Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Cyclopeatron is Doing Math Again!

He's making a list and checking it twice.  You know what list I am talking about.  Congratz to Beedo of Dreams of the Lich House.  Go look at it TODAY.  ACT NOW.  OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY.

- Ark

World Skeletons

For me, the core of a fantasy world has always been it's spiritual side.  Players may never know or care anything about it, but in actually building the world it's vital.  The spiritual side of a fantasy world  is the skeleton you hang everything else from.  In my quest to build a universe from D&D/Labyrinth Lord basics, I'll focus on alignment, plannar structure, and deities.

Alignment is an important feature in any Dungeons and Dragons campaign.  Even it's absence from a DM's creation is very telling about that world.  Entire planes of existence were even created along the nine point alignment system.  But it sure has been a pain in the ass.

In thirty years of wrestling with the alignment system, I've come down to a simple thought.  It doesn't mean a great deal to say your character is Lawful Good of Chaotic Neutral or whatever.  It matters what you do.

People are what they do.  Not the other way around.  A frog can sit around and do geometry problems and recite lines from the movie Toxic Avenger, but it's not being a very good frog.  In fact, we probably need an entirely new word for this frog-like entity.  Characters are the same.  They probably shouldn't even bother writing down an alignment.  The DM should just assign one based on past behavior.

In breaking down alignment, good and evil are the simplest part.  There is nothing particularly spiritual about the continuum in itself.  It's really just how beneficial your actions are to the groups of which you are a part.  That group can be an adventuring group, a village, a nation, a race, or all intelligent creatures.  A person can't define themselves as good.  Group members have to do that.  Evil is pursuing self interests that conflict with the group's.  Of course, the definitions are always subjective, depending on who is doing the labeling, and what group they belong to.

I think Law and Chaos are where it gets interesting.  Chaos can be likened to entropy, the universe's inclination to break down into disorder and randomness.  Law can be likened to life itself.  Life is not only organized, it tends to create even more organization.  The Life = Law idea is borne out in the fact that Lawful clerics have turn undead, while Chaotic clerics have create undead.  The undead appear to be a subversion of Law.  Skeletons, ghouls, and zombies rarely build cities or formulate tax codes.  They kill the living without benefiting the living.

I've read bits of James Raggi's LotFP alignment system and love it.  All magic users and elves are chaotic.  It's great.  It's not quite what I am striving for with this world, but man, do I want to use it.  It fits in with my Law/Chaos theories as well.  I'll probably sneak as much as I can in, though.

In D&D and Labyrinth Lord, Law and Chaos stretch off the edges of the page, so to speak, into other planes,  indicating that they are Platonic ideals with their 'source perfection' somewhere beyond the realm of mortals. These places tend to be the planes of the Gods.  

In thinking about the nature of the alignments, I am thinking of breaking away with tradition, well, at least D&D tradition.  It only makes sense to me that Law, it it's purest form, would be purified into a singularity.  There would be one, and only one, Lawful deity.  I have surprised myself by becoming a fantasy monotheist.

The human culture that I envision eventual came to understand that all clerics received the same spells and abilities, whichever god or goddess they were worshipping.  They could hop from one deity to another even, with little issue.  It dawned on the spiritual leaders that there was only one God of Law.  More 'primitive' cultures might have a whole slew of lawful deities, but they were only worshipping aspects, or avatars, of the one true source of Law.

Furthermore, they believed that this Lawful God could not be represented in any suitable visual form, and to attempt to do so was silly - to the point of being dangerous.  The best you could do was to represent this god with geometric shapes or abstract symbols.

Chaos, on the other hand, has a thousand gibbering mouths and a million tiny little hands and feet, all busy disassembling the universe and eating it from the inside out.  There is no one Chaos - it is infinite. 

So, there are some of the bones I am using for this new campaign world I am working on.  Not like the players will ever know - since they will only see the flesh.  They won't even care - but you know, it's not about them. :)

- Ark

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Bullied

I've written this post countless times over the last few days and deleted it an equal amount.  I've posted some information, then removed it, which has probably confused some who have caught snatches of it.  To sum up,

My son has been bullied at school for a while now, and it has taken a very heavy emotional toll on him.  He has a large amount of people surrounding him to help him through this, ranging from family to professionals.  Steps are being taken to make things right.

My son is different in many of the same ways that I am, and many of the ways that I think anyone who sits down and writes a blog abut role playing is different.  Differences get pointed out in painful ways.  It hurts down deep to see my boy have to go through this.

Things are now getting better, but it has been very rough.

I'd like to thank Johnathan Bingham, ze bulette, Telecanter, Mike, Spawn of Endra and Chris Hogan for your support, and I am sorry that your posts were deleted when I deleted the blog entry.  I have them in email and I am keeping them, having reread them many times already.  They mean a lot.

I'd also like to thank Harald over at The Book of Worlds for a very succinct reality check .  The flat of your Viking battle axe upside my temple has cleared my head.  Seriously.  Thanks.

- Ark

Friday, February 25, 2011

NTRPGCon - 2011

It's official.  The boy and I are going to the North Texas RPG Convention in June.  Here's a little blurb about it from the website:

"The NTRPG Con focuses on old-school Dungeons & Dragons gaming (OD&D, 1E, 2E, or Basic/Expert) as well as any pre-1999 type of RPG produced by the classic gaming companies of the 70s and 80s (TSR, Chaosium, FGU, FASA, GDW, etc). We also support retro-clone or simulacrum type gaming that copies the old style of RPGs (Swords & Wizardry, Castles & Crusades, and others)."

Guests attending are:

"Erol Otus, Rob Kuntz, Jason Braun, Tim Kask, Dennis Sustare, Steve Winter, Frank Mentzer, Paul Jaquays, Steve Marsh, Jim Ward"

I am quite pumped.  Anyone else round here going?

- Ark

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Robot Holocaust and Hackmaster

I mentioned the Robot Holocaust in an earlier post, so I suppose I should introduce them.  Robot Holocaust - readers, readers - Robot Holocaust.

My son bought a bunch of little animal shaped erasers in those toy machines you find at the front of grocery stores.  I was more interested in the little clear bubbles that held the erasers, than the erasers themselves.  Coming in at an inch wide, they were perfect for my nefarious plan.  A touch of paint later - and I had a myself an army bent on taking over the world.

Regretfully, the campaign that I had intended to use them in fell through and they never got used.  But they are lurking on my craft table - waiting for their chance.

In other news, I picked up the HackMaster GameMaster's Guide at Halfprice Books yesterday.  Why was I not informed of this product?  If D&D is rock and roll, HackMaster is HEAVY METAL.  I did not realize that Gygax's lily could be gilded, but indeed it has.  Quite awesome!

But why, on every page that I turn, and I reminded of Zak of Playing D&D with Porn Stars? Must be Vornheim or something.

- Ark

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

DMs Say the Darndest Things

"Sit down here." I patted the chair across from mine, a clipboard and pencil in my lap.

My son eyed me suspiciously and sat down.  I began writing on the clipboard with it tilted away from him.  I had come up with some awesome Middle English based names for my Labyrinth Lord campaign.  I just wanted to run them by my son to make sure they sounded okay.

"Why are you hiding that piece of paper?"

The boy is always to the point.  "I want to see what you think of a some words.  They are names for places that I've made up, and I want to see what you think.  I'll read them out loud."

"Oh. Okay."

"Great.  The first one is Aloftgres."

He tilted his head and made a 'thinking' face.  "Interesting," he said as he taped his lip.

Great.  He's posing and I don't even have a camera out.

"The second one is Duskenfaunt."

"Sound like something you do while on the toilet."

That one took me aback.  Duskenfaunt was a fine name.  A really good name.  What did that even mean - something you do on the toilet?  How dare he insult my word.

"What are you writing on the paper?"  he asked.

"I'm writing what you said."

"Why?"

"Because I care what you think,"  chuckling at myself and my word vanity.

"Oh," he smiled.

"Dweryen Doun."

He thought for a moment.  "Cool."

"Ernslak,"

"Sounds like an insult for lazy people."

I'm not sure how long I kept my mouth open.  "Um, okay.  Yeah, I guess so.  Interesting.  The next is Nyrvylrem"

He laughed.  "Nervilrim . . . it's funny."

"Hethwalle."

"Cool."

"Senginbergh"

"That's weird"

"Senginerd"

"Next"

I raised an eyebrow, just like Spock.  Well, just like Spock in my mind.  My eyebrows don't do that willingly.  He wasn't smiling.  It was a complete and utter diss of the word.  Wow.

"Vathloof"

"Bless you,"

Okay, so he's a smart-ass, just like me.

"Lefdikuss."  The minute the word left my mouth, I realized I had made a horrible, horrible mistake.

"Are there two? Is there a right one?  Left?  Dick?  Left?  Dick?  Huh?  Huh?" he guffawed.

Oh dear god.  I can't believe it.  I even put this up on the blog.  I blame you people.  I had no idea.  You should have warned me.  You saw it.  You knew.  You set me up.  On purpose!

I suddenly realized I was in a Monty Python skit.  After he calmed down, we moved on.

"Fultum."

"Cool."

"Rotenslade."

He chuckled.  "That's funny.  Rotten."

"Failham"

"Sounds like an epically failing ham."

"Flumrys Brig."

He smiled, "Sounds like the name of a ship."

"Gobelyntur."

"Sounds like a goblin giving a tour.  Or!  Or a tour inside of a filthy goblin!"

I tried to wipe the image of goblin intestines from my mind.  "Kyndrecchen"

"Interesting," he nodded.

There was one last name.  All I can say is, never say this word in front of my son.  Ever.

"Pricketholt."

I mean it.  I have witnesses who will concur.

You have been warned.

- Ark

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

I'm Literate!

After years and years of trying, I'm finally published.  I had to publish it myself, but dang it, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Now there is at least one hard-copy of my stories in existence that I can leave to posterity.  I should go bury it in the backyard in a Ziploc bag for when the Robot Holocaust comes rolling into town.

I'd like to thank my family, the academy, Lulu, and the hundreds of editors who have xeroxed millions of rejection letters just for me.  You can get a free copy here.

- Ark

Monday, February 21, 2011

More Wishes!

Click to embiggen.
Someone mentioned that if you took the AD&D rules and projected them forward as the physics of a world, you'd get one like Dark Sun - controlled by magic-user who run city-states.  I've been wrapping my head around a universe extrapolated from Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion, and I'm not so sure.

Wizards are in a nuclear arms race to attain the wish spell - plain and simple.  Upon reaching 17th level, the only sane thing is to pour all of one's time and money into creating a wish spell.  The next step is to use your new power to hunt down and destroy all other existing copies if the spell - and kill or incapacitate the creators of those spells. 

Of course, containment of the wish spell would be impossible.  Eventually, someone else would figure it out, or some extra-planar being will drop by with the power.  Magicians would have to form alliances to protect themselves, and as the power of opposed alliances grew, a stalemate like the Cold War would occur.  A wizard couldn't remain neutral in this conflict for long.  They'd be forced to choose sides. 

If the stalemate faltered, however, opposing sides would wish each other out of existence in a flash.  Wishes could even be delayed with dead-man switch type technology to obliterate the other side even if the original wisher was wishified.  (Which is kind of wishy-washy.)

So, assuming that the magic-users didn't devastate the planet and themselves, they would operate in Magic Unions formed around an agenda - usually the survival and increased power of the Union and its near immortal founder - the "Wish Master" (ick, probably need a better name for that.)  Operating out in the open would be the last thing they would do as they would want to be seen and detected by rival Unions as little as possible.  They would operate much like a cabal.

I can't see that running countries would be in their interest.  At least, not out in the open.  It would be much safer to pull stings from the dark.  Participating openly in military campaigns would even be iffy.  High powered magicians would spend much of their time in study and research.  I kind of see them as above (or below, if you will,) affairs of state.  They'd also want to have a way to get things done in a non-magical way - thus they would be assassins or ninja or some other stealthy, elite force that does not rely, or emit, magic.

So, it's magical cabals fighting each other in the dark over powers that can rip holes in reality, all the while, pulling secret strings in the mundane governments to futher their knowledge and survival.  Well, at least that is the way I see it.  Of course, it depends on how the rules are tuned.

What do you see?

- Ark

Sunday, February 20, 2011

His Name is a Killing Word

As I zoom down in drawing the map for my (as of yet) unnamed world, I begin to feel the urge to name things so that I start getting a frame of reference.  Naming things is fantasy worlds is one of the more fun things in world building, and also one of the most nerve wracking.  I want cool names. 

I mean, the last thing I want to do is call a city Confluzel and have the players, for the rest of the campaign, call it "Floozy City."

It's really easy to slap two English words together.  WotC seems to have made an art of it.  Wintermist, Stonemarch, Gardbury, Dawnforge, Witchlight, and Ogrefist sit within the the Nentir Vale.  So it's all pretty understandable and pronounceable to your average English speaking person.  However, it lacks some of the foreignness I like in a fantasy world.

A while back, I thought it would be fun to make a world where Common was actually English, and that the culture had been around long enough that many of the place names were a lot older - Middle English, in fact.  That would give the common sounds that would make the words easier to pronounce.  It would also, in theory, pluck at the ancient etymological strings inside the players brains.  WotC like to use this with the word "fell" and "dire" I think -  fell-this, dire-that, fell-tonsils and dire-cabbages.

Making English the Common tongue also explains why any notes I give the PCs would be in English, and why you might have a character named Roger.  I mean, if you look closely at the Middle Earth stuff, Tolkien did the same thing.  Hobbit-speak evolves into English, and is basically a tweak on old or middle English.  Good Old JRR probably explains it all somewhere, I'm sure.

So I've been working on names for some of the older towns and regions is the campaign staring region.  I started with an English name and/or concept, and attempted to translate it (horribly, I'm sure) into Middle English.  Here is a list:

Aloftgres (ME Alofte - on high + Gres - grass)  a town on a elevated plain.
Duskenfaunt (ME Dusken - dark + faunt - infant) town of the dark child.
Dwergyen Doun (ME Dwergh - dwarf + Yen - eyes + Doun - hill) a town near the hill of the dwarf eyes.
Ernslak (ME Ern - eagle + slak - gap between two hills) the town at eagle pass.
Failham (ME Fail - dirt clod + ham - home) a town of sod houses.
Flumrys Brig (ME Flum - river + Rys - branch + Brig - bridge) a town near a river bridge.
Fultum (ME Fultum - help) a town built around a religious sanctuary.
Gobelyntur (ME Gobelyn + Tur - tower) Fortress built to hold back the goblins.
Hethwalle (ME heth - health + Walle - well) a town near a well with curative properties.
Kyndrecchen (ME Kyn - cows + Drecchen - torment) Where the cows were killed.
Lefdikuss (ME Lefdi - lady + Kuss - kiss) The town of the lady's kiss.
Nyrvylrem (ME Nyrvyl - little man + Rem - kinddom) land of the halflings
Pricketholt (Pricket - buck + Holt - wooded hill) a town built on a forest hill known for a male deer.
Rotenslade (ME Roten - Rotten + Slade - valley) the rotten valley.
Senginbergh (ME Sengin - singe + Bergh - hill) a town on a hill known for burning.
Senginerd (ME Sengin - singe + Erd - land) the burning lands (the elven Razing Zone.)
Vathloof (ME Vath - danger + Loof - rudder) The place of smashed rudders.

Now the next step is to say these names out loud in front of my son.  If he busts out laughing, I know that it's probably not a great name.  Hmm.  Maybe that means it is a GREAT name.  I need to think about this.

So how do you name things?

- Ark

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Tim Shorts Did Not Rip Me Off

Over the years, I've been leery of PDFs for cash.  Rarely do I feel what I received was worth the money.  Most of the time, I just feel like someone took advantage of me and I need a hot shower and a good scrub down with a thick bristle brush.

Knowledge Illuminates, by Tim Shorts, has broken that mold.  It's a fifteen page, low level adventure culminating in a dungeon crawl.  I'm sure you had that figured out already.  What's nice about it is that it actually makes sense.  All the bits and pieces build into a cool story for the players, and it was an enjoyable read.

There is also a rather heavy, potentially campaign changing idea in here.  I'm talking about the Viz.  No, not the anime distribution company.  It's a . . . thing . . . which does a . . .  thing.  Let's just say it has to do with magic.  I quite like it.  But it has the potential of completely taking a standard D&D type universe and giving one heck of a tweak to the magically inclined.  I don't' know how that would play out in a campaign. 

However, the inclusion of one of Dr. Seuss' most lovable characters as the main villain is very confusing.  Hmm.  Oh.  Not Lorax.  Lorox.  Oooooh.  Um, never mind.  Forget that.  My bad. :)  The big baddy is particularly cool and creepy and - well - just imagining him - the way he is described - might give me nightmares tonight.

The adventure sprinkles all sorts of hooks throughout, and by the time the players are done with the adventure itself, they will not be lacking for things to do.  A lot of things.  A lot of scary things.

This is definitely one I can recommend.

- Ark

Friday, February 18, 2011

And They Say 'Geek'

I was driving my son to school, and suddenly remembered something important from the night before.

"Do you remember Beedo?  He had talked about starting up a blog for his boy when you set yours up?"

"Uh-huh," he nodded, confused that I had switched from the lecture on cleaning the bathroom to blogging all of a sudden.

"Well, his son is posting on his very own blog now.  I emailed you the link last night."

"Oh cool," he smiled.

"They have a game where there are a bunch of kids and a bunch of dads play D&D."

His looked at me, "Can we play with them?"

I took a deep breath, "They are not around here.  They are in Canada or Mongolia or someplace.  I'm not sure where, but not close."

"Oh," he looked down at the floorboard in the car.

"But we could set something up like that.  Are any of the kids in your school interested in fantasy stuff?"

"No, he said, looking out the window, "I say 'Dungeons and Dragons' and they say 'Geek.'

"Is there something wrong with being called a geek?"

"Yeah."

I sighed.  "You know, people who use words that they think are an insult to you were not your friends to begin with."

"It's not people that I know really well that say it," he shrugs.

We do the school drop off thing and on my way home, I begin to think about the day before.  My boss was in town with a bunch of other manager and executive types.  A group of us go to lunch and for some reason the topic moves to Star Wars and I express that my favorite Star Wars movie is The Empire Strikes Back

My boss pops up that he preferred the stories when Han and Leia had kids.

Thinking for a second, I cock my head and reply, "You mean the ones with Admiral Thrawn?"

He points at me with a smile and says, "Yeah!"  Then he immediately looks embarrassed and covered his mouth.  "I shouldn't talk about things like that.  People will think I am a geek."

Too late, dude, too late.

I sighed.

- Ark

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

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Map's Up


Okay, not the island one - the boy's map.  He finally finished tinkering with it and coloring it and the wonderful work of art is up on display here.  It's the land of Flornar in the year 1207.  Apaprently, EVIL is afoot.

For the first itme in 25 years, I've rolled up a character for an RPG that I seriously intend to play.  I'm quite tickled.   Prickly Buckthorn is a gentleman adventurer who owns no shoes, but is proud of that fact.  He's from the Misty Isle of Isniri where, evidently, people disappear in the mist and never return - or so says my son.  

Prickly is kind of concerned about the whole mist thing and has decided to leave his home island as soon as possible.  After all, giant alien bugs could be in the mist.  That would be bad.  But luckily the boy doesn't read Stephen King.

The boy appears to be trying to drum up some players over there on his page.  I might have to help him redirect that energy to the kids in the neighborhood. 

Does anyone know of some low level OSR adventurers that are relatively short and easily digestible by a ten year old boy - adventures his father could just print out and hand him without having to read and spoil the surprise. :)

- Ark

Monday, February 7, 2011

Surts' Isle

Actual photo of the real island.
Sea of O'sr Island Teaser

Surts' Isle is modeled off of the real life island Surtsey off the coast off Iceland, but with some D&D twists. 

The island is not hard to miss.  Smoke continuously bellows from it, visible for miles around in the northern seas.  Merchants avoid the island as much as possible as flaming boulders have been known to fall from the sky nearby.  Pirates, dwarves, and mighty wizards have set sail to Surt's island on purpose.  Few have returned.

Fifty years ago, a cook on a trading vessel reported seeing a tremendous battle in the sky.  An Eftreeti and Djinn, each the size of a mountain, fought tooth and nail in the clouds.  Suddenly, the Djinn grabbed the flaming entity and cast him down into the ocean with such force that only molten rock rebounded from the ocean floor and solidified into a small island.  The cook was the sole survivor of the following tsunami.

Over the decades, the smoldering island has cooled and solidified.  The cook's stories have circulated far and wide, sending many to Surts' Island to seek fortunes.  Returning explorers have spread rumors of new magical alloys, huge rubies the size of watermelons, and the still beating heart of a dead Efreeti deep within a bubbling volcanic cauldron. 

Who would be crazy enough to go there on purpose?

Oh yeah - this is D&D.

- Ark

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