Monday, January 31, 2011

Moses in the Rushes


So my son and I were clearing off the kitchen table, getting ready to play our first official Labyrinth Lord game.  Denis the Fighter's character sheet was laden with scattered dice.

I love back story, so I ask my son, "So where does Denis come from?  A big city, a medium town, or a small village?"

"A great big city," he hopped up to my desk and pointed the rough draft of the Gulf of Labrys basin.  "He was born there, in Norlun."

Hmm, I had intended to start off in Oshtan, which was more to the south west.  Oh well, I could deal with that.

"Okay, so . . ."

My son wasn't finished.  "And his parents were killed when he was two and he was adopted by dwarves."

I blinked a couple of times.  That completely messed up my whole non-racial fraternization concept for the world.  I began to imagine baby Denis in a basket made of reeds floating down the Nile.  Oh well, I could deal with that.

I scanned the map.  "There are some nice mountains near Norlun right here.  I suppose there could be some dwarves living here."  I nervously looked at the big word DUERGAR in the mountains.  Oh well, I could deal with that.

"No," he shook his head, pointing to the mountains with DWARVEN STRONGHOLDS written on them.  "That is where his parents live."

I began scratching my beard.  That was over 1,200 miles away from his home.  How in the hell did the two year old Denis get all the way over there.  The dwarves, in my mind, certainly were not much for travel.  They only hit the road if the needed a Burglar to sneak into lonely mountains.  My mind raced.

"That's a long way away.  Why would Denis' parents be anywhere near the dwarven mountains?"

Of course, the Peanut Gallery had no answer. 

"They must have been merchants," I muttered. “ Desperate merchants looking to strike a deal with the dwarves.  They would have had to have gone through here, the NEUTRAL ZONE, which is full of thieves and outcasts of society.  They they'd have to brave the Lands of the Goblinkind to get to the Dwarven Strongholds." 

My son nodded.  "The Goblins killed his parents."

"Aha," I nodded back.  "It all makes sense now.  The dwarves rushed to help the humans, but it was too late, and all they could save was baby Denis."

"The dwarves taught him to fight and vanquish anything in his path."

"Vanquish?"

"Yes, it means . . ."

I chuckled, "I know what it means."  We sat down and I began to flip to the back of the Labyrinth Lord book. 

"What's that?" he asked.

"Oh, it's a little adventure in the back of the book I'm going to take Denis through."

"I don't want to do someone else’s adventure.  I want to do one of your adventures.  Your adventures are much better."

I watched the entirety of my plans go up in smoke.  I took a deep breath.  I could deal with that.

"Okay . . . so Denis is . . . at his home, in Jarlsberg . . ."

The boy shook his head.  "It should be a cool name.  Like . . . like . . . Thornhold."

I smiled.  "Okay, So Denis is with his mother and father, Helga and Jarn . . . Bronzebottom . . ."

"Just Bronze." he said.

"Okay, Denis is deep in the bowels of the Dwarven Fortress of Thornhold, a hollowed out shell of a mountain.  It's normally dark, since the dwarves can see heat,"

"Like a snake?"

"Like a snake.  But Denis' parents have always carefully lit their home so that Denis could see well and not stub his toes.  So Helga and Jarn dressed Denis up in the family armor and gave him a sturdy shield and mighty sword.  Then his mother says 'We've taken care of you all these years, my son, and loved every minute of it.  We've taught you all we can teach you.  It's time you made your way to the human lands.  You need to learn about being a human.  You'll make human friends and find a human woman to love and have a family with.  You can't do that here - only with other humans.’"

I watched as my son's face began to drop and it almost looked like he had a tear in his eye.  "It's okay," I said softly.  "It's time for Denis to go have adventures now."

"I know Dad," he looked at me, "But Denis is really sad.  He wants to go on adventures, but Denis loves his mom and dad a lot and will miss them a bunch."

I nodded and gave him a minute. 

"Ready?" 

He nodded yes.

"Okay then, Denis' mom and dad hug him and warn him about the goblins and send him on his way."

He smiled great big.  "Okay, I leave home and go off into the wilderness.  Do I see any goblins?"

"As a matter of fact . . . you do."

Okay, now that is why I play.

- Ark

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Riddle Me This - Hit Points

So today I'm playing a little D&D with my son.  I just got in the Advanced Edition Companion so I'm feeling all retro - and his fighter Dennis gets knocked down to negative one for hit points.  It's been 20 odd years since I've read the dying rules, so I start digging through the AEC for the rules about bleeding from 0 HPs and they dying at -10 - but nothing.  Nowhere.  Hmm.

What the hell?  An AD&D emulator with no 'dying' emulation?  Was that not thought neccisary?  Just the old 0 HP and you are dead?

So my quesiton is - how do you handle hit points and dying?  Zero is death?  Negative ten?  Something else?  And why?

- Ark

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Moving Right Along

As a student of Zen, I should really know when the universe is kicking me in the ass to do something.  Okay Universe - I get it.  Type IV is dead - long live Labyrinth Lord.  Sheesh.  Shut up already.

Sigh.

So, moving right along, I'm working on a world that supports the classic D&D feel.  I'm having to scrape 4e thoughts out of my mind.  Little things like elves being short little dudes that live over 1,000 years, instead of being human sized with 300 years lifespans - these differences really matter.  The continuity of elven culture would be much more pronounced.  If you can go ask great great uncle Ed what life was like 1700 years ago, well, chances are that kind of society would change very slowly.

Fourth Edition also harps on the fact that the different races are all mixed up all over the place - so while there might be more humans in general, every little village will have some dwarves making swords, halflings hanging out around the tavern, and the ubiquitous half-orc down the road selling doorknobs, or some other stupid things.  Blech.

I've made a rough draft of a map for my new campaign.  I've marked areas where different races hang out and there is little fraternization.  Most races are more likely to kill each other than sell each other door knobs.  To me, that feels more like old D&D, but perhaps that was just my pre-teen take on how such a world would be.  You know, dwarf-lords in their halls of stone - and all that jazz.  You can click on the map down there and it should pop up a bigger one with my nasty chicken-scrawlings more visible.

The idea behind this campaign is that in the past, there was a devastating war lasting thousands of years between the forces of Law and Chaos on the continent.  Some humans escaped it by sailing to distant islands and hiding.  Chaos won, but Chaos doesn't tend to maintain roads or stabilize local governments or anything useful like that, so everything fell apart.

A thousand years later, these islander humans - all pumped up on the religion of Law - come back to the continent to rehabilitate it.  Five hundreds years after the first colony was built, the humans are still having a hell of a time keeping order.  Boat crushing sea mosnters, hordes of goblins and orcs, pissed off elves, grumpy dwarves, rabble-rousing halfings, blight-ridden lands, evil high priests, cannibalistic necromancers, and mysterious slavers from the west tend to get in the get in the way of organization.

Who you gonna call?

Enjoy the rough, raggedy map.  I'll be focusing in on the central area and developing a hopefully worthy campaign soon.

- Ark

Friday, January 28, 2011

Card Pimps

I shouldn't be surprised, but I seeing it here in print is like a smack in the face.  The LIVING FORGOTTEN REALMS® CAMPAIGN GUIDE Version 2.0 includes the optional use of Fortune Cards.  This is not the option of the DM - no - it is the option of the players. 

You build your 'deck' almost like a Magic the Gathering deck.  Surprise surprise.  "You may have no more than one copy of any individual card (by name) per 10 cards in your deck."  Per 10 cards.  Multiples of ten.  They come it packs of 8.  So they are like hot dogs and hot dog buns - they don't match up in count.  Great.

"You must have a minimum of 3 cards of each type (Attack, Defense, Tactics) per 10 cards in your deck."  Oh just peachy.  If the booster set you buy doesn't have the right mis of types, you must buy more.  AT 50 cents a card.

THERE IS NO LIMIT ON YOUR STACK. You could have 180 cards piled up on your character sheet.

I could go on quoting the new rules, but I would vomit all over my keyboard.  It would be bad enough as a DM running a home game to suffer though the whines of the players begging to use the cards.  But in RPGA play - everyone can use them - which means that everyone will.  Except the poor shmuck in the corner without enough cash.  That little bastard has the fact that he can't afford it ground into his face. 

I should stop before I start cursing.

Damn I'm pissed.  I'm going to go chew my leg off to calm down.

- Ark

Thursday, January 27, 2011

More Impressions - Labyrinth Lord


I have this unstoppable habit of spelling it LABRYNTH or LABIRYNTH.  I blame Sir Arthur Evans.  For many years, I devoured anything I could find on the ancient Minoans and Mycenaeans.  Good old Arthur, who dug up the palace of Knossos on Crete, felt that there was a connection between the "laBYRinth" of Minotaur fame, and the double-sided axe, or "laBRYs."  Other people thought he was stark raving mad.  You see my confusion - BYR vs. BRY.  Sir Arthur brought the word “labrys” into the English language.  It has haunted me to this day.

In a previous post, a reader mentioned that Labyrinth Lord had helped clear up past confusions with the classic game, echoing my initial experience with Proctor's work.  I wondered why that was.  Was it because the writing was just clearer? 

I pulled up a, er, up, copy, of both Holmes and Moldvay and read sections of them that corresponded with Proctor.  I can't say that one was clearer than the other two.  Holmes may have been a bit less concise, but Moldvay was equal in brevity and getting to the point. 

One factor that did strike me was layout.  Labyrinth Lord uses fonts and spacing and table format that is much more comfortable on the eyes and does not create a clutter that interferes with getting the data into my head.  It looks more modern with the standards that Word and HTML and Adobe has made us conform to.  Perhaps it's not better, but it's more modern and what we are used to.

A bit of thinking about it lead me to a theory.  The difference was me. The distance from 11 to 41 is a long one.  I didn't understand a lot about the game back then.  But honestly, I don’t think I gave them much of a chance.  I packed my bags and ran off to AD&D as soon as I could afford the hardbacks.  Then yeah, whammo.  AD&D was some tough stuff.  Rules that I didn't understand got rewritten on the fly into something that I and the other players understood and could work with.  I didn't try to make the game work as written.

Since 1981 I've run 30 or 40 different rule systems - and read a lot more.  With 4e I sat down and read and read and read the rules and discussed them with the players and we hashed them out until we were playing RAW.  For a whole year I refused to 'fix' any rule, since I wanted to know fully that I was running it right before I started tinkering with it.  When I did start changing things - rewriting monsters and adding critical hits power-ups and adjusting some magic items - it rarely felt okay.  I would change one thing and another part of the game would suffer.  It was like a house of cards with me scrambling around under the foundation trying to keep the mess from toppling.

Classic D&D was never sacrosanct.  Rules went in and out all the time, sometimes multiple times in a single session.

I took another gander at the DMG.  Back then it kind of hurt to read.  Thirty years later, old Gary still hurts my head sometimes.  Read NON-LETHAL AND WEAPONLESS COMBAT PROCEDURES.  No, really, read it.  Here, I'll give you a snip-it:

This is not me - just a radioactive zombie who looks like me.

"The base score on percentile dice is opponent AC value times 10 to arrive at a percentage chance to hit, i. e. AC 10 = 100%, AC 9 = 90% . . ."
 

Um, Gary, dude, I kind of get it, but why did you invent an entirely different game to slug some zombie in the face?  Playing with Gary as DM - sure - that would be completely awesome.  But an 12 year old trying to run a game like that?  Yeah, right.  Well, I guess it was supposed to be ADVANCED, right?

I thumbed through OSRIC to see if my bearings were straight.  Yeah.  They were.  Those rules are hefty.  It's not just a matter of how they are explained.  They sure are a THICK CHUNK to try and cram into your mind.

Labyrinth Lord is that simplicity that I rejected as a young man because I wanted to be and adult and be smarter than everyone else.  Cripes, I took physics and calculus for fun too.  I wanted to be ADAVNCED - even if I had no clue what that was.

Digging through the Advanced Edition Companion I see a completely different idea going on.  It's Moldvay with Advanced sprinkles on top.  Really – very similar to the way I used to play it.  I think that is pretty nifty.  It’s not just a Xeroxed clone.  It’s a clone of the spirit.

I need to find this Daniel Proctor guy and shake his hand.  I suppose instead, I can just Google him right now though.  If only he wouldn’t have called it Labyrinth Lord.  Something I could spell.  Like Crypt Commander.  Or Trench Titan.  Or Hole Hero.  But I Gary used tons of words I couldn’t spell either, so I guess nomenclature legerdemain is something game designers revel in.


- Ark

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Chekhov's Can of Soup


My son has been home sick for the last few days.  He's a pretty social kid, and he was beginning to go stir-crazy.  After work today, I noticed Denis the Fighter under some papers on my desk and asked the boy if he wanted to finish buying equipment and filling out the rest of his sheet.  He looked about as excited as I am confronting 1040 Full Form Income Tax Return - but said yes. 

After settling on the banded mail, shield, and long sword (who needs the rest of the stuff?) we moved to the Saving Throws.  He looked confused.

"You know that roll you make when you get flung off a cliff or . . . well . . . when anything strange happens and you have to roll a 10 or above?"

"Yeah," he said, eyeing the chart full of numbers.

"Well, that's kind of a dumbed down version of the classic Saving Throws.  Some things just hit.  A dragon shouldn't have to roll to blast you.  If you just stand there, you are toast.  It's up to you to pull yourself out of the frying pan.  Or to not look at the medusa.  These are the numbers you have to roll."

"Oh," he nodded.  He did a few test rolls.  Poor Dennis would have been a burning, petrified, poisoned, dead Fighter.  My son frowned.  We moved on to Armor Class.

"So when did AC stop being upside down?"

"Um, Third edition, I've heard. Want to see how it works?"

"Sure."

"Okay, let's see," I opened to the monsters and immediately saw the entry for Zombie.  "So Denis is in the dark labyrinth with his sword and, um, well, he probably would have brought along a torch too in his shield hand.  And suddenly, a zombie jumps out!"

His eyes widened.  "I stab at him!"  My son arced his arm over his head and I leaned back just in time to avoid getting a broken nose.

"Okay, get a d20 and roll to hit."

He dug for his special multi-colored lucky one that he loves, except when it rolls low so he has to give it a stern talking to.

"Do I hit?" he asked, pointing at the 15 on the die.

I shrugged.  "You tell me.  His AC is 8."  A quick explanation of the hit chart and he was all like . .

"Booyah!  Now damage," he understood that one pretty well.  "Okay, 6 plus my strength bonus is 7.  Does that kill him?"

"Dunno.  Let me roll his hp."  Before he could even ask, I pointed at the zombie entry. "See, he's got 2 hit dice.  That's like levels.  So I roll 2d8 for his hit points.  No one just a a flat amount of hp around here.  There we go - nine hit points.  So your sword sends chunks of rotting flesh flying, but your zombie friend is still standing andis  looking to get his dance card punched again."

My son has learned over the years to ignore most of the bizarre, out of place things I say and distill it down to what matters.

"I HIT HIM AGAIN!"

"Hold up - he attacks you.  Oops.  He swings his rusty sword over your head.  It would be quite a refreshing breeze if thick puss wasn't oozing from his eye sockets."

"I HIT HIM AGAIN!"

"Hold up - initiative."  He grabbed his d20.  I shook my head and pointed to the d6.  He rolled a 6 and the zombie a 1.

"I HIT HIM AGAIN!" he pointed to the 11 on the die and on the Attack Value Track.  "See!  Three points.  He's dead!"

"The zombie explodes like a can of Campbell's Chunky Sirloin Burger with Country Vegetables put in the microwave for 30 minutes."

"EWWWW!" he said, and went on the clean out the next eight rooms in the impromptu dungeon.  The two lizardfolk at the end gave him some trouble, but Denis the Fighter came through with his scalp intact.

A great big smile was on his face.  "That went by so fast.  It would have taken forever with Essentials."

I grinned.  "And where were all the minis?"

"In here."  The pointed to his forehead.  "I imaged the whole thing.  Denis has great big muscles."

"So did you like it?"

He nodded it the excited way he does, slapping his chin on his chest.  "And, um, I was wondering.  If I'm sick tomorrow, can we play a whole adventure?"

I imagined spending the day throwing the bones and chasing my son around in his mind with beasties and wicked bear traps.  It sounded really nice.  But suddenly I had to be the Dad.  "I don't think you are sick any more.  And even so, I still have to go to work."

He looked down and sighed.

"But since you've been sick, I haven't signed us up yet for the RPGA games yet this weekend - and they are pretty full.  Why don't we stay home this weekend and I can take you through something."  I glanced briefly at the purple module on my desk that had just arrived in the mail.  Keep on the Borderlands winked back at me.

"I'd like that." my son smiled.

“Me too.”

- Ark

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

I Finally Found the Link


I guess I should have known.  Oh wait - I did.

Reading . . . reading . . . reading . . .

- Ark