Other kinds of worlds

This is something I've been thinking about blogging for some time now (since my vacation back to America last summer) and I'm finally getting around to it now. Procrastination (prepping a Chanbara adventure for my first round three play test this coming Saturday) can be a powerful tool!

Anyway, on to the content. We've all seen plenty of various campaign worlds. There are the official ones, like Greyhawk, Toril (Forgotten Realms), Krynn (Dragonlance), Athas (Dark Sun), Eberron, and of course the good old Known World/Mystara. There are plenty of worlds from other game products -- Glorantha, Harn, Golarion. There are of course alternate Earths, and worlds taken from fiction like Middle Earth, the Hyborian Age, and the lands of the Wheel of Time (all three may actually fall under "alternate Earth"). Hundreds more, not even counting worlds created by various DMs.

What's something most of them have in common? They're all scientifically plausible (if sometimes unlikely) planets.

But Ancient and Medieval thought about the nature of the world and the universe could make for some fun gaming, could it not? I don't think I've ever played in - and I'm sure I've not yet run - a Flat Earth world. And while I've used the Great Wheel (AD&D) and the Astral Bubbles (BECMI) and a few other things for planar cosmology, I've never used the idea of the Celestial Spheres. Why not?

Wouldn't it be fun to have a world in which you literally could sail right off the edge? That's a temptation that would be too strong for most players, I'm guessing. Eventually, they're gonna try it. And what happens next? They fall into the void forever, passing the turtles that go all the way down? Is that how you travel to the Astral Plane from this world? Do they end up in the Land of the Lost? All kinds of fun potential there.

The Celestial Spheres are maybe not such a font of awesome sauce, but it could still be cool. If you take a Dantean bent to it, it would be possible to travel on foot or by mount from sphere to sphere, rather than requiring magical means to go from plane to plane. It could allow for some lower level planar hijinks, without the gothy emo overtones of Planescape.

I'm sure someone's done both of these ideas before, just not in any campaign I've ever played in. Maybe, after I get done testing Chanbara, I'll run a flat fantasy world and see how it goes.

Last Day of the Year

Yes, the obligatory year in review post! Luckily, it's going to be short. There's not a lot to review.

So this year, I started the year off by getting back to work on Chanbara with a new revision mostly from the ground up. I'm now happy with that revision (a few things need tweaking, and I'm still undecided on how much setting info to include, and whether to revise the adventure/campaign advice chapter). I'm going to start play-testing it both on G+ with the guys, and on RPOL. Anyone interested in joining? So far, one guy, a friend of friends from two other RPOL games, has agreed to play. If you want to try it out, here's the link:

http://rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=65385&date=1449791951

Other than that, there's not much gaming related to say. I tried to get a GamMarvel World (Gamma World in the Marvel Comics Universe) game going, but got sidetracked by real life. I tried to get my Mentzer Cover to Cover series going again, but got sidetracked by real life. I tried to game as often as possible, but usually got sidetracked by real life.

Well, them's the breaks when you're trying to adjust to a new job (teaching at a university instead of a kindergarten), work on a PhD dissertation (more to come in 2016!), and raise two boys (one seven, the other one-and-a-half).

Happy New Year to all of my readers, and I hope you all have great gaming experiences in 2016!

D&D Winter Workshop

Today was Day 2 (of 10) of my "Developing Communication Skills through Role Play" special workshop class. What do we do in the workshop? Play D&D, of course!

I'm using a slightly different set of house rules for my students, because they are all learning to play and in a second language. But it's still Classic D&D.

I have six people registered for the class. Five came yesterday, but only four today. Yesterday I introduced the game, its history (briefly, and some basic concepts. Then I let them explore the solo dungeon from the Basic Set.

The Fighter lost her plate armor to the rust monster, the Halfling was killed by a skeleton (the player then picked a Magic-user fro the pre-gens), and the whole party lost its treasure to the magic mouth riddle.

Today, 3 Thieves and a Magic-user  (the Fighter's player didn't come) started in on N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

Even though the people at the first plae they visited warned them not to stay there, they spent the night at the Golden Grain Inn and were captured by the cultists.

When taken before the naga, only one was charmed. The magic-user of course! (The player is taking his bad luck in stride.) The others were put in a cell and when they came up with a plan to escape, I made the MU be the guard they unarmed sneak attacked to escape.

They had met the ranger in town briefly, so I had him rescue them from the marsh and take them to town and advise them to see Ramne the NPC Magic-user. They did, but his dispel magic failed to free the PC MU of the charm.

The player said he will try a new character tomorrow. :)

New Beastie

Printer’s mark of Guillaume de La Nouaille.

Looks like a chimeric hydra-cockatrice. I'll be statting this bad boy up when I have free time! (Image from the OBI Scrapbook blog)

Very Cool Stuff

Last Friday, Greg Gorgonmilk posted this image from the most recent Knights of the Dinner Table comic -- an article talking about the OSR.

Now, there's only one page, and as some people mentioned, a few big name games (Labyrinth Lord in particular) were left out. But among those that made the cut?

Flying Swordsmen.

Yeah, baby! Yeah! Yeah! I am the Evil Midnight Gamer, What Games at Midnight!

Thanks to Kenneth Newquist, author of this piece, for including my little contribution to the OSR! Also, thanks to Greg G. and Jens D. (The Disoriented Ranger) for bringing it to my attention.

Riddle Me This

A necromancer is exploring a dungeon with his trusty skeleton bodyguard, a charmed goblin, and a big bag of loot. He comes to a river of lava cutting across a chamber, preventing further progress to those without magical assistance.

The necromancer casts fly on himself, and then floating disk. But he has a problem. The floating disk is only big enough to carry one of the three -- skeleton, goblin, treasure -- at a time.

If he leaves the skeleton and goblin alone, the skeleton will kill the goblin. If he leaves the goblin and treasure alone, the goblin will make off with it.

So what's the optimal way for the necromancer to get his henchmen and loot across the lava?

Maximizing Profits

Just had a random idea that would make a (potentially friendship ending) interesting game idea. Probably it would be a better idea for a D&D movie.

Chaotic (and or Evil depending on your alignment system of choice) party enters dungeon.

Facing of monsters, avoiding of traps, solving of puzzles ensues (preþy standard so far).

As the party, loaded down with treasure heads to the surface again, characters start trying to bump each other off (some making it look like accidents, others blatantly backstabbing their companions). Sorta like the Joker's bank heist at the beginning of The Dark Knight.

Only one PC makes it out, with most of the treasure. (Bag of holding required to make this work.)

If a movie, the ironic twist at the end would need to be the lone survivor, bruised and bloody, encounters a lone kobold who slays the PC and takes the loot.

Like I say above, it might not play well for a regular group. Maybe as a convention game, it could work.