Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Persuasive Writing

The boy had an assignment today in Language Arts - a persuasive essay. He chose to write about Dungeons and Dragons. It's interesting because, up until very recently, he preferred 4e over older versions of the game. Okay, well at least *I* find in interesting. :)


Why Old School D&D is Better than New School D&D

by The Boy

Old school D&D is more fun because you have more freedom to do what you want. It is much more simple and easy to play, and it is a fun challenge.

In old school you have more freedom to do what you want. You don’t need a power to jump on to a building. You do not need an ability to be able to climb an ogre and stab it in the head

It is a simple game to get started with. Just roll up a character and role play. If your character dies just make a new one. It’s NOT rocket science.

Old school is fun and challenging. You can have long games or cliffhangers. You can play for what seems like ages and not play for ten minutes. You can get confused between the real world and the game world.

Old school is simple, fun, and cheaper than new school so try it out today!


I am curious as to what the teacher will think. :)


- Ark

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Random Quotes from the Labyrinth Lord Game


"Hurry up!  Put on the ferret costume and dance.  There is money to be made!"

"I gather up the priestess' finger bones and make a pan flute out of them."

"Wait just a minute.  This is important.  Let me get the Zamfir video to play right."

"I hid in a bush all night in a puddle of my own urine."

"Hold on guys!  If we steal the bones, we loose the opportunity to surpise the door."

"I'm going to tea-bag the dragon with his buddy's testicles."

"I think I should really get some say in whether my character impregnated a horse or not."

"According to my calculations - given the xp value vs. damage output - orcs just really aren't worth attacking anymore."

"Are you kidding?  Why would I put my fighter on the front line when he has a sling?"

"What kind of thief are you?  You refuse to get anywhere near a trap!"

"So how does this guy have little folders with information on all of us?"

"My new family motto shall be Honoris causa in - Honor Within Reason."

- Ark

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Dungeonspiration: Crazy-Ass Tim

Ugh.  Over the last month, work has ground me down into a semi-lucid blob thing.  The extra work hasn't been any fun.  I'm still doing work - in hour 14 of today' workday again.  Of course, I'm salaried.  I've been worrying about the developers I manage too - which is an unexpected side-benefit of managing - worrying about people and hoping they will be okay under excess work loads.  My brain can barely form coherent computer code - much less find anything inspiring about the universe.

THAT'S WHERE TIM COMES IN!  Yay!  Tim is one of my players in the Labrynth Lord game I run.  You have probably read about him here.  He's Captain Chaos - the Eye of the MAELSTROM.  You know - that guy.

Tim has started a BLOG - From the Ashes.  Oh, and let's call Tim by his blog handle, PureStrainHuman .  I think a lot of you will get that reference.  If you don't, well, may you be visited in the wee hours of the night by Jim Ward holding a cricket bat.

So sorry, I can't lift a finger to inspire you today.  Dungeonspiration is exhausted mentally and physically, and still has many more hours of real life work crap to do.  But go visit PureStrainHuman. Say hello and go follow his blog.   He's pretty inspiring.  He has inspired the boy to create Chaotic Neutral Goth Halfling Sorcerers.  Wheee!

Brain hurts - must stop typing . . .

- Ark

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Dawn at Olympus


The child of morning, rosy fingered Dawn, crept across the sky in flickering curtains of gold.  She illuminated the mountain fortress of Olympus, which still echoed with the revelry of the night before.

" . . . and so I threw the Acropolis at him.  The whole Acropolis.  True story," mighty Zeus slammed down his goblet of ambrosia while the gods around the table laughed and slapped their knees.  At his right hand side, gray-eyed Athena sat, her chin cradled in her hand, trying not to yawn.

"Father," Athena whispered while the laughter continued, "It wasn't the Acropolis.  It was a whole mountain.  Mt. Etna.  Remember?"

Zeus didn't even bother to look at her.  "Details are boring, girl.  It's the delivery that matters."

"Whatever, Dad," she muttered.  Being the Goddess of Wisdom meant that she was constantly surrounded by idiots.  The grey owl on her shoulder nuzzled her neck, and hooted lightly into her ear.  Athena's eyes instantly shot wide open.  "Father, father, we have a problem!" Athena hissed.

Gray bearded Zeus just talked louder over her.  The son of Cronos was recounting the time he seduced the Spartan queen Leda.

" . . . since I boinked her as a swan, she laid an egg nine months later.  You should have seen her face!"

As Zeus recounted the tale, the banquet hall became quiet, too quiet, as they were not even laughing at his jokes.  It was an uncomfortable silence, and Athena tugged at her father's robes, clearing her throat.

"What is it, girl?" he looked down at her and thundered.

She raised a finger and pointed toward the entryway.  There stood Hera, wife of almighty Zeus, arms akimbo, tapping her soft sandal on the hallowed floor.

"Well!" the queen of the gods huffed, face red.  "I thought I would find you here, cavorting with these . . ."

"Hera, my beloved wife, what brings you here at this late hour?"  Zeus sighed.

"Late?" Hera puffed, "Late?  Dawn is outside and you call this late?  Oh no, husband, it is quite early!"

Zeus blinked, and then blinked again, unsure how to reply.  "Um . . ."

Hera pulled up the hem of her robe and marched around the table, toward Zeus' throne.  The gods around the table were silent.  Dark Hades stared at the floor and shuffled his feet.  Brave Ares picked up a knife and examined his reflection in the silver.  Watery Poseidon, master of the sea, god of horses, and the 'Earth-shaker,' picked up a salt shaker and tipped a few grains into is ambrosia, then watched as tiny bubbles floated upward to the surface.

"How dare you.  I have been scouring the surface of the Earth, looking for you!" Hera jabbed a finger in Zeus' face.

"Do not talk to the King of Olympus in such a manner!" Athena shot up out of her chair.

Hera glared at Athena.  "Hold your tongue, daughter!"

"I am no daughter of yours," Athena scoffed, "I was born, fully formed, from my father's forehead."

"Oh, you were born fully formed alright, right out of his giant ass, you little shit," Hera hissed.

Before Athena could materialize the golden spear into her hands, Zeus put his palm on the crown of her head and gently, but forcefully, shoved her down into a sitting position.  "Shh, little one." He then turned to his wife.

"If you would have checked the schedule, you would have known about the party. Right boys?" Zeus said.

"Of course," Hades replied.

"Been on the calendar at least a month," Ares nodded.

"The invitations arrived last week," Poseidon waved a brightly colored piece of paper with a weak smile.

Hera's stare bore down on the gods at the table and they all found more interesting things to look at, such as the ceiling, the wall, or an imaginary noise in the direction of the kitchen.  She whipped her head back to Zeus, jabbing her finger at him again.

"You've been at it again, and this time I have a witness!"

"I . . . I . . . no," the son of Cronos stammered.

"There is no talking your way out of this one. You are guilty, guilty, guilty!" she jabbed him in the chest.

"I haven't done anything, have I, boys?" he looked back at the gods, who were still busy examining things that weren't there.

Athena stood up, "Hera, this is hardly any way to behave to your King and husband."

"Shut up!" Hera and Zeus said in unison.  Zeus eyed Hera, and then turned to Athena.  "Listen pumpkin, Mommy and Daddy are having a grown up discussion, so go find something else to do."

Athena huffed and collapsed back into her chair, crossing her arms in a powerful pout.

Hera glared at Zeus, rage in her eyes.  "You've been cavorting around with a mortal woman!"

Zeus stared at her.

"What do you have to say for yourself?"

Zeus continued to stare.

"Well?"

"I'm thinking," Zeus, the aegis-bearer, yelled at this wife.

"You swore to me, you swore on your throne, that you would stop this obsession with mortal women.  No more stalking and raping them.  No more taking the form of an animal and surprising them in the shower!" she shook her fist at him.

Zeus took a deep breath.  "Lies.  All lies.  I have been true to you.  I have not touched a mortal woman.  Who is this witness that tells such falsehoods?"

"He is there," Hera pointed to the entryway.  There stood a form, bent over, hobbling with a cane, his face scarred.  It was Hephaestus, god of fire, patron of blacksmiths.

"Oh, I see you've brought your parthenogenetic son with you," Zeus smirked.

"Tell us, my son, tell us what you saw," Hera said as the crippled god finally made it within hearing distance.

"Um, hi Athena," Hephaestus' voice cracked as he made a little wave towards the girl.

She rolled her her eyes.  "Hello Hef."

"Get on with it!" Hera hissed.

"I'll report only what I saw, the whole truth," Hephaestus started.  "Three nights ago, by a pond, I saw a flaxen haired damsel by the name of Podarge remove her clothing for an evening bath.  Of course, I did not wish to be seen, so I hid in the bushes."

Zeus laughed.  "Can you really imagine gimpy here running around the bushes like a ninja?"

"Hush," said Hera.  "Let him finish!"

"So, the flaxen haired beauty entered the water, and lo and behold, what should I see but a huge glowing bull descend from the sky, his bovine member fully erect, and he ravished the poor mortal girl from behind," Hephaestus finished.  Hera turned to Zeus, arms crossed, a smug look on her face.

"Oh come on," Zeus said, "Does every huge flying glowing bull with a tremendous cock that anyone sees on Earth have to be me?"

"Yes," the whole room said in unison.

“You are not helping!” Zeus hissed to the gods at the table.

“Mother warned me,” Hera sobbed. “She said I should marry that nice Hebrew god down the road.  But noooo . . .”

“Ambrosia lips,” his voice softened, “That was me.  I was there.  But you’ve got it all wrong.”

“How?” she sniffed.

“I was there, yes, and I was buggering Podarge.  But Podarge is a boy.”

“What?” Hera gawked at him.

“Podarge was a boy,” Zeus nodded.

“But Hephaestus said . . .”

“She had breast!” Hephaestus piped in.

“The poor boy was fat.  It was a glandular problem.  You can hardly fault him for a medical issue.”

“But . . . but . . .” Hephaestus stuttered.

“Oh come on.  Who are you going to believe, me, or a gimpy god with only one working eye!”

Hera glared at Hephaestus.

“But . . .” Hephaestus said meekly.

Hera grabbed Hephaestus by the ear and began dragging the cripple towards the door.  “You brought me out here for a boy?  A boy?  You won’t be able to even limp when I get through with you!”

The cacophony of name calling and curses gradually receded in the distance.  Sighs of relief emanated from the table.  Zeus wiped the sweat off his brow and turned to his daughter.

“Thank goodness that is done with, Athena.”

“Yes, Father,” she sighed.

“Now I want you to go to the walk-in closet in my private room.”

“Which walk-in closet?” Athena cocked her head.

“The one with the waterfall and the forest.”

“Oh.”

“There are three mortal women in there, a blonde, a brunette, and a red head.”

“Dad!” Athena bolted from her chair.

“Take the blonde.  That's Podarge.  Feed her to a Cyclops or toss her into the sky and make a constellation out of her.  Whatever you do, keep it quiet, but get rid of her.”

Athena shook her head, sighing.  “Father, if you don't control yourself, you may, one day, be replaced with a god who is a monogamist.”

“Nonsense, my girl, nonsense,” Zeus laughed, mussing her hair.  “What kind of human would worship a pansy-ass god like that?”

Rosy fingered Dawn tiptoed across the palace and back down Mount Olympus, heading across the Ionian Sea to Italy, snickering silently to herself.

The End

[with apologies to Homer . . .]

- Ark

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Behold the Druid! Beware His Powers! Unspeakable Powers!

So continuing from this post, the Labyrinth Lord gang was in a forest, armed to the teeth, standing around a magical hole on a slab of granite on the ground - a hole that lead to another magical hole 60 feet up the side of a tower half a mile away, overlooking the central courtyard of the town of Barton Hill.  It was near dusk, and they could see 30 orcs standing in formation outside of the local Church of the Lawgiver.

Yeah, if that hurt your head, you should probably go read the first post. You probably missed the whole part about the Aperture Science Portal Wands and big green dragon. :)

Anyway, one player began pitching Molotov cocktails at random roofs.  Another tossed an oil flask at the orc who looked like the leader.  Other players unleashed volleys of arrows into the startled orc platoon.

The orcs were freaking out in the town square.  To the side of the square was the church.  Now the church had had its front face ripped off, but was at such an angle that the player's couldn't see inside, yet there was a suspicion that the green dragon that they had seen landing in the town was inside.

One of the characters that The Boy is playing is Beagle the 2nd level Halfling Druid.  Okay, yeah, I am being a little lax on class restrictions - but druid halflings make perfect sense to me.  It probably stretches back to my affinity for Yondalla and the belief that all halflings would worship the Goddess of Nookie.

So Beagle drops an Entangle spell down in the courtyard, making sure that it covers the entrance of the church, and the the area of effect goes deep inside the battered holy structure.

Go grab your AEC and look up Entangle.  Page 43.  I'll wait.

Okay, I won't wait.  Go compare it with the Entangle spell in the 1st Edition Player's Handbook.  I'll wait.

Again, I tricked you.  I won't wait.  This LL first level druid spell has a range of 80' and 40' diameter of effect  - a factor of ten greater than the original spell.  I kind of think a typo might have occurred here - but I'm really not a fan of nerfing things mid-flight . . . so . . .

A 40 foot diameter.  I can't believe it.  That's enough to entangle . . . a dragon.

That was just where the frikkin dragon was sleeping too.  He was supposed to get up, look around, see the PCs and go bleach their skins until they had no more skins.  This was to be my revenge for all those horrible, horrible things the players have done to me over the years.

But still . . my pretty little lizard had a saving throw.

Crap.

Double dog crap.

FAILED.

As Charlie Brown says when Lucy pulls the football at the last moment . . . AAAUUUGHHH!

So the dragon wakes up and finds himself entangled.  He's already nervous.  His sister was killed by a bunch of yahoos only a week ago, not twelve miles away.  He's agitated, cranky, and ready to kill something.  His opponent must be close by, so he lets loose with his breath weapon.

Clearly, the dragon was operating off his remembrances of reading Gary Gygax's version of the spell, not Dan Proctor's.

And, yeah, the big cloud of chlorine gas fills up the courtyard and kills his orc bodyguards.  Bodyguards.  There to protect him.  Him.  A dragon.

It really just gets worse from here, but I'll leave that to another day.

;)

- Ark

Monday, September 19, 2011

Moe's Scale of RPG Hardness

I've always been a fan of talc.
Over the last year, I think I've played a larger variety of role playing games, with a bigger mix of people, that I have in any other year during my gaming life - especially as a player - not just a DM.  It's gotten me thinking about a lot of facets of gaming - and about what I like in a game.  One of the things I keep on coming back to is Roll vs. Role playing.

I'm still on the fence about a lot of it, from a player's point of view, but it seems to me you could map a lot of it out on a continuum, like Moh's Mineral Hardness scale.  People have probably already done it - and I just haven't seen it - or didn't pay attention at the time.  On one side would be having everything in a game be determined by the results of dice rolls versus skills.  The other is where everything is decided by GM fiat.  Everywhere in the middle would fall actaul real games that existed in reality.

As a players, it's pretty neat to create a character that can yell there way out of combat.  Playing one, ont he other hand, feels kind of weird when you do you best yelling every - then roll your die and hope the other creature is intimidated.  

On the GM's side, the use of skill rolls is nice in that it gives an out - the GM doesn't have to bow to social pressure in making everything run away from a character who yells all the time.  Those rules give some comfort in how to handle it, I guess.

But it all seems strange to me, when you step aside from the social interaction and toss a die. 

Anyway, this little post is really quite half baked as I am still trying to wrap my head about how I feel about certain styles of play.  Feel free to comment down below, as I'd love to see some discussion about it - from many different viewpoints.

- Ark

Saturday, September 17, 2011

The Road Less Exploded

Note the carefully placed snipers behind the
bottle of soap bubbles and the Wii Zumba box!
I've been a long time fan of Savage Worlds.  Back last year, I ran some one-shot games and was preparing to run a campaign, but it fell through.  The Boy even GMed a short game with some friends, which was very fun.  I'd love to do some more Savage Worlds, but with the amount of other games going - it just hasn't been feasible.

Enter Savage Worlds Showdown.  Showdown is a skirmish version of Savage Worlds.  The rules are basically the same as Savage Worlds, with a bit of streamlining to take it out of the realm of RPG and into the wargaming world. You build your units with points, agree upon a scenario with your opponent, and have at it.  It's kind of like GURPS Warhammer, I guess, in that you can build just about whatever you want.  It's easy to min/max and make unfun - if that's what you like - but if the players agree upon some guidelines and look at the process of creating a scenario as game design, rather than competition, it can be loads of fun.

We started out using LEGO Star Wars figures, and as the Boy and I were playing, I came to the realization that we really didn't have to play on a game board or map.  We could use the entire frikkin living room as our battlefield.

Today, we graduated to our old WOTC Star Wars minis.  This was mainly because The Boy didn't want to go through the effort of digging through his vats of LEGOs to find the battle droid pieces.  The minis were fun.  I must say - Savage Star Wars is much more fun than the old Star Wars skirmish game.  

The Boy had a troops of clones - some regular clones, a troop commander (kind of a vanilla Rex) and some snipers.  I had some Super and non-Super Battle Droids.  Oh, and some snipers as well.  The two sides were fighting over a set of strange LEGO buildings that The Boy had crafted.  They were important to the war effort, I'm sure.

Like our old Soviet nemesis, I decided to go with sheer numbers.  The Boy went with grenades.  Frikkin grenades.  That punk commander had a thermal detonator.  It didn't take long for my poor troops to become scrap.

The boy took the Road Less Exploded, and that has made all the difference.  ;)

Savage Worlds Showdown is FREE, btw.  You can get it at the company website on the downloads page.  Don't forget to snag the excel worksheet that has all the troop building formulas built in.

Enjoy!

- Ark