Death in the Sky Tombs

Last night, rather than Vaults of Ur, Justin ran a straight up Stars Without Number game.  He had run a session of it months ago.  I'd made my PC, Gawain "Greasebox" Mifune, a technician style Expert, but then wasn't able to play.  Dean's PC Fighterman Jung (a Dr. Who style Cyberman), and Jeremy's PC Killbot5000 (using some android rules from I don't know where) explored a starjammer style ship.

This time, Justin decided to retcon the spelljammer stuff out, and run a more straight up sci-fi game, Panoply Sector.  All of our characters, plus some backups were stranded on Brightside Station, a mining colony in the asteroid sea (there are no planets) around a red giant star, known as "The Beast."  In order to escape near indentured servitude, we'd need to scrounge up 500 credits each without owing our souls to the company store (you know the old song, right?).  Quick way to get rich?  Explore the Sky Tombs of an extinct alien race!

Since we had backup PCs, I should give a roster:
Jeremy -
Killbot5000, combat machine (droids don't get classes, they just have skill sets)
Dr. Atari, super-intelligent science droid on a scraped together junk frame
Dean -
Fighterman Jung the Cyberman, Warrior who will die if not encased in a cybernetic life support suit
Sister Pomepeius Isabella, Psychic Bene Gesserit 9-year old girl
Me -
Gawain "Greasebox" Mifune, Expert technician, crack repairman
Tommy "Six" Gunn, Warrior hotshot space cowboy
Dr. Zoltana, Expert xenologist seeking to study the aliens who left the tombs

After securing slave wage jobs, finding an NPC protector for Sister Pompeius, and getting ripped off by the company outfitting shop, we secured passage to a Sky Tomb on the Leadbelly, piloted by the guy in a wheelchair from Alien 4.  We selected our first away team were Killbot5000, Sister Pompeius, and Greasebox, plus beefy NPC dude whose name I didn't commit to memory.

We explored a bit, and found the place habitable and fully powered.  After opening a locked door, we found some alien artifacts, but apparently tripped an alarm.  Shortly thereafter, we were surrounded by giant black carapaced things which killed Pompeius as she skipped up to a door without checking around a corner, Greasebox as he tried to run back to the airlock to call for help, and then NPC dude and Killbot as they made a stand.

TPK

It was a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see if our reserve PCs will fare any better next time!

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.

New Blog in Town

You ain't from around here, are ya, boy?

Oh, wait, it's just Tim Knight.  Come on in and have a drink, pardner!

What's this silliness?  Well, Tim Knight of Hero Press has a new location for his blog, Hero Press 2: Rise of the Blog Lords. 

If you enjoyed his old blog, full of gaming, British SciFi/Fantasy TV, and comics, head over to the new site and follow!

The 4 Year Curse

So, this little oft neglected blog of mine turns 4 years old today.  Huzzah! 

Of course, with an emergency bout of editing that one of my professors needed me to do last night/this morning (she's the influential one who could land me a sweet job in academia with her influence and contacts), then the normal exhaustion that comes from teaching kindergarteners, and then a three-hour evening class (same prof), bedtime stories for my son and some exercise, I'm about worn out.

But apparently you all don't want to hear about that crap, you just want your Joesky Tax.

Well, since I'm too tired to think of anything useful to say about gaming, I'll do what other lazy bloggers do on anniversary posts, and point you in the direction of some of my favorite older posts.

How to Tackle a Megadungeon  The link is to the first of eight linked posts (links to the rest internally) from three years ago, where I tried to examine megadungeon play from a player/character perspective rather than the usual DM perspective.  I'm pretty proud of this post, having recently re-read them all. 

Every Monster Should be Beatable  Not one of my most popular posts, but one in which I spell out what to me is a key facet of game play in RPGs.

Endless Quest Reviews  Grad school put the kibosh on this series (maybe one of these days I'll get around to finishing the two or three more I have to do, and move on to the pair of Super Endless Quest books, and a few Wizards, Warriors and You books on the shelf).  These books, along with the D&D cartoon, shaped a lot of my early gaming ideas about what D&D is supposed to be about.

Johnny Cash Alignment Meme Poster  Because everything's better with a Johnny Cash soundtrack (OK, maybe not everything...)

Flying Swordsmen  The biggest (non picture) post on my blog.  Maybe the biggest period, haven't bothered with Google Analytics for a long time.  I announced the release of the game a year and a half ago.  Was it only a year and a half?  Feels like it's been longer.

And finally, because my blog doesn't get enough Star Frontiers love out there, my reproduction of the list on the back cover of inspirational reading for the game, Star Frontiers Appendix N.

Thanks everyone for continuing to read this here silly little blog about rolling dice and pretending to fight dragons, aliens and David Hasselhoff.

Out of the frying pan, into the George Foreman grill.

Our Ur adventures continued last night.  We had left off last session with our characters retreating to the farmsteads set up in the ruins in order to rest and recharge before taking another stab at the cannibal orc warrens.  But our old friends the ogre mercenaries were running the show there.

The players: DM Justin, Dean playing Venerable Carolus, Jeremy playing Noctis, Alexei playing Maya, and myself as Thidrek.

This session, we began bargaining with the ogres.  They'd just pulled a "bring out the gimp/Deliverance" thing of some sort (off screen) on our NPCs Webberan and Chomondelay and set them free.  Thidrek offered a truce, and offered to assault some enemy of theirs, figuring that nearly every faction in Ur is our enemy as well, and it might just give us a chance to slip back to Fort Low, hire mercenaries, and come back to wipe them out.

The ogres (by the way, if you didn't read the link above, Ur ogres are lycanthropic nightmare machines, appearing like normal humans one minute, grotesque mutant mostrosities the next) were wary of such schenanigans, and planned to send us back to Fort Low to basically lead an insurrection for them.  Roll initiative time.

Karl's spell "repudiation of light" managed to soften up the opponents, but Haarkon the spider-centaur ogre leader escaped since we lost initiative.  Wez the other leader type also managed to escape, but we took out several of their underlings and then fled.  Escape was too easy. 

We were pursued, however Karl used Speak with Animals to call the carnivorous apes (not that they're too fond of us either), who responded and attacked the ogre pursuers, giving us time to flee. 

On the way back to Low, we were ambushed by a group of masked cannibal orcs - or so we thought.  During the battle, we realized that they were humans, which is why they had Fort Low armor (Romanesque) rather than cannibal orc armor (Mad Max-esque).  Luckily, Maya rolled a 1 on one roll, dropping her spear, and forcing her to use the nonlethal damaging Sky Hunter whip.  Not often that you hear someone thinking a natural 1 is lucky, is it?  Well, turns out that the leader of this band was Iago, brother of the Fort Low official who had gone missing.  We ended up taking him and one other prisoner thanks to the whip.

A large body of troops from Fort Low was approaching as we finished the battle.  We hid the bodies, and quickly looted them (a magic war hammer from Iago, two magic swords like Thidrek's, a scroll and a potion).  Karl went out to talk to the troops, Maya joined him.  Thidrek and Noctis skulked off into the ruins, Mattaki Shiptu, nerd orc magi NPC, following us.  Our former hirelings Webberan and Chomondelay were with the army, and were raving about how we'd slaughtered all of the humans at the farmstead (the ogres were actually doing that as we escaped - clever plan by Haarkon). 

Maya, Carolus, Iago and his companion were all taken into custody.  Next session, Dean will have some use for all the "dealing with folks" skills Carolus has taken like Bureaucracy and Diplomacy and Religion.  Noctis and Thidrek (and Mattaki) are hoping to slip past Low to the Hive, rally some allies, hopefully a Great Mind or two who can dispel magic, and expose the ogre treachery. 

Should be a fun session!  (Oh, and Noctis made 5th level last session, Karl made 7th level this session, and Thidrek made 6th level this session!)

Devilish

I wrote up my Devil entries today. 

The list contains:

Mephistos: Vice - Pride.  Schtick?  Contracts and ego stroking.
Malebranche*: Vice - Envy.  Schtick?  Secretly buffing one member of a party.
Erinyes: Vice - Wrath.  Schtick?  Pissing people off.
Succubus/Incubus: Vice - Lust.  Schtick?  Seduction.
Belphegan: Vice - Sloth.  Schtick?  Get rich quick schemes.
Mammonite: Vice - Greed.  Schtick?  Telling you exactly where the loot is (nothing more).
Beelzebal: Vice - Gluttony.  Schtick?  Party till you puke.
Pit Fiend:  overlord of the devils.  Schtick?  Kicking your ass.

Hat tip to Collin de Plancy.  Demons, I decided, will just be interspersed throughout the other monsters, rather than as their own "type."  Why?  Because devils are fallen angels, so have a bit of "Law" to their make-up, if no longer their natures.  Demons are just pure Chaos/Entropy.

Now, do I want to do the Choirs of Angels?  Something to think about.


*I couldn't do this without at least one nod to Dante. 

Infernal Powers

I finally figured out what to do with demons and devils in D&D Mine.  I've always been mildly disappointed with the handling of demons and devils in AD&D and onwards.  Gygax and various successors to the D&D property were always so keyed to alignment when discussing them, and the whole "Bloodwar" Planescape thing just further cemented in my mind that in (A)D&D, the fiends were just more bags of combat powers and XP with a bit of lower planar fluff.

I'd decided a little while back what to do with devils.  I'll create seven types (or maybe eight to have an over-devil), each keyed to one of the Seven Classical Vices.  I'll mine my various print and online sources to figure out what names, appearances, and powers each devil shall receive.  Devils are tempters of mortals.  Their domain is Sin.  They could care less about unintelligent creatures.  They exist to tempt humans, demi-humans, and other intelligent creatures to do bad things.

For demons, it finally struck me tonight.  Demons are forces of entropy.  Each demon type (not sure how many, and not sure whether they should all be stuck under one demon entry, or just listed by name in the general lists, as powers will likely vary quite a bit) will be about some sort of destructive force.  Rot, pestilence, decay, disease, dementia, discord, anarchy, etc.  They are the force trying to wind down the universe, break things apart.  As such, they would just as happily corrupt any living things (although a few with social/mental domains will of course focus on the humanoids).

So, both types are Chaotic (I come from Classic D&D, so just Law-Neutrality-Chaos for alignments in my game), and both types would be considered "evil," but both have very different flavors.

I'll likely borrow some of the AD&D devils, demons or daemons as inspiration, but refluff them to match the above.