Thursday, February 17, 2011

Kicking it Olde Schoole v3.5

The boy and I had a pretty busy weekend. We went to a micro anime convention at a local library, talked Labyrinth Lord over dinner with a old 4e friend, and attended the kick-off meeting for brand new Old School D&D Group in North Texas.

I've attended - and run - quite a few rpg-centric greet and meet-ups, ranging in focus from D&D 4e, Star Wars Saga Edition, and Shadowrun.  Really, the best formula seems to be shaking hands, reminiscing about the old days for half and hour, than taking out the dice and getting to business.  This new group did not disappoint, as the organizer guessed that to be the proper course of action.

The one thing that I didn't realize is that the organizer considered D&D 3.5 to be old school.

That was . . . okay.  Not what I was hankering for, exactly.  I had never player 3.5, but am willing to give anything a shot.  I took my pre-gen's backstory and ran with it, playing an cleric who had been told by his deity to meet up with the group.  I played up the creepy stalker guy who 'talks to God' aspect.

The boy was bored stiff.  He was playing an elf ranger.  Plink plink plink.

While he has some attention problems in day to day life, a good game usually snaps him into focus.  This was not one of those games.

I too wasn't incredibly impressed. The DM and the 'theory' behind adventure were fine.  But the actual fights took forever.  I once thought that 4e fights could be painfully long.  I had no idea.  And at first level even.

I don't really know all that much about 3.5.  I'm sure that some experts could have banged out the fights in half the time.  But these guys we were playing with seemed to know what they were doing - yet it still took freaking forever - and the time was mostly spent on the mechanical details - not in anything that I consider particularly fun.

3.5 seems to be pretty damn fiddly.  There is all sorts of math and bizarre rules slapped willy nilly on everything you might want to do.  4e is much more cut because of what appears to be a rules consolidation and simplification from 3.5.  0e and 1e is much more clear cut cause THE DM JUST MAKES UP RULES ON THE SPOT AND NO ONE FUSSES ABOUT IT SO THERE.

The DM and players were all nice people and fun to be around.  My new buddy 3.5 - well - I don't know if I'll call him back for a second date.  I'm just not that into him.

That gives me some worries about Pathfinder.  I was thinking about taking a look at it - now I'm wondering if D&D 3.75 will do it for me.  How different is it?

I should probably give 3.5 another try - but - hmmm.  Yeah.

Talking to my son about it, he said he didn't like it much.  I asked him what he thought the biggest problem was.  He told me in no uncertain terms - it didn't have and POWERS.  All he could do was plink plink plink.

Ah.  I'm noticing a pattern here.  Options makes the game.  For my son, at least.

- Ark

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Nettle Coral

As I was doing development work on my aquatic 4e campaign Sea of Tears, I started watching the anime series Eureka Seven.  I'm not a fan of giant robot anime, but this series had amazing characters, flying surf boards, great music, a green haired emo girl, and scub coral.  I highly recommend it.

The scub coral in Eureka Seven is part of the big mystery that the series unravels slowly throughout it's 50-odd episodes.  I won't spoil it for you, but my initial ideas of what scub coral was turned out to be dead wrong.  However, I used those initial guesses to fuel a major feature of the Sea of Tears campaign - Nettle Coral.

Nettle coral appears to be a regular form of coral, although a bit more straight and spiky and thorny in appearance - more like bleached brambles.  Its biological niche includes where normal coral lives, but it exists in deeper waters as it does not need sunlight to live.

When the sharp tips of nettle coral come in contact with skin, they delivers a sharp blast of pain and damage similar to a nettle, or other corals, for that matter.  However, nettle coral does something that other corals do not do - they reach out to and touch someone.

"Explosive growth" was how I described it to the wide eyed players.  A foot long nettle coral spike could suddenly grow ten feet long to stab its victim.  The coral commonly grows in large enough batches to take out entire pods of sperm whales.  The stuff was a major shipping hazard, and if a port became infested, it had to be abandoned.

Given the right circumstances, nettle coral grows in huge enough clumps to exit the water and form bone white, thorny islands.  Above water, the nettle coral thorns do not explosively grow, they simply explode, sending showers of randomly sized stinging needles in the direction of any movement or noise.  Pirates and other sea-farers used such island to their advantage.

Eventually the characters discovered that the nettle coral was undead - formed by swarms of zombie coral polyps and the nettle stings were actually the polyps sucking life from them like microscopic vampires.  Had the party a cleric, they could have even turned the stuff, but they didn't have one.  Silly party.

I did a search on Google for the term nettle coral, since I figured that the name was already in use somewhere - perhaps even a real type of coral.  I could only find one reference.  Strangely enough, it was mentioned once in the book Blue Lagoon.  I could not have invented such a bizarre non-sequitur if I tried.

So I offer unto you the humble nettle coral - vampiric and evil zombie polyp swarms.  It's Strahd von Zarovich under a microscope.  Do with it what you will.

- Ark

 (Check out the rest of the Sea of Os'r Project over at the Lands of Ara.)

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Surts' Island Draft

The weekend was pretty busy, and I swore to myself I wouldn't blog till I had finished up at least a rough draft of my island.  I kept to the letter of the law - but not the intent, when I saw one of Telecanter's found treasures and had to go on and on and on about it.  I swear, he always finds cool stuff.  You know that boy who stuck in a thumb and pulled out a plum?  Yeah, that's Telecanter as a kid.

So I finished the rough draft.  It needs a hacksaw taken to it - and maybe an arc welder - but it's done.  I couldn't keep it down to a page.  Verbal diarrhea I guess. So it's two pages.  With teensy font.  I apologize for your eye strain.

The link is here.  Again, this is on Goolge Docs, which makes pdfs look crappy.  Just click File and save it to your desktop and read it via acrobat.

Enjoy!

- Ark

(Check out the rest of the Sea of Os'r Project over at the Lands of Ara.)

Friday, February 11, 2011

Your Moment of Zen

"When I get 16 I'm going to get a car and drive to the game store and play Living Forgotten Realms with the RPGA." my ten year old son said suddenly from across the room.

"That's fine with me," I said as I worked on the map at my desk.

"I want to go play," he sighed, "I miss it."

"So do I. We had some good times there.  But you know I can't support the RPGA if they are going to allow those cards in the game."

"But I want to play D&D."

"We will be playing D&D.  Two of the guys from the old group are interested in playing Labyrinth Lord."

He perked up.  "They are?"

I chuckled.  "Yes, the are.  I've told you ten times already."

He looked as if it was the first time he had heard it.  "Oh."

"And you could play yourself, yanno.  You have friends around here.  You could DM a game."

He shrugged and grunted.

"And there is that map you drew and the character I made.  I do want to play with you."

The boy sighed.  "I don't know how to DM.  I'm too young."

I shook my head.  "You know, I was just a little older than you when I started to play  Less than a year older.  Practically your age.  I picked up the D&D book, read it, and started DMing without anyone teaching me how.  There was no one to teach me how.  There was just me and my friend Chris and neither of us knew anything."

"Really?"

I nodded.

"But it's a big book."

I nodded.  "Yes, it's pretty big.  But do you want to know a secret?"

"Yes," he said as if that was an extremely stupid question.

"Have you ever noticed how in fourth edition that everyone expects to follow the rules in the book?  Players even correct the DM and the DM nods and goes along with what the player said, or people will argue about a rule and someone will have to pull out one of those big hardcover books from their bags?  There are so many rules that it takes a whole table of people to try and remember them all."

He looked at me like I was telling him the sky was blue.

"Well, in classic D&D, the DM is the rule book."

He looked at me as if I was telling him that martians made all of the bubblegum in the world in a secret chicken coup in Mumbai.

"What?"

"The DM is the rulebook.  You have final say on the rules.  Not some book."

"Oh," he said, staring off into the aether.  Then he looked at me. "I'm the rule book?"

I nodded.  Deep in thought, he stood up and wandered off in a daze.

A few minutes later, he came back with a crooked smile and a bag of dice.  "Can I use your book and some paper?"

"Sure thing," I grabbed the Labyrinth Lord book and some paper and a clip board and pencil and handed it to him.  "What do you want the book for?"

"Prickly the hobbit will need retainers, right?"

I tried not to smile.  "Yes."

He sat down across the room and began flipping through pages.  "Would he like short people to adventure with him?  Like a dwarf?"

"Sure,"

He stopped at a page, put a sheet of paper on the book and began writing.  Then he started rolling dice and writing again.

"Just remember," I said.  "If the NPCs have all 18s, it makes the PCs feel kind of useless."

"Oh," he said, and began erasing.

I smiled and turned back to the map.


- Ark

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Feycutter

In my file rummaging I found another sea-faring related idea of mine that I had forgotten - the feycutter.  As my Sea of Tears campaign was 4e, it contained the requisite eladrin PCs and NPCs.  For those of you who don't know, an eladrin is like a super-elf, hailing from the Feywild, which is like the super-elf plane oozing with super-fairy dust.  Some eladrin lived in the 'real' world, and basically put their elven cousins to shame on how 'elfy' they were.

A feycutter is a ship of eladrin design, exquisite in form and durable in function.  The feycutter can travel up to 15% faster than a similarly classed ship.  This speed boost comes from having at least two masts - one normal, and one magically enhanced to catch the wind in another dimension - usually the Feywild.

As the feycutter's sails are pushed in two different directions, crew members must have extensive training on how to operate and maneuver these lithe vessels.  The fey-sail's immersion into the Feywild is variable, so the additional thrust can be carefully applied and much less tacking is necessary.

Also, since the feycutter uses 'more' wind than standard vessels, it can always outrun a standard vessel of similar class at a particular time.  Due to the difficulties inherent in construction, a feycutter will cost at least 300 times that of a similar, single-winded craft.

To translate the feycutter into more classical versions of D&D, one could say they were manufactured by elves and are their 'feysail' is actually tapping into the etheric wind.  Note that these are not spelljammer ships.  They float - they don't fly.

Feel free to use the feycutter in your own campaign.  They are particularly effecive when used by jerky, drunk elves who throw beer cans at the PCs, then sail away without any fear of being caught. :)

- Ark

 (Check out the rest of the Sea of Os'r Project over at the Lands of Ara.)

And a Star to Sail Her By

I ran a 4e campaign for almost two years called Sea of Tears.  The idea behind it was that an entire continent had sunk 100 years previously and there were only mountaintops above the waves.  Kind of like a D&D Waterworld, without Kevin Costner.  Ships and boats were very important, and the surviving halfling population, deprived of their forested lowland hills (or their natural habitat per 4e - rivers) had become the masters of the waves.

I found a folder cache of my stuff from the campaign.  I forgot that I had created ship layouts for use with miniatures.  Apparently I was pretty proud of them since I pdfed the thee pages of maps and scrawled name all over.  I submit them to you for your use in wherever a boat or small ship map would be appropriate.  What I did was to print out the maps and glue them to card-stock, then cut them out and had pirate attacks!  Follow the link here. Oh, and they look lousy in Google Docs, so after clicking the link, you'll need to click File and then click Download Original, and then open with that Adobe thingy.

- Ark

 (Check out the rest of the Sea of Os'r Project over at the Lands of Ara.)

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Living Forgotten Rant

No, this isn't about those cards.  Something has been festering in my gut.  It has to do with mandatory DMing.

I have no idea if mandatory DMing is an official RPGA policy, but it was practiced where I played.  I've seen mention of Living Forgotten Realms being run that way on other blogs, so I assume it's a common practice.  Other gaming groups attempting organized play probably use it too.

Now I have no problem with playing a game under a learning DM.  I have no problem playing with a horrible DM.  Once. (I always have the choice of who I play with.)  But the flip-side of mandatory DMing is mandatory NOT DMing.

You heard me.  Mandatory NOT DMing. 

How it works is this - I check out the games that are scheduled for play.  There is no game with an opening (there needs to be two openings for my son and I.) 

So I say "Hey - there are some other players who want to play, my son wants to play, I want to DM - lets' do this.'

And the organizers say, "No.  You have DMed this month.  You may only DM once every four weeks."

"But," I say, "No one is willing to step up.  No one wants to.  I would LOVE to DM.  Gimme a mod.  I will DM it.  Gimme the back of a cereal box.  I will DM that.  I want to play."

"Sorry," they say, "Someone else has to."

"But, if I don't DM, there will be no game.  I DM - there is a game.  I'm happy, people are happy.  Right?"

"Wrong.  If you DM, then someone else is shirking their responsibility of DMing.  They won't DM, they won't learn how to DM.  They'll just sit there and play and never give anything back to the community."

I then start chewing my leg off rather than explode in a volcano of cuss words that would flambe everyone within 50 miles.

So, because of the mandatory DMing policy, five to seven people don't get to play in the RPGA that day, even though they was space, they had enough players, they had a table, and they had a DM.

On an organizational level, I get it.  They need DMs.  If people don't try DMing, they don't learn and there will be no new DMs.

On a personal level - AAAAAAAAAA RRRRRRRRRR GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Yanno, if it was just me - well, I'd say, those are the breaks.  But my son was getting kicked around by this policy.  That is very frustrating.

The only way to be sure to have a spot was to hover over the sign-up sight and wait for a DM and sign up the second a table was posted - whether I knew we had Saturday free or not.

I never could resolve the whole thing satisfactorily in my mind.  It makes sense on paper.  In my gut, it feels all sorts of messed up.  I just don't know.  Since I don't play in the RPGA anymore - it's not really an issue - so I suppose I should just let it go.

There - I got it out of my system.  Grumpy post done.  Now I hope I can have a slew of ungrumpy posts. :)

- Ark