23 Stoopid Answers to 23 Sensible Questions

(JOESKY Tax content at bottom of post for those who don't fancy reading a bunch of egoblogging wordswordswords.)

In accordance with my informal policy of leaving no passing bandwagon unmolested, and because I need to type something to get my fingers limbered up, I hereby present my answers in brief to the open interview questionnaire posed by that odd arty bloke with the eyebrow-raising resume. Thus spaketh the Zak:

Repost and answer. Or, if you don't have a blog, answer in the comments. Or be a big rebel and do neither.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
I don't invent. I steal, file off the serial numbers, and exploit to the hilt. Original ideas are things that happen to other people.
I am quietly pleased with the Chambers of Devouring Night though. I've had to institute a Jeff-style XPloration bonus just to get people to set foot in them, the cowards.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Sunday 22th Jan. GCX playtest. I learned many valuable lessons in 'theory != practise' and 'the wastepaper basket is your best friend' that day.

"Why did you think I meant critique when I said critique? Don't you know that's code for 'massage my ego subcreature'?"

3. When was the last time you played?

An RPG? September 2011.
Any fantasy game? Sunday 29th Jan.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

Spelljammer Ulysses 31 using a Terminal Space/Mazes+Minotaurs mash-up system.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Scribble notes. Smile enigmatically. Roll dice for the noise they make.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Wine gums or hard candy. I'm a bit of a stickler for no crumbly foods (and no glasses!) at the table. Children get food on their books, adults should not. Especially not my books. I will use a cigar trimmer to take fingers in payment!

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Mentally draining, yes. Hell on the vocal chords, yes. Physically exhausting, no.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Pass. It's been entirely too long since I've played in a truly memorable game. We had fun a lot of fun with moral dilemmas in an L5R game a few years back...

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Everything turns into Nextwave or Metalocalypse in the grubby hands of my players. Everything. Nothing is sacred; everything is there to be mocked, then stolen or destroyed.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Nothing! Any rumours you have heard to the contrary are scurrilous calumnies on my good character. Srsly? Generally they turn into a vicious version of Froud's "Labyrinth" goblins, or possibly L5R's bakemono: funny right up until their clownish antics turn nasty and start downing PCs.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

A lot of the gadgets and gimmicks from issues 1-24 of "Transmetropolitan" (yes, people still read that).

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

In-game: Possibly the First Annual Vaults Spontaneous Mook Convention. You know the situation, it was that one time that *every* WM roll came up a 1 (memo to self: check Eye of Sauron d6 for excessive evilness). Halfway through a pretty standard fight more creatures turned up.
"Uh oh!"
The fight continued. Check for racket: more monsters.
"Fight on!"
Check again (#=1) And more...
(#=1) and more...
(#=1) and more...
Eventually the party clear the area, settle down to bind their wounds and loot the dead. I tick off the turn and note it's time for another WM check. *clatter, clatter* "Hey, guess what lads..."
"Don't care. Routing. Dump the swag. Leave the dying. Devil take the hindmost!"
They hared it back to the surface like rats out of a drainpipe. First time I've used the pursuit rules in a while...

Meta/Tabletalk: The Manifestation of the OmniFred. It was deemed by the usual decision-making process (hubbub and half-heard drunken inferences) that individuality was merely an illusion, and that all people and objects were actually aspects of Fred. Our apprehension of the inherent Fredness of all things lasted the rest of the evening. It got very weird. Thankfully no pianos required shifting.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Chaosium/GW "Stormbringer". I was looking at it coz that's what was propped on my printer.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

John f***ing Blanche and his scritchy, mad, fever-dream art.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

No. Only my arousal.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

It was a TSR adventure we played back in the day. I vaguely remember it being some "But thou must..." Dragonlance railroad. The players - trained in the school of hard knocks (and sly shankings) that is WFRP - said "screw the plot" and instead set about harvesting wandering monsters for their skin and organ resale value (weasel fur, fire beetle glowpods, Vilstrak gullet gems, etc). Fine by me; I'd only read a couple of pages ahead anyway. IIRC it all went TPK when they decided to raid a Roc's nest to steal the eggs.

And that is why you do not play Dragonlance ever! after immersing yourself in wildlife documentaries for an extended period.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

Semi-circle of sofas with a large low table in the middle. Side table for refreshments. Good lighting. Instrumental background music turned low. No TV. Phones set to silent/emergency only, thank you.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

K.A.Pendragon and HoL. One is a serious-minded evocation of myth and literature; other is like someone made the inside of my nasty bogmonkey head into a game.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Terry Gilliam films, HMHB, 2000AD, Cinnabar, Gear World

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
People who don't take themselves too seriously. We're adults playing Lets Pretend with our toy soldiers FFS! Punctuality (the courtesy of princes), attention to the matter at hand, and not being a rowdy attention hog are also appreciated. People bothering to learn the rules seems to be a hopeless pipe dream though...

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

My fear of centipedes.  Although I've yet to introduce my players to the recurring nightmare of having one hatch out through your eye...

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

The Concordance of Riskail by Netherwerks - the only role-playing product transmitted back to the Toxic Era by a surrealism-loving insectile hivemind. I would buy it SO HARD! And so would all other right-thinking people.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Lisa (Mrs Chris). Her geekery is Errol Flynn films, baking and arts-&-crafts, she's only ever played Heroquest, and she doesn't read extruded genre product. She understands the appeal of creating emergent improvised adventure stories, but has no desire to partake. All this - combined with a patient, understanding nature and a dry sense of humour - makes her a fantastic 'outside the bubble' sounding board for ideas.

-----

JOESKY TAX:

Spell: Deliquescent Transition (Wiz2)
Caster's body, clothing and held items melt into a varicoloured fleshy ooze. In this form the caster may squeeze through any non-air/watertight space at 1/2 normal speed. Yes, they can climb walls and ventilation pipes. 1 Round to dissolve flesh, 1 round to travel, 1 to reform. While in ooze form caster is AC 9[10], no Dex bonus.
Additional complication: encountered dungeon oozes think the caster has a purty mouth.

(yeah, like a potion of gaseous form, only less so.)

ACKS Eats 5E's Lunch, Belches Heartily

[All content-creating efforts are going into another project ATM. Breaking blog silence only to post an opinion piece/review.]

Note: this is based entirely upon the PDF version of ACKS, released 01/02/2012.

Adventurer Conqueror King System
Authors: Alex Macris, Tavis Allison, Greg Tito
Publisher: Autarch.co
Format: 8.5" x 11", pp270.
Colour cover, black-and-white illos throughout.

Adventurer Conqueror King System (hereafter ACKS) is a Kickstarter funded semi-retro-clone that basically does what WOTC want to do with 5E: namely, nick the best elements from preceding editions of D&D and kludge them into one (hopefully) all-conquering whole. That said; ACKS does borrow more from some versions of D&D than from others.

Expected Elements
ACKS is basically the BEC- of BECMI, with mechanics rationalised and extended to suit authorial taste.

• Most of the mechanical chassis - classes, spells, proficiencies, equipment, adventuring mechanics, monsters, magic items, stocking dungeons, encounter tables - will be pretty much home ground to any fan of Classic D&D. Even ACKS' (well-executed) new classes will look more than a little familiar.
• The integrated 'roll over' core mechanic of ACKS owes something to the SRD. Where ACKS differs is in being a close-ended system: you always roll your d20 hoping to exceed the target number. This puts a hard cap on difficulty and keeps bonus inflation within the bounds of sanity. No one "falls off the RNG" in ACKS.
• Magic item creation looks to be straight from 3E, albeit with a BECMI-style success roll required.

Nice Touches
There's a lot to like in ACKS, though it does tend to conceal the more subtle system interactions which illustrate its cleverness. I don't want to derail myself by talking about those, go see the games' developer blog for that.

My personal favourite take aways are things that look - at least in isolation - like simple, elegant "I wish I'd thought of that" house rules:

• The formalisation of the 'henchmen as vassal' idea, and accompanying henchmen-of-henchmen trees as the basis for a feudal structure, is an ingenious idea.
• Carousing (blow stacks of cash to no benefit) as an XP bank for your next character.
• Abstract combat you can either keep simple or complicate as much as you like. 
• Grapple rules? Sure. One paragraph. And you can boil them down further to: "roll to hit, he saves vs. paralysis or ends up pinned."
• High level magic (L6+) is situational one-shot rituals. No wish-per-day breaking of the setting.
• Created monsters - wanna make constructs, undead, or hideous hybrid monstrosities? Certainly Mr Mad Wizard, here are the rules. Go crazy you cackling maniac you...
• Tapping the faith of the masses and/or sacrificing them on unholy altars for magic makes Cleric happy.
• Hijinks and skullduggery rules for when the Thief gets back to civilisation.
• Build dungeons, then exploit their monster infestations for XP and reagents.
• Rule tribal humanoid domains (poor and backward, but swarming with Orcy cannon fodder).
• Gain XP from your profits as a merchant prince, feudal lord or arcane experimenter, but only over a certain threshold (dependent on character level). You can do much more than just adventure, but adventuring still gives the best XP return on effort invested.
• All magic items require reagents in their creation.
• Formalised rules for creating PCs above level 1, along with equipment, batcaves, and accompanying cadres of vassals and pet monsters.
• Sharktipedes.

Niggles
My ACKS niggles are totally matters of taste. What bugs me will probably make the next gamer priapic with joy.

• The sections on arbitrage trading, generating a setting, determining local trade goods and suchlike are comprehensive and appear to scale well. But they are a bit, well, spreadsheety for my tastes. Less BECMI domain system, more Birthright-style abstraction would have been nice here. But then I consider anything more complex than counting on my fingers just too damn fiddly.
• My old bete noire of Treasure Types ("Five types of coin? GTFO!") rear their ugly head, albeit rationalised somewhat for the 2010s. Type A is least valuable, R most. Statistical average value is given right there on the table. Supplementary gem, jewellery and "replace cash type with equivalent value in trade goods" sub-tables are good. The same treature types are used to generate monster swag and dungeon loot. Believe me, it's high praise when I say that I probably hate this take on Treasure Types the least.
• The suggested magic item reagents are sadly WoW-esque ("bring me a dozen troll hearts") rather than mythic ("bring me the sound of a shadow"). But that's easily amended...
• I'd love to have seen some of the inevitable D&D standby monsters - especially the interchangeable humanoids ("Kobold, Goblin, Morlock, Orc, Hobgoblin, Gnoll, Neanderthal..." *snore*), scaling animals (bears, big cats, crocs, non-giant snakes, rodents, birds of prey, etc.) and niche-encroaching wastes of space (*cough* hippogriff, caecilian) - dropped or rationalised in favour of new Auran Empire beasties.
• I know the writers were limited by page count, but it would have been nice if they'd been able to include a couple of their excellent ACKS blog articles (economics from the ground up, the magic ratio of worldbuilding, etc.) in the book as sidebars. It would have made some of the figures generated by the system a little more transparent to the casual reader. Don't hide the clever, dammit!

Easter Eggs
Things that tickled me, because I am small of brain and easily pleased.

• I'm not sure why a sheep (80lbs) is considered a form of lodging (p42). I don't know, and I don't want to know.
• Spotted on the ACKS patron list: the name Mike Mearls. Nah. It couldn’t be that Mike Mearls, surely? Must be some other guy. ;)

Is ACKS worth the money? Well, it's no Vornheim in terms of immediate open-and-play utility (what is?), but I still bought it sight unseen on the strength of a few developer articles. The lads at Autarch talked a good fight, and they delivered. The book appears well laid-out, well cross-referenced, the writing is clear and coherent, the artwork thematically unified without being straitjacketed by a corporate 'house style'.

Issues of taste and "I wouldn't have done it like that" aside ACKS is a damn fine distillation and extension of Classic D&D. The writers manage to integrate the rulership end game into the main killing-and-theft game without having the economy go to pot. As anyone who's played 3E knows: that's an achievement in itself.

So, ACKS scales all the way up without breaking, gives us new mechanical toys to play with, and it still looks like D&D. Your move WOTC...

Puritans &... Pleistocene?

A half-formed thought inspired by notes on The New World for SBVD, by re-reading Marvel's 1601 comic, and by a thread at alternatehistory.com entitled No Megafauna Extinction (in between threads entitled "Cato's Cavalry" and "A Long and Flowing Whig" - those AH guys are nuts. Erudite, but nuts).

So Daniel Boone crossed into the bluegrass country of Kentuckee. 
Only to happen upon...

From the originating thread:

I see there being a market for Glyptotherium and D. clavicaudatus shells as curios in europe, along with Ivory, utterly massive furs, from Arctodus, Castoroides ohioensis and C. leiseyorum, and various fibers from all the different Camelids. F***! It'd be like a treasure trove for anyone stupid or desperate enough to try and set up shop there.

Hell, in the Caribbean, where things aren't as deadly, you've still got miniature ground sloths, Flightless Owls and rather interesting parrots (that might revive the fashion for parrots among the nobility back in Europe,) plus all the stuff that drove settlement IOTL.

We have scads of Pleistocene beasty stats in B/X; we have our grungy, low-powered D&D modcops; and between ckutalik's Hill Cantons Domain Game and Autarch's forthcoming ACKS we have our colony-builder systems. This is just crazy enough to work!

And lo! The gods did look upon the ravings of the fog-addled bogmonkey, and decreed that Mammoths and Muskets (or Brutes & Buckskins? or Settlers & Smilodons?) was a stupid idea, but one that might have legs, so don't knock it on the head just yet. :)

Edit: You know, I should probably split all this non-Vaults stuff off into another blog. Or would that just be annoying and fiddly?

Pic Source
Frank Frazetta (of course), found in the Comic Art Community Frazetta gallery.

[SBVD] Crime and Punishment

Note: the topicality of this post in the light of recent events in the UK is entirely accidental.

Sooner or later our brave heroes (such as they are) are going to fall afoul of the law (such as it is). Here are some half-formed thoughts on making their big day in court fittingly Kafkaesque and memorably unjust.

Detection and Detention
Thanks to the thieving antics of travelling vagabonds, gypsies and suchlike sturdy beggars (*cough* adventurers *cough*) outsiders are generally the first to fall under suspicion when a crime occurs. Many jurisdictions still hold to the old legal principle that if no one is punished for a detected crime then the elected headmen of the community are guilty of conspiracy with the criminals. This tends to concentrate the mind on finding anyone to punish, rather than the right person.

There are no police as we understand the term in the world of SBVD: no CID, no CSI, no Special Branch. There are civil watchmen and rural road wardens, but these are paramilitary peacekeeping organisations with no interest in helping recover your stolen purse. Privately hired watchmen are common in cities, but their effectiveness as deterrent to criminal activity is limited by the innate venality and cynicism of the breed. [1]

Unless someone is actually caught red handed and captured by an initial hue-and-cry [2] the best way to bring someone to trial is to either: 1) hunt them down yourself, or 2) hire a professional thief taker (prototypical bounty hunters and/or private detectives) to bring them in. Struggling artists and jobbing printers do a roaring trade in lurid Wanted! posters commissioned by clubs of vengeful private citizens.

1] Many (most?) private watch organisations are little more than local mafias operating on a "Shame if anything happened to your place..." protection racket basis.

2] This is the common term for the ever-present pitchfork-wielding mob in vigilante mode. The more archaic and formal term posse comitatis is used by highfalutin, la-di-da legal types.


Trial
Once captured, stripped of their goods and remanded into custody in the filthy local cells (save vs. poison or contract a random disease) a defendant will have to wait 1d20 days before being dragged before the beak. The concept of bail (remanding into the care of an appointed custodian) is gradually evolving in the cities.

The trial system in SBVD is archaic, arbitrary, chaotic and entirely dependent on how bored or dyspeptic the judge feels today. Half-forgotten centuries-old traditions and ridiculous practices are rife, and illogical - but procedurally correct and thus technically legal - decisions are the norm. Think in terms of the Red Queen’s Court in Alice in Wonderland, rather than the stately gravity of contemporary courtroom dramas.

Outrageous as it may seem to people raised under the aegis of Common Law, but the society of SBVD works on a quasi-European inquisitorial system of law. The magistrate hears the evidence he wants to hear, and then passes judgement based on his personal prejudices and/or knowledge of precedent and case law. Judges to the busy, important urban courts are appointed either by the civic council or Imperial decree, but many rural courts are still feudal, presided over by whatever semi-educated local toff feels like wearing the big wig for a while.

If a jury is convened to pass judgement (common in the big city, less so in the boondocks) they're more likely to be there to get out of the rain than to deliberate with wisdom and discretion. Most juries will either be prejudiced against the defendant ("He's in the dock; he must be guilty"), or liable to use the case to address longstanding local grievances ("Can't let rich toffs think they're above the law").

Travellers are warned that the old customs of trial by combat or ordeal are still on the books. These expedients are resorted to if the judge just can’t be bothered and fancies livening up proceedings with a bit of bloodshed.

The outcome of a trial can be decided either by GM fiat, or, more fittingly, by a 2d6 Reaction Roll:

2d6	Result
2	"Pass me the black cloth cap. I might be needing it..." Found guilty. Punished with all the harshness and imagination the GM can muster.
3-5	"Hand me that book, that I may throw it at the wretch." Found guilty. Sentenced to something harsh and onerous, but usually non-fatal.
6-8	"The court requires further evidence. Now, what's for lunch?" Remanded in custody for another 1d10 days.
9-11	"Not proven. Now stop wasting my time." Let off with a warning to quit town/be on best behaviour.
12	"This was obviously all a dreadful misunderstanding." Exonerated with an apology and testimonial to good character signed by the judge.

If the GM desires, the following situational modifiers may adjust the reaction roll:

+1 for each that applies
Respectable defendant
You didn't do it
...and you have an alibi
You bribed the judge
Your lawyer is a shark
Minor offence

-1 for each that applies
Respectable victim
You did it
...and witnesses saw you
Hanging judge
Your lawyer is an idiot
Outrageous crime


What About My Defence?
Oh, the cost of hiring a lawyer? This is very much a "What you got?" situation, but most decent lawyers won’t get out of bed for less than 50GC/day. They’ll expect payment whether or not they get to present their evidence in your defence: lawyers might be venal, ethically flexible logic-choppers, but they’re not stupid.

In cases of trial by ordeal/combat a retained lawyer will offer advice on procedure, and the name of a good doctor or judicial protagonist (if required), but won’t waive his fee. ("It’s not my fault the judge decided to revive the ancient tradition of ‘trial by flaming tarred pants’ just for you. I recommend running for that pond over there as fast as you can...")

A word of warning about lawyers: watch out for the keen-eyed pro bono crusading ones out to make a name for themselves. Their grandstanding antics are just as likely to annoy the judge and get you hanged on a technicality as to get you off with a virtuoso display of logic and rhetoric. Young, fast and fiery are fine qualities in a racehorse, but less than ideal in an advocate.

Punishment
Judicial punishment is harsh, exemplary, and usually ironic in nature. Incarceration is rare and special, reserved for valuable hostages or those who someone with an oubliette wants lost and forgotten. Most punishment involves some form of violence, public humiliation or hard labour. Debtors are put to work in chain gangs; givers of short weight are forced to wear a locked cartwheel around their neck; thieves and fraudsters are fined and lose a finger; seditionists get their tongues clipped or their lips seared; rapists are castrated; grave robbers are buried alive; murderers get the rope or axe, or occasionally, a ‘Ketch Special’.

Public headsmen are a wickedly inventive breed, constantly in competition to produce the most interesting and spectacular forms of public execution. Throwing to the dogs has fallen out of fashion as cruel and barbaric; the current fad is a spectacularly pyrotechnic form of breaking on the wheel called 'the flaming Katrin'. Such spectaculars make a great day out for the whole family.

Exceptions to the Rule
There is no equality before the law in SBVD. Some people are simply above it; others aren’t even considered legal persons. In many jurisdictions a nobleman, wizard or clergyman can only be bought to book by his social peers. Yes, this means that the upper classes can literally get away with murder, so long as they don’t pick on anyone liable to arouse the sentiments of the mob. There are also places where serfs, foreigners and/or non-humans are considered legal minors or chattel, legally the responsibility of the respectable types they accompany.

Mutants, warlocks and the like rarely even get to trial: the angry mob tends to skip straight to punishment. Such cancers to the body politic commonly ‘die of injuries sustained resisting apprehension’. Creatures entirely outside society (NPC races like beastmen, orcs, giants, etc.) are deemed outlaw and thus fair game for anyone with the ability to take them down. You don’t bring an action for damages against a giant eating your sheep; you apply to the army, or that gang of passing heroes.

Pic Source: Breaking on the Wheel, courtesy of seiyaku.com

[SBVD] Pretty Pictures Edition

Note your humble author in yellow

Sorry for the long silence: it's been all about Dark Heresy (using the RT/Necromunda-derived Book of the Arbitrator fan rules) around our way recently, and InquisiMunda - although fun - is Off Topic for a Classic D&D blog.

New and improved version of SBVD (ver0.3) uploaded. Thanks again for downloading, perusing, using and feeding back.

Tweaks include:

+ switched to pdf format.
+ prettificated with public domain pics.
+ Added Social Injustice rules.
+ Experimented with Drugs and Poisons.
+ Played with Madness.
+ Split off Encumbrance.
+ Acquired Retainers.
+ Dabbled in higher Magic.
+ Obsessed over Treasure.
+ Extended the Menagerie.
+ Opinionated waffle given free rein in the footnotes.

++ SBVD character sheet.

If interest is expressed I'm happy to reformat the game for the OSR's preferred Format of Awesome (A5, 8.5" x 5.5").

Possibly of interest to those who remember White Dwarf back when it was good: Gobbledegook skirmish game by Sean Patten. My impressions on a first read: lotsa zoggin' fun! Take a couple of minutes to look over his other homebrew games and his fantastic scenery collection (including "how to" guides).

Edit: also of possible interest. Noisms' dungeoneering dog breeds and dog quirks-and-traits table.

Pic Source: detail of "Landscape with Blind Orion Seeking the Sun" by Nicolas Poussin, courtesy of sightswithin.com