Ubiquitous Orcs

"So THAT'S what I was up to all this time?" - Catching up once again

2011-06-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

Good grief has it really been more than a year since my last update here? I recall once warning my readers (all one of you) that I tend to fall off the face of the earth from time to time. D'ya believe me now?

As far as RPGs of any sort go, I have been almost completely inactive since my online "Olde Worlde" Swords & Wizardry game came to a long grinding halt near the end of last summer. I had one brief flirtation with Pathfinder as a player-character shortly after that, but a huge steaming heap of gamemaster politics and "draah-mah" brought that to a short conclusion.

Around a week or so ago my good friend Randy (Codename:Haldir) put up a cattle-call for players in a new S&W play-by-post game and I was fairly eager to take the bait. I believe "Oh HELLYEAH" were my exact words, but I digress.

I was considering playing a human fighter or perhaps cleric, but it wasn't long before Randy and I both seemed to come to the mutual agreement that I'm a character-actor, and by that I'm sure all my awesome readers know exactly what kind of character I'm talking about.

I freely admit I've got quite a few character sheets for various half-orc characters I've played in the past, some of which I routinely resurrect with minor adjustments to fit whatever game module or level of play they're about to join. But while I believe in recycling, I try to be very faithful to each character and not "reinvent" her entire personality. Janara is my favourite. She was my first...kind of like a schoolgirl crush, you might say. Even though she has appeared in D&D 3.0, 3.5, Warhammer and S&W, her basic attributes, personality and quirks have remained the same. I sometimes call her (after the Arthurian legends) "the Once And Future Janara". I hope one day to actually find a way to work her into a futuristic sci-fi game.

So, back on topic (in a roundabout way), I didn't think Janara the Hafforc Cleric would be the best fit for Temple Of Elemental Evil, so I called up another character from the minor league. She was one I made for our thieves' guild game using Labyrinth Lord rules, and her name was originally Burzug,...I admit not a particularly good name for a character, but I was in a bit of a pinch and had to name her quick. I will now claim the name was just an alias.

She is now going by the name Chara...which is coincidentally also the name of the team captain of the Boston Bruins. She, like he, is a bit of a goon,..loved by some, loathed by many more. Though she is technically speaking only a fighter, her lifelong aspiration is to be a thief. In fact that is what she was doing before joining the party, and I'm sure the circumstances of her leaving behind her life of crime to become a traveling adventurer will be interesting..as soon as those details come to light.

In my new game, the adventure began at a crossroads. Our party was deciding which way to go first, and we all were already acquainted with one another. This saves us much in-game time getting to know each other, and permits all players the chance to reveal bits and pieces of our pasts as we (the players) get a better feel for our own characters and those of the other players.

So, Chara has somehow won the approval of a lady monk called Isha, a human cleric called Coriander Waterspout, or Cory, for short, and a dwarven magic user (yes, you read that right) called Golden Hammer, and Golden Hammer's bodyguard, who calls himself Body Guard. We're a motley crew and you can probably already imagine the fun sorts of group dynamics that can develop as the game progresses. At the moment, the magic user and cleric are kind of taking charge. Perhaps that is because Isha and Chara are "just girls", but somehow I suspect that neither monk nor fighter will remain wallflowers forever.

And now to compound Chara's troubles..and yes, she is a complicated woman, she has Body Guard following after her like a lovestruck puppy.

At this point, the adventurers have just arrived at the Inn of the Welcome Wench. No doubt there will be booze a'flowing soon, and I have invited the other players to fill in a bit more of Chara's history, specifically what happend any one of those times she got so drunk that she herself cannot recall what she did.

I only hope no players will take TOO many liberties with poor Chara's history. She is, after all, a distant cousin of Janara, and Janara might have her cut off from the family fortune.

One Monk makes all paper models FREE!

2010-04-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

I only just found out today, but according to One Monk's web site, all paper models are now available to download and print for free.

(from One Monk's news page, April 1st 2010 ..and no, this isn't an April Fools gag)

After much thought and deliberation, I have decided to to change my hobby back into a hobby, and provide my designs for free download for all who want them.

I really want to thank those of you who have supported me over the years by purchasing my figure sets, and I hope they were of a good value to you. My decision to go free will hopefully not anger some of you who had purchased my figures in the past. Having a little boost to my income was a great help, especially as I transitioned from a high paying stress filled job, to a lower paying, but much more rewarding job in the adventure gaming industry. Now that I am a bit more established in my position at my new job, I no longer have such a great need for the extra income, and have lost my drive to design more stuff to sell.

So, what I want to do, is offer everything I have designed, and will design from here on out for free. This will allow me to design whatever I want. I can design figures based on published games, movies or TV characters, roleplaying games and more. Having this burden off my shoulders will allow me to do what's FUN! and that's designing super cool amazing miniatures that can be printed and cutout by anyone.

Some of you probably already know I have a huge collection of pewter miniatures, but I completely understand the "sitcker shock" that new gamers, especially young gamers, feel when they walk into a game store. With the average price of a single character mini being somewhere around $5 not including paint and brushes, and with that cost multiplied by at least 20 for tabletop fantasy wargaming or stocking a dungeon, and with the general state of the economy now, this could not have happened at a better time.

There are dozens of free or nearly-free fantasy roleplaying and tabletop wargaming rules available on the internet. I've mentioned several on this blog even. With those kinds of resources, and with free game-aides like One Monk's paper minis, all a kid needs is a pencil, some paper, a computer and printer..and maybe some dice.

And if you don't have dice, you can download and print some of those too.

Family planning... orc style!

2010-03-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

Today's Reaper previews gives me extra cause to squee.

03511: Orc Matron and Brood
by Jason Wiebe

It seems like forever since I've been campaigning in the "Minis we'd like to see" topic on the Reaper forum for a baby orc, or orc kiddies..or orc-mommy. At long last, I got what I've been wanting..YAY! And hey..I have a birthday in June!

Olde Worlde - my first encounter in my first game as referee

2010-02-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

This is a cross-post from my "official" game blog for my online play-by-post S&W game. I was really nervous about this first encounter, having up until now only been a player. Would it be too hard for the players? Too easy? Would I totally botch up the flow of things? Would my players call me a nOOb? Well, here's what happened.

First off, let my just squee about how cool it is to have Matt "Mythmere" Finch joining in! Like I said joking with my husband, "Oh yeah..he's JUST the guy who wrote the rulebook I'm using. Uh-huh..No pressure, nope. None at all. Nosireebob!"

So.how do you insert a new PC into a game in-progress? Easy! He was there all along, but none of the nine-dozen other folks in the adventure-procession really noticed.

Anyhoo, whilst bashing down the door to a randomly treasure-seeded room, our brave adventurers called down a posse of three gnolls on themselves. Again I used the random-encounter chart to generate a wandering threat in the hallways, but to be honest I was kind of worried I had served up more than the players could chew. Gnolls are dang hard to hit, much less to wound and kill. And they're deadly. I should know. In a solo outdoor adventure last winter I lost my 3rd level elven PC and six hirelings to a patorl of gnolls. This was in spite of being armed with magic and lots of longbows.

I had no idea that Charm Person could be so much fun. Good thinking on behalf of Paraphin (Mythmere's Magic User character). If for whatever reason the gnoll had passed a Saving Throw, it could have been bad for the fighters up in the middle of the scrum.

So..what do you do with a pet like that? Well, you ask it to be your native guide as you tour the rest of the dungeon, that's what. To see how the gnoll reacted to the idea, I consulted the monster "Hostile/Friendly Reaction Table" from the Holmes Basic D&D book. I gave the charmed "person" a +6, and as it turned out, he was "enthusiastic - volunteers help". Then he had to convince his two gnoll comrades of the validity of Paraphin's idea. Being that they are of the low-intelligence follow-the-leader sort, I rolled for them on the table, but with disadvantages. One got -2 simply for being an unreasonable brute, and the other a -6 for having been shot at by the archer. The former turned out to be 'friendly' while the latter turned and bit the elf.

The dwarf Brag Ironballz (gotta love that name) jumped in and defended Chu-toi (gotta love that name too) and bravely killed the ever-lovin' bejimmies out of the gnoll. The DM gleefully awaits the Save-or-barf results.

So now comes the time to dole out XP. With so many players to divvy up experience points, I may have to up the danger level just a bit. I suppose they won't want to be low-level forever. But for what it all is worth, I'm really enjoying running a game and surviving my first encounter.

In other slightly-related news, I just ordered and received a small Chessex wet-erase game mat with 1" squares on one side and hexes on the other. If I ever hit my stride as a PbP referee, I'm wanting to run something face-to-face in realtime. I'd like to be ready for that by ReaperCon at the end of May.

Swords & Wizardry Play-by-Post - already in progress, actually

2010-02-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

I know I announced a while back that I was maybe going to gather up a play-by-post RPG using Swords & Wizardry Core Rules on the Reaper Miniatures forum.

Well.... following a hectic end-of-December/start-of-January, I jumped right in with both feet and started the game...and neglected my blog as usual. Sorry 'bout that, folks.

Finding five players willing to commit to my regular posting schedule was amazingly pretty easy. They all did their homework, downloaded the rules, got themselves familiar with character generation and how the game plays, and we were off and running in record time (compared to other PbP games I've seen).

The game-gathering topic may be seen here. >> Spike's Olde Worlde OOC (out of character)

Almost as soon as people began signing up, I figured I'd best get going on a dungeon and quickly. I'm what you might call a digital-junkie in a pen-and-paper world when it comes to old-school gaming, so I went to the Cartographer's Guild forum and found a great topic on mapmaking here >> Creating an old-school map in GIMP For those of you not familiar with GIMP, it does many of the same basic functions as Photoshop...except emptying your bank account. As for the tutorial, the instructions for GIMP translate seamlessly to Photoshop. While making my own map, I improved upon a few processes and will post my own tutorial here at a later time.

Next came the stocking of the dungeon. This was really a challenge for me since I've never even ran a game before, much less created an adventure. The S&W book has some guidelines, but in the end I referred to my copy of Holmes Basic for help with appropriate challenge levels, how many rooms to leave empty, and how to handle the monsters that inevitably wander the corridors.

Once that was done, I began making use of Chgowiz's One-Page Dungeon Template in keeping track of what is where. This download was made for MS Word but works just fine in OpenOffice. As you can see, I'm a real fan of freeware.

I decided that it would be good to put all my game information in a single place seperate from the Reaper forum so that the players could be just a click or two away from their character sheets, game information such as marching order, passage of time, lists of looted treasure and such. For that purpose I made a new blog here >> Oldeworlde Chronicles. It's still a work-in-progress as I've not finished formatting character sheets and may yet put in some more fluff about the setting.

And now for the fun part...the actual playing of the game!

Like I promised, this game is whimsy-loaded and not meant to be taken terribly seriously. The story begins with all the characters conveniently railroaded into a tavern called The Epicurean Orc, at which they learn about Lord Arbitrary's reward of 16,353 gold pieces to have his dungeon made monster-free. And to make things even more convenient, there is a ready gang of day-labourers assembled at the tavern looking to hire on and help the party. These fine folks were lovingly though randomly picked from 140 Henchmen for Hire, by Garish (a.k.a. Steve Page).

Once the players picked their hirelings, I let the players take control of their own particular followers as far as actions and dialogue are concerned. Eventually when PCs start gaining experience (both in XP and in gameplay experience) I will let them pick a favoured follower who will probably be given an extra share of the party's XP in order to advance quicker and be better prepared to become the player's next PC should the player's current PC become incapactiated or worse yet "teh dead".

If you want to follow along, the in-game topic is here >> Spike's Olde Worlde RPG

The cast of characters (in a metaphorical nutshell) are:

Solace- a very devout human female cleric, who would seem to be the voice of sense and reason of the party.

Kane- a sharply-dressed human rogue with shifty eyes and a taste for adventure, even if it means having to go slumming in orc-operated drinking establishments.

Taryn, human fighter who has brought his father's longsword out of retirement in hopes of finding fame, glory and gold...because he, like everybody else, didn't come there for the food.

Chu-toi- elven elf (since elf is also a class) archer and mage who has discovered that the cheese at the Epicurean Orc can probably double as "improvised weapon"

Brag Ironballz- dwarven warrior with some amazing abilities...except Charisma....but who really needs Charisma anyway. Just look at Steve Buscemi!

Jonah Redshirt- not a hero, nor really much of an antihero..but I can guarantee you that if this was a Disney cartoon, he'd have narrow eyes and a sinister moustache in addition to his one arm and fat pockets. He's what you might call a meatshield-broker.

Lord Arbitrary- Actually nobody knows much about him..not even the game referee. It's rumoured that he once single-handedly defeated the dread gazebo.

Matilda- human serving wench, who is single, likes kittens, long walks in the evening, and men who aren't afraid to cry.

Spike- female orc bartender...but you already knew that, didn't you.

"We now join our regularly scheduled RPG already in progress"

It would seem the players just miiiight be about to encounter something as they begin exploring corridors. Thusfar all they've found is Lord Arbitrary's trash-dump, a little bit of buried treasure, and some mundane rats. Let's see what's behind Door Number One!

The Whimsy Factor

2009-11-30T18:09:00.000-08:00

Preface - Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Recently I got to take part in yet another PbP RPG implosion. This time it was a 3.5 game refereed by a self-proclaimed novice, for which a small amount of the blame may be entitled, but the more I think about it, the game in general was lacking.

The ref is one of those guys who prepares for everything. Mind you I'm not saying that preparation is bad, but it is possible to take it too far and in the process ignore the players' needs to feel as though they are still in control of their own destinies. Furthermore, it is entirely possible to turn a fun game into too much work for both the players and the referee and spoil the flow of the adventure with the nit-picking of details.

Getting to the point, I have a few people who want in on some retro style PbP roleplaying, and I want to have a go at refereeing. I may very well fall flat on my face, or lose the players' interest, or a little bit of both, but I digress. Some of the guys who played in that ill-fated game with me expressed their own opinions of why the game came undone and it seems that for most of us, it was the encounter-to-encounter pace, the lack of opportunity for players to be spontaneous for being "still in combat rounds" and the general feel of being run through the gauntlet for the sole reason of letting the referee see how quickly he can kill the party. While it is fairly well known that Challenge Ratings are not an integral part of old-style RPGing, there is such a thing as being the "killer GM". There should be a balance between the real risk of losing a character and the players feeling as though they've been thrust into an unescapable encounter that they can neither fight nor flee from. Most of the players also seemed to be quickly put off by all the bickering back and forth about various abilities and actions and just how or in what order things were to be done. And not one single player was happy with the referee's insisting that the players all use an online dice roller "for record-keeping purposes". The entire flow of the game was then at the mercy of a site that was often experiencing downtime, and when it was in working order seemed to have randomness issues. I would provide an example for you right now, but as luck would have it, InvisibleCastle is once again 505.

So, back on topic, a few of the players and I were chatting about retro-gaming and I kind of let them twist my arm a bit. One of the guys said he wanted something less serious and one of the girls said she just wanted to have some fun and maybe get the chance to do something with the really cool character she had made. It seems people want from gaming exactly what I want from gaming, and that is to above all have an enjoyable experience, be part of a story, and not feel committed to a pile of books, rules, and books about game settings that have their fantasy environment laid out down to the very last paving stone.

What we all want..is whimsy.

Before I go any further, if you are one of those uptight grognards who believe everybody should play old-school exactly the way Gygax did, you may with to click through to another blog. This might hurt.

My plan is to start up with a simple subterranean encounter for the players. It'll be like a training exercise in which they can learn their capabilities and how the game works while still having a good chance to escape or seek healing if things go badly..which they still can. That in and of itself isn't so unorthadox, but I am seriously considering an option which will likely have folks like Red Priest coming round to my house to revoke my OSR Secret Decoder Ring. I want to give the training exercise more of a short-term video game feel by allowing players who are killed to quickly return to the action and for new players to jump right in. This will be accomplished by reincarnation. Since the older games allow players to take along hirelings, there will be extra ready-made slots in the adventure party awaiting their chances to become primary player-characters as needed. I recall an article in one of the OSR zeens or blogs calling this the entourrage philosophy or somesuch, but it seems a good way to give the players a sort of safety-net of lesser-developed characters to fall back on rather than have to start completely from scratch.

This will also be a trial period for me. Not only do I get in some real-life practice in refereeing, but I get the chance to gauge the collective attitude of the players and see what style of adventuring they are suited for. They may very well decide they like a more hack-and-slay sort of game, or they might see the combat as nothing more than an interruption to inter-character theatre. And knowing these players, it might also turn into an episode of Three Stooges or Monty Python's Flying Circus.

I'm also completly open-minded to working with players who want to play a character type that is not in the book. The most important sentence in the book I will be using is "Imagine the hell out of it",and that is the main rule I plan to abide by. A player should feel at least some connection to their new character from the beginning. I'm also willing to hear out any players' requests for gear or spells that are not in the book. Why should the referee get to be the only one doing the imagifications.

Hopefully, once the game roster has settled down to a core of dependable players who are having fun and who have learned the ropes and have survived past the "glass cannon" levels, I will graduate the game into the "real" world where dead is dead, the wrong word to the wrong NPC can get you thrown in the geol, and in the woods you better beware because "dragons happen".

This game will hopefully begin in January. I'll post again in the nearer future once I post up a game-gathering topic on the Reaper forum where I will run the game.

As for the 4e game I had joined, it is still in progress, but the GM's computer crashed and took with it all his game-resource files. Hopefully it will be resuming soon, as I was really starting to like it.

The ubiquitous orc ventures fourth...

2009-09-07T08:24:00.000-07:00

Okay I will warn my old-school buddies right up front. This blog entry contains me saying good things about D&D 4e, so if your grognard sensibilities are easily injured, go ahead and put the duct-tape on your head now before it 'splodes.

A friend of mine has been running several play-by-post games on the Reaper Minis forum, and recently had a slot come available in one of his games due to another player being unable to find time to post. I had mentioned early on that I would like to try out a 4e game so that I could at least offer up an actual educated rant on why the game stinks, but now that I have begun reading the player guides and building my character, my opinion has shifted somewhat.

Yeah we've all heard people say, "If you pretend it's not really D&D, it isn't so bad."

I believe that is a pretty fair assessment, but in all honesty the same thing could be said about 3e by the folks who had been playing 2nd and earlier. It's different, but not so different that I feel as though I'm learning a new game. It's like comparing Windows XP to Vista. It feels different and it runs different, but it's still has its roots in the same game.

And what about "It's D&D for dummies."

Having looked at the player guides I can honestly say that isn't true. Yes, there are some game aspects such as skills, alignment, and combat actions that have been made more simple. Yes the book is less populated with charts and tables, and yes the game relies more heavily on combat maps with tokens and powers-cards and other visual aides, but this does not mean that the GM and players are required to "dumb down" in order to enjoy the game. It seems that the game's creators have tried to make less work for the players and especially for the GM. I don't think a 4e combat encounter could be done using only narrative, but for many people (who I personally do not consider to be dummies), keeping up with spatial relationships between combatants while worrying about the actual fighting only bogs down the action.

Oh, and the AC is ascending.... for all the dummies like me. :D

But then, "It takes too long to make a character"

Yeah that is probably true if you are old-school and used to being able to put all your character notes on one index card. And of course like any other game system, your first 4e character will take longer because you are learning a new system. I'm guessing my second character won't take so long, but in my personal opinion, getting my head wrapped around 4e character building was easier than learning 3e. The player guide is far easier to understand and all but walks you through making your character choices and filling in the sheet. In addition, there is the free downloadable character builder on the WoTC site that lets you make characters up through 3rd level. I used both the book and the builder program while making my character so I could get a clearer understanding of why the program does what it does.

But "Do you really need a character builder? Are you an idiot?"

I like to think of the free character builder as a good proofreader. It is designed not to let you take options that are not allowed for your character, and most options display a description that guided you toward making choices that are best suited for your character. But what really makes it a nice thing to have is how it can output a simple text character summary for online play, provide a printable character sheet that includes a page of powers cards to help you keep track during encounters. I've not played face-to-face yet, but apparently the little cards are helpful in that regard. I believe advancing a character won't be difficult at all, but if I were planning on playing a 4e campaign with my game group, I'd probably subscribe to DDI at least one month of the year just to get the full version of the program and an occasional update.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, "But I don't like the limitations on characters and classes and soforth."

Uh-huh. I doubt anybody who says that will get too much sympathy from anybody who plays old-school. Yes, the various classes are somewhat "samey", but at least there are no advancement caps, serious drawbacks for certain race-class combinations, nor vast inequities in how XP is doled out. And no I'm not taking pot-shots at old-school D&D, but that is how the games differ. To each their own I say. It seems that 4e tried to move away from some of those prestige classes in favour of what they call paragon paths. There also appears to be a real move away from multi-classing and munchkin-builds.

But, "Every character is a munchkin now, aren't they?"

It would seem so. Everybody has all these powers and healing surges and stuff. I'd sure as heck not bet any money on my Oe or 1e character lasting long in the 4e world. Heck, my old-school characters are lucky to live as long as they do in their own turf. So yes, it's fair to say there has been power-creep in D&D.

And finally, "If I wanted to play a video game, I'd play a video game."

I can't honestly say that 4e is not closer to video-game mentality than other editions. The healing surges remind me far too much of the health-status bar that appears below your character in some of the cheesy online MMOs I've tried out. Who here has ever run up on the "boss", taken three whacks at him, then led him on a chase through the dungeon while your health points regenerated? Okay 4e isn't quite that gamey, but I can see how people make the connection. BUT in the defense of gameyness, it seems like videogames are becomeing more and more advanced with virtual reality so that soon somebody will say "If I wanted to play a LARP, I'd play a LARP." Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but you get the drift. In the defense of the game's creators, there is quite a bit of emphasis in the players manual on how to roleplay and use narrative during the game. It's up to the GM and players to set the tone for the game. If they all are roleplayers, then they will get a far different experience out of the game than a group whose prior game experience begins and ends with WoW. As for the gamey jargon, it is only a manifestation of the generalizations many D&D players have been making all along. I'm not real wild about it personally, but I suppose that is one of those things that comes with getting older and grumpier.

And finally, "I don't like the new races and classes."

Again, you'll not get any sympathy from this old-schooler. While I'm personally not wild about playing a gnome or a tiefling, I can understand others' excitement over the new diversity. In a roleplay-influenced game, the diversity can make for some real interesting group dynamics within the party.

In conclusion, I will continue to play the old-school games I enjoy. I will keep playing the 3/3.5 games I enjoy, and I will go into 4e with an open mind. After all, it's all really about friends, adventure and imagination.

So shuddup and go play.

"Natural Born Orcs" - YouTube funny-de-jour

2009-08-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Pardon me for my whimsical departure from my ordinarily serious profound content. :D

And yet MORE big news for Reaper..AND for Paizo

2009-08-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

This just went up on Reaper's front page, but in case anybody missed it, Reaper and Paizo are partnering up to produce miniatures to support the new Pathfinder RPGs.

My own experience with Pathfinder is pretty limited thusfar, but if Ed Pugh says it's good..then it's good, goshdarnit!

(from reapermini.com)
________________

Monthly metal miniatures releases to support Paizo's new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

August 12, 2009 (INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.) – Paizo Publishing and Reaper Miniatures today announced a new partnership that will see Reaper produce monthly metal miniature releases to support Paizo's blockbuster new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The line is set to debut in Fall 2009, with fantasy miniatures supporting the Pathfinder RPG, Pathfinder Adventure Paths, Pathfinder Modules, and the world of the Pathfinder Chronicles. All miniatures will be cast in the finest white-metal alloy and will be available through regular hobby distribution channels.

"We're ecstatic to be working with the fine people at Paizo Publishing," said Ed Pugh, CEO of Reaper Miniatures. "The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game has set a new standard in roleplaying and gaming in our industry. We're proud to be a part of such a groundbreaking endeavor."

With the formal release of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook scheduled for tomorrow , on the opening day of the Gen Con Game Fair, Paizo has already seen its initial print run of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook sell out completely to gamers and distributors, with the presses working overtime on a new second printing expected in early November. The massive Pathfinder Bestiary, featuring more than 350 fantastic foes for Pathfinder heroes, debuts in October. The Pathfinder RPG is an evolution of the 3.5 edition of the world's oldest fantasy roleplaying game, and is released under the terms of the Open Game License.

"All of us at Paizo use miniatures in our games, and when it comes to marrying high-impact sculpts with excellent production and distribution, Reaper Miniatures stands at the very pinnacle of the hobby games industry," said Erik Mona, Publisher of Paizo Publishing. "I simply cannot wait to discover the incredible sculpts and dynamic characters Reaper will produce for its Pathfinder line."

The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and Reaper's extensive, award-winning miniatures line can be found wherever gaming products are sold.

ABOUT PAIZO PUBLISHING
Paizo Publishing®, LLC is a leading publisher of fantasy roleplaying games, accessories, board games, and novels. Paizo's Pathfinder® line of rules, adventures, sourcebooks, and campaigns combines decades of game design experience into one evocative system compatible with the 3.5 rules. Paizo's GameMastery® accessories offer easy-to-use tools aimed at improving the tabletop RPG experience. Titanic Games™, Paizo's board game imprint, unleashes fun, challenging games like Kill Doctor Lucky™ and Yetisburg™ that appeal to both families and casual gamers alike. Paizo's Planet Stories® line of science fiction and fantasy novels promise thrilling adventure of the like not seen since the legendary pulps. Paizo.com is the leading online hobby retail store, offering tens of thousands of products from a variety of publishers to customers all over the world. In the seven years since its founding, Paizo Publishing has received more than a dozen major industry awards and has grown to become one of the most influential companies in the hobby games industry.

ABOUT REAPER MINIATURES
Reaper Miniatures is a worldwide leader in the design and casting of metal science fiction and fantasy miniature figurines. Based in Denton, Texas, Reaper products are available in fine hobby shops around the world.

Another big announcement from Reaper Minis

2009-07-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

For those of you who like to game with miniatures, but do not necessarily care to spend hours painting them, this might be of interest to you.

>>>> Official announcement from Reaper's web site <<<<<<

Reaper Miniatures is proud to announce the creation of a new miniatures company: Asylum Miniatures.

Asylum Miniatures is an independent company wholly owned by Reaper focused on the creation of pre-painted miniatures, games, and associated products.

Under its own banner, Asylum Miniatures will launch with and supply the Reaper Miniatures pre-painted plastic line Legendary Encounters™. Asylum Miniatures will also pursue the development of products and lines outside of the Reaper Miniatures core brands.

Offered in an open, non-blind, non-random format, Legendary Encounters™ pre-painted plastic miniatures will be packaged in Asylum Miniatures blister cards. Both single and multiple piece packs will be offered.

Asylum Miniatures will continue to draw upon Reaper's vast miniatures catalog of thousands of metal models to expand the Legendary Encounters™ miniature line.

From Ed Pugh (CEO of Reaper Miniatures): "This new company solves several problems Reaper has been facing concerning the creation, marketing, and brand awareness of our pre-painted products. Allowing Asylum Miniatures to operate independently of Reaper Miniatures will give management much more flexibility to create, market, and supply pre-painted miniatures, games, and products."

Asylum Miniatures -- what you need, when you need it!

Reaper Miniatures is a worldwide leader in the design and casting of metal science fiction and fantasy miniature figurines. Based in Denton, Texas, Reaper products are available in fine hobby shops around the world.

For more information about Reaper Miniatures, visit the Reaper Miniatures website at ReaperMini.com.

>>>> END QUOTES <<<<<<

I'm hoping that this will mean lots more new releases to add to the existing range of models we've seen in the Legendary Encounters™ line. Specifically, I'm hoping for MORE pre-painted orky goodness to further my plot of world domination...but that'll be our little secret.

Also drop by Reaper's store to get the freshly released (yesterday, as a matter of fact) Warlord 2nd Edition. I think you'll like it too.

A bit of half-orc nostalgia

2009-07-27T19:13:00.000-07:00

"I've been a half-orc almost as long as I can remember."

-Janara

I started playing D&D during the reign of 2nd edition, and of course there were no half-orcs in 2nd edition, not even in the Monstrous Manual as I recall it. So I had to bide my time playing halfling thieves and human barbarian fighters and yes..even an elf wizard. It's all true. I have the dog-eared character sheets to prove it.

Of course 3e came along and with it came my favored race. I mean, what's not to like about being a half-orc. You get a minus to your INT and CHA scores right away.... okay fine.. so maybe that's a bad example..but you get Darkvision, right? Oh..wait...so do all the other non-human humanoids..but hey, you get Orc Blood. But wait..that's not a good thing either. Wow, being a half-orc kinda sucks...except for the STR bonus. Now that I put it down in those terms, I wonder why all those disenfranchised half-orc players got so vocal when they had to wait a few extra months for their 4e 2nd Player Guide to come along so they could get their game back on. Being a Dragonborn ought to be so much cooler, right?

So..let's have a look at a 4e half-orc, shall we?

I've been following a PbP 4e game on the Reaper forum because 1) I don't want to be counted among the OSR pundits who hate the game but have never really played or even watched it being played and 2) the DM and players are all excellent roleplayers and writers and it should be an entertaining story to read.

I personally don't own any 4e books, but might download the quickstart to get a better perspective on what's going on in the PbP. Anyway, here's the character stats for Kaanite the 1st Level Half Orc Two-Weapon-Fightin' Ranger who just so happened to have once been a cat burglar.

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 20, Con 14, Dex 19, Int 14, Wis 17, Cha 13.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 18, Con 14, Dex 17, Int 14, Wis 17, Cha 13.

Huh? None of his scores even went down...and he gained DEX...and he has 31 HP starting out?!

And get a look at this!

TRAINED SKILLS
Dungeoneering +8, Acrobatics +9, Perception +8, Athletics +11, Stealth +9, Thievery +10 (+12 w/ Thieves tools)

Acrobatics and Stealth? NO WAY! This guy's TOTALLY UBER! And I say that with the utmost respect for the player (Hi there, Orcsoul) and with no disrespect toward the game. If it works for you and it makes you happy, then go play.

WHIIIIICH brings me slowly round to the point that I alluded to earlier. Early in this blog's archives, somebody corrected me on my assumption that there were no half-orcs before 3e. I had always assumed that it was the not the way of any reasonable game company to giveth and then to taketh away.

Once I joined the old-school, I really had no good reason to look through the AD&D Players Handbook. I was content to play my homebrew-hafforc and call it good, but curiosity got the best of me and I decided to have a look at a 1st edition half-orc for nostalgia's sake. I've made a few observations.

It's a man's world

And by "man" I mean huMAN. Every other race (including half-orcs) has a glass-ceiling in the form of level limits. These limits are based on class of course, but even among the non-human-humanoids, half-orcs get the shaft. A half-orc Cleric can only advance to 4th level...a Thief only to 8th..provided his/her DEX isn't less than 17, in which case he'll get stuck at 6th. The only class that favors half-orcs, the Fighter, limits them to 10th..which is higher than fighters of other races...except humans, of course. THEY can do ANYTHING...pth.

And it's a MAN'S world

By "man" I mean hi-honey-I'm-home-what's-for-dinner-I-wear-the-pants-in-this-household....that kind of man. On the Race Ability Score Minimums/Maximums, it was for some reason necessary to break those scores out by male and female. As you might have guessed, humans are excluded from this table because...well..they're human. They don't have limitations. Also you probably guessed it... almost all women are weaker....by an average of 1.6 points of STR below their male counterparts. I suppose as a self-liberated woman, I should at least be thankful that the gender difference is limited to STR. Even Gygax "knew better than to go there." Interestingly enough, the only race to NOT have weaker women-folk was the half-orcs. Yep, it kinda makes a girl proud. :D

It ain't no world for a half-orc girl, that's for sure

Half-Orcs:
Orcs are fecund and create many cross-breeds, most of the offspring of
such being typically orcish. However, some one-tenth of orc-human
mongrels ore sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human. Complete details
of orcs and crossbreeds will be found under the heading Orc in
ADVANCED DUNGEONS L DRAGONS, MONSTER MANUAL.
As it is assumed that player characters which are of half-orc race are
within the superior lo%, they have certain advantages

The description for Half-Elves is nothing like this. I mean, far be it from me to play a race-card, but this particular description about percentages and racial purity sound a lot less like the world of Tolkien and a bit more like the world of Alabama in the 1920s. Yeah I know it's only a game..a fantasy game at that, but in my opinion, D&D has certainly evolved in the right direction as far as sensitivity to race and gender are concerned.

_____________________

So, now I have actually defended 4e and then spoke disparagingly of 1e. I can almost imagine the angry mob gathering outside now with their torches and pitchforks and descending ACs to roast me on a spit.

On the other hand, I've had fun looking at a bit of D&D history.

RPG off-season and how to feed the need

2009-07-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

Due to various family circumstances, friends taking vacations, work schedule conflicts and whatnot, it has been almost two months since our group has played any of our ongoing RPG campaigns. We've met a time or two since then, but for other games, one of which is still in closed beta.

Which brings me with unusual swiftness right to the point.

What do you do when you, for whatever reason, can't get a game on?

In the past, I've fallen back on play-by-post online web forum games. Providing the players are all enthusiastic and share a common style of play (be it narrative, hack-and-slay, or even the much discussed "roll-play" attitude), these games can be a great outlet to sate the unrequited need for high adventure. But often these games fizzle because one or more players or even the game-master loses interest. Granted the same thing can happen with a face-to-face group, but the yawning and fidgeting usually cues you in. A PbP can sometimes lag for days or even weeks even if all players are still eager to continue. Eventually somebody will post "Are we still playing" in order to snap the game out of its slumber.

Of late though, PbP gaming has lost its popularity to more flashy graphics multi-player games (not naming names here) that grant the player instant gratification and in spite of all those jokes about MMRPG online gamers having teeny spans of attention, they still manage to be able to play for hours. That being the case, there's always somebody online to game with, even at 4 AM on a Tuesday. I may not speak on behalf of all traditional gamers, but I just can't keep an RPG session going that long or start one that late, even with stockpiles of Mountain Dew and triple-fudge brownies. Besides, my relic of a PC probably can't handle the software...and yeah, my OSR friends would revoke my membership card and glow-in-the-dark secret decoder ring.

And then there's the real-time online option. Depending on how sophisticated you and your buddies' computers and internet connections are, there are programs out there that can provide you with a virtual gametable map and virtual dice. For the rest of us who aren't quite so well-equipped or technologically savvy, there's still the opportunity to run a game in any ordinary chat application. Of course the beauty of that plan falls apart when one or more of your players is a slow typist or worse yet, completey incoherent in chat rooms.

KTHNX LOL?

So..for the past weeks I've been filling my usual gaming time with miniature painting and a good deal of blog reading. But I just can't bring myself to post on a regular basis about playing the games I love when I've not actually played lately. But I do want you, the Esteemed Reader, to know that I've not lost interest, nor have any of the guys in our group. We've just been busy. Life does that to a person from time to time.

With the real promise that regular game nights will resume at the end of this month, I am thinking it is time to once again prepare for that little one-off adventure I blogged about a few months ago. It'll do me good to get out the books again and shake some of the dust off of my imagination. It's been rather underworked lately.

Until my next blog ... sooner or later...hopefully.... I wish y'all happy gaming.

BIG news from Reaper Minis

2009-06-03T19:19:00.000-07:00

As you may recall a LONG time ago (or so it seems) I posted here that I was going to ReaperCon out in Denton, TX for a weekend of mini painting, gaming and being around lots of cool like-minded people. As it turns out, I had a great time, did some old-school RPGing, a bit of Pathfinder, got to watch some 4e being played, took tons of pictures, and talked quite a bit about Reaper's own tabletop fantasy game called Warlord...which brings me to good news.

Warlord has been revised and is slated for release later this summer. This isn't yet another pile of errata or repack of the same old game, but a complete new set of rules...so new that it is being called Warlord 2nd Edition (no 1.5 here, my friends). There's a brand-new cover art so you'll know it's the new edition, and below that is a snippet from the official Reaper web site's news.

Uses the same RAGE combat system as previous versions of the game.
Completely re-invented magic system that allows spellcasters to choose their spells during the game.
We got rid of all the little rules that either didn't get used, or were unnecessarily complex.
Reduced number of damage tracks for faster play.
Includes the 10 core factions that the first edition rulebook featured.
Remaining factions, as well as 5 brand new ones, will be featured in a follow-up book later this year.

(end quote)

Warlord in its beginnings was meant to be a quick skirmish game with simplified d10 combat, simple easy-to-learn rules, and each game model (made by Reaper of course) would come with its own data card with all the vital statistics needed for game play. And it was great fun, but as things often seem to go, it needed some "fixing" in order to make the game more fair as well as to add in more new models and factions and subfactions and new rules and new-improved data cards and ..... you get the picture. During the past three years or so, the game underwent so many changes that many players, myself included, lost interest and moved on to other things. And believe me, moving on was not easy. I loved that game. My husband and I along with many from our gaming group were part of the original beta play-test group and up until the first major revamp we played almost every Sunday. Then, when the first major revamp came along, we playtested that also, but in the end most of us agreed that too much of the game's selling points had been lost. It seems others felt the same way too, and eventually enough voices let themselves be heard that the game developers decided to take a second look at what made the game so popular in its original form, fixed what needed fixing, tossed out what didn't work, and gave us what we wanted.

To quote my mother, "dance with the one that brought you"

Right now, Warlord 2 is in the very last stages of open beta testing. The book and faction data are both being checked and double-checked to be sure that this WILL be the LAST new edition you'll be seeing for a long time. I'm very pleased with what I've seen and although I had no real hand in the development of WL2 aside from two years of grumbling about the state of the game I love, I am once again proud to recommend this game to anybody looking for some good tabletop skirmish fun.

The game itself is simple. You and your opponent(s) buy armies using points. You have some models that are leaders, others that are grunts who require leaders, some who are elites such as mages or heroes and some who are solos such as assassins or monsters. Rather than the old I-go-You-go, players activate one leader and troop or one solo at a time and player activation is determined randomly with chances based on total number of troops per player. Combat is done using d10s versus the opposed model's defense number, and offensive and defensive strikes take place simultaneously. The point-cost of all magic-users includes their spells, which are chosen from spell-lists as the game is being played. All you need to play is a few d10s, a measuring tape or small ruler, a dozen or two minis, the rule book, a 4X4 table, half an hour to an hour to kill, and a friend to play with.

The softcover rule book will be available July 27th. A hard-cover version shold be along not too long after. There will also likely be a PDF, but I'm not sure when that will be released.

___________

In other not-so-happy news, the reason I have been so long overdue in updating is that on May 20th, the day after we got back from Texas, Steve's father passed away of an apparant stroke. He died as he might've wished to..in his own home at his rocker chair with a book nearby. Since then, we've had much work to get done at his house and at ours, therefore not much time yet for gaming.

Steve's dad was very supportive of all of Steve's hobbies as well as mine. Paint-&-Play was one of our pursuits he particularly liked, saying that "Anything that gets kids and their parents to do things together is a good cause."

___________

I promise there's more exciting updates to come. I'm working on a fun paint project right now and there's some interesting RPG news in the works. I'll have more on both as soon as I can. I also hope to be doing a review soon on Mythmere Games' new Swords & Wizardry monster manual, which just came available on Lulu this past week.

Tips for photographing your gaming models

2009-05-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know there's a few of you out there who don't use miniatures in your games, and that's perfectly okay. These tips and suggestions can be applied to any sort of closeup or "macro" photography, or even if you just want to upload a few images of some things you want to sell on eBay.

The most common problem to overcome for most beginning photography seems to be getting the light just right. Sometimes the subject of the photo is too dark or the backdrop too bright. Other times the whole picture takes on a yellowy hue no matter what colour backdrop you use or what sort of white-balance setting you set your camera for.

There are three things that almost EVERY experienced photographer can agree on.

Multiple light sources help prevent distracting shadows
If natural daylight is unavailable, then "natural daylight" bulbs are the next best thing. Most yellow or red shift is caused by overexposing the subject under tungsten lamps.
Avoid mixing the types of light if possible. This makes white-balancing much easier.
Diffusing the light helps prevent glaring bright spots or reflections on the subject
Do not use the flash if you can possibly avoid it

If you're not much of a DIY person, there are a good number of home studio lighting kits available online. This one by Digital Concepts is quite popular and affordable, though I'm told that getting replacements for the lamps is difficult to impossible. There's also the XPRO Light Cube and other similar products out there. Unlike the first style I linked to, the cube allows you to light from any direction including underneath. Of course the lamps are sold seperately.

If you're a bit more inclined to making your own, there are some darn good tutorials out there to help you. I've also designed one of my own, which I have posted on my photography blog. (Yeah, I have other hobbies too. LOL)

No matter what sort of camera you use (including a camera phone), there are a few basic things you can do to make better photos.

Use a tripod or some other sturdy platform rather than "hand-held" if possible
If your camera has a shutter timer or remote shutter control, use that instead. Shaky hands make blurry photos.
Know your camera. Read the manual and learn its capabilities and limitations.You might be pleasantly surprised.

Being aware of your camera's focal range is important. Most cameras have the macro function (the one with the tulip) that lets you get a bit closer, but in most cases, six or eight inches is as close as you will be able to go. Fortunately, most modern cameras have high enough pixel resolution that a photo of a single elf archer from two feet away can be cropped so that the subject fills a typical web 400X300 pixel image.

For taking photos of games in progress, the real challenge is to do so without interrupting the game unnecessarily. This is when you may find you need to use the built-in flash. A simple way to avoid overexposed washed-out or red-eyed subjects in those situations is to diffuse the built-in flash. I've used everything from a folded slip of waxed paper to a potato chip can lid and got decent results.

Again, a tripod always helps. If you don't want to be bothered with using a tabletop tripod, you can use a plain old soda can to steady your camera upon. (Chances are there's an empty soda can sitting around the gametable somewhere.)

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING to remember is that you are there first and foremost to play games. If your friends tell you to put that darn camera away, listen to them. Pictures are meant to capture a good time, not to spoil it.

Anyway, I hope this post can be of help to somebody. HOPEFULLY I will resume a more directly game-related pattern of posting after ReaperCon. There I'll be playing in several RPGs including one Swords & Wizardry advenure. I'll also be hob-nobbing with a lot of talented painters, fellow RPG enthusiasts, tournament gamers and nice folks in general.

Here's a picture made using my own light box.

orcs of ubiquity (Reaper Legendary Encounter pre-painted minis
And yeah...when I get back from ReaperCon, I'll be posting tons of photos.

Mindless fun.... Ubiquitous Orc style!

2009-04-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

..and JUST when you thought this blog was getting all booknosey and educated-like, I've found you a new time-waster.

When you finally have had enough complex plot twists, overdeveloped characters, laboriously-custom-designed game settings and all the multicultural and multinational intrigue they entail..and you just wanna go on a rampage, then Shotgun Orc's the game for you.

Yeah..it's free, and it's in my sidebar right over there. >>

You gotta scroll down, but trust me it's there. I just lost an hour of valuable house-cleaning time because of it.

Basically, you're an orc. You've found a shotgun, and because you're an orc with a shotgun, you get to shoot people..mostly knights, wizards, elves and the like....hopefully before they can get a whack or shot or spell at you. The game is multilingual so you can play in English, Swedish or Japanese. Sorry, elves. It don't speak Sindarin.

Book Review - Orcs, by Stan Nicholls

2009-04-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Around a week or so ago, a friend of mine was in a Books-A-Million and saw a copy of Orcs, by Stan Nicholls, and in his own words "If I didn't get it for Spike, she'd kill me." ..and also in his own words was initially compelled by "the badass orc on the cover".

Yeah...I was smitten too. And that was without even reading it.

As the blurb promises, this book will change how you feel about orcs..unless of course you are like me..but then, few are. Anyhoo, this is a story of the Wolverines, an elite warband of orc fighters, who are sent on a quest by a particularly wicked half-human queen who needs a magical artifact in order to further her evilness. After an unexpected delay in returning the queen's prize, the orcs realize they have likely brought her wrath down upon themselves and soon find themselves branded as renegades. Next thing they know, they are on the run from everybody including a trio of bounty hunters, a band of human religious fanatics, and a small army of orcs who still remain loyal to the queen.

These aren't Tolkien's orcs, nor WoTC's orcs, nor Blizzard Entertainment's orcs. If you are expecting brutish thugs who kill for the sake of killing, have low Intelligence scores, and speak gratuitous Cockney, then you'll probably be disappointed. These orcs never say "WAAAAGH", nor "Zugzug", though they do freely drop some of the more choice four-letter words. After all they are still orcs.

Without giving too much away, the story's "plot" almost takes a back seat to the real story, which is in my opinion about different perspectives of race relations and intolerance. The world of Maras-Dantia is a place gripped by spreading chaos. Glaciers are quickly advancing upon civilisation and the world seems to be dying. Worse yet, the magic that once coursed through the earth in ley lines has been bled almost dry. And it would seem the humans are to blame. Of course there are many races of beings in this world, but the course of their history has pitted the elder races and their many gods against the humans and their one god. Of course not all humans are "the bad guys", and throughout the story there are plenty of situations in which various characters learn to put their differences behind them and work together. During their adventure, the Wolverines (including a dwarf sergeant) encounter gremlins, pixies, brownies, centaurs, goblins, trolls, friendly humans, bad orcs, and even a dragon or two.

The battle scenes are quite embellished; a good thing for those of you who enjoy the works of Robert "Two Guns Bob" Howard. And so are some of the vignettes concernign the bloody rituals of the wicked queen. This isn't a book for the youngsters or the faint-hearted. If you don't care for adult language and some adult content, you may want to pass this one over. I'd say it's rated M14 at the very least.

The book picture above is actually a trio of shorter novels bound into an omnibus publication. A second trio of books bound under the title "Orcs - Bad Blood" should be coming available right about now. and I for one will be on the lookout for it.

The Seven Minute Orc

2009-04-14T20:53:00.000-07:00

For some, painted miniatures are an essential part of the role playing experience. Back in the Long-Time-Ago when old-school was still new-school and TSR was known for historical games, it was necessary to improvise and compromise, because very few manufacturers of miniatures delved into fantasy at all, and those that did ran a rather limited repertoire of models to pick from. Luckily, the hobby grew, and so has selection. Nowadays you can not only find just about any creature imaginable to stock your dungeon, but if you shop around, chances are there's a model that can represent fairly well just about any player-character a player can conjure.

Of course, not only have miniatures "grown up" a bit in the last 30 years, but so has the hobby of painting them. Once, you could slap a quick base coat of model paint on an unprimed mini, and so long as the other guys at the table could easily guess what your mini represented, then you had succeeded. These days, however, mini painting has become an art form, complete with its own "masters" and numerous arenas of competition such as CoolMiniOrNot.com have sprung up so that novice painters can have their self-esteem put into proper perspective publicly..for better or for worse. There are painters who sell single painted minis for upwards of $300 apiece and often sink 40 hours or more into the mini to do so. (Do the math... minimum wage?) But the craziest thing to come about in the world of minis is that people actually paint the darn things and then DON'T PLAY WITH 'EM!

Three years ago or so, on the occasion of an upcoming local "convention" my husband and I organized, it was decided by mutual insanity that we should have a massive miniature skirmish game involving a single unified orcish horde taking on all the other races of the fantasy world. It was just a few weeks until the Con, and we were a few score orcs short..and he went to painting. My kitchen table looked like some kind of Isengard assembly line with queues of unpainted orcs lined up waiting for their latex makeovers. And of course he started bragging about how fast he could finish one. "I can paint an orc in seven minutes..quicker than you can make cake-frosting." said he. "Put up or shuddup!" said I, and I got my camera and stopwatch.

When I uploaded the video (no sound, bad focus, old camera) to Reaper Miniatures' forum, I think it scared some folks. He might be what you call an old-school painter. He doesn't use any of those fancy-schmancy Liquitex additives. He don't wash his brush in between colours, and he paints straight from the pot..sometimes even mixing colours in the lids. If he were any more old-school, he'd be pre-school..using his fingers and wearing a plastic smock.

So that year, at ReaperCon '05, somebody (Reaper Kit, I think) asked him to repeat his seven-minute orc feat in a much higher quality video with sound and titles and narrative and all kinds of groovy things. A few days ago, I got permission to repost the video to YouTube.

So...here it is..... kinda like Saruman.

Enjoy!

Magical item - Hammer-pants - +3 to bustin' dope rhymes

2009-04-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

And you were expecting something enlightening and/or sophisticated here? No?

The topic came up on Mythmere's S&W message forum about the alleged negative impact of the term "old-school", in which I responded with my $.o2 concerning the culture I grew up in. Methinks some folks are missing the difference between "old-school" and "old farts". But then The Venomous Pau came in behind me and REALLY "took 'em back to school" on the subject.

Here's quotage.

by The Venomous Pao on Thu Apr 09, 2009 8:12 am

Spike beat me to the punch on mentioning the Hip Hop connotations of the phrase (nice work, Spike!), so I'll just echo the sentiment.

{beatbox}

Old School is cool, I must insist,
not negative, nor exclusionary
Brothers are whack if they resist
and claim the phrase is too contrary

Step back y'all and roll the dice
The way they did in seventy fo'
Don't need no lists of skills and feats
Just play the game, let imagination flow

Yo elf! Whatcha class?
I'm a martial striker with seven ranks in rules lawyer...
No, elf! Whatcha class?
Um, I'm a Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User with nwops in rope use?
NO, ELF! Whatcha class?
I'm an elf, pure and simple
Don't need no incidentals
I kick it hard, the old school way
Tomorrow I fight but I cast spells today

Word.

Step back y'all and roll the dice
The way they did in seventy fo'
Don't need no lists of skills and feats
Just play the game, let imagination flow

East Austin Represent, Yo!

{beatbox}

WHO SAYS there's no Bards in Original Edition!

The Perfect Campaign

2009-04-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

For those of you who just dropped in from RPGBN or other quality places, there's no doubt you've already read the news about WoTC's move to pull all WoTC-related PDFs from the various download sites such as Drive-Thru RPG and Paizo...and you probably also have heard the sad news concerning the ailing Dave Arneson. The fact that the former event has had the poor taste to concur with the latter event only makes both seem worse.

Therefore I will not try to contribute any furhter commentary on either. To quote that song by REM, "Let's try and find a happy game to play."

So, how about a campaign that lasts a long time? Yeah, I suppose we'd all like something like that, so I'm not really bringing any new suggestions to the table here. I've been playing on-and-off for a little over ten years and have yet to get a character past 5th level, not because she gets killed or retires, but because the campaign just fizzles out. Sometimes it's because one or more players leaves the group, or maybe the GM just gets bored. It's hard to say, but it just happens. And it has happened so often that I actually have a sense of dread for my poor character who has just reached 5th level. Rather the same sense of dread one feels when the 3-year bumper-to-bumper warranty has just run out and there's a strange new noise coming from the transmission. But what makes this so funny is that in all honesty I really do not care so much about gaining levels as I care about gaining experience. And when I say experience I'm not talking about XP either. I mean real campaign-setting worldly adventuring experience of the kind that turn ordinary game sessions into memorable stories and perhaps legends.

So how about a campaign where more XP is needed to gain levels? Or maybe let XP only count half? Yeah sure it would make the game take twice as long, but think of the extra time spent as opportunity for character development and growth. If I had my way in that regard, the game referee would not need to spend near so much time coming up with "epic" level encounters to challenge the player characters. Of course after a while, players might get bored with fighting the same level of creatures, so it would be up to the referee to find new ways to make the gaining of XP more challenging without pouring on more creatures or badder creatures. Players who like "kobold bashing" or "grinding" probably would not enjoy playing in my Perfect Campaign.

So, how about lots of new traps, monsters never before encountered in anybody's 'manuals", and maybe some new and imaginative cursed items to place in the path of ambitious PCs? Okay, so there would be players grumbling about "killer referees" spoiling the game for them. So maybe the ref should find other ways to challenge the players besides with deadly combat. Maybe the players could face other challenges that involve non-combat abilities. Maybe these could even help earn XP for the players if they succeed. We could call them "skill challenges"...........or maybe not!

So how about skills? Yeah okay I can see a few of you fellow old-schoolers rolling your eyes at me for such heresy. But seriously, there comes a time in a well-developed character's career that he or she has scaled enough walls, picked enough locks, or practiced his lute enough that he deserves a small bonus whether his chosen class dictates so or not. Now I know there are folks that play versions of The Game in which skills are bought with XP..and that's fine, but so much can be said for the personal satisfaction of having earned a skill through practice and mastery rather than having paid for it via a game mechanism. And maybe the character does not even know when he's actually achieved mastery of a new skill. Maybe it's the ref's little secret and the player is left to figure out that lately something has gotten a little bit easier to do.

So how about a sort of character sheet for the ref? Now I see you new-schooler folks rolling your eyes at me (all theee of you) and wondering why in heck anybody would spend so much time developing a character just to give control of that character over to the referee. Of course the player gets to keep a character sheet. I don't want the ref having to do all the work, but there are certain things about one's self that most people do not know. Remember the first time you ever successfully hit a baseball? Did you know your batting average at the time? Okay, so sports metaphors might be lost on a few of us, since we gamers don't like to venture out of our social stereotypes for fear of being penalized as 'multiclass', but you get the point, right? To quote Han Solo (perhaps a more familiar icon to us), "Never tell me the odds."

And that, my friends, would be The Perfect Campaign. It might be winter of 2025 before poor Janara the *cough* Fighting-Man has her own Barony, but dangit, the getting-there would make for one helluva saga.

So in closing..tomorrow is game-night once again after a three-weeks layoff. Perhaps a Level Drain spell awaits?

Also, remember Dave Arneson and his family in your prayers or meditations. Like others have said more eloquently than I can, his contributions to our hobby are great and he deserves to be memorialized with the perpetuation of the game he helped create.

Fight on!

"More money than sense" -- Carousing Mishaps from Fight On magazine #4

2009-03-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

For those of you not yet "in the know", Fight On! magazine is a quarterly fan-zine "for fantasy role playing campaigns played with pencil, paper, and your imagination". Each issue so far has been packed with campaign ideas, dungeons, character and class ideas, randomization tables and lots of artwork..the latest issue being no exception.

Now...like it says in my blog's little credo in the margins, I don't pretend to be any sort of authority on the history of RPGs or have some deep insight into how the game has changed. Heck, I freely admit that I still haven't committted to memory the timeline of the evolution of The Game We Love from the little brown books to present...and I also stated quite recently and truthfully that THACO does my head in. I've never lunched with Gary Gygax, killed a purple worm, or even made it past fifth level.

BUT I know what I like in a game or game setting. I enjoy random and often stupid fun, whether it be at the expense of myself or some other poor player character. Leave it to Jeff Reints to come up with a random table for players who wish to spend their looted gold out on the town in order to build their reputations (and in theory gain a few experience points in doing so). The complete article can be found in Fight On! #4, so I won't spoil it for you, but I will provide a quick example of how it works.

Let us suppose that you, the Esteemed Reader, are a human barbarian named Gorn The Crusher*. Let us suppose that you have just survived a fortnight in The Endless Tunnels of Enlandin and want to spend all your hardly-earned gold on whiskey, whores and Texas Hold-'em..and maybe just waste the rest. Let us also suppose that a few hundred XP is all that stands between you and the power and glory that is fourth level.

First, roll a d6 to see how many hundred gold pieces you spend. This also tells you how many hundreds of points of XP you will gain through increased reputation IF you survive the night.

Much to real-life, tying a drunk-on in a larger city affords you the chance to double or triple your chance to earn reputation as well as empty your pockets.

And also true to real-life, if your character "can't hold his poison", then you better be ready for the worst....and of course "the worst" is defined by a random dice table.

So...our imaginary Gorn goes into town and spends 300 gold pieces .... but fails his saving throw against poison. "Shouldda stuck to wine coolers, aye?".

What happens next?

"13 - Target of lewd advances turns out to be a witch. Save versus polymorph or you're literally a swine."

Mind you there are also some good things that can happen to you too...but you'd likely have to hear about it second-hand because you can't remember a bloody thing after that last tankard of orcish mushroom elixer.

But who cares..you're now 4th level... even if you ARE a pig.

The entire Carousing Mishaps table is just as entertaining, and can make for some fun role playing opportunities in the hands of an imaginative game referee. This and other great articles are all in Fight On! #4. You might also enjoy the Dungeon Home Remedies article and the random table of Magical Weapon Drawbacks.

Get Fight On! #4 in printed format and help it reach first place in the Lulu monthly top-author contest. Right now the editor, under the name Ignatius Umlaut, is firmly ensconced at #2. Seeing pen-and-paper RPG stuff in the limelight makes me think we're maybe doing something good around here. :D

* Any relation to player-characters living, dead, undead, or otherwise is purely intentional.

Descending Armor Class ....Does ANYBODY still use it?

2009-03-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

In my ongoing education toward becoming a game master (dungeon master, referee, labyrinth lord or whichever you prefer), I've been reading my Swords & Wizardry Core Rules book from front to back to be sure I'm not confusing my recollection of the rules I am going to use with tidbits from any of the other RPG systems I've played.

Then I got to the part about Armor Class and how to use ascending and descending AC charts in combat...and felt compelled to thank my lucky stars that our group has always chosen ascending AC whenever we have been offered the choice.

Okay..a quick refresher course in old-school weirdness for those of you who are late coming to the party and can't remember back to the times before there were Feats and when Half-Orcs were only allowed to be monsters.

For some odd reason, back in the early days of The Game We All Know, it seemed like a good idea to let the lack of armour be represented by 9, and the very best magical protection to be represented by a -9.

Uh-huh... less is more.... makes sense to me.

So in the beginning when there was combat, and you were a first level Fighting Person,and you wanted to attack an orc with an AC of 6, you consulted a table and saw that you needed to roll a 13.

Then along came THACO. (That's "To Hit Armor Class 0") in the 2nd edition of The Game We All Know, and suddenly each character had their own special "to hit" number based on what type of character they were and how large their group was. Of course there were tables provided to find your THACO number. Then, when facing an orc with AC 6, all you had to do was take your THACO number and subtract the orc's AC from it to know what you had to roll. This was ..and I'm quoting here.. "speed the play of combat greatly"

Ummm.. oookay... so I subtract... unless of course the orc is armoured like a tank with AC-5...in which case I add...right? Math is haaaard. I'm just a girrrrrrl!

Then somewhere around the end of the last century, some lazy person like myself got the bright idea to flip-flop the AC so that it goes up instead of down as you add on armour, and then to give your character a "Base Attack Bonus" instead of making you consult another table. I mean seriously... if we wanted to consult charts and tables all night long, we'd be playing Bosses & Board Rooms.

Well...getting back to the here and now..and closer to my elusive point...I was reading through S&W Core Rules and came across the bit about ascending and descending...and how you can either use the table as it was intended OR if you choose to use ascending AC, a simple formula..which I will quote.

"Here’s how it’s done: each character class gains
a base “to-hit” bonus as their levels increase. Add this
bonus to your attack roll, and if the result is equal to or
greater than the opponent’s AC, the attack hits."

And somewhere, some poor schmuck is going NOW WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT!

Now I normally consider myself to be just weird enough that I can actually find the bizarre logic behind just about anything, no matter how silly..but this one has me stumped. Perhaps descending AC is legacy rules from some old mothbally tactical historical game that TSR wrote back when TSR used to write such things..or maybe somebody wanted to make the math unnecessarily complicated so that non-nerds would shrink back in fear upon encountering such esoteric arithmatic.

But far be it from me to pontificate about which method of AC numbering is "right" and which isn't. I certainly don't mean to say anybody out there needs to change if they prefer the descending method...but I am genuninely curious as to why.

____

And for what it's worth, in the two years I played 2nd edition The Game, I NEVER was able to totally wrap my head around THACO. I'd just grin stupidly and allow the DM to tell me how badly I flubbed the attack and to which corner of the room my sword flew from my hand.

You want me to run a game? Are you NUTS?

2009-03-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know already, my husband has been playing various RPGs for almost as long as I've been on this Earth, and is, at least in my opinion, pretty good at it. When he's not running our group's games, we have a second referee who I will hereafter refer to as Unglef, who has taken us through some pretty imaginative homebrewed adventures of his own. Being that I have as much fun as I do playing in the styles of games that both of them like to run, I have long wanted to try my own skills behind the game screen.

About two years ago, I finally got up the courage to start an online forum play-by-post game, and was thrilled to find four eager players. The adventure was one I had played in before, and was very well composed and seemingly dummyproof. I spent about two weeks getting together player handouts (html files, actually) and drawing up maps and other stuff, and the game got off to a fabulous start... but as unluck would have it, two of my players almost immediately dropped from sight, and I didn't have the heart to spend another month wrangling replacements.

That was two years ago though..and that was third edition. Since then, I've discovered retro-RPGs and am fortunate once again to have a few face-to-face friends who work reasonably regular schedules and who are eager to get a game in at the drop of a hat.

So I'm going to give it a try again. This time I'm picking a small low-level adventure from IridiaZine, an online weekly fanzine which features content on all sorts of RPGs both current and out-of-print. The adventure is called "The Abandoned Shrine of Weyoun the Wanderer" and at first read-through looks like it will suit our group's style just fine. I'm hoping that a face-to-face session will, unlike PbP, move fluidly and keep the PCs focused.

But there's one problem... and that is ME!

The guys in my group aren't nOObs. They're not powergamers either, but they know their stuff far better than I do. They know the tables and charts by heart and NOTHING gest past those guys. So I'm doing my homework, folks. I've downloaded OpenOffice so I can make use of the numerous spreadsheet game-aides available (Thnx, Chgowiz) and am reading through S&W Core Rules, adapting encounter stats appropriately, making game notes, and crossing my fingers I don't come off looking like a complete pea-wit.

I'm giving myself two weeks.

And I promise I will blog all about it... come what may. If nothing else, you all are in for some good old fashioned low comedy.

Swords & Wizardry Core Rules-2nd Printing now available!

2009-03-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

The post below is "straight from the horse's mouth"

Press Release
Swords & Wizardry Project
http://www.swordsandwizardry.com
mythmere at yahoo dot com

I’m very proud to announce that the second printing of the Swords & Wizardry Core Rules is now available for free download here: Free PDF of Core Rules and that print versions are for sale (and super-cheap) at Lulu.com at our storefront

Swords & Wizardry is an OGL “retro-clone” of the original fantasy roleplaying game created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The Core Rules also contain some selected material from the supplements (1974-1978). With a thriving internet community and tons of support products, Swords & Wizardry is bringing back a lost style of fantasy roleplaying. Forget huge rulebooks - just play. If you can imagine it, you can do it in Swords & Wizardry. The rules are simple and quick to learn, and they are infinitely flexible and expandable. Take the basic framework and “Imagine the hell out of it!”

Swords & Wizardry is supported by Knockspell Magazine, the quarterly magazine of fantasy retro-clone gaming, and by the active forums at http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/forum.

We downloaded the free PDF today, even though we already have the older version (as many of my wisest readers do also)..and the new artwork is astounding. Some needed corrections and clarifications have been added as well as a little new as-yet-unseen material. If you've not updated yet, you should..and if you've not gotten ANY of the previous S&W products, you REALLY need to check this game out. It's just that good.

A fun blog-quiz for roleplayers

2009-03-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

This one got sent to me years ago on LiveJournal..and is lots of fun, especially if you play a wide range of characters in a wide range of RPG systems.

FIRST..

Name 10 characters you have played in RPGs, before looking at the questions that follow. List your characters numbered 1 to 10, including the name of the RPG you played them in and maybe character class/race if applicable. Once you've picked your 10 characters, look at the questions and answer accordingly. (No peeking until you've picked your characters!)

>
>
>
>
>
.... hey..no peeking unless you've made your list already.
>
>
>
>
>
>

THE QUESTIONS..

Who would make a better professor, 6 or 1?

Do you think 2 is hot?

2 sends 8 on a mission. What is it and does it succeed?

What is (or woudl be) 9's favourite book?

Would it make more sense for #4 ) to swear fealty to #6, or the other way around?

For some reason #5 is looking for a roommate. Should they share a studio apartment with #9 or #10?

#2 #7 and #3 have dinner together. Where do they go and what do they discuss?

#3 challenges #10 to a duel. What happens?

If #1 stole #9's most precious possession, how would they get it back?

Suggest a title for a story in which both #10 and #4 attain what they most desire.

What kind of plot device would you use if you wanted #1 and #3 to work together?

If #7 visited you for the weekend, how would you get along?

If you could command #1 to perform any task for you, what would it be?

Does anyone on your friends list resemble #5 (either in appearance or personality)?

If #2 had to choose sides between #4 and #5, who would it be?

What might #10 shout while charging into battle?

If you chose a song to represent #8 what song would it be?

#1 , #6 and #7 are having dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. There is only one scallion pancake left, and they all reach for it at the same time. Who gets to eat it?

What might be a good pick-up line for #2 to use on #10?

What would #5 ) most likely be arrested for?

What is #6's secret?

If #8 and #9 were racing to a destination, who would get there first?

If you had to walk home through a bad neighborhood late at night, would you feel safer in the company of #1 or #10?

#7 and #9 reluctantly team up to save the world from the threat posed by #4's sinister secret organization. #6 volunteers to help them, but it is later discovered that he/she is actually a spy for #4. Meanwhile, #4 has kidnapped #9 in an attempt to force their surrender. Following the wise advice of # 5, they seek out #3, who gives them what they need to complete their quest. What title would you give this story?

_____

I'll likely post my own results up in a few days or so ... giving myself a chance to forget the questions so it doesn't skew how I order my list.

More fun in the "City Stake of the Unvisible Ogre-Lord"

2009-03-04T19:46:00.000-08:00

A few posts back I mentioned that our regular gaming group had begun a new adventure using Labyrinth Lord and the Wilderlands Of High Fantasy campaign setting. We all thought it might be fun to run an all-thieves campaign set in a city, and the City State Of The Invincible Overlord seemed like as good a place as any to find trouble.

First, a bit of additional character background. Gund is a rather gruff and mistrusting fella, even by Dwarf standards. But he's the voice of common sense in our group and therefore is sort of the leader..kind of like Moe of the Three Stooges...nyak-nyak-nyak!

Then there's Leif the mage and his watch-doggie Mylo. We do not yet know much about Leif except that he fancies himself to be a good-looking gent and a real ladies' man. He's right smart..but kind of unpredictable. I have no idea why he bought a guard dog, because then there's that ever-present problem of "Where's Mylo" whenever we are in a no-dogs-allowed tavern or worse yet, when we're trying to sneak in or out of a place.

Then there's Burzug, who prefers to be called simply "Zug". She's darn nimble, fairly strong and even somewhat clever... and wise... and has a decent constitution. Suffice to say Charisma is her dump stat, so she's got what you might call a face only an orc-mommy could love. She's not much for conversation either, and according to later more "rulesy" versions of Our Favourite Roleplay Game, would not be very good at intimidation either. Lucky for her she don't care too much for following the rules.

Finally, we have our newcomer, who calls himself Larry. He joined the plot already in progress, which as we all know can make for some interesting retro-continuity fixing or at the very least some awkward introductions. Larry is played by my good buddy Chris, who also plays with us under the name "Gavin the Archer".

So we're in a tavern right where we left off, and Gund has gone nosing over to another table to drop eaves on a couple of men in military dress who are revealing a bit more information about a plot-hook concerning a stolen horse. While Gund and the NPCs are chatting, poor Larry (Chris) is sitting at our table (on my sofa) casting odd glances at the robed human and the cloaked half-orc (looking at me and Shane with a bemused and confused look on his face as he oft does).

"Whoozat?", Zug asks the mage, hooking a thumb toward the non-conversant newcomer.

Then for the next ten minutes while Gund is entertained by the game referee, Zug and Leif argue back and forth over exactly how long "Quiet Larry" has been with the group. Zug begins to think that perhaps she has spent a bit more time passed-out-drunk than she had originally calculated. And then Gund returns to the group.

"Who be you?", he asks the newcomer, who promptly introduces himself as Larry. Then follows another ten minutes of trying to figure out whether Larry is one of Leif's old friends or just some nutty guy who has took it upon himself to do a bit of social networking at the tavern beginning with our table.

Eventually, however, we get around to the "truth" that Larry is also a thief..and he proves so by pinching the napkin from the dwarf's lap undetected. Now, far be it from me to further any racial stereotypes here, but a napkin?... from a dwarf's lap? Yeah..you get the picture too.

Surprisingly mostly of all to himself, he succeeds in doing so..and whether it be Larry's strange wit, the house mead, or the need to move things along in the game, we agree to let him join our little group, at which point Gund relates to us all that the men in military dress told him about the stolen horse, the other valuables that were also taken, and then speculates upon the possibility of a reward or at least something worthwhile for our troubles.

Fast-forward to a few hours later... well after dark...and our band of thieves..and don't forget Mylo.. are investigating the stables from which the horse was stolen. A city guardsman approaches the group and asks what it is they are looking for here at such a late hour. Larry, being the self-appointed spokesperson for the four, says "We're looking for beaver cheese!" *

*Beaver cheese is apparently one of the items on the menu at one of the City's more low-brow dining establishments according to the game-master's guide....a tidbit of local information that our game ref felt he had to share with us lest the adventurers never find that particular eatery on their own

Larry did eventually recover from a swift clubbing to his manhood by the guardsman, but maybe has learned how to better respect (or pretend to respect) the local authorities.

So, after the appropriate bribes are given, the guardsman reveals new vital information on the possible whereabouts of the horse thief we are seeking. The next problem is how to get out of the walled City in the middle of the night while the gates are all still closed. The laws don't look kindly on folks scaling the City walls, but the trail won't stay hot forever. The group hatches a plan to use one of Leif's Sleep spells to thoroughly neutralize a particularly slackish patrol and then make their escape.

"Where's Mylo?", Gund asks as the four prepare to climb over and out.

"Guess you gonna carry him?", Zug interjects, doubtful dogs can scale such walls.

Strangely enough, you can actually get a live guard dog into a backpack. Whether he decides to bark about it is entirely up to fate though. Fortunately fate was kind, and the dog behaved.. at least for that moment.

Well...they caught up to the horse thief in an outlying village. The group had found what they suspected to be his hideout and tried to sneak closer... but the dog started barking..and next thing they know one of the horse-thief's henchmen is staring us down and asking who we are.

So..what does a hafforc girl with a Charisma of 6 do?

"I'm with him", says Zug, pointing at Leif.

Meanwhile Gund thwacks the henchman upside the head with his quarterstaff and lays him out cold like a mackerel.

Not exactly what you'd call high strategy..but if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, then you baffle 'em with bullstuff.

In the end, we were able to capture the horse thief and return the stolen goods (well..most of the stolen goods) to the righttul owners for a decent reward. Gund, under the assumed name of Barry, explained how it all happened to the city guards..conveniently forgetting to mention the sneaking-over-the-walls part or the part where they found a huge stash of stolen gold in the thief's hideout.

And what about the dog?

Poor Mylo tried to be a good war dog, but in the end gave his life to save the life of his master. Leif is now thinking of taking his share of the liberated gold and buying a more practical animal for his particular specialized line of work.. something like a trained weasel or ferret.

The group has survived another night in the City... but there are as yet hundreds of new beginnings to new adventures out there in the sandbox waiting. I'll be tagging this and all future related gameblogs with "Invincible Overlord". Hopefully we'll be playing that campaign on a more regular basis soon, as I am really enjoying the group dynamics of this one.

Song of Blades and Heroes - tabletop fantasy miniature skirmish game review

2009-02-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

My husband is a self-proclaimed game collector, and a few nights ago he came across this gem of a fantasy tabletop game while surfing around Drive-Thru RPG looking for some new and exciting way to spend our tiny gaming budget. Being married to a self-proclaimed game collector, I am usually the one who gets to be his crash-test-dummy as he tries out the various games he has picked up through the years.... and having suffered not-very-quietly through some fairly boring evenings of pushing little metal men around on a grass mat while trying to figure out if it was still my turn or looking over a page full of stats trying to see if my leader failed his morale check... *yawn*.... you can trust me when I say this game is the best five bucks we've spent in a long long time.

After one session of play last night, here is what I find so exciting about SBH.

Armies
The only rules governing how you build your army are 1) the amount of points-cost-total that you and your opponent agree upon and 2) no more than 1/3 of your total army point cost can be spent on "personality" models such as leaders, special monsters or heroes. Also there is a huge list of characters to pick from and even more in other system suppliments.

Initiative
The turns are not I-go-you-go, nor is initiative decided by drawing random markers from a bag. Each model has a "quality" number between 1 and 6. High numbers are better. Both players roll a d6 to see who goes first..then the one with initiative can choose to roll between one and three d6s to activate the model of his/her choice. Matching or beating the model's quality number allows the model a single action for each successful die rolled. Rolling two failing dice means the initiative goes to the other player on the next turn. Therefore there is a degree of risk in trying to take multiple actions with a single model. Making and predicting strategy is much more difficult, but then again, this IS a skirmish game, not Waterloo.

After several failed attempts to win in combat against a stubborn door, the goblin sneak succeeds in smashing down the recalcitrant barrier and finding the rope bridge.

Hit Points
There ARE NO hit points. You either get killed, pushed back, or knocked down, but you CAN get back up again (like the Chumbawumba song says) if you get the initiative and can roll a successful activation. Having no fiddly wound markers to keep up with lets you focus more on playing and less on tracking all your models' hit points.

Moving
You don't have to play on grid or hex paper or worry needlessly with how to measure movement around a corner. There is a simple movement measuring tool that works for all models in the game, and only one straight-line movement may be taker per model action. While this may seem to slow down play in a dungeon setting, the simplification is worth the slowdown.

The skeletons begin crossing the bridge after their archers fail to remove the green menace from the cavern on the other side of the chasm.

Other Stuff
I've not personally read through the rulebook yet. But my husband tells me there are charts for filling in all sorts of dungeon essentials such as treaures and traps; and that there are campaign rules that let my models become MORE heroic as they survive more battles.

Fast, Fun, Dummyproof
Our game took a little more than an hour to play, much more due to the mazelike nature of our cavern labyrinth than anything game-mechanics related. I had ten goblinoid models. He had ten (IIRC) assorted undead types. All the model data I needed was on one easy-to-comprehend player sheet, and I only needed my three d6s and my movement-measurer to play. After just a few turns I had the hang of how initiative works and how combat resolves, and after that, it was almost like roleplaying...complete with teasing, taunting, and obnoxious warcries from the ubiquitous orcs.

This orc bravely attempts to slay the recumbent wraith hero, only to later end up himself in orc-heaven while his surviving victorious compatriots drink to his memory and squabble over his gear.

The Song of Blades and Heroes game, as well as the game system, makes its web-home right here on Blogspot. There you can find links to buy all their PDF downloads as well as links to their Lulu print-on-demand store. If nothing else, you should go there just to check out the fantastic cover artwork.

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing if I can somehow find a way to work my orcish horde into the Arthurian or Robin Hood legends. If I do, you'll definitely hear about it here first.

Blogspot REPLY issue..and a temporary fix

2009-02-23T19:31:00.000-08:00

Many of you have likely experienced difficulties posting replies to other peoples' blogs today. The "Captcha" word verification image never finishes loading.

For those of you who have had an unusual lack of comments on your blogs, but who don't care to dig through the piles of postings on the Blogger Help forum, here's a work-around until the problem is fixed.

The problem only occurs on blogs that have their comments-form embedded below the post, so go to your Dashboard, click the Settings link next to the title of your blog, and then click the "Comments" tab at the top of the Settings page.

Where it says "Comments Form Placement", select either Full Page or Popup Window. I'm personally in favour of full page as some browsers dislike the popups and try to block them.

This is a much safer fix than disabling the Captcha altogether and letting in spammers.

Anyway...I hope to have been of service to somebody....and my sincerest apologies for straying off the usual role-playing and gaming topic.

Announcing my new blog

2009-02-20T21:38:00.000-08:00

As those of you who have been following the Ubiquitous Orcs know, my husband Garish (aka Steve) and I have been running a regular Sunday event I call "Paint & Play" down at our local hobby store.

The success of our little venture has gone far past what I was expecting, and I decided it was time we made an official online group bulletin board with an events calendar, announcements and such. A brief flirtatious trial-run on a popular social networking site proved to be rather lacking in versatility and more than a bit of a hassle to update, and then it dawned on me... USE BLOGGER! DUH!

So..my Sunday Paint & Play club now has a home here.... or HERE, actually. It's got a calendar, a list of good gamer resources including some of our favourite retro-clone folks, and eventually I'll be putting up photos and highlights of the events there.

As for what's in the future for the P&P club (not to be confused with a pimento and pickle loaf sandwich), we have a painting contest underway and more planned. We are looking ahead to introducing our players to outdoor adventuring and the fundamentals of character roleplaying, and hopefully someday to see Swords & Wizardry and/or some of the other Oe retro-clone products in distributorship at our local game store.

If any of you out there in the bloggersphere decide you'd like to contribute a new original article or post from your own archives that is appropriate for beginner gamers or painters, I'm more than happy to make it possible. Just send me an email spikepage (at) gmail (dot) com

It starts on the playground

2009-02-13T20:43:00.000-08:00

I was just reading this article about character origin and the sexes over at Trollsmyth's blog, and was happy to see an entirely new line of thinking on this old and sometimes overdone subject.

The gist of the article is that female roleplayers tend to craft their characters with much more details concerning their relations, home, how they miss home and are seeking a new one, etc. Whereas male players tend to stick with the here-and-now and leave the family tree either minimally filled in, or completely up to the imagination (however sinister) of the gamemaster.

Trollsmyth's theory is that what we all read has much to do with the sorts of characters we play, and his point is quite valid. Ever seen a guy reading a book with a picture of Fabio on the cover? And have you ever met a girl who read Lord Of The Rings who did not want more Aragorn and Arwen and much less Boromir or Gimli?

But I'm going to pile another two cents onto Trollsmyth's thesis and say it starts much earlier. In fact, it begins at playtime.

Boys like to play action games. They play cops-and-robbers, cowboys-and-indians and an entire host of games that involve seeking and destroying monsters. Boys' games usually start out with the choosing of teams. "You be the Sherrif's guys and we'll be the Merry Men" or "Pretend the wood-shed is the O-K Corral and these sticks can be guns." There may be some bickering over who gets to be Robin Hood or Wyatt Earp, but beyond that, nobody cares about why anybody's character feels a certain way toward anybody else or which one had the worst childhood.

Girls do it differently..belive me. "Let's play house." sounds innocent enough, but in the spirit of post-2nd-edition D&D, character generation can take hours and cause much pain and suffering. "Ooooh I wanna be the big sister so we can pretend she has a car and is bossy and has a boyfriend and never does what mommy tells her to do...and you can be the rich Auntie who takes us all to Disneyland.... and somebody else can be the grandmother that's really a bad witch." But of course everybody argues over who gets to be the baby so they can be Mommy's favourite. And naturally, nobody ever says "Let's pretend we're doing our chores after school.". It's much more fun when the plot involves a huge wedding, twins being born, or the discovery that the middle-sister is really adopted and that her real parents are the King and Queen of Spain.

Yeah, it's not a perfect universal truth, and in spite of thinking of myself as the tomboy who liked to upset the applecart by enticing the boys into plotting a pirate raid or vampire invasion of the girl's playhouse because I was bored with being the spinster housekeeper.... I have been guilty of creating a few "shippy" characters in my roleplaying career. ('Shippy' - (adj) - abbreviated form of 'overloaded with sissy-girly relationship-centered rubbish)

Yes, even a half-orc with no recollection of her mother or father at all can fall into this category. She may be motivated to the adventuring life because she is out to prove something to the people who picked on her as a child..or she has become obsessed with finding her birth-mother..or she is embarking on an ambitious quest to outshine the fair-haired human sorceress in the party who she is convinced has caught the eye of the male half-orc NPC.

Yeah..it's true.. all of it..and I suppose I should be ashamed. But the truth is that the game never suffered for it, and it gave the GM something to do..and like our GM says, "One sure way to keep a character alive is to keep the dungeonmaster entertained."

The Next Generation

2009-02-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in earlier posts, Garish and I have been doing what I call "Paint-&-Play Sunday" down at Hobbytown to introduce new people to the joy of painting miniatures and then using them in roleplaying games. So far we've had amazing success, attracting a regular audience of young people and their parents, who tell us they're glad to see their kids playing the same kind of game they started out playing back years ago when they were still in school.

These kids' intro to RPG started with a simple Oe-style character data card for one single model. We then let two kids take their models and a few dice and let the models have a fight. The simplicity of Swords & Wizardry Whitebox rules makes keeping up with model stats a bit easier so the kids catch on really fast.

So you can imagine how psyched those kids were the next week when we unpacked our fieldstone dungeon maze...wihch was awarded the official seal of "wicked-awesomeness" by one youngster. Their characters who had been pit-fighting at home all week now got to partner up and clean out a dungeon.

Honestly, it does a soul good to see kids getting so excited over anything that did not involve extreme speed, high sugar, or joining an online guild.

So they came back next week, this time with friends. Of course their characters had experience points now and a few weapon upgrades, and they "totally owned" the dungeon full of kobolds and rat swarms. By now they were coming to understand the concept of levelling up and getting more hit points, and a few of the parents were asking about how to make some of the terrain pieces we had been using.

This past Sunday, some of our kids showed up all ready to go, telling us that they had downloaded and printed both S&W rule sets and two even had found the character sheet download. They had also brought along another new friend who says he "never plays games,but it looks cool" and we put them through a new water-caverns maze (seen below).

A closeup of the water-caverns HirstArts environment with our local club's party defending a passage.

All we need now is cake and ice cream!

These guys did not want to go home they were having so much fun. One kid went so far as to say we "should do birthday parties too".

And that's how to ensure roleplaying has a future. Now we have two families..two generations of roleplayers, enjoying the hobby together. With the economy being what it is, families are glad to discover inexpensive entertainment, and thanks to the vast wealth of older-edition materials out there at places like Dragonsfoot and Judges Guild, they can expand their hobby as far and wide as they wish. And ultimately, imagination can take them everywhere beyond that.

Not so long ago, I posted a "challenge" on the TARGAtalk Yahoo group and TARGA Facebook group for people to introduce our hobby to somebody they've known for a long time but have never gamed with before. This can be a spouse or sweetheart, a co-worker, or even a family member...and that especially includes kids. ...because I believe that children are our future...

Oh good grief...now I've got Whittney Houston stuck in my mind.

... teach them well and let them lead the way....

Yeah..let them lead, especially if they've got lots of hit-points or are good at finding traps... and show them all the beauty they possess inside .... and don't forget the ten-foot pole!

Beefcake

2009-02-09T20:58:00.000-08:00

This is a little service I provide from time to time just for the ladies. Think of it as twitterpation therapy.

(from the "Previews" page of upcoming models from Reaper Miniatures)

#03405 Black Orc Hero, by Tre Manor

Girls, I can about promise you this fine eligible bachelor won't ever be seen at any emo club wearing your jeans, nor will you ever have to worry about him reading Elf Eye For The Orc Guy.

Yeah..I like my orcs like I like my coffee... hot, black, strong, and three times a day!

Mmmm.... beeeeefcake..... *sigh*

GameBlog - Tomb Of The Iron God

2009-02-06T19:30:00.001-08:00

When we last left off, the group had discovered the location of the kobolds' lair and were still deciding what to do next.

It seemed that Drake and Amaryxes both agreed it was a good idea to wait a bit, watch to see if the kobolds sent patrols out, and make plans based on what they could learn. Dukkor, it seems, would prefer to go right in and get down to business. Gwynned (Yes, the Mage is back) decides that his best personal plan is to have a glass of wine because...

"There are things I shouldn't do without the excuse of being drunk."

Turleus and the others begin moving supplies to a more discreet vantage point, and are scarcely settled in when the kobolds appear. There's thirteen, and two dogs. The kobolds are equipped (so it would appear) for hunting, and somehow totally missed the party's encampment just to the south of the cave mouth.

Well..no sooner do the kobolds leave the vicinity of the cave than Drake heads right on in, motioning for the others to follow. Turleus and Big Bart go right in after him. Amaryxes is left to wonder just what happened to the watch-and-wait plan and is adamant that he's staying put. Dukkor appears to feel the same way, but with the group's best interest in mind, he trots ahead to let those who went ahead that there were others who did not share their reckless enthusiasm.

So, who's plan will prevail? Will Drake and company turn back, or will Amaryxes and Dukkor join them?

Will the cave be easier to take with less defending it, or is there a surprise waiting for our party of adventurers?

And how is it that a party of kobold hunters with dogs cannot find a large pack of hygenically-disadvantaged dungeoneers?

Updates weekly (at the very least)... same orc-time, same orc-channel.

...hmm.... has a nice familiar ring to it, don't it.

I wonder if I need an orc-phone, an orc-pole, and an orcmobile?

GeekEnd: Day 2 and 3 -- change of plans

2009-02-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

Well, things didn't go quite as planned. My GeekEnd was interrupted by a rather sudden and vicious 24-hour flu of some sort, and so much of last night and this morning was spent with fever and some serious head and muscle aches. Suffice to say, we had to cancel game-nite until tomorrow.

But I still found a way to get my geek-on.

Yeserday was spent doing HirstArts projects..mainly this cavern.

The green stuff is just posterboard, and will eventually be replaced with a cavernous-looking stone floor. There are also lots more pieces still on the drying-table or awaiting paint. The finished product will be something like this

{Gorn the Crusher and one of the ubiquitous orcs discussing quantum physics}

Then I spent the later part of today (having waked up at 1pm) noodling around with DungeonCrafter 1.4.1 and, while not accomplishing much, having a lot of fun. Basically, the program lets you assemble tiles over a squared off matrix to form a rather nice-looking topdown view of a dungeon. The tiles include floors, walls, dungeon furnishings and even traps, and there are other sets of tiles available online with different "looks" so you can even make a cheesy blue dungeon like the kind that came in your Moldvay D&D box. Oh..and the download is gettable here.

Tomorrow, provided I do not collapse into a puddle of perspiration and medication at work, our game group will pick up where we left off in the Endless Tunnels of Enlandin. Until then, I think I will go have a hot cuppa Cure Disease...or maybe some tea instead.

GeekEnd: Day 1 - Paint-&-Play Sunday and Game-Nite

2009-02-01T22:32:00.000-08:00

Around the end of last year, Garish and I decided to start doing regular painting and gaming programs down at our sort-of-local Hobbytown USA store in Kennesaw.

You might say it's a double-feature matinee. First, our participants get to choose from a selection of free Reaper minis to paint and keep for themselves. We supply the paints, brushes, and whatever meager collective expertise we can offer. Then, once the minis are dry, anybody who wishes to can come over to the dungeon table and do a bit of old-style RPG looting and slaying in our HirstArts plaster dungeon maze. Those that play the dungeon also get a free Chessex d20 and d6 and a handy list of places to get various free rules sets to help them get the most fun out of their painted minis.

Ordinarily, we might have around half-a-dozen folks joining in, but today was a bumper crop...including two entire families and we even coaxed a few of the guys from the Flames Of War tables to give fantasy minis and gaming a try.

Below are some photos and highlights.

The "Paint" part of the event, sponsored by Reaper Miniatures through their Black Lightning demo team program

The dungeon table, featuring our customizable HirstArts maze. The rules we used today were Swords & Wizardry White Box

These two minis with their magical swords are looking for some trouble.

The party, an unlikely collection of elves, dwarves and orcs, find the kobolds' lair. All the players are looking forward to next Sunday's game and the continuation of their long and perilous journey to fame, fortune, and 2nd level.

__________

Then, after we got back home, we were joined by Shane "The Crusher" and Unglef "The Dwarf" for a bit of AD&D 1st Edition action. We had been talking about getting an all-thieves adventure together and running through the City State of the Invincible Overlord module. (Or as Janara the hafforc would say "City Stake of the Unvisible Ogre-Lord).

So I'm playing a half-orc thug (bit of a surprise, I know), Unglef is a somewhat chaotic dwarf second-story man, and Shane is our human magic user.

Our first night in Ogre-Lord City consisted of Leif (the mage) nearly getting arrested over a botched attempt to gather information, Burzug (the hafforc) passing out drunk, Gund (the dwarf) having to use his bulls:)t-skills on a local guardsman to keep Leif from being hauled to jail, Burzug waking up after all the "good stuff" had already happened, Leif getting seduced by a random-night-encounter which turned out to be a succubus, Gund and Burzug running away as soon as the second demon appeared (but returning to his aid once the town watch and some high-level priests showed up to help with the problem), and at long long last we all found a place to spend the night... and the game session ended with the GM dangling a nice juicy plot-hook in front of us concerning a nobleman's stolen horse and sword.

__________

In other GeekEnd-related news, it looks like Groundhog Day will be reserved for casting up HirstArts parts for the new cavern system. Garish has proclaimed himself the Master Caster of Plaster Disaster.... as the condition of my kitchen counter and floor can verify.

Three-Day GEEKend!

2009-01-30T20:55:00.000-08:00

As such luck would have it, I work a four-day week, and so I get Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays off. You might say I've reached that point in my life in which I find that my time is infinately more important than money or career. Therefore I rejoice in finding new and more importantly CHEAP ways to get the most happiness out of the time I have off.

Tomorrow night, a friend is coming over, and we'll be playing a bit of Orcz while Garish finishes up casting a HirstArts dungeon for a different friend down at our local game shop.

Then on Sunday we'll be heading down to Hobbytown USA in Kennesaw GA for our weekly Reaper Miniatures paint-&-take demo (free minis, anyone?) followed by Garish's intro to traditional adventure roleplaying Dungeon-of-Doooom

But, do you think we're going home to watch the Superbowl? Nope! We have yet another friend coming over for a bit of Swords & Wizardry. This poor guy is so gung-ho for traditional roleplaying that he seems to have forgotten all about..what's it called again....football?

Monday? Well...nothing formally planned, but it's Groundhog Day, and it is said that if a geek ventures outside and sees his/her shadow, there will be six more weeks of waiting for the next issue of his/her favourite eZine to be published...and this simply cannot be allowed to happen, so we'll find SOMETHING geeky to do I'm sure.

Then comes Tuesday...and it looks like the whole gang plus perhaps a new player will be coming over to kick the tires on Labyrinth Lord with a little all-thieves campaign.

Suffice to say, I should have some fun stuff to blog about in the next few days. Meanwhile, I have to sleep.... 'cuz I gotta work tomorrow. ...pthtpthppppttthh! :P

GameBlog - Tomb of the Iron God

2009-01-29T20:14:00.000-08:00

When we last left off, the group had made camp in a small patch of trees near a stream. As it turned out, the fishing was quite good that evening. Eight in all,..and I'm sure they were all hungry after the day's encounter with wolves.

It would seem that the mosquitoes were hungry too, and have a preference for sleeping elves.

As Day 2 began, Big Bart prayed for his spells. Meanwhile Turleus collected up his wolf pelts and took up his bow to scout ahead as the group began the trail up into the rocky hills. Luckily the day's travel was completely uneventful.

And yes.. we can has map!

Actually my map does not do the view justice. The actual mountains look considerably less dorky, but y'all bear with me. I'm still a cartography-nOObie.

So, after a lousy night's sleep at the first camp, Drake sought out a less rocky place to lay his head and commenced to enjoying his pipe. Turleus set up the wolf pelts to dry some more overnight, and Dukkor took first watch.

And again, the night passed without event.

(The DM seems to have misplaced his stable of random wandering outdoor adventure creatures and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night and kill poor 1st level elf girls and their hirelings)

But the good news is that everybody healed a point of damage for getting a good night's rest...and Ibhram's map showed the cave can be reached by day's end...and this is good..because had begun to rain.

Turleus loaded up his pelts and got ready to set out with bow and pole again. Meanwhile Amarixes wisely suggested that the group decide how best to approach the kobold lair. Gwynned the Mage, it would appear, prefers to execute the plans before they can be laid, hatched and grow up to become strategies.

(And it seems somebody hit the [FF>>] button and suddenly, there's the cave.

And Gwynned has just found some little paw prints.

Could it be.... I dunno... kobold paws?

{cue ominous music}

Will the group go right in before the kobolds find out they have arrived..or will they find a place to camp one more night so they heal up and prepare to assault the caverns in the morning? What sort of plan might they come up with, and will that crazy elf berserker remember to forget the plan later?

Watch, wait, and we all shall see!

In which I talk about my character

2009-01-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know I know..it's taboo, so I won't do it too often, but here goes.

When we started playing S&W back in November, I asked if I could still play a half-orc even though halforcs did not become PCs until 3rd edition and if I recall rightly did not even exist in the monster manual until 2nd edition.

The GM, likely fearing yet another rant about oppression, green-rage and "the man", said he'd allow it, so long as the character could be expressed in Oe terms..that is to say, she had to be a fighting ~~Man~~ Orc-ette with emphasis on Strength and de-emphasis on Intelligence and Charisma. She would get no advantage for her orcish blood..not even Darkvision. But that was alright by me. After all, the game should be about playing the role of a character rather than playing stats and special abilities, right? Also, due to the fact that the six attributes can grant at best a +1 bonus and at worst a -1 detriment, having even the proverbial "minmax" character does not make you a window-licking Terminator.

Surprisingly, it did not take too much getting used to, even though Janara (you might say she has achieved the status of recurring franchise) was originally created for 3e D&D. Okay, so she kept forgetting to light her torch at first,... as did our Dwarven cleric...but that's neither here nor there. On a completely unrelated note, the GM has more recently decided that in his games, demi-orcs and dwarves get darkvision just the same as their later counterparts. I mean, why should Elves get to have all the fun, huh?

Actually, in the game setting Janara belongs to, Elves would be as yet unknown beings. They might just be legends..or they may be (as Dunsany would say) 'beyond the Fields We Know'. Orcs, on the other hand, are based on historical barbaric tribes from the east of the big continent (Europe, actually) who were brought to the isle (Scotland) by the Latins (Romans) to provide a buffer against the northmen (Vikings). Half-orcs might be more properly called orc-blooded, since their kind has been left alone and to their own for a few centuries by the time our adventure begins. Janara only knows that she is different, that she comes from a people who are different, (but no differenter than the picts or that crazy yellow-haired berserker NPC her party had originally hired...may he rest in peace). She's never seen an orc, and is curious about the stories she has been told about the eastern warrior tribes. For all intents and purposes, she was raised human... Christian actually... and has no doubt that she is one of her God's creatures too... as are the people of her ancestry if she should ever happen to meet one.

Well..that's how it started at least. Janara and company did a bit of low-level romping around in the highland hills, but as such things happen, they eventually boarded a longship and went to a place suspiciously Norwegian in topography, custom and outragiously exaggerated accents. It was there that they encountered their first halfling and their first elf. The halfling was, of course, trying to unlock a treasure chest, and the elf was quite deceased.

I won't go into too much detail, as you may find yourself in this same adventure some day...as I highly recommend you should. Stefan Poag's work is top-notch adventuring

So imagine what poor Janara thought the first time she came across actual orcs. Of course these orcs were hostile and attacked first, so being a loyal fighter who stands by her friends, she helped slay the ever-lovin' doggy-doody out of them.

But this time after the fighting is over, rather than help the others toss the room for hidden treasures or loot the bodies for useful weapons or coins, she carefully looked over the dead orcs' bodies for any jewellry, regalia, totems or other such items that she would think to be culturally unique to orcs. She did the same with the next two orc encounters as well, eventually collecting one rather odd-looking dagger and a little medallion made of bone.

She really cannot quite explain her recent interest in orc-anthropology, and she is really starting to suspect that orcs as a collective group are generally and deservingly disliked by everybody. The Dwarf in the party has shown no hostility toward her, but then again the Dwarf is a man of God..even though he sometimes calls God by the name Thor. Janara is almost certain that God has different names and aspects for different people in different lands. This might account for why her Christian education was cut short and she ended up becoming a fighter...but that's yet another story.

Yeah..she's a complicated orc... can ya dig it?

___

Oh... and then there's the point, which I almost went right past without getting around to.

Don't let the lack of a Bard class or Ranger class or the absence of Tieflings keep you from enjoying the older edition roleplay games. All it takes is imagination and a bit of flexibility on behalf of the player and dungeonmaster to make things possible. The old Oe rules are only there as a toolkit and house-rules are practically encouraged and in some spaces almost necessary. Even the retro-clone rules encourage the concept that the DM and players run the game, not the book.

By the way, Janara's newly-embued darkvision was "discovered" by her halfway through the dungeon adventure. She will likely explain it away like this. "I never tried it before. When it was time to put out my fire, I'd just shut my eyes and go asleep."

That's her story, and she's stickin' to it.

"Old School" character sheet download

2009-01-24T20:28:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I am finding I enjoy the simplicity of the character sheets used in older editions of D&D and the retro clones. There are already a few character sheets available for download from various individuals..and each has its merits, but over the past two months I've gotten a better feel for which elements are most important, which statistics need to be located where in order to be found easily, and how much room is needed to fill in the various types of information on a character sheet for a typical player in a typical game (though "typical" might be a strong word for what goes on here at Chateau-Garish)

And since the traditional roleplaying community has given me so much in the past few months, I'm giving a little bit back. I've created a character log sheet PDF that can be downloaded HERE from my ftp space.

Among the features this one has..

Places at the top for character name, player name, and campaign -- This is important around here because we have three seperate campaigns going on, and it's not entirely impossible that a character might be participating in more than one campaign at the same time.

A spot for character portrait -- I know not everybody can draw, but then again, who's the one that wants to tell Rich Burlew that stick drawings are not viable, huh?

PLENTY of room to list loot -- though most folks end up cashing in their loot as soon as they hit the next town and therefore track their looting on a piece of scratch-paper, I like the convenience of having all my data on one page...because I lose stuff or might get my loot pages from different campaigns mixed up.

A place for tracking quantity of arrows/darts/bullets -- Most sheets just don't have room for that sort of thing, but it is, at least in my opinion, one of the more important game stats for characters that use ranged weapons.

Ascending and Descending "to hit' table -- I keep wanting to call it THACO, but you other retro gamers know the sort of chart I'm talking about.

A small block for character notes -- Good spot for keeping up wtih current nemesis, favourite tavern, or character's shoe size...whatever you feel is important.

Anyway, feel free to make use of this in your own retro games. I promise soon to produce a similar sheet for tracking spells for mages and clerics. I'm also not beyond taking requests for elements you'd like to see included in such a document.

Revisiting 3.5 ... Character Generation

2009-01-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

As you all know, I have been playing retro D&D clone rules for the last few months and having a great time. Since discovering "traditional style" gaming, we've begun several ongoing face-to-face campaigns at my house, one online PbP game, and we're embarking on starting up a weekly dungeon-crawl "pickup game" down at our local Hobbytown USA store. As a matter of fact, I probably am beginning to annoy the hell out of folks with my praise of "Oe" and "old-school"... but then sometimes I have to get things back in perspective.

I started out playing good ol' 2nd Edition..with the THACO and all that good stuff. It was not long after before a friend convinced us to try out 3e, and eventually that version took over our group. We never really bought into the 3.5 because over the course of three years we had a decent-sized investment in 3e books. Besides, as our GM will be the first to admit, he hates having to learn a new system if there's nothing wrong with the one he's already got. Suffice to say, 4e ain't gonna be happenin' here.

And I LIKE 3rd Edition actually. Or at least I think I do. Even now I have no reason to grumble about skill-checks or all the various types of Saving Throws or the different races and classes available. Those just add more dynamic to the game... ..but..

(hehe... she said, 'butt'...hehehehe)

Eariler this evening, a friend dropped by and asked me if I could print him up a 3.5e character sheet for a face-to-face game he has been invited to join. So I offer him one-better and fire up my /wink/ "secondary market" /nudge/ eTools software and start generating him a nice li'l 3rd level barbarian.

Now..I've used eTools plenty of times in the past. It's especially handy for PbP games when you like having an HTML version of the character sheets as an online referrence. The program is also nice because ... to be blunt...the Resident Half-Orc sometimes makes math mistakes and screws up AC or Saves or forgets the cost penalty for cross-class skills.

So, the friend I am making the character for is our own Shane "the Crusher" from my previous Traditional Roleplay Week posting. He wants his Bbn-3 to be a Chaotic Neutral half-elf with high INT, decent STR, could care less about CON, and wants to speak an extra language, maybe put a few ranks in Move Silently and Craft(Weaponsmithing)...and did I mention Tumble?

No..I'm not making this up.

So who am I to stifle a dude's creativity! We got a character generated in about an hour, and it's all rulebook-legal and 3.5 compatible and stuff. I almost wanna be there when he springs this'un on his DM.

So we print out a sheet. There are all his vital stats in three pages of glorious 150 dpi Canon-colour..right down to his chosen god, his weight, and a spiffy colour cartoon of a wild-elf with a huge sword. My Oe character sheet should be so lucky. It is one page..B&W with no artwork..and nowhere does it say how old my character is nor even her gender.

I could be making those up as I go along, ya know?

So.. at last, we are nearing the elusive point of this post.

If you like planning ahead, quantifying everything, and knowing exactly what your character is capable of, and you don't mind spending an hour or two filling out your character sheet, then 3e and 3.5 are both right up your alley.

But if you don't care for number-crunching, like to make things up as you go along, or find that most of your characters don't survive more than a few hours of gameplay, then you might want to go retro like me and lots of others are doing.

BTW I plan (depending on the capabilities of my ftp space) to upload my own retro-clone character sheet in PDF form.

Ya know... I've yet to see anybody come up wtih software for generating Oe characters. I suppose they figure if the Resident Half-Orc can do it without a computer's help, anybody can.

GameBlog - Tomb of the Iron God, continued

2009-01-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry for the belated gameblog update. Time got away from me this week.

__________

When I last left off, our brave adventurers were hiking east toward the mountains, unsuspecting of what awaited them. Turleus, who chose to scout a bit ahead of the group, is the first to be attacked by the wolves. One sprang upon him, and four others charged the rest of the group. Fortunately for Turleus, he was able to fend off his attacker for a short while.

Oghram and Ibhram each shoot, both hitting their targets. Meanwhile Drake and Dukkor move to protect Ameryxes, Bart and Valley. Dukkor with one swing was able to finish off the wolf wounded by Oghram. Bart also took a swing, but missed. Both he and Drake were bitten badly in the initial attack.

Amaryxes stepped up with his staff and landed a wallup on the head of the wolf that was trying to eat poor Big Bart. Valley swung his axe at the fourth wolf and sent it into a yelping fit.

Turleus then somehow managed to kick dirt up in the face of the wolf that was attacking him, giving him a chance to throw an axe at the vicious animal. His axe connected, and then Ibhram and Oghram were able to rush in with swords and finish off the wounded wolf.

Meanwhile, Drake and Dukkor continued trying to protect the magic users. Neither have much luck in wounding the beasts, and Dukkor got bitten a second time. Ironically, it was Valley's axe and Big Bart's club that came to the aide of Drake. The angry wolf that had been tormenting Drake then took a bite out of Valley.

Turleus and Amaryxes both tried using their darts on the remaining wolves with some success. Meanwhile, Dukkor killed another wolf as Bart was trying unsuccessfully to nail it with his club.

As all that was happening, Valley the elf went into a berserker rage, bearing teeth at the wolf in front of him, but swinging wild with his axe and missing completely. Luckily Drake stepped in and lopped the wolf's head off.

Who's afraid of the Big-Bads? Nope. Not those guys!

But Ibhram gave them something else to worry about as he and Oghram did a bit of first-aid on the wounded comrades. Rabies? Or maybe becoming a werewolf? Or maybe an elf?

Turleus didn't seem too worried though. He went right to skinning him some wolves. Oh how wonderful the camp will be smelling later on!

So our party is pausing for the night, setting up camp amidst a small stand of trees, and they might just be having fish for dinner. There is a stream nearby, and Drake, Valley and Oghram head off to see what they can catch. Dukkor and Big Bart seem more inclined to kick back beside the fire ...err... guard the camp, that is.

Actually, it seems as if Big Bart is watching the backs of his own eyelids rather than guarding anything.

__________

And that's where we are. Tune in soon to find out who gets to clean the catch-o'-the-day, what else might be lurking in those woods, and how to tell that you are becoming a were-elf.

Networking? Me?

2009-01-20T09:46:00.001-08:00

Yes, it's true, and I am just about as surprised about this as some of you other folks who know me.

I have in the past tried to steer clear of social networking web sites, finding them to be rather like the schoolyard of my childhood...big, noisy, somewhat disenfranchising, and sometimes even a bit hostile. And much like the schoolyard, being "somebody" on those networks had much more to do with how flashy your profile was and how large your friends list had become.

But last week I decided to give social networking a second chance..and am glad I did. There are two new communities on FaceBook that those of you who are traditional style gamers might be interested in.

One is the official TARGA group, which is less than two weeks old but already almost 80 members strong.

The other is Attack of the Retro Clones, a less formal group that is also all about promoting any and all retro-clone D&D RPG publications and the playing of said games. It is a brand-new community and so far has less than 10 members.

Being that roleplaying itself is a niche hobby, making retro roleplaying a niche within a niche; I believe that these and other social networks can be valuable tools in making others aware that such games are still out there and perhaps even help bring players of a particular locality together face-to-face. The idea of a TARGA or ARC member-meetup in the Atlanta area is an exciting possibility, and I for one will do my best to support such networking.

So..take a moment and have a look at both groups. Join up if you wish, and help spread the word about traditional style gaming.

International Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Week

2009-01-17T21:57:00.000-08:00

For those of you who've not yet noticed the link down at the bottom of this page, I an now supporting TARGA, the Traditional Adventure Roleplay Gaming Association, a not-for-profit corporation made up of gamers who want to preserve and promote the "old-school" or classic style of roleplaying we love. Last week I joined the TARGAtalk Yahoo group...just in time for International Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Week. Here is a quote from the main web site.

And what can we get done? TARGA’s first initiative is International Traditional Adventure Roleplaying Week, January 10th through 17th, 2009. We are challenging you, ourselves, and old school referees everywhere to find a game store, contact the owner or manager, and arrange a demo of your favorite old school game or retro-clone. Or invite some friends (gamers and/or newbies) to your home for a one-shot adventure. We need to get people playing!

Our group is doing its part. We have been meeting at least once a week for a few months now, and our original three players has grown to five, and a sixth potential player has been asking about what we do. Here are some pics and highlights from last week's game.

That is Garish the GM (also known as my husband). He is taking us through The Endless Tunnels Of Enlandin, an AD&D dungeon-crawl adventure by Stephan Poag published by Dragonsfoot. For those of you who might want to follow in the footsteps of our party, I won't spoil any surprises for you..but be warned, Stephan Poag's dungeons are quite imaginative, especially where traps and tricks are concerned. You better bring more than a ten-foot pole. Garish is seen here with dungeon map and a truckload of dice ready to unload on his players.

If you look carefully in the reflection on the glass cabinet door behind him, you can see your intrepid photographer and resident half-orc.

That's Chris, a.k.a. Gavin the Archer. Here lately when we call off marching order, he ends up taking the rear guard position. But he's not chickening out. As a matter of fact whenever a fight breaks out, he's back there shouting "Can I get to 'em?" or "Can I shoot 'em from here?".

He has an amazing Dexterity score. Just look at how well he stacks those dice.

He is also a real TARGA success story. We have saved him from the sinister clutches of console video MMORPGing and he has come to know the joy of traditional adventuring.

Then there's Shane...a.k.a. Gorn the Crusher. He is our local thick-headed barbarian type who just so happens to prefer playing thick-headed barbarian character types when we game. His favourite phrase in-game is "I kick the door down!"

This picture was made moments after he was shot in the back by a particularly imaginative trap which he sprung. He was not amused when the half-orc removed the arrow, then suggested he go back and see if he could get another one the same wey.

Shane has been playing historical wargames with us for years now, and seems to enjoy the simplicity of this style of roleplaying. Having a character sheet that does not look like a 1040 tax form is a good thing.

So... we hacked and slayed, found numerous creatures, living, dead, undead and otherwise. I am not entirely sure which category gelatinous cubes fall under. Anyway, fate brought us to a hidden room filled with a helpless halfling, a box of treasure, and two carrion crawlers. The fight was ON!

There you can see our happy band of brothes (and sister) nearly getting killed by denizens of a self-cleaning dungeon. Several of us spent the last few rounds of combat paralyzed from their attacks, but ultimately the good-guys won...and now we have a halfling along for the fun. Tune in next week to see if the cute li'l fella is actually Orcus in disguise.

As for Traditional Roleplay week, Garish and I contiune our crusade tomorrow at Hobbytown USA in Kennesaw. We have a HirstArts dungeon full of Reaper monsters and a few lovely polyhedron "treasures" to give away to any brave adventurers who dare enter The Dungeon of the Dreaded Snake-Eyes... MWA-HAA-HAAAA!

Dice-collecting

2009-01-14T18:39:00.000-08:00

And now that I have a new dice box, my mail-ordered Chessex Pound-o-Dice arrived this afternoon!

Not that there is anything wrong with having spare dice on hand, especially if you do a lot of game demos and tend to have shrinkage in your dice inventory; but I was a tad skeptical about just what sorts of dice would come in the potluck mix. I imagined these would be the "unpopular" styles that inevitably turn up in the "cursed dice" loaner bucket at the game shop. Boy was I pleasantly surprised.

Before I go on, I must mention that my set was the "premium" Pound-O-Dice, which Chessex made temporarily available because their usual stocks of ordinary pounds-o-dice had run out. Unlike the normal pound of factory-second assorted dice, the premium deal gets you (for the same price as the usual deal) a pound of factory-firsts, but the styles are all out of current production. The normal Pound-o-Dice should be returning to availablenessity (according to the enclosed note in my bag) in November 2008.

Here is a breakdown of what values of dice came in my particular mix.

31 d20s
31 d10s
5 d10s "double zero"
7 d12s
8 d4s
2 d8s
11 d6s "pips"
1 d6 "numbers"

In addition to the above dice, each set comes with a special factory-firsts envelope of speckly dice that can only be gotten in the Pound-O-Dice.

That's 102 dice..all full-sized and in a nice variety of styles. Now as the Chessex site states, the Pound-0-Dice is made of factory seconds and the assortment will likely be scantt on the lighter dice like d4s and d8s.

Of course, Garish and I both got "pick of the litter" before putting the rest into the communal dice box. Here's my picks.

Three matched d6s like this just SCREAMED "character dice" to me.

This was the only one of this style...but again, it's made of pure pretty.

And these were the closest thing I found to my swirl dice. I call 'em "blurple swurl"

Ahh yes..the d12..the barbarian's best friend. When you're rolling up your hit-dice..or hitting your dungeonmaster with your greataxe, who says you can't be pretty while doing so.

Then there's Garish's picks, since this was his idea.

The lighting here does not do these justice.

It's a shame this was the only one and is, according to the enclosed note, out of production...else Garish would be ordering more to fill out a complete set.

OH... and while we're on the subject of dice, here are some others (NOT by Chessex) I picked up a few years back.

These are what you should be using when you roll for the attitudes of NPCs. But these dice really work. Each single dot, dash or symbol represents a pip. For instance, the one in the middle with the party-hat is a 6..the one with glasses to the left is a 2, and happyface on the right is a 4.

Anyway, tomorrow night is our next scheduled game-night for Swords & Wizardry, so I get to give these dice and my new box a proper try-out. Hopefully these rookies will do well and keep my character from being eaten by a purple worm.

A simple dicing box for $2 (US)

2009-01-13T17:37:00.000-08:00

My husband was in serious need of paint brushes after a week or so of frantic demon-painting, and so we found ourselves at the local HobbyLobby today. While there, I decided to pick up some things and do a little craft project I've been meaning to do but keep forgetting.

Now I know there are some folks over on the HirstArts web site who have designed some amazing dice-tumbling towers with complicated chutes and funnels all to make your players green with envy...and that's all fine and good if you want to spend a little money and a LOT of time making one..but for the rest of us who just need a place to roll the dice that will keep the dice on the game table without scratching up the surface of said table, here's what I made today.

Start with a simple wooden tray. Hobby Lobby sells them in various sizes and shapes and they cost anywhere from 99 cents to $2.99 depending on size. I chose this cute little oblong octagonal one. The one in the picture above is 8" long measured from outside edges.

Next, get a sheet of FunkyFoam. This stuff comes in all sorts of colours and in my humble opinion is something that no gamer should be without. The greens, browns and blues make for excellent ground scenics on the cheap, and the soft material is kinder to your painted models than traditional flocked felt or sculpted sand tables.

Start by aligning the tray with two edges of the foam. This saves cutting. Then with a pencil trace the outside edges of the box onto the foam.

When your done doing that, set the tray aside and use a scribing tool or something similar to draw a second smaller outline in the middle of the first tracing. I just so happened to have a craft stick that was exactly as wide as the sides of the tray so I used that to trace out the interior shape.

Then, cut out the exterior tracing, being careful to only trim along the drawn lines. Repeat with the interior shape. As you can see in the picture above, the interior shape will become the bottom liner of the box, and the foam between the interior and exterior shapes will become the tabletop-protection padding on the bottom. The bottom liner, if sized right, may not even require glue. The padding underneath can be attached with any white craft glue. Superglue should not be used with FunkyFoam, as it will dissolve it.

End result..you will have a simple and lightweight dicing box that keeps the dice in one place, saves your tabletop from scratches and dings, and can even be a nifty gift to a fellow gamer.

If you want to be fancy, you can always finish out the tray with some fine sandpaper and a stain or varnish and maybe even get a woodburning tool and personalize the tray. You could also substitute felt for foam if you want, though the foam really cuts down on the bouncing and clattering when you roll the dice.

So far, my tray has not proven to help my dice roll any better, but on the bright side, they've not gotten any worse.

I've been OUTED!

2009-01-13T14:59:00.000-08:00

Found this one on QuizFarm - What kind of roleplay gamer are you?

You Scored as Method Actor

You think that gaming is a form of creative expression. You may view rules as, at best, a necessary evil, preferring sessions where the dice never come out of the bag. You enjoy situations that test or deepen your character's personality traits.

Method Actor

100%

Storyteller

92%

Specialist

67%

Tactician

50%

Casual Gamer

33%

Power Gamer

33%

Butt-Kicker

33%

GameBlog - Tomb of the Iron God

2009-01-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

After a short holiday lull in game posting, things are finally starting to move along. The characters and NPCs have left the city of Augustina and are moving along the east road toward the mountains where there is alleged to be a cave and ultimately the hidden treasure.

_______________

Here's the part where I put in a sort of Gilligan's Island summary of each character for those just tuning in. .... er... just sit right back and you'll hear a tale..a tale of a fateful trip?

Amarixes - a slight man with prematurely vanishing hair who has a fondness for coin tricks but likely has more up his sleeves than just slight-of-hand. He seems to be a nervous or shy person.

Dukkor - raven-haired man from the north who carries a sword in one hand, a tankard in the other, and seems quite confident in his skills with both. He also speaks a bit like Jack Sparrow.

Turleus Ba'dor - tall wiry man in dusty black desert garb carrying a crossbow.

Gwynned - Elf magician..or is he a fighter..or is he a magician? He has brown hair, blue eyes, a bag, a bow, an axe, and an eye for the ladies. He also has an alter-ego called Valley..who is a fighter. Confused yet? Don't worry, there's time yet.

Drake - brawny tattoed wall of a man with braided beard. He carries a wooden flagon and chews on a pipe. He was once a sailor.

"Big Bart" Hammerstein - balding man with grey unkempt hair and full beart, somewhat unfit physique, tatty robes, and a serious fondness for strong drink, even for a priest. He carries a very large ironshod club.

Ibhram - the group's Yarab guide and friendly helpful NPC

_______________

So, our group of adventurers along with a map, a guide, and an ass (donkey, that is) are moving into what a fair sprinkling of in-game foreboding indicates to be bandit-country. It is morning. The dirt road leads them away from the port city of Augustina and past farms and ploughed fields, small hamlets and orchards, and the occasional westward bound pedestrian.

What random encounters lie beyond yon hill or homestead? You'll have to wait and see.

And now.. I present my first game aide. Here is a map using the tutorials I mentioned in my last post. Mind you the hex grid kind of takes away from the Middle-Ages cartography look, but sometimes function overrides form. The hexes are 3 miles each (whether that's edge to edge or corner to corner I have no clue).

Mind you this map took a bit of trial and error..and I still am not wild about how the mountains turned out..but Chgowiz pointed me toward a forum specifically for mapmakers and I hope to learn a thing or two there also.

Happy Mapping

2009-01-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

Many evenings, the first thing I do online after reading my email is to come visit my blog just to have a look at the various updates made to the blogs down in my "Blogs List". Not surprisingly, this tends to eat up a lot of my time, but then again, it keeps me off the streets. :D ..so it's all good.

Recently I came across a posting on Chgowiz's blog and followed his link to a spot on YouTube called ZombieNirvana. There I found a series of podcasts on how to create medieval-styled maps in Photoshop for use in your roleplaying games.

Now..this isn't Photoshop For Dummies. Yes, he guides you through step-by-step, but it does help to have a working knowledge of how layers work, what the various tools are called, and how to navigate the various menus. If you've mastered those, then you should have no trouble with this series. Each video takes you through a different step of the mapmaking process, and once you have done that, you can save your original Photoshop file so that with a bit of editing on certain layers you can create more different maps in the same style with minimum reworking.

Best of all..it's like having a cooking show on DVD. You can make a project right along with him and pause whenever you need a bit of extra time to finish the step you are working on. So of course I jumped in with both feet and made myself a li'l ol' map.

I think the tutorial is using PS7. My version is PS6, so I have a few less fancy brushes in my palette and also am unable to resize any brushes except for the perfectly round ones. Other than that, my version was good enough to keep up. Now, I thought I was a person who knew Photoshop fairly well, but after watching the first 12 videos, I learned five new techniques for accomplishing various effects as well as at least half a dozen keyboard shortcuts to help me get my workflow unclogged. (Apparently you are not a "real" digital photographer until you are comfortable throwing around terms such as "workflow".)

By the way, those four orcs at the bottom left are courtesy of JuniorGeneral.org, another free download site for tabletop gamers that allows you to download, print,cutout and play with paper miniatures. Those orcs, however, can no longer be found there, as the site has discontinued its fantasy models section. Those particular orcs were made by Michael Krein.

Chgowiz also has a link to a dungeon mapping tutorial, which I will be trying out really soon.

____

In Tomb of the Iron God PbP related news, the game WILL continue, but the gamemaster has been busy the past two days with a bit of important beta reading. I'll keep after him to move things along tomorrow.

My 2009 Beefcake Calendar

2009-01-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

Several years ago on the Reaper forum, somebody brought up the idea that it might be fun to have a informal beauty contest of some of the "hotter" female Reaper Miniatures models. For those of you who are not familiar with Reaper's models, the company makes numerous fine 28mm pewter minis suitable for tabletop miniature gaming or for representing your roleplaying game's characters. Reaper is particularly noted for having produced a few anatomically-correct female models dressed only in their birthday-suits, which they sell under the "Urban Legends" title.

So naturally the guys all jumped in with their favourite elf chicks or succubi or barbarian girls in chainmail bikinis...at which point I, being me, said there should be a few posters of Reaper's more eligible orc lads too.

My enthusiasm met with several "ewww"s and "ugh"s and one particular notable "would give me nightmares", and one person even went so far as to say that orcs are "butt-ugly"??

After that, I made it my mission to make the all-orcs calendar a reality. I put a posting on Reaper's forum asking any comers to paint their favourite orc model and send me a picture of it. All the models in the calendar are by Reaper and painted by Reaper forum members. I accept entries from painters of all skill levels and give credit to each artist involved.

None of the painted minis themselves have been edited in any way by me, though I sometimes change the background to make it more dynamic if need be.

In the past, I have uploaded the calendar PDF to my own web host, but this year, thanks to Mythmere and the other folks at Swords & Wizardry, I have discovered Lulu.

Lulu is a print-on-demand company that allows the author to upload ebooks, photos, and other digital media for others to purchase. Lulu handles any printing, binding and shipping necessary for a share of the earnings. Best of all, an author can use Lulu to share free downloadable media. This is good, especially for one like me with a teeny ftp host and bandwidth restrictions.

Anyway, my calendar is a 12 page PDF, 150 dpi resolution, and is around 2.5 MB in size...and FREE!.

Here's the link >> 2009 Beefcake Calendar download

If you for whatever reason are disinclined or disallowed to download PDFs to your computer, the images are on my Flickr account for your viewing pleasure.

The link >> Beefcake Calendar set on Flickr

Next year, I am feeling inclined to create a special "Monsters of D&D" project similar to the Beefcake, and perhaps even formatting it to be printed by Lulu as a professionally bound wall calendar.

And now for something green and kewt...

2008-12-30T00:52:00.000-08:00

..and no..it's not a LOL... well..not in so many words.

Gameblogging

2008-12-26T18:16:00.000-08:00

In spite of it being the holiday season and all that entails, Garish's play-by-post RPG jumped off to a start this past Monday and is moving along at a nice pace.

For those of you just tuning in, the game is taking place on the Reaper Miniatures message board and can be seen here. The RPG system in use is Mythmere Games' Swords & Wizardry with a sprinkling of his own house rules. It only took a few days to gather up a cast of players, and I know at least one or two also follow my blog..so I won't be giving up any spoilers here.

Think of me as a bard... or a chronicler... or Kermit the Frog with a Sesame Street News Flash. :D

__________

The story is beginning in Espanola (where the rain falls mainly in the plain) in the city of Augustine, and there is a bit of a noisy gathering at the Blade And Tankard, a tavern frequented by people looking to hire or be hired for high adventure. At this moment, the man doing the hiring is a rather portly man called Orizon, who seems to personally prefer the tankard to the blade. He hopes to hire a party to retrieve for him a valuable artifact, a brass bowl of some great importance.

A man steps right up almost immediately. He is a man of slight build, his robes a bit thin of thread and his head thin of hair. He has a large walking stick, and a deductive person might guess he is a mage. Besides, all mages have names meant to baffle the dyslexic. He introduces himself as Amarixes Rythykia, and demonstrates his abilities by making a coin disappear from his fingers and reappear elsewhere without rational explanation.

The reader may note that such a talent can be handy in an adventure, but even more handy in Illinois politics.

Anyway, as Amarixes and Orizon finish discussing details of the quest and payment, a tough but scruffy man with dark hair armed with a sword which the man says is his preferred means of negotiation. He introduces himself as Dukkor and offers to "stand toe to toe with whatever be blockin' the path to yer bowl."

Next to enter the tavern is Turleus Ba'dor, a tall wiry man in black desert garb carrying a longbow. Following right on his heels is Gwynned, an elf of tall stature (for an elf, that is) with blue eyes, brown hair, and sporting side-whiskers. The human immediately asks about the job, whereas the elf first spares a smile for the ladies in the tavern. Gwynned carries a bow as well as an axe, and tells Orizon that "Spirits told me to come there, so I did. Perhaps were they mischievous or mad spirits, but who knows?". Being that elves are permitted in this style of game to behave like college freshmen who cannot decide upon a degree, Gwynned is, at least for today, a mage.

Even as Orizon is inviting Turleus and Gwynned to join him in what seems to be a slippery path toward eventual drunkenness, a large tattooed man with braided beard and a pipe clenched between his teeth approaches the gathering. His name is Drake, and he is an old sailor who now seeks adventure away from the sea.

By now, everybody is busy getting to know one another better, though Orizon seems to think the party is still one short. (These things sometimes happen to PCs in online games during holidays, but our tardy cleric never strays too far on his sabbaticals.)

__________

So, that is where we are. Sometimes I think the most fun as well as most important part of the adventure is the beginning-- the carousing around some inn or other in hopes of finding some new opportunity to earn wealth (or get killed) and getting to know the other characters. An article I read recently suggested that PCs in old-school style games ought not invest too much time in character backstory at first or second level because the character may very well not make it to third, but on the other hand, first impressions are so powerful in setting the tone of the game and how the party interacts with one another, I find it hard to imagine getting past the first round of in-game drinks without knowing more or less how one wants to be thought of by the others. One cannot keep being the stand-offish one in the darkened corner thinking how much cooler his character would be if the GM let him use the name Strider.

Yes, we had a PC like that once. You couldn't pry three words of character interaction out of him with a tire tool. Suffice to say, he don't game around here no more.

Anyway, I am really having fun watching this game afoot. Having played the adventure myself, I know where things eventually go, but like my Mom always said, "Getting there is half the fun."

Season's Greetings

2008-12-23T21:19:00.000-08:00

May your holiday be a safe and happy one

~Spike~

Funny 'cuz it's truuuuue!

2008-12-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

Admit it..you laughed too.

Die with STYLE!

2008-12-22T19:53:00.000-08:00

Recently I got a look at a video on YouTube featuring Lou Zocchi's GameScience dice and quite a convincing argument for buying his product. As a matter of fact my spouse has a few Zocchi dice including the coveted Zocchihedron, and I cannot find a bad thing to say about them except this.

They don't come in pretty swirly girlie colours like mine.

I started collecting those about six years ago. The original seven RPG dice came in a clear plastic tube with a black hook-top cap. Six were hot pink and the seventh, the alternate d10, was yellow. I am fairly sure the style was called "Ice Cream" or "Cream Swirl" or something of the like, and whenever I saw more of that style in my game store's loose assorted dice bins, I would buy them. Of course, being like most other things I like, they went the way of the Jolt Cola and the solid white Nikes and now are next to impossible to find except for the rare overpriced swirl pink d6 on eBay.

I suppose for myself and most other gamers, dice are like runes or Tarot cards. It is said that people who use such talismans eventually form a psychic bond with those items and therefore do not let others use them or even touch them in some cases. Mind you I'm not that kind of superstitious about my dice, but I still prefer to game with my own instead of somebody elses, even when my own seem to be playing against me.

On the other hand, I have known gamers who have a relationship with their dice that can only be described as fickle. Oh they fall in love with them at first site, but as soon as old Snake-Eyes shows his face, the pretty dice go into the trash or worse yet into some other player's dice bag. I have an estranged iridescent d4 in my collection to attest to that anecdote... but in all honesty it does not compliment my own collection very well so I just keep it around for others to use if they need a d4 and came to game-night without one.

Then there are the players who like to throw their dice when the dice do not obey their will. I have seen this happen not only in my house, but at a convention tournament, at which the act was perpetrated by an otherwise quiet-spoken and meek individual. He later apologized to the offended party, but I do not recall seeing him go crawling under the table across the room to retrieve his recalcitrant die.

That sort of thing makes me wonder what would the world be like if everybody made their dice as precisely as Lou Zocchi. What would gamers have left to blame all their missed shots, failed saves, lost spells, fumbled skill checks and low character intelligence scores on?

Pppthhhh...I suppose they'd have to blame some vast right-wing conspiracy..or the beans they ate for lunch..or the post office. Who knows!

Meanwhile, if anybody out there knows where I can score more pretty swirly dice, please drop me a message. I like having a second-string waiting on the bench for when my starter dice run out of natural 20s.

Skeleton of a muse in my closet

2008-12-21T00:20:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, Garish and I were working on a rather large HirstArts dungeon layout, and after weeks of casting plaster, gluing and painting, we assembled our wee dungeon in the livingroom floor.

Of course we wanted to try it out and see how it looked with a few miniatures in, and that is when my X chromosome took over. Next thing you know, the dungeon-o-horrors had become Barbie's Dreamhouse. I went and got his iconic wizard character mini and my favourite half-orc and decided to have some fun with the camera and Photoshop.

Oddly enough, it would be another two years before Garish and Janara would actually participate in the same RPG together..and as it often seems to go with half-orc girls, she and Garish ended up "best friends" and nothing more.

Still....it's fun to pretend.

And now...the long-awaited point.

It's no real surprise that there are not that many girls hanging around the game shop. Most games involve math and logic and a high degree of male macho conquest mentality. Girls just generally don't go for that. It's just our nature. We prefer more freeform creative touchy-feely empathic illogical mushy girly things such as Nano-pets, Barbie dolls, scrapbooking and reality television shows.

WHICH IS PRECISELY why roleplaying should have been targeted more toward girls from the start. It's nothing but pretending..making art imitate life, getting into another person's head, and I'll even go so far as to say it's about drama, even at the risk of you, the Reader, throwing a brick at my head. We as a gender are hard-wired for that sort of thing, but most of us cease to indulge it as soon as we think we are too cool to play with dolls or our toy kitchens. It appears that somebody at TSR or WoTC later figured this out and so the later core rules of D&D are filled with examples which involve female characters and their players (which in most but not all cases are also female..but that's another rant altogether).

But of course there is that perception out there that a girl in the game group automatically means that at least one of the guys in the adventuring party will "get some action" or at the very least there will be some soap-opera interaction. Again, it's just one of those human-nature things that has to be either overcame or embraced. I suppose it all really depends on what sort of game group you are in and whether or not your spouse or your friend's spouse is a jealous person with homicidal tendancies.

It would seem, however, that having a half-orcish physique generally stems the tide of unwelcomed advances from males on game-night. Having a character who happens to be half-orcish helps in that regard too.

____

The comic strip, by the way, was the genesis of a long series of comics I made about miniatures in general and orcs specifically. The series was called 28mm Theatre. I may be uploading a few of the more relevant ones to Flickr soon, and now that I am gaming again, am feeling compelled to start the comic back up.

Dungeon Ecology?

2008-12-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

I suppose it is just another one of those things that most GMs never think about, but have you ever wondered exactly WHY it is that for the last three hours, your adventuring party has been hacking its way through this subterranean maze of wandering horrors in which countless other parties have delved and died... and yet in your tedious exploration and mapping of the catacombs, not ONCE have you happened across any of the bones or gory remains of those who last dared to steal the dungeon's treasures?

Then there's those wandering monsters. Just HOW is it that at no time in the dungeon's history that the scores of traps meant for unwary adventurers never accidentally ensnared some poor unfortunate goblin that was not paying attention while looking for a place to go potty.

And on the subject of pottying, there is a whole other horror aspect that most GMs neglect to include in their complex dungeon designs. I am sure that kobolds, like mice, pick a favourite place to leave their little calling cards.

Little things like this may not seem like much, but even in fantasy gaming there has to be some credibility, else there ceases to be any point in the players using any common sense or logic when solving problems in the GM's "silly" game setting.

Below is an example of bad dungeon ecology run amuck. This map came in a red-box set of D&D that my mother-in-law picked up at a garage sale for two bucks. My guess is that the kid who owned the set before was age 10 or 12, and that at least two of his players were much younger. I can almost imagine big-brother convincing little-sis that if she plays and plays nice-like, he'll let her character have a pony.

One day I'll have to scan and upload some of the character sheets. Those kids may have been doing it "wrong", but I guarantee you they were having fun.

Note the gold dragon in the closet there just above and to the right of centre. Also note the fact that this section of dungeon has a serious problem with bees. My guess is that the kid who owned the game had an allergy to bee stings.

"Never mind that horde of bugbears with axes, if that bee stings me, I have to go to the hospital!"

But you really have to wonder what's kept the dragons from eating all the lesser lifeforms in the dungeon first and then turning on one another so they don't have to share all the pretty coins and gems and Swords Of Good.

"Sword Of Good?"

Yeah..the ubiquitous dungeon artifact, the Noun Of Adjective, the reason you've been plodding through this silly dungeon for the past three hours. Legend says it was forged eons ago in the fires of Real Bad Place by the evil Sorcerer DarkSomething, who poured the very essence of his evil into its creation, but couldn't be arsed to come up with a more imaginative name.

On Character Attributes

2008-12-17T20:11:00.000-08:00

At what point did the Powers That Be decide that one's ability to make adversaries pee their collective pants from fear had anything to do with one's lack of friends on Facebook?

The beginnings of a play-by-post RPG

2008-12-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are wondering "What in heck is play-by-post?", it is simply a roleplay game done on the internet, usually on a webforum or blog, and with a deeper emphasis on narrative as opposed to simply rolling dice and smashing things up. What makes me so excited about the forthcoming PbP RPG this blog will be tracking is that it is to be an Original Edition (henceforth to be known as Oe or old-school) styled fantasy heroes-versus-monsters roleplaying game.

"So, why's that so special?", you may ask if you are not yet enlightened and have not yet joined the Oe flock.

Unlike later versions of the game we all know by name, specifically the newest version, Oe gaming emphasizes that the game referee for the most part and the players to a lesser part have more freedom to find out what is and is not possible for the characters to do. A player cannot simply look at his character sheet, calculate the odds on whether or not he can succeed at a particular task or stunt. If you see a wall and want to climb it, you don't roll dice and let Lady LUck decide everything for you. In Oe, you better know at least a little bit about wall climbing. You can throw that d20 all you want, but it won't get your feet off the ground. You're going to have to actually describe how you plan to go about it. This sort of thing makes for excellent face-to-face gaming, but when the players have time to set their thoughts and actions down in words, it can evolve the game into a rather gripping story for others to read as you play.

And before you ask..NO you do not have to be an actual sorcerer to play one old-school style, but if you want my advice, get a copy of Excalibur and watch everything Merlin does. A good game referees will likely look favourably upon a nicely done bit ot theatre on the player's behalf. This sort of mindset can greatly enhance a PbP game for the players as well as anybody else who is reading along.

But I digress (as I often do)

The PbP this blog will be tracking is a Swords & Wizardry module called Tomb of the Iron God. Follow the link in my sidebar to the swords and Wizardry site if you have not already and download the free core rules. The S&W site has several other free downloads too as well as a few "cheaper than food" modules for sale.

The game will actually be running on Reaper Miniatures' webforum. There is an out-of-character topic here, in which the forum members are invited to join the game and, once the game is underway, players and referee handle all out-of-game questions and announcements so that the game topic will be less cluttered and more easily read and enjoyed.

So far, we have four players, one veteran from the Reaper roleplaying forums, and three others who have come over from other old-school RPG forums to join in. I'm excited about the chance to meet new people in and out of game, and to let others have the chance to see what Oe old-school gaming is about.

I'd join in myself, but I've played the module already..BUT I still get to be involved. I'll be providing the visual aides. With a houseful of miniatures, boxloads of HirstArts blocks, and my camera, I'll try my best to provide some good combat maps as the game goes along.

So..watch this space for more on the PbP as well as the usual musings and randomness.

"Ere we go -- 'ere we go --'ere we go!!"

2008-12-16T22:11:00.000-08:00

After some adjusting of look and layout, a test-post or two, and a bit of fine-tuning this blog, I think I'm ready to show it to the world.

So..WELCOME, WORLD, to my new gaming blog.

In particular, welcome all ye folks at the Swords & Wizardry forum, the rest of you over at the Old School D&D forum, and those of you from the Reaper forum.

Also a big howdy-do to those of you who might have followed me here from my old blog at Vox.

I hope you find your visit pleasant or at least not terribly painful, and I also hope you might even return later when I have more actual content.

Thanks again for dropping by.

~Spike~

Got Evil?

2008-12-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

What makes a good horror movie a great horror movie is not the monster itself, but the suspense leading up to the inevitable appearance of the monster.

The same can be said about a great session of roleplaying.

Example 1:

The players are just arriving at the house for Sunday night's session. While the lovely and talented hostess is clearing off space to play, the gamemaster is bringing forth a shoebox full of miniature creatures and arranging a huge pile of dice behind the gamemaster screen. He sometimes looks up, looks back at his game notes, and laughs like a maniac.

Example 2:

One of the players phones the gamemaster the night before game night and invites him and his lovely and talented wife to come over and watch a movie or two. The gamemaster declines, saying he still needs to finish painting three more demons.

Example 3:

The players have wised up to the gamemaster's antics. Nobody in their right mind would expect a party of second level adventurers to survive a fight with ten ghouls or a rooom full of giant spiders and a grey ooze. So, the party has made it through the dungeon, faught giant spiders, oozes, gelatinous cubes, zombies, and even a giant toad. They're nearly out of healing potions, and they come to the ubiquitous door at the end of the last unexplored corridor. The paladin tries to detect evil. The GM informs the paladin that he detects so much evil that his nose bleeds..... and the adventurers learn soon enough that the worst kind of bluff is the one that turns out to be true.

Don't bother counting. There's fifty skeletons. Luckily though, our party of 2nd level adventurers had a few hirelings and a dozen or so bottles of oil. All the player-characters made it out alive, though our hireling berserker went down.

Should not there be a sign at the entrance of the room posted by the fire marshal regarding maximum occupancy?

Imagination and gaming - my first of many more musings to come

2008-12-09T00:36:00.000-08:00

It seems like there are psychologists and doctors clammouring to come up with inventive names for the various learning disorders and attention disorders that plague children and society in general these days, but of all the afflictions that deserve sympathy, there seems to be one out there that has yet to be given a name or its own special ribbon to raise awareness.

What I am talking about is Imagination Deficit Disorder.

Maybe it is just one of the advantages of growing up disadvantaged that I learned to make-believe and make do with sticks for swords and cardboard boxes for castles...and sometimes an imaginary player-character or two to flesh out the fairytale. I sometimes wonder if kids still did that sort of thing after I had grown up, or did virtual-reality games take the place of playing pretend? Have young people lost their ability to suspend disbelief and furthermore lost the ability to make it up as they go along?

Here is a sample of what I am talking about.

Our little party of adventurers have found themselves in a rather bustling little medieval trade village in a place very much like Sweden. They have sackfuls of looted gold and treasure, and are all in need of better weapons, armour repairs, and maybe a bit of entertainment. As chance would have it, and strictly by accident, we end up in the medieval equvilent of the red-light district. The game master throws out a plot hook and the players eventually take the bait and find themselves involved in a turf-war among three proprietors of three brothels. To make a long story short, our eventual plan involved sending one of the party to solicit a "lady" and make a reconnaisance of the questionable proprietor's establishment.

But first, a bit about the player. I've known him for nearly a third of my life and for most of his. He's a young adult now, but I still think of him as my kid brother. I'd never speak badly of him, but he's more random than any random nonplayer-character you've ever met. He joined this particular adventure campaign in progress and took over one of the NPC hirelings in the party.

So into the den of temptresses he goes..and is offered "exotic pleasures from the far corners of the world". He says nothing. The proprietor offers him several girls to pick from, and still he says nothing. Finally, a girl is chosen for him, and she leads him off to somewhere more private to talk..or something. Still, he says nothing.

"Is this your first time", she finally asks him after getting nowhere with her attempts to coax from her client any particular desires or inclinations.

The poor boy goes as red as a beet and makes the time-out sign. "What do I tell her?", he asks the GM.

I suppose in retrospect I should have had more sympathy for a kid who in reality is trying to act the part of a celtic archer having dialogue with a prostitute being played by a fifty-year-old man, but I could not help it.

"Imagine you are you.", I said. "A hot girl is asking you if it's your first time. You...say... YES!!". Then I remember to add "Unless you know something about you that we don't".

So, maybe we have a bit of work to do on his imagination therapy. I really hope that resorting to live-action roleplay and costumes will not be necessary. Some horrors are simply too inconceivable to contemplate.