So I picked up some 5th Ed D&D stuff, and have been churning away at getting a Dragons of Phandelver -a mashup of the Starter and Essential boxes- campaign typed up as a way to keep my mind on things. My hope is too start running my kiddos through it. Fun little tid bit is the cartographer who did the maps for a lot of the early 5th Ed stuff, sells digital copies of the maps for a nice price. I’ve had a copy of Realm Works for ages now and never really used it, so I’ve been putting it through its paces loading maps and location info into it. It’s interesting to see my gaming laptop start locking up from a simple program...

I have actually started playing 5th Ed at a FLGS, and the group is wrapping up Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Once done they’ll be starting Descent into Avernus around the new year. Sadly my shift schedule only allows me to play every other weekend. Which means I’ve not gotten any treasure for the last couple adventures, cause they were finished the following week. Donno if I’ll stay with it or switch to running my campaign, or even a whole other game. There’s talk of starting Shadowrun or Traveller, and I also got a ridiculously good price on a Wrath & Glory Collectors Edition box, so maybe that.


Anyway that’s the state of things right now. Hopefully I can get back into working on my Dragonlance stuff.

*Cross posted from WP

Not AWOL

Sorry for the absence. My new career has three shifts: day, evening, overnight, and I've never been a morning person and my kiddos have no clue what "Be Quiet" means, so I work nights. Getting familiar with the ins and outs of the medical field has eaten alot of my time up in the last few months.

That said, I've jumped back on too WP. As mentioned I don't have a lot of time most days, and tend to have my iPhone or iPad in use more than my laptop, so I needed a platform that has an in house app. If everything goes well at work, I have about about two hours of just sitting or walking 50ft doing bed checks, before my shift ends, so this'll give me a chance to keep up. I'll just dual post for a while, then simply stop posting on Blogger. I also follow a multitude of blogs that are on WP and trying to engage in a conversation with them -or spin off a tangent idea from one of theirs- is all but impossible from Blogger.

So thats where things stand right now. If your on WP, heres the link to the other blog: https://playinganrpg.wordpress.com/

Quickie Update

So my April 18th post never went past a draft, and got forgotten due to a hernia, interstate move and a new job. So if just popped up, no its not your blog reader, its me. Sorry!

In other news, I finally got around to buying the 5th Edition D&D books. Their in my pile of books to go through, right behind a couple other nonfiction and fiction books. I of course immediately went looking for 5E stuff on DTRPG and found modules for 5E styled Dragonlance on Fanatsygrounds, but its been scrubbed to fit into Forgotten Realms. It requires the actual DL modules to use, so the author isn't stepping on toes, but FR?!? Kinda takes the fun out of the setting.

While not a fan of FR -loved the Drizzt books (minus the last couple series)- I'm kinda interested in seeing what hes done. But right now I have to other priorities.

Thoughts on a Twisted, Generic D&D Campaign

While walking my kiddos to school and then coming home the other day, I started thinking about how taking the stock fantasy world D&D uses, and giving it a little bit of a twist, that would make it fresher experience to all the BTDT crowd. For now I’m not digging into doing a map of this world, just the people populating it. There should be a logical flow to some of this, so everything makes a little sense with just passing info. Then over time and playing, details can be filled in if needed.

Let’s start with Elves. Tossing out the Tolkienesque descended Elves (and various subtypes all the editions have added) we’re used too, and we’ll replace them with just three types: Surface, Underground, and Wild. We’ll keep the extreme longevity and other abilities, but tweak the fluff of them.

• Surface Elves look physically just like your typical fantasy elf. But they are all very dark skinned, with tones running from olive to almost black. Hair color tends to follow the same colors as humans and other demihumans. They can grow facial hair, but it is sparse and only comes in like a goatee. They absolutely love art or artistry in all their various forms, but due to their long lives, they can be very snobbish or elitist about their current favorite “thing” this decade (or century, their patient). Temperament wise, they run the gamut from good to evil, just like humans/other demihumans. However while they are cordial to other races, they do not tend to make friends or forge alliances with them, due to elves often outliving other races, their descendants, and in some cases the country they lived in. This is why there are several Elf enclaves within other countries borders, that tend to remain neutral to the country’s politicking. Culturally, their like the Achaemenid Empire (the first Persian Empire), in that they have regional governors, standard imperial coinage, and tax districts. Also like the Achaemenid Empire, they -nationally- follow one god, but they are tolerant of other religions.

• Underground Elves are the descendants of clans who assassinated the king, and tried to install weak willed puppet on the throne. Failing, they fled the kingdom and laid blame on another clan for their collective failure. Some sought help through arcane means, and eventually followed their new demon god and its spawn into the underground. Several thousands of years living in darkness, they have -as a people- lost the ability to see completely. This is compensated by enormous ears -that they can individually move- and a hearing range that is comparable to bats. They are of course all albinos. Additionally, their pantheon of gods is lead by the demon god that first helped them.

• Wild Elves are descended from the other group of Elves that fled the kingdom. Instead of seeking aid, they fled far from their home lands and hide in the depth of an ancient wood. From there they raid the surrounding countries. Other than being blood thirsty savages, not much else is known about them or their customs.

Well, that seems to be the state of things right now. I have a few ideas dwarves, gnomes, and halflings, but they need a bit of time to percolate.

Still Working at This

Pardon my absence, I was trying to find a job in a whole other state then the one I currently live in. Having done that, I am now waiting on a background check. So more free time, yay...

Anyways, I did find a little time to gather some notes on the mega adventure for Dragonlance. This will be a straight comparison of the DLs, DLCs, 15th Anniversary book, and the 3E books, encounter for encounter. Paths that deviate from the original three books, will be also be complied as a just in case measure.

 Having read DL1 to prep, I’m trying to find the railroad most people talk about. Other then  the initial encounter and a little bit of “keep the meta plot moving” rules, the module is a straight up wilderness hexcrawl. If they even make it to Solace, they still have to go to the bar, mingle a bit, and engage the old man telling stories. Skip any of that and no quest. Additionally Xak Tsaroth is just a two part dungeon crawl. If anything, people should be grumbling about the GM map and the Player map not matching up like they should. There are two different maps (style wise), and every single peak labeled on one, is else where on the other. And the GM map is done in black and shades of grey, on white. With white encounter numbers. My vision isn’t all that bad, and I have trouble reading the thing. Can’t imagine someone with worse vision trying.
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Now I will point out that it might be assumed that the players of DL1 are knowledgeable about the plot of the books, and thus their quest. Because outside of the above mentioned NPC with a quest or Goldmoon and Riverwind’s background, there is nothing to serve as a plot hook until they either get to Haven (then directed to Xak Tsaroth) or stumble into Qualinesti/Darkenwood (not only directed to Xak Tsaroth [screw it, XT from now on] but immediately taken there as well).

If some how the characters haven’t gotten a clue or fast traveled to XT, they can wander around the open plains in the Eastern half of the map until the Dragon army takes over everything and kinda pushes them into XT. This might be why people think these are a railroad, but I don’t feel that’s the case. We’ll have to see how the rest of the modules pan out.
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However the characters make it to XT, it turns from a wilderness crawl to a dungeon crawl. And an  extremely deadly one at that. Simply slogging through the swamp -vice walking on the out of water land parts- can result in combat with either a catobelas [Save vs Death gaze attack], a nest of black dragon hatchlings [with three attacks each], a nest of poisonous snakes [damage + poison attacks], or upwards of a dozen level draining wraiths. And then the characters get to fight the black dragon itself. A GM with a “let the dice decide” attitude, would TPK a group in no time, because there is no healing magic in the world yet. Survive that, and you get to head down a level and try not to fall into the bottom of XT.

Making it to the bottom allows characters to take in the sunken city of XT. But any prolonged or noisy combat could net players upwards of 50 draconians or even the black dragon again. The later can only be killed through luck, or the blue crystal staff and its “win button” move of smacking the dragon with the staff.
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Anyway, I’ll finish getting the Dragons of Despair arc written out and post it in a few days.

Plumbing the depths of G+

With the pending end of Google+ (G+), I thought I'd spend a day grabbing all the various RPG things I'd tossed into a private circle. Which for those down the road: when G+ started, it had Circles which were custom mini friends lists, that also had -IIRC- some weirdly arbitrarily small number allowed in each. I think the idea was to offset the mega friends lists people have on FB. Anyways a tip I'd been given, because it was hard to "save something for later", was to create a private circle and share it there. Then you just go and pull up the private circle to find them. Google did away with limit on circle sizes, and then circles pretty much altogether. But it was still a decent way to squirrel away others post to -maybe- look at later.

That being said, its been an interesting trip. Some of the blogs that were linked to the posts are still around, some haven't updated in years. A few only posted for a brief time, and some -like this one- have starts and stops. Sadly, some of the posts were from people on G+ and they've taken down all of their work because the hassle of moving it wasn't worth it.

Things I'll miss from G+:

• The sense of actual community each of the Communities had. You had people like me rubbing virtual elbows with authors, artists, and who ever. Popular peeps and niche peeps too. You never knew who you'd bump into in some communities. The Star Wars D6 RPG Community even had some of the guys who wrote the original D6 RPG as active members.
• The level of civility that existed in those communities, which in some cases wasn't much. That said, the worst I ever saw on G+, was higher then most groups on FB. 
• Being able to find things! Having used Myspace, FB, and G+, G+ was hands down the best to use. You could actually sort by date, and its wasn't messed with by an algorithm. Finding your comments where a little touchy, but doable. Try that one on FB.
• The integration between G+, Drive, and Gmail. So useful.
• Tripping over fun little snippets of things. Like funny memes, gaming advice, odd stories people would share. 

Things I won't miss:

• Blogs spamming multiple communities. You know who you were!
• Umm... The fact that its closing???

Anyways, the point of this post isn't just a bit of rumination, its also a quick "Hey, heres somethings you might have never found other wise." kinda of thing. So keep scrolling for links.

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The Signe of the Frothing Mug - "Making it at Home", 4 Aug 2014; A post talking about how medieval towns worked, and some idea for lodgings within that knowledge.

Mythlands of Erce - "Dragonlance was a Unique Sandbox", 3 Aug 2017; Its Dragonlance and a sandbox. Why wouldn't you love this? ;P I kid, but it looks at one of the other products in DL. Most people -as far as I've noticed- only seem to know about the DL1-16. Which is the prototype for all adventure paths that came later.

High Level Games - "Eight Unusual Ways to Enter Ravenloft", 13 June 2017; When fog becomes too dull to use. I had at one point thought of using Ravenloft as a good segue within a campaign between major arcs of things. It was also going to be a good way to move the characters huge distances for now reason.

Elfmaids and Octipis - "d100 Wasteland Compound Structures", 27 Sep 2016; I'm a sucker for random tables and such. And this whole post was right up my alley.

Another post from above - "Self Aware Dungeon Generation", 19 November 2015; More 13th Age, but it does go in the Interesting Ideas mental folder.

Notes of the Wandering Alchemist - "Reskinning: Lizardfolk from Around the World", April 12, 2016; This article influenced me to include lizardmen in my Kowloon City (link), with an idea of making them cave lizards. Blind albinos are always fun when they show up in fiction.

Fantastic Maps - Their tutorials and how tos are awesome. Like drop what your doing, head over there and read some of these. I'll wait...

Done? Great right?! Continuing on...

Red Blob Games - In their own words: "I make interactive visual explanations of math and algorithms, using motivating examples from computer games." The Polygon map generator, a later version, and the article their based on "Polygonal Map Generation for Games", are worth a look if you enjoy playing with mapping software.

Burn After Running - "Tenra Bansho Zero One-Shots", 1 May 2018; Tenra Bansho Zero is a JRPG, that is built for one shots, but there is some wiggle room for long adventures, but not for long running characters. This is a great resource for getting it started. Its a system that drips anime crazy, but you need to read the rules first. Or just use the sourcebook (you get a rulebook and a sourcebook in a set) and your own favorite rules and have fun. 

Another for TBZ is: Deeper in the Game - "GMing Tenra Bansho Zero", 16 Jan 2014; Its goes into more thoughts on running TBZ. They also have several other articles of related material.

Inkarnate showed up multiple times in my stream, so if you haven't poked at it, do give it a whirl. It'll take some practice (or paying for the Pro version) to knock out some nice maps.

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Well, I figure I've gone on for a bit now. While there was quite a bit more "saved" in my stream, mostly odd die drop tables, charts and tables, and various humorous images, most of it wasn't something share worthy.

Till next time.

*Miniupdate from like ten minutes later: I need to go through my Starred blog post on Inoreader too. Its not going anywhere, but there are 150+ of them...

Stealing ideas from video games.

So while playing the lite-RPG that is Ghost Recon Wildlands -yes it is, and even a sandbox one at that- I was letting my thoughts wander as I flew yet another aircraft 5 to 10 km across digital Bolivia. I realized while doing this that the system for gaining and calling in rebel support could be partially ported over to a short set of rules and tables. Which then lead me to the fact that no matter what you do to the cartel or corrupt military force, your always hip deep in both with the slightest blunder. At max for the military, you have cobra gunships circling you like sharks, and a whole lot of troops. Fixes to this have occupied most of my time at loading screens since I first started playing the game.

First off, the basic frame for the influence system would start with a paired down version of DCC's dice chain mechanic: D6-D8-D10-D12-D20. Most people have a basic dice set that includes these, so this system is not going to require more than they already have. However, if you do have a full set of DCC dice, I wouldn't go under D6 and I certainly would not go above D30. This die would then be rolled against a fixed table consisting of "Opposite of Request", "Nothing Happens", "Request Fulfilled", and "More Then Requested".

Now every group the players could influence or be influenced by, gets a dice (D6 to D20). What die -high or low- they start with, depends on the circumstances of the area and whether the players are trying to work with or against them.

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For example, if the players headed over to medieval Nottinghamshire and set themselves up as Robin Hood and his merry men, interacting with the peasantry and the Sheriff and his men. To start the groups there would get:

• Peasants - D6
• Sheriff and his men - D20

The peasants aren't to sure about this whole idea of robbing people on the road (and they certainly don't think they'll see any of the money), and the Sheriff and his men are no worse then most at this point. So if the players request aid or a favor from them, their still iffy about it. On the otherhand, if the Sheriff or his men tell them to do something, they'll most likely do it.

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Now after several weeks of robbing the rich and giving to the poor, the Sheriff's overreacting, and the players generally making him and his men look like fools, things might shift:

• Peasants - D12
• Sheriff and his men - D10

The peasants are now more likely to assist the players and not the Sheriff. Its now sure bet, but at least they won't be ratted out at every turn.

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When the Sheriff is finally run off or killed -and his men as well- things might look like this:

• Peasants - D20
• Sheriff - N/A

Cue the wedding music and the return of King Richard, and roll credits on the this adventure.

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All of this can fit on a 3x5 card, doesn't require remembering any modifiers or what not. Short and simple.

So what do ya think?