brothers) and the occasional other friend would sometimes play. We grew up in the country, so it wasn't unusual for a 'game session' to be just one DM and one player. We mostly played BECM (Ben had Immoratals Set I think, but we never did more than look at it), and Star Frontiers.

Magic the Gathering and some members of my university gaming guild who were the stereotypical gamers you don't want to game with kept us from playing much in college, but after graduating I fell in with Tim (not my brother), Kenny, Jason and Steve. Tim and Jason were co-workers with me at Circuit City, Kenny was Tim's roommate, and Steve was a friend of theirs. We played a lot of short lived campaigns that were a mish-mash of 1E and 2E AD&D, including me running a game set in Feudal Japan for a few sessions. This is the Evansville Group.

Then I went to Japan, and after a couple years 3E came out. A few other teachers had also played, and we were all curious about the rules so I picked up the PHB when I was at home for the summer and ordered the DMG and MM when they came out. With the nature of the expat life, we had a bit of a revolving membership, which included Billy, Chris, David (he's Puerto Rican so it's pronounced Da-veed), Nick (who was actually the exchange student at the high school I taught at), and Gene. This is the Toyama Group. We played 3.0 D&D.

I moved to another part of Japan, and Billy, Chris, Gene and I tried gaming online with voice chat and OpenRPG, but it didn't go so well. We did get to try out d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars though.

After a few years, I got to talking with some other gamers in Tokyo on the Wizards message boards, and we formed the Ebisu Gaming Club. The members were Steve (not Steve from Evansville), Pete, Gene (from the Toyama group, he'd also moved), and toward the end Tim (number 3). We met once a month at Steve's apartment in Ebisu and played marathon 8 hour sessions on Sundays. We played 3.5 D&D, d20 Modern, d20 Conan, and tried out several Forge Indie games including one Steve was working on himself.

Concurrent to the Ebisu group, I fell in with some local guys who were playing a game of White Wolf's Trinity. This was Paul, Brent, Tanya, Mish, and another guy whos name is escaping me at the moment. The other guy was frequently absent, so they asked me to join up. After that game ended, Brent, Tanya and Mish all left Japan, but Paul and I recruited some other friends and formed a second group.

This second group was Paul, Atley, Josh, Jacob, Michelle, and Mark. Later, Lauren, Rick and Renee joined after Mark left the country and Atley lost interest. We started out with a d20 OA game that I ran, but then switched to a Classic D&D game run by Paul. Another guy named JD also ran a 3.5 game with some of the same players, but I was too busy to join them for that. Collectively, this is the Yamanashi Group.

And then I moved to Korea and fell in with my current Board Game Group.

Dragon Fist

Anyone else remember Dragon Fist? Chris Pramas's 2E based martial arts RPG that Wizards put out as a free download just before 3E came out?

With my Oriental Accents articles seeming to be a hit (at least compared to my normal traffic), a sumo tournament going on, and the fact that the Maritime Campaign keeps getting put off, I decided to print myself up a new hard copy at work.

Finished the printing and comb bound it today. Maybe I'll actually get to play it again someday (ran a 2-session test run back in the early Oughts and had a blast).

Related to that, does anyone know of a good place to get cheap plastic kung fu/wuxia minis en masse like army men style? I've got a set of 54mm Boxer Rebellion figures and some samurai/ninja stuff, but nothing like what you see in the movies.

Anyone got a lead?

Post Script--since Pramas isn't doing anything with this, it might be a prime candidate for a free retro-clone. Again, if I ever get the time.

SEX!!!

Over at BX Blackrazor, JB has had a series of posts on Sex in D&D. He describes how sex and matters related to sex made his games better back when he was a kid, and how he feels something has been lost in later editions.

He asks the question:

Am I the only one that experienced campaigns like this? Somehow I doubt it. Perhaps it wasn’t as explored in as great o depth by other gamers, but SEX is present in AD&D for those with eyes to see it.

Reading through the posts, I gotta say that my old group (myself, my two best friends, my brother, and the occasional other friend or sibling) played fairly similarly to JB. Maybe not to quite the extent, but we did have romance in game (even though the only female player was my little sister occasionally joining us). Most of the romance, therefor, was Player-NPC. But it did happen.

We didn't play AD&D much, mostly BECM. But even in those books, it seemed obvious to us that characters, especially higher level ones who became rulers, were spawning offspring. We had quests to save the princess, assassins posing as prostitutes, ass-kicking female adventurer retainers (before Xena, and before I'd read any Fritz Leiber), and plenty of other opportunities for our characters to get it on.

And not just in D&D, but also in Star Frontiers or other games we played.

And like JB, since we were young and mostly inexperienced, we tended to just drop the curtain when that sort of thing happened.

But yes, just like in JB's games, our teenage gaming had quite a bit. Characters got it on, characters got married, sometimes divorced, etc. In one memorable adventure, my best friend Todd's character with a Charisma of 3 had been forced into marriage as the result of an adventure we went on. Later, he found out (through a scroll of communication or a two-way crystal ball or something) that Archduke Stephan Karamiekos was moving in on his wife while he was out saving the world again. This led to two things--the wife was also an adventurer, and when she bit the dust in a trap-filled dungeon, the 'bereaved' husband ended up using her corpse as a trap-finding method. "Just throw her against the door and see what happens."

Crude, but we thought it was hilarious at the time.

Later, also, that character ended up deposing Karamiekos and setting himself up as ruler. That ended up being pretty much the capper of that campaign, since I was in college by then, and we were only playing when I was home on breaks.

So sex did have an impact on my early gaming, and it also made things more fun for all of us involved.