Gleefully Late to the Party, Again

Reading Dungeon World.

But lo, mere reading is not enough. I must share its goodness with others (most of whom will probably say "Dude, we know" in Henchman 21 voice).

Gripes

• the layout of the free pdf is a bit wonky (section headings at the bottom of the page? No! Bad layout monkey!); 
• the idea of structuring adventures around Fronts ("...a collection of linked dangers -- threats to the characters specifically and to the people, places, and things the characters care about.") and Moves (IGOUGO as a dungeoncrawling mechanic?) is a bit unusual; 
• the use of Warhammer-ish ability keywords in the statblocks might not be to all tastes. 

But!

Raves

• the writing is clear and entertaining; 
• there's at least one instance of "wish I'd thought of that" on every page; 
• it has the kind of 'obvious in hindsight' GMing advice I'd have killed for back in the day; 
• this is what the writers think of as an entire stat block:

Ankheg 
Group, Large
Bite (d8+1 damage) 10 HP 3 Armor
Close, Reach
Special Qualities: Burrowing
A hide like plate armor and great crushing mandibles are problematic. A stomach full of acid that can burn a hole through a stone wall makes them all the worse. They’d be bad enough if they were proper insect-sized, but these things have the gall to be as long as any given horse. It’s just not natural! Good thing they tend to stick to one place? Easy for you to say--you don’t have an ankheg living under your corn field.
Instinct: To undermine

• Undermine the ground
• Burst from the earth
• Spray forth acid, eating away at metal and flesh

That's it. Next! (I especially like the inclusion of monstrous To Do lists for all.)

In conclusion: Dungeon World, my face when: 

"Ermagerd! So gooood."

Pic Source: the famous Dorf Fortress fun image.

Small But Vicious Dog Steals Hearts, Humps Leg

Remember that ill-advised B/X-WFRP hack I wurbled about a couple of months back? Done (apart from the last few magic item and monster descriptions).

All the other WFRP-ish goodness - drugs, diseases, insanity, mutation, gunpowder, chaotic magic, dorfs with mohawks, hot pies, giant angry puffins and so forth - is in there. Heck, I've even included rules to model that special WFRP "gods hate you; failure is law!" atmosphere.

Have a download, see what you think (critique and comment welcomed and appreciated):

Small But Vicious Dog ver0.3: Cover and Contents page
Small But Vicious Dog ver 0.3: The Gubbins

Also useful:
Chaos Mutations compilation by Andrew Fawcett

Small But Vicious Dog is dedicated to:

Erin "Taichara" Bisson for giving me the idea with the FF Red Box Hack,

Owen "Coopdevil" Cooper - the psychopomp of the Brit OSR,

and

Kelvin "brainsplurge" Green for mooting the idea of a B/X-WFRP modcop in the first place.

Oh, while I was pecking away at SBVD I discovered Warheart, a WFRP-style mod for the d20 system. It's pretty cool, but you can't call it a *proper* WFRP clone: there's no ratcatcher career FFS! *Tsk* Schoolboy error.

Tangentially related: Seeing as my long-time favourites the Fimir are finally getting some love (both from the grassroots, and from the Evil Empire itself*) after 20 years spend in the Squat Zone, you might be interested in this: Mr Saturday's Fimir army for WFB.

-----

* GW shamelessly mining their old IP instead of having a single new idea? Nah, never happen. ;)

AtoZ April - N is for Nostalgia

Nostalgia? The OSR? I have no idea from whence you might derive the idea that the two are in any way connected. ;)

That said. Yes, I has it. I like old stuff. I like reminiscing about 'back in the day'. I have no shame in playing things - be the things in question games or music - for nostalgic reasons (mainly I play them because 20+ years later, they still rock!).

And yes, I have used nostalgia to hook players. Never underestimate the power of

"Oh wow! Old D&D! I used to love this back in the day. You're still playing it now? Not Pathfinder or 4E? That is so retro. So - and I'm just asking out of politeness mind - where and when are you playing?" 

The nostalgia might hook them; but it's the game itself that keeps them coming back.

That out of the way, JLCC. Also cake:

Madeleine of Lost Time
Curious confectioneries baked with long-undisturbed dust retrieved from deep within ancient ruins.
Eating a madeleine of lost time unleashes the visions and memories baked into it, sometimes merely in the form of dissociated visions, sometimes in the form of contextually meaningful clues. On rare occasions the eater takes on aspects of some long-dead personality.
The reverie induced by a madeleine of lost time lasts 1d6x1d6 minutes.

Random Effect (d6)
1. stone dust - stone tell effect
2. plant dust - speak with plant effect
3. fossilised crumbs - clue (as commune or contact other plane spell)
4. book dust - textual information
5. grave dust - personality (as speak with dead spell)
6. thaumically charged dust - randomly determined magical effect

Pic Source
Topically relevant cakes from chestofbooks.com

The Map Knows More Than I Do

Doing a bit of random hex-map generation this evening (using a tinkered-with version of Victor Raymond's Wilderness Architect method from Fight On! #2).

Here's the generated terrain in question (just so the following makes at least a little sense).

It's supposed to be the Vorra River Valley, south of Adburg and the ruined City of Nagoh. Yes, I called my adventureburg Adburg. It's easy to remember in the heat of play.

So, yer pretty boggo area of forested hills descending from mountains to a well-watered plain; so far, so fantastic realism. But suddenly the dice decree that there's a 5-mile diameter desert in the middle of this verdant landscape. Wuh?!

Now, to me an out-of-place desert hex that just screams adventure hook. I'd be totally remiss as a GM if I just left this as a blank space on the map. A few quick rolls on the appropriate tables in the ever-handy Ready Reference Sheets reveal the salient feature of this particular hex is a keep, ash-covered, and situated on a rocky outcrop. The environs are crystallised and petrified and the local inhabitants are Giants.

Ashes, crystals, keep and giants says to me the obvious: Fire Giants. Probably digging in to protect/exploit something of use in their forthcoming runt-squishing crusade.* They've likely happened upon (or been sent down by some Big Bad to secure) some form of climate-altering artefact or heat-based weapon that, even inactive, is able to create a microclimate hot and arid enough to bake the land for miles around. All that crystallised, petrified stuff is probably the result of this mini Death Valley effect: roasted trees and dried out ponds and the like. Sounds like a proper nasty place that eats adventurers for lunch. *grin*

 * There's always a runt-squishing crusade in the offing for giants IMG; it's kind of a default state of existence for them in a world which - from their elevated perspective - is over-run with tiny, hyperactive vermin.

And blow me down if that doesn't also explain the sparse settlements and assorted ruins the dice have decreed shall be scattered around what should - in any sane world - be a densely populated area of settlement. Obviously the giants have already made a start on clearing the surrounding areas of its infestation of annoyingly short people. ("You must be THIS tall to continue living. Surtr commands it!")

I picture them rocking up 13th Warrior style (hellhounds, salamanders and fire imps in tow) and setting fire to local villages at night. Or standing on a rise hurling lava bombs (treat as fireball or something) down on unsuspecting bargemen plying their trade. A few instances of that is going to have refugees fleeing the area and will royally screw the economy of everywhere along the river: crops from the farming villages and recovered artefacts from the Vaults can't get down the river to the cities; manufactured and luxury goods can't get up-river to Adburg.

I'm already getting a wacky War of the Triple Alliance meets Against the Giants vibe off the situation...

"We want you to head up-river and dispose of the crazy fanatics blocking river traffic."
"Sure, we'll set out right away. Should have them run off by the end of the week."
"Oh, by the way; they're Fire Giants..."

All that from one hex! Random terrain generation: giving you more than you expected since 1974.

Pic Source:
Me, with a little help from AKS Hexmapper

Fame and All the Benefits Thereof

"No you jackasses! Kleos; not campness..."

As Tim of Gothridge Manor argued some time back, adventurers can be seen as the big-spending, high-living, tall-tale-telling rockstars of the fantasy world. Kids play out their adventures; swains and maidens have woodcuts of them on their hovel walls; bards sing of their loves, losses and achievements; innkeepers give thanks to the gods when they see them walk through the door. So why not have that social stature reflected in the game? All too often I've seen mid-high level adventurers treated as no-account bums by vendors and functionaries who, by rights, should be licking boots and sucking up.

The K.A.Pendragon game uses Glory (the sum of a knight's personal accomplishments) as its XP equivalent. The more Glory you have, the status you will have among your peers. Why not adapt this, or something like it, to D&D?

Ok, here's a table. Whenever the party first saunter into a new burg roll a level check (d*, equal or less than level = success) to if their reputations precede them (for good or ill). What size die is rolled depends on how big and busy the locale is, and on how far the characters are from home.

Hometown - d6

Other town - d8

Local City - d10

Distant City - d12

'Overseas' - d20

Offworld/Other plane - d30

• If the character is a regular patron of bards, or a big man on the local social scene; shift the die down a size.
• If the character lives abstemiously or anonymously (like, for example, a lot of thieves); shift the die up a size.

Why a level check? Because XP in D&D is garnered by doing macho, lucrative stuff that gets you talked about: killing monsters, stealing swag, paying your bar tab with a fistful of rubies.Fame and public recognition will be an emergent effect of the things you do to garner XP (and more personal power) in the first place.

Why scale the dice? Because being 'hometown famous' likely doesn't mean a thing in a big, jaded city like Viridia, but almost everyone in the Wilds has heard at least a few stories about the Heptarchs of Aftane or the Emperoress of Throx (high-level doodz with lotsa kills and big rep). Someone/thing like Demogorgon? He's famous all across the planes.

If the level check is a success the character is recognised as noteworthy. Roll, or choose (as appropriate) public reaction to his presence:

     1-3    Positive impression (brave, learned, generous, etc.)
     4-5    Negative impression (cowardly, cheapstake, braggard, etc.)
     6    False impression (mistaken identity, mis-attributed deeds or scandal, etc.)

Positive and Negative impressions modify NPC reactions by moving them up by one band on the NPC Reaction Table (Unfriendly to Neutral, Indifferent to Friendly, etc.) for Positive reactions; down by one band for Negative.

• Positive impressions might get you exclusive invitations, discounts, free stuff, convivial company, etc. All as the GM decides.
• Negative impressions will get you barred from entry (to the baths/palace/city...), sudden outbreaks of "Sorry sir, out of stock/price went up.", surly service, hired thugs gunning for you, and/or the traditional urchins throwning clods of dirt.
• False impressions should involve any hilarious, farcical complications the GM can devise ("Why are they cheering us/smiling in that sickly manner/chasing us with pitchforks and torches?") Claiming credit for things you haven't actuallt done (or not correcting misattributions from others) can result in unearned gifts and adulation, but expect Lord Slashstab to be more than a little angry when word gets out that a bunch of no-account punks are getting props for supposedly killing a dragon he slew/unhorsing him in battle/cuckolding him...

You might also elect to apply this fame effect to the morale of encountered monsters. Where appropriate use a level check to see if the monsters have heard camp fire tales of these guys (the deeper into the dungeon/wilderness, the larger the die used). If yes, modify their reaction and/or combat morale accordingly.

This last tweak ain't crazy innovation for the sake of it; there was actually something similar in Gygax & Perren's "Chainmail" (see page 30, under the entry for Superhero).  Lowly 1HD oiks had to make a morale check if a Superhero even ambled within charge distance of them. Totally reasonable IMO. I mean, you've heard stories about that wild-eyed albino guy with the burning runesword and the bat-winged helm; do you really want to be the first one to go up against him today?

Sources:
Header pic from What's On TV?

How Much is a Dovecote Anyway?

I've recently noticed a certain desire to play house among my D&D players.

No, I don't mean they want to emulate the antics of the infamous misanthropic doctor, or that they want to prod at one another in a NSFW way (at least, no more so than normal). But rather that, in a game predicated on playing out a chaos-fucked version of the gangsta aesthetic (to whit: "cap doodz: gain bling, hoes* and respect."), my players seem really keen on nest building.

* Quite why rappers regard gardening tools with such ardour is beyond me.

It starts small, with hirelings, henchmen and various pets. Then, as comfort level with the game world (such as it is) and available party cash increase, my players tend to start looking to put down roots fast and early. As in 'settling down by 4th level' early.

They're like rivers. Sure, they'll merrily babble through the glens, crash over the rapids, or throw themselves off the precipice if that's what's required by circumstances. But the moment the pressure comes off they slow down, drop their luggage everywhere, and start to think the place would look prettier with a water meadow over here, some alluvium there, a reed bed along the margins, an ox bow lake over yonder...

I don't recall people wanting to play Barbie Dollhouse Adventures D&D (I thought of it first Hasbro!) quite this much in my/our younger days. Maybe it's because we have a number of gurlz (chiz, chiz) in the group; or maybe it's because in our 20s-early 30s we're all slowly turning into fat and happy clichés of self-satisfied bourgeois. Whatever the reason, there's suddenly a desire to have a little pied a terre within the game.

"Gimme!"

I cite pulp heroic precedent for perpetual (skint) peripatetism, link to Al's S&S Greyhawk posts, sink their barge to keep them lean and hungry, and even wave the carousing tables in their faces. But my piteous, nasal, Cartman-like whinings of "But you can't settle down: it's not genre appropriate." have begun to sound pitiful and strained even to my own ears. Obviously people want to lavish care and attention on their particular little personal corner of our 'shared world'.

It's probably entirely my own fault for making the 'soap opera with ultraviolence' of "Deadwood" such a touchstone of the setting. That brings in - as a less than subtle subtext - the whole Western trope of settlement, civilisation and rising gentility. Which is all well and good, until people become more interested in playing Settlers than D&D.

But I think the single worst thing I ever did was let people read the (adapted to D&D) master price list from the K.A.Pendragon RPG.

Player: What's By-zan-ti-ney garb?
Me: *sighs and hands over History of Costume book*
Player: Oooh, pretty.
-----
Player: Can I buy a castle?
Me: When you're 9th level.
Player: What about a (*squint*) manor house? I have the cash, and an entourage to house, and you said the area was looking for people to settle...
Me: Ok, ok.
Player: Now, these tapestries...

It's like watching Clint Eastwood's laconic Man With No Name morph into home improvement fetishist Steve Thomas before your eyes. I'm thinking of burying the Pendragon Book of the Manor under 6' of concrete for the duration. They haven't noticed it yet, but I fear what will become of our sessions if they ever do. I'm not quite ready to have the game transformed entirely into some social media site farming sim.

Greyhawking the place? (in the "pillage the décor for resale" sense) The nearest we've had to that traditional dungeon crawler modus operandi is a particular form of magpie-ism that I call Beckfording. Unlike the traditional "Get the crowbars. It's all coming with us!" form of tomb robbing, Beckfording is where people seriously plot how to unseat that one particular fresco/mosaic/statue and transport it back home. Not for resale value; but simply because it'll look good in their house.

"Yeah, that Green Devil Face we hauled out of the Tomb of Horrors really ties the room together..."

Seeing my players try to get a favourite fresco (a cycling illusion of a pastoral scene) off a wall in one piece is possibly the hardest I've ever seen them work at any form of tactical/logistical planning! Forget searching for secret doors and treasure, they wanted this magic mural. I actually had a bit of a hint of a smidgeon of a twinge of guilt when I invoked the old "magic fades if removed from the room" rule and left them with only a few crumbling fragments of their prize. Had to throw a silly-dense combination of trap rooms and wandering monsters at them just to make the grizzling stop. :/

(grog hivemind query: What exactly is an appropriate basis for an Art Conservation check in B/X D&D anyway?)

So D&D as Grand Tour with added violence. Anyone else experienced it?

Grumbling and random links aside the K.A.Pendragon RPG is probably good (nay, excellent) fodder for a pre-Name level land-holding game of D&D. Even a fighter of 4th level will be a person of note in his local area, having pumped ~6,000gp into the economy (assuming 3/4 of his XP comes from loot) in the time it took him to rise that far. And all but the most insanely dedicated monster-slaying knight errants settle down eventually...

Re: the Pendragon price list. I just treat 'd' as 'gp'. Weapons aside, the price approximations are generally usable.

Ele*meh*ntals, Amirite?

"Agreed, f**k Heart. Let's just kill all the puny fleshies."

Elemental as written in classic D&D (B/X and A-) are, sad to say, a bit *meh*. They are mechanically pretty dull; their descriptions and artwork have none of the allegorical/mythic resonance of their inspirational material; nor do they convey a sense of the power and fury of nature at its most violent. Even their minis are a bit pedestrian and phoned in. How to make them a little less yawnsome?

Well, there are several options:

1. first and easiest: change the fluff,
2. allow for composite elementals, and
3. change their mechanics a bit (the obvious thing is a random table of some kind).

Changing the Fluff

The default assumption (reinforced by decades of path-of-least-resistance models) is that elementals just look like big humanoid lumps of... stuff. Which is depressingly limited, especially given how many other element-themed monsters share a similar conceptual space.

Fortunately refluffing is quick and easy in classic D&D, where 'canon' is generally synonymous with "whatever the DM decided last week". Lo! Instead of being simply big rocky dudes who are almost indistinguishable from badly eroded stone golems, the latest earth elemental to burst forth instead looks like a (d6):

1. giant Easter Island stone head that grinds about the place looking down its long nose at people.
2. stone rhino (“...the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.” - Job 40:17-18)
3. single massive limb that erupts from the earth and blindly strikes as the summoner directs.
4. gloomy stone dude who just sits there in the lotus position and hums sonorously.
5. menhir, elaborately engraved and orbited by jewels.
6. stone toad squatting in a geode.

You can do this easily enough for all the classic quartet. So I will:

Fire elementals next:

 "Erm, no."

Instead of being yet a-bloody-nother ambulatory bonfire with beady eyes and mediocre artwork, they're (d6):

1. greasy little axolotls (complete with external gills and that characteristic sh*t-eating grin) that make everything around them burst into flame.
2. odd multi-armed Hindu-looking divinities juggling flames and dancing about in coronas of fire.
3. red-and-yellow peacocks/birds of paradise.
4. burning dwarves, who simply don't understand why you don't want to shake hands (Azer, Dorf Fortress, blah).
5. iron and brass braziers; self-mobile and happy to throw all you lucky, lucky people the unsolicited gift of a burning coal or two.
6. amorphous flying clouds of burning embers. No glowing eyes or perceptible face, and especially no big sad eyes or Billy Crystal-sounding voice. Just a cloud of mucky burning stuff.

Undines. Either you can have something that makes Hosukai wonder why he ever bothered in the first place, or you can describe them as (d6):

1. Fanservicey Renaissance bints in damp gauze surfing around on sea-shells
2. The dorsal ridge and flukes of some massive shark, whale or similar half-seen leviathan of the deeps
3. Abyss-style living water that mimics the face of anyone who looks at it
4. Shoal of fish that form a composite face (Nemo/Matrix fashion).
5. Elaborate abstract formation of ice crystals, falling water and mist.
6. ZOMG sea serpents! (and suchlike Freudian imagery)

Slyphs are already in the Monster Manual as the airborne wing of the hypnotic/blinding magical hot chick army (dryads, nymphs, sirenes, etc). And the various minor air elementals (aerial servants, invisible stalkers and wind walkers) have already stolen their invisible, malignant air current shtick. So we'll have to do something other than have them being whirlwinds with eye spots (d6):

1. Boreal face-in-a-cloud huffing away (complete with puffed cheeks. The puffed cheeks are an essential thematic element)
2. Thunderbird/storm crow/bluebird of tempests.
3. Whirling vortex of blue and white sparkles.
4. Swirly oriental dragony thing looping around mid-air to the accompaniment of discordant cymbals. 
5. Rapidly spinning triskel which periodically whirrs, sparks and throws off clumps of shredded feathers.
6. Skinny windblown dude in flowing robes.

Stats for all the above are as normal, just with an FX modification. Hopefully enough to add a little bit of "woah!" back to the primal spirits of the world.

As for elemental politics. Well, the Princes of Elemental Evil (FF) are simply cooler than almost any other quartet of elemental gods you care to name, either in pulp fantasy or gaming fluff. The idea that the earth/air itself is plotting against you is just... right (and we all know that the sea and fire are just biding their time). None of that Princes of Elemental Good nonsense though. The natural world is uncaring and merciless at best.

Composite Elementals

By this I don't mean the wackiness of the various Para- and Quasi-Elemental types (that way lies the madness of reified every-bloody-thing elementals. "Time Elemental, I'm looking at you!"). And no, Ice, Wood, Void, Magnesium and the like aren't /proper/ elements. Those are just...stuff. You'd be laughed out of the Academy for even suggesting they’re fundamental elements of creation.

Nor do I mean mimicking the noxious failure of creative ability that was the 4E elementals. How dead to the cultural heritage of the gaming world do you have to be to think that "Rockfire Dreadnought", "Earthwind Ravager" and "Thunderfire Cyclone" are worthy replacements for the rich trains of association and resonance trailed by names like Slyph, Salamander and Undine? (Not Gnome though, that name has been ruined by association with David and his fuzzy-faced, badger-fondling, bad joke ilk)

Despite what the Product Identity-mentals of 4E, and the various Para-, Quasi-, Pseudo- and Spurio-Elementals of late period TSR D&D did to the idea, combining elements is not necessarily a bad thing. Just allow two of the non-inimical classical quartet to borrow aspects of one another’s flavour and you've suddenly got whole new looks for the previously boring "I'm a self-mobile cloud/puddle/furnace/rockery" quartet.

Earth + fire = magma elementals, and who doesn't like lava?
Air + water = storm elementals.
Air + fire = burning, choking ash cloud elementals.
Earth + water = erm... mud? How about water-eroded rock? Silt? Clay? (jeez, there's always one joker has to ruin it for everyone!)

Again, no mechanical fiddling required.

Changing the Mechanics

A lot of what Classic D&D elementals do is fine. Their collective immunity to non-magical weapons makes sense. Beating on the landscape, or on a jet of fire erupting from a furnace, isn't going to do anything except give you some nasty burns and ruin the temper of your sword. Similarly there are proverbs in many cultural traditions about the futility of fighting the sea or the wind. So, yep. Immunity to mundane stuff is good.

Likewise the "maintain control, or it'll turn on you" thing that's a commonality of elemental summoning in both Basic and Advanced D&D is fun, flavourful and in keeping with pulp precedent. The rule allows the wizard player to don a big battlesuit every once in a while, but also ensures that his mates have to keep an eye on his happily drooling self while he goes kaiju on Team Monster.

The different HD from different summoning sources (stave = 8HD, wand/magic item = 12HD, spell = 16HD) probably has logical Chainmail/OD&D precedent; but from AD&D and B/X onwards it's merely another unexplained mystery of the Gygaxian universe. As for the 80 Hit Die walking disasters of BECMI...

The ‘unique abilities’ of the elementals though, those suck a fat one. The power and majesty of elementals is really undercut when it’s possible to adopt a SOP against their terrifying innate powers.

"He's summoning a [air/earth/fire/water] elemental."
"We're fine so long as we [avoid the whirlwind/cast levitate/cast resist fire/don't get in any boats] then. Oh, and by the way, dispel evil."

Surely creatures of 16 HD (that's more than any non-unique dragon, giant, or demon/devil in classic D&D) should have something a little more impressive than one bog-standard ability available to their entire type? Baz Blatt's non-canonical Tekumel demons (presented for our delectation in Fight On! #3) were pretty hardcore, and they only had 1 HD apiece.

The genies (Djinn, Efreet, etc) and minor elemental beings steal the peculiar quirks that rightfully belongs to the true elementals. So here are a few quick-and-lazy ideas to redress the balance:

Standard Elemental type ability
They get this for free, it's the calling card of their type.

Air	Flight
Earth	Meld with Earth
Fire	Make stuff to go *whumpf*
Water	Make water do tricks (run uphill, form arches, dancing fountains antics, etc.)

Then, dump the standard ability of the elemental (this is likely a bit of extra damage in B/X-LL, and the customary Whirl[wind/pool], or some extra damage in AD&D) and instead roll d10 on the table below:

Air
1. Steal Breath - save or die from hilarious blue-faced asphyxiation
2. Whirlwind – as the standard ability
3. Blade Barrier – as cleric spell
4. Cloudkill – as wizard spell
5. Lightning Bolts / Call Lightning – as the spells
6. Thunderous Bellow – as the breath weapon of a Dragonne or Androsphinx
7. Invisibility – innate ability, cannot be dispelled
8. Rapid Transit (as wind walk or the special ability of the Aerial Servant)
9. Buffet (like a giant air cannon) - duplicates one or more of the famous 'hand' spell series
10. Windwall as protection from normal missiles

Earth
1. Immobility (self or other) - as hold person spell
2. Fossilising Blow - save vs petrifaction or be a decorative feature
3. Immurement (as imprisonment spell)
4. Gravity Control (slow, reverse gravity, etc)
5. Magnetism - as attraction/repulsion spell
6. Rusting Aura - as rust monster
7. Warp Terrain
8. Earthquake - as spell
9. Rock to Mud - as spell
10. Wall of Stone - as spell

Fire
1. Pyrotechnics - self-destruct as a Type 6 demon
2. Wall of Fire / Fireball - as the spells
3. Hypnotic Movement - as fascinate or fire charm
4. Immaterial Form - physical damage? Immune suckers!
5. Prophetic Ability - as foresight, or DM fiat.
6. Destroy Weapon - directed disintegrate, but with fire FX.
7. Fire Shield - as the spell
8. Heat Metal - as the spell
9. Cause Spontaneous Combustion - save or die
10. Move like Wildfire - as blink
11. Firestorm - attraction effect + AoE fire damage

Water
1. Drown - save or die, or water spews from every orifice
2. Erode / Rot - warp wood, disintegrate, etc.
3. Waters of Lethe - memory loss
4. Airy Water - as the spell
5. Dessication - save or petrify, or you're Lot's wife now
6. Freezing Touch (water is a great coolant)
7. Wall of Ice - as spell
8. Maelstrom - as the standard whirlpool ability
9. Part Water - as spell
10. Annoying immunity - the water elemental just sits there, takes it, and goes *bloop* (like the Shao-Lin conditioning exercise where you have to slap water for an hour, to show the essential futility of worldly action)

Your elemental can use this ability once per round in the place of his normal attack.

Hopefully this'll make elementals a little less a bunch of palette swap monsters.

Thoughts? Opinions? Demands that I stop playing with the fundamental building blocks of the physical realm.

Wiffling About Initiative

Further to Doug Easterly's post on initiative at Savage Sword of Athanor I'm gnawing over the old bone of who goes first yet again. It seems there are as many ways of determining who goes first as there are retro-clones...

Retro-Clones (incomplete list*)

• OD&D (via Swords and Wizardry): Declare Spells > Initiative > Winners' Actions (spells, missiles, etc.) > Losers' actions > Held Actions.
• OD&D (Judges Guild Ready Ref. Sheets): Individual initiative determined by action/weapon, modified by Dexterity and movement speed.
• BD&D (via Labyrinth Lord): Initiative > winning side Move, Shoot, Spells, Melee > losing side Move, Shoot, Spells, Melee.
• AD&D (via OSRIC): some wild-eyed, complexity-fetishist individual initiative madness about tracking segments (or, as they're known in English, "seconds") within each combat round.

* Yes, I know I've completely overlooked Basic Fantasy, Swords & Spells, [insert game of your choice here].

Further OD&D Variations

• OED: Initiative > Move, Shoot, Melee, Spells
• SSA: Initiative > Missiles, Move, Melee, Magic

Other Systems of Interest

• D20 System: Actions taken in individual initiative order.
• GURPS Goblins: first to say "I whack 'im!" strikes soonest.
• GW Mordheim: Initiative > Alternate turns (Move, Fire, Melee, Recovery).
• Legend of the Five Rings 1E: Initiative > Actions declared in reverse order (lowest first) > Actions taken in order (highest first) > Blood all up the walls.

Much as I'm taken by the sheer simplicity (and the rigorous emphasis on player skill) inherent in the initiative system of GURPS Goblins, I'm currently leaning away from the 'all or nothing' BD&D/LL initiative system towards something a bit more OD&D-ish.

Stuff I like right now:

• Team initiative (No Grandstanding!)
• The idea of both sides acting in the same phase (winner does A, loser does A, winner does B, loser does B, etc), 
• The idea of people being pelted by arrows before they close to melee.

So which system to nick?

PS: 'initiative' is a bitch of a word to type...

The Five Worlds - Cosmowaffle and Stock Table Abuse

Riffing a little on Netherworks fascinating thought on planes as chakras (I grossly simplify the conception, probably doing it a great injustice) and Michael Moorcock's idea of more accessible 'local clusters' within wider multiverses (5+10 planes in the Corum stories, 6 in "Phoenix in the Sword", etc.), I've decided to hash together a brief overview of the Five Worlds of Nagoh, and the inter-planar connective tissue that binds them together.

Although seemingly at odds with my willful insistence on canon doubt and uncertainty in the Nagoh setting everything here is subject to revision and replacement at any time; it's simply what works for the purposes of the game at the moment.

This is what D&D canon fiends would call a 'non standard cosmology', but what the OSR would call "so-and-so's nutty take on things".

The Five Worlds

The five worlds - Nagoh and its four sibling realms - move into conjunction and opposition with one another over the ages. These celestial pavanes affect the worlds in a manner that sages and astrologers will happily blather on about until your eyes glaze and you lose the will to live. But what it boils down to is that over the centuries each world causes shift in local zeitgeist as they move in and out of proximity/association/accord to their neighbours. Successive conjunctions and oppositions may help bring about golden age of inquiry, age of horrors, an epoch of retrogressive chaos, a heroic age, and so forth on a neighbour world. These epochal shifts in alignment also cause bizarre tidal effects in the Void Between (how a void can have tides, or anything analogous to them, is another matter entirely...).

Name	Setting	Illumination	Pop Culture Referrent
Nagoh	dark age/medieval	heliocentric	Erm... D&D
Ghoan	far future	dark world	Nightlands - W.H.Hodgson
Hgona	primitive	tidal locked	Hothouse - Brian Aldiss
Aghon	baroque	lunar	Agone RPG
Onagh	classical	cometary	Imajica - Clive Barker

Nagoh: "[B]etween the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of…". Nagoh is pretty much your standard fantasy setting, albeit one with only the haziest claim to any coherent cosmology. 'Home' to the PCs, and in its explored regions not dissimilar to the world of Green Lantern: Mosaic (hat tip: The Burnt Selena Project).

(note: Everything mapped and explored so far is in the central brown bit of the map linked above. I wouldn't want to be the one to beard an Any Median Ian of Wars in its lair. ;) )

Ghoan: A desolate wasteland illuminated only by the faint light of ancient, dying stars. The strange peoples of Ghoan scratch a living from the wrack of their former greatness and fight a losing rearguard action against the twin menaces of planetary heat death and nihilistic heritor races of the darkness.

Hgona: A vibrant tidally-locked Eden. The perpetual Mother of Storms whirls at the noontide zenith of the world, forever calving wild typhoons and monsoon rains to plague the verdant jungles of the Sunlit Lands. The great ring of the cool, long-shadowed Twilit Realms girdles the waist of the world. Nightside is a place of eternal cold and darkness, inhabited by strange and baleful creatures of the outer dark.

Aghon: This perpetually moonlit world of silver foliage and crystalline palaces is ruled by a complex network of mutually emulous fairy courts. Elaborate etiquette and complex, seemingly nonsensical geases rule all social interactions here.

Onagh: A comet-lit world of blazing dawns, bright days, and long, lingering twilights. Onagh is home to a number of sophisticated societies, vast and ancient cities in the full flower of their glory, and to innumerable ideological, political and social quarrels.

There is constant fringe philosophical speculation about the existence of a Sixth World, but no verifiable proof of such, positive or negative.

The Ethereal Margins

The shallows of the Void Between (q.v.). This is the out-of-phase state you slip into when you dimension door, blink, teleport, have floaty out-of-body experiences, and suchlike. It's also where the intangible bulk of the mountains whose peaks make up all those trendy floating islands lurk. The souls of the dead persist for a while (allowing speak with dead and haunting antics), but gradually fade away to... Well, who knows where. Anyone who does isn't telling.

The Void Between

The metaphysical deep ocean between the Five Worlds, and the surest route between them. Inhabited by weird things that - in the words of the Blessed Pratchett - want to break through and enter the material world, with much the effect of an ocean trying to warm itself round a candle. This is where swords-and-sorcery elder demons lurk, whispering madness and blasphemies. Only lunatics travel through this realm of their own free will.

Travel in the Void Between is fraught with peril. It's tantamount to swimming through shark-infested waters wearing a swimsuit made of bloody meat. Various abjuring incantation can protect against the residents attracted by the delicious psychic scent of material life, but these are not infallible. Entropy is greatly accelerated in the void. Things corrode, rot and weaken rapidly if unprotected; flesh exposed to the Void Between dessicates and dry freezes almost instantly. It's generally considered wise to have some form of life-sustaining protection (either powerful magic, or a big, tough voidship) when travelling.

Navigating the Void Between is as fraught an experience as surviving it, similar to trying to fix one's position without instruments in the midst of a ferocious storm. A journey through the Void Between, even with a suitably experienced navigator and bound native guide, requires a number of transitions (think the plane-shifting in Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber here) between relatively fixed locations (standing vortices and eddies, cold matter clumps, nexus crystals, etc.).

A typical voyage between worlds requires d6 checks on the table below:

1. Monster*/Hazard**
2. Monster + Treasure***
3-5. Empty
6. Apparently Empty, 50% chance vortex to Pocket Universe****:
-- 1. Empty
-- 2. Trapped, Empty
-- 3-4. Treasure
-- 5-6. Trap and Treasure

* Use monster generator of choice (Carcosa, Random Esoteric Creature Generator, etc.) or create your own horrors. I'm leaning towards a typical encounter in the Void Beyond being about 4d8 HD divided equally between 1d6 creatures, each with 1d4 special abilities replicating spells of level 1d6+3.
** Select nautical hazard of your choice. Multiply it by the risks of sailing through a demon-infested realm with limited visibility, which is slowly eroding your material form.
*** As Sham's OD&D Treasure Tables, or per your preferred retro-clone. Suggested dungeon level 1d8+4. Content should tend away from gold and bling, and towards weird stuff. These caches should be squirreled away in nexus crystals, cold matter agglomerations, sarrgasoed galleons/submarines/saucers/etc.
**** Pocket Universe traps should generally be Star Trek: TNG-style puzzle worlds. You have to engage with the world and solve it to escape; brute-forcing the situation shouldn't be a viable option. The BECMI module Talons of Night might be considered good source material here.

(note: Yes, the above was a shameless rip-off of the OD&D dungeon stocking table. I'm just seeing if there's a way to extend the utility of that little beauty further...)

The Astral Realm

The astral spell (and similar invocations) remove the caster from the physical realm of the Five Worlds and move him into the rarefied Astral Realm, the domain of dreams, ideas and ideals. Circular time, subjective gravity, thought as motive force, and mind over matter are the norm here. Inhabitants of the Astral Realm are often strangely abstract or allegorical in nature, and long-term visitors may find themselves slowly losing their individuality (keepsakes, memories, quirks of character, etc.) and becoming ever more notional versions of themselves over time. Simpleminded humans tend to go completely mad if they think too hard about how profoundly different the Astral Realm is to the concrete world they know. Those more used to altered states of consciousness, or to thinking in multiple dimensions, tend to cope better.

You can meet the gods in the Astral Realm, but gods in this place are little more than self-perpetuating, vastly powerful archetypal patterns. For most mortals (those below 10th level, and who haven't made some unholy pact for power) this transcendent experience would be akin to trying to establish contact with an incredibly narcissistic natural disaster. Abnormally powerful mortals - who tend to have dedicated themselves to the single-minded pursuit of a particular ideal or philosophy - actually take on something of this 'divine monomania' while in the Astral Realm.

(note: I (barely) resisted the urge to go the whole Dreamtime hog and create a wacky pastiche realm of Astralia, complete with slouch hat-wearing Githyanki larrikins and marsupial kaiju, instead going for a RuneQuest-ish 'realm of ideals'-meets-Godland take on things.)

Elemental Planes

There are no elemental planes in this cosmology. Almost by definition elementals are creatures of the material world, so that's where they come from (and generally stay). Elementals can be summoned in any of the Five Worlds, but not in the Ethereal Margins, nor in the Void Between, the Pocket Universes, or the Astral Realm. There simply isn't enough material matter in these places for elementals to arise.

This gives me a little more structure than the "yeah, why not?" omnivorousness of the Ferris Wheel of Doom, but still lets me play fast and loose with plane-hopping stuff, alternate worlds, hostile outer darknesses, ghostly hippy space, and the like.

(art credit: Maelstrom section 19 by Ian Miller)

Gadget Madness - it is coming

(a 7E player, some years hence)

OK, so first Rob of Bat in the Attic tweaks my Luddite nerve with his wild-eyed prophecies of Kindle gaming. And now Matt Colville of Squaremans is seriously talking about people using the next generation of iGadgets as the medium for enhanced reality RPGs.

That does it! I'm mining the lawn. Has the technophobic wisdom of Hollywood taught us nothing? Ain't no Skynet running my games for me!

*Dons tinfoil hat. Stocks tinned food, ammunition and lead minis*

"An intriguing game. The only way to win is not to play."
-- WOPR, Wargames

edit: And now James Mishler (who knows of what he speaks) predicts the inevitable doom of RPGs in terms more commonly heard from Dmitri Orlov, Jim Kunstler or the guys over at Coming Anarchy than from fun-loving game designers. Like Cold War armageddon docu-dramas Mr Mishler's thoughts are scary, but definitely worth your time.

link to James Mishler's prophecies of doom added 15/07/2009

The Rake's Progress (gamer edit)

Nick Bielik, the lord of Castle Dragonscar commands that we reveal our gaming histories. Squishy-minded and prone to drone-like following as I am ("Will minion for food. Can provide own cult robe"), who am I to argue?

~ = magazine/comic
* = board/table top game
# = books
-- = related event

Primary School
Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harryhausen movies and fantasy films
# Greek and Norse myth, Arthuriana
# The Hobbit

Secondary School/Sixth Form
# Lord of the Rings
~ 2000AD comic (UK)
Fighting Fantasy
Lone Wolf
# Michael Moorcock
* Heroquest
* Space Hulk
Mentzer Basic D&D
~ White Dwarf (UK)
Dragon Warriors
AD&D1-2E (any setting; we weren't picky)
~ Dragon magazine
* GW Warhammer (FB/40K/Epic) + Dark Future
TNMT/Heroes Unlimited
MERP
WFRP
~ Game Master magazine (UK)
Elric, Runequest
WH40K Rogue Trader roleplay homebrew
~ Arcane magazine (UK)
Megatraveller
Rolemaster

University
Amazing Engine (TSR generic system - Bughunters, Once and Future King, etc.)
GURPS
-- discover internet --
Cyberpunk
Call of Cthulhu
* GW Necromunda
Vampire
Shadowrun

World of Work
-- LARPing --
Pendragon
Ars Magica
* GW Mordheim/Warmaster
* DBA
Fading Suns (longest campaign)
LUGTrek
Dune
D&D 3.5
WFRP 2E (like tonsil hockey with an old flame: familiar, but still exciting)
D&D 3.5 + Tome Series
-- discover grogblogs --
Castles & Crusades (briefly)
Labyrinth Lord

I am such an archetypal British gamer it's not even worth joking about it. I came up during the 80s NWOBCF (New Wave of British Cynical Fantasy), and it's marked me indelibly.

"How Well Did I Do?" for the Lazy DM

Although mentioned in several places in the 3.5 PHB (notably in the skills chapter) the aspect of degrees of success is not - at least AFAIK - explicitly called out as part of the system. That's a shame, because having degrees of success defined helps the DM in his job of adjudicating exactly that the heck just happened there? when half-a-dozen people are shouting over one another, throwing dice, shoving minis around, and hooting like gibbons.

Presented below is my personal "How'd they do?" quick reference table:

Check vs. DC	Degree of Success	Bonus (to Whatever)
-11 or more	Terrible	-2
-6 to -10	Poor	-1
-1 to -5	Fail	-0
+0-4	Pass	+0
+5-9	Good	+1
+10-14	Superior	+2
+15-19	Excellent	+3
+20 or more	"No wai!"	+4

Any resemblance of the above to the successes table from Savage Worlds is...probably intentional, in retrospect.

The Bonus (to Whatever) column is a general thumbnail guide to how a subsequent check (aid another, recovery from falling, etc.) will be affected by the outcome of this one. It could even be used as a bonus to damage if the initial d20 was part of an attack roll (at the moment success and damage in D&D are - critical hits aside - almost wholly dissociated).

note: found out what was causing the table problem. Blogger treats carriage returns in the HTML of tables as line breaks.

Out of the Vaults

Another day, another gaming blog. Vaults of Nagoh - an old-school megadungeon ... blah blah ... sandbox game ... blah blah ... hacked 3E mechanics in an old-school play style... blah blah.

Look, if you've ended up here then either

(a) you game with me,
(b) you already know what sort of thing this is, or
(c) you're horribly lost and should go back to Facebucket* or whatever web2.0 social thingy you wandered in from. You people are lost. This is the deeply geeky end of the Internet, and here be wickedly-grinning buttsecks sharks, and ancient jabbering madness, and polyhedral dice, and geeks geeks GEEKS! in all their resplendent neckbearded glory.

They gone?

Good.

For those of you still staring at the screen with a big glowing question mark over your head the game is intended to be a no plot, no railroads (...fox only, Final Destination), swords-and-sorcery-meets-whatever-is-going-through-the-DM's-head-this-week game centred on exploring forbidden ancient underworlds, whaling on the inhabitants, desecrating their temples, and taking their shineys. Ya know, the kind of good clean Heroquest-ish fun** we all enjoyed back in the sepia-tinted, pre-webtartubes day.

The system used in this ongoing insult to the fine work of Sts. Gygax, Arneson, Bledsaw, etc. will be my own D&D 3E hack, in itself a horrible mish-mash of the SRD, Keith & Frank's Tome Series, and Dan's Diminutive d20 . What can I say? I hate excessive brainwork and legalese in my games, but I'm simply not hardcore enough to use one of the many fine retro-clone products available. Plus I like to hear game rules moan "Kill me. Kiiiiiill me." in plaintive dispair.

Downloads for my players and other visitors - if any - can be found in the sidebar. This main column will just be the usual fulminations, karkfardlery, and bloggerly brain custard (tm Warren Ellis - "Ze greatest livink Englischman").

Now, how to you publish with these filthy devil machines again?

* Facebucket is real?! Who knew? I just used the name as parody.
** I'm kinda hoping James Raggi IV doesn't notice the 'f' word there...

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