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?

Still alive

So I'm still around, I just went from some time to no time around the end of the spring 2016 semester. I got a part time job and then had to knuckle down for finals. And working on this blog went from back burner to fridge to bottom of the fridge.

Kinda happens when you complete your degree's required classes in 2.5 years. Though I now have a Bachelors of Science in Psychology. Yay me. Would have had Summa Cum Laude, but apparently I still suck at Chemistry.

Now I haven't been all work and no play, I kept up on all the various gossip and issues going on in RPG community via G+. Some of you probably even had a conversation or two with me there (as of right now there is only a month or so left on Google Plus, so if your reading this down the road, thats why you can't find it). I backed a few RPG Kickstarters -the reprint of Aaron Allston's Strike Force, Worlds of Cypher, all of Goodman Games DCC/MCC projects, Tales from the Loop/Things from the Flood, The Umerican Survival Guide, and Main Gauche. Granted all of them ended up on shelves after a read through, but once I get a 9 to 5 type job, they'll get their play time.

Now having mentioned Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC) it goes without saying that is were my Kowloon City dungeon will go. I'm thinking subing it in for one of the various Chinatowns in either Chicago or LA. Either works for a sunken city: Chicago is slowly sinking -4 inches or so a century- and already has a network of tunnels under it, and LA is one or two big earthquakes from sinking. Both have an existing river next to them and adjacent highways. LA's is leading in my mind, because it's right next to Dodger's Stadium and Elysian Park, so there is the added crazy of irradiated Dodgers fans or LAPD Cadets. Maybe a cargo cult type group that treats the area as paradise.

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To save for posterity, I'm including my post from the DCC Community on G+, about running some DCC for my twin sons and sister over the 2018 Thanksgiving holiday. They had fun, I learned abit about running for kids, and I'm still looking to get them another adventure done before the school year is over. Though they prefer Minecraft most days.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Ran my twin boys and sister (5e gamer normally) through Purple Sorcerer’s Nebin Pendlebrooks Perilous Pantry. Kinda to give the rest of the family a break from them playing Smash Brothers on my sisters Wii she brought with her.

They (twins) had a good time and consistently volunteered to open doors and run into rooms. One of the boys took his whole group of peasants in the room with grub, and promptly ran them all back out when it burst up and tried to swallow one of them. The rest of the peasants got to see an epic turn undead moment (the other twin had found the fountain the holy symbol) with critical turn roll, then a max roll on the table. Most of the undead dwarves and Nebin scattered to the corners and left them easy pickings (from an almost max turn time roll).

The fight with the rock behemoth was a series of flubs by the behemoth and good rolls (and burned luck) for the peasants. The wizard was useless and just peaced out after being freed.

Work continues on the Slivers.

Between slogging through Composition in Everyday Life, my lovely require English class for college, and job hunting after getting out of the Army, I have been working on the following list. It isolates between rules lite to rules heavy, and I'm trying to keep the flavor of the card over the actual rules in some cases. I can say that I'll trim down the list because some of these do replicate others in terms of abilities.  And the list is friggin' huge too!

As always, lemme know what you think.

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Here are what the colors mean:

• Orange is one I have skipped. They either don’t translate well or they duplicate an ability with another Sliver.
• Green is my place holder. Everything up to this point is on pass two for rules and what not. Anything afterwards is only on a first pass.
• Yellow is a legendary. I’m leaning towards pulling them and writing them as separate creatures.
• Tan are constructs.

Sliver doesn't rhyme well.

So here is what I got after digging through the DCC monsters. Started with a Hobgoblin, added a dash of Elder Brain, and tweaked a bit.

Sliver: Init +3; Atk Talon +2 melee (1d8+2); AC 12; HD 1d10; MV 30’; Act 1d20; SP blindsense (perfect perception of all things, including invisible targets, within 250’); SV Fort +2, Ref +4, Will +6; AL C

Of course it didn’t feel right so I went looking for a method to making DCC creatures. I found a few different ways to do it, but everything boils down to eyeballing it. A friend loaned me a copy of Critters, Creatures, andDenizens by Cognition Press. And while not very straight forward, I was able to get around a bit and get a usable bit of information out of it. So here is the mark two sliver:

Sliver: Init +4; Atk Talon +3 melee (1d10+1); AC 14; HD 3d10; MV 40’; Act 1d20; SP blindsense (perfect perception of all things within 120’); SV For +2, Ref +4, Will +2

And the juvenile (token analogue) and alpha (legendary analogue):

Sliver Juvenile: Init +2; Atk Talon +1 melee (1d8); AC 12; HD 1d10; MV 30’; Act 1d16; SP blindsense (perfect perception of all things within 120’); SV For +1, Ref +4, Will +1

Sliver Alpha: Init +8; Atk Talon +7 melee (1d12+3) AC 18; HD 5d10; MV50ft’; Act 1d24; SP blindsense (perfect perception of all things within 120’); SV For +3, Ref +6; Will +6

Normal ones will be found anywhere, either singly or a small group. Juveniles will be found in and around a nest with an Alpha, and depending on the size and age of the nest, from a dozen to several dozen. Alphas will be found near a nest most of the time, with or without a few normal slivers.

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I think this does well enough. Individually, a party should be able to kill all three with ease, but they are a strength in numbers kinda of creature. I’ll continue to tweak the abilities chart and see how it looks. I’m thinking of putting a one or two racial rules with them, but might leave them as a personal rule. Anyway, if anyone ends up using these, please let me know how they do.

Taking a crack at that list.

So I decided to take a crack at the sliver idea.

A quick trip to Wizards.com, pulls up all 96 of the distinct slivers and their abilities. I dropped the results into an Excel worksheet and started cleaning it up. I left the name of the sliver, special abilities, and power and toughness for general stating. After that I went through and interpreted the abilities they had into more RPGish ones. Duplicates will be trimmed off, and similar ones will be tweaked to be unique. I also need to decide on a few if they need to be worked on at all, because they really have no analogue in gaming terms.

Now that I have the abilities roughed out, I’ll start stating up the base sliver, a juvenile, and an alpha. The juvenile will be the equivalent of a sliver token, while the alpha will be mix of the Queen/Hivelord/Overlord/Legion legendarys. I’m aiming for a few notches less then deadly individually, so when a large group pop up the PCs don’t think easy XP, and their treated as a legitimate threat to the area if left unchecked. 

Why I'm doing this to myself.

No longer having a job -sorta- gives me a bit of free time. Having a few ideas for some adventures/dungeons/campaigns and needing an outlet which would force me to work on them, I started this blog. Doubt I’ll ever truly be finished with having gaming ideas and some might never get past a post or two, but it’ll be fun to get them out of my head. Hell, maybe they’ll inspire someone. Or if I ever get settled into another group, they’ll fear the sesions that I run something from this blog!

And so without further ado:

- Drawing up a dungeon based off the Kowloon Walled City that used to stand near Hong Kong. Most likely this will be setting/system agnostic, because it could be a purposefully built underground city, ala Derinkuyu, or as a sunken city from an ancient culture or post apocalypse culture. I’m going to keep an Asian flavor to the levels, with a few foreign enclaves, and maybe some subterranean footholds in the deeper areas. I’m planning on making the large courtyard into a cenote style lake with several waterfalls coming into it. Maybe make the roads underground rivers or streams.

- A Norse-ish campaign set in a post Ragnarok world where the players are heading out into the wider world in search of adventure and fortune. This would be magic lite, with pretty much no healing magic of any kind. Runes would be used for a mix of fortunetelling and empowering items (to a point). I’ll need to dig up and either whole cloth copy a resource system or modify it so they can set up an outpost away from home. I also kinda also need to pick a system to run this in… I was thinking of and started planning with Pathfinder, but I might go with Fantasy Age now that my sister has introduced me to it. I need to read the rulebook a bit more and see. I could possibly run it in FATE, but I need more practice with the system to make sure it doesn’t go sideways.

- A Star Wars D6 campaign, set right after the Rebel Alliance destroyed the first Death Star. This might be the second most contentious of my campaign ideas, because I’d throw out the prequels/Clone War stories, Stormtroopers would truly be the crack troops their said to be (though to balance things Imperial Army Troops would be rather mediocre), and finally [SPOILERS REDACTED BY ISB]! Turn things on their head a bit, to keep things fresh and interesting. I devoured the old EU books, so I’m going to keep how things ended up in them (I loved TFA, but it’s not how I see the things going) as an idea of how the campaign will evolve. It’ll start in medias res, with barely anyone really knowing one another, a slight Rebel hook, and I’ll just let things go from there for good or bad.

- Getting a good Dungeon Crawl Classic campaign frame work laid out. I’d like to use the existing world and pinpoint where the various DCC modules are at, so as to let the players find adventures themselves while being the little murder hobos most players like to be. I have The Chained Coffin box, so I might start them there and let them branch out into the world. Might be a bit before this one starts; I packed my rulebook into storage in anticipation of the new printing getting to me later in the year. So this can be a good slow burn.

- Also getting a good Metamorphosis Alpha campaign frame work laid out. I’m thinking of making the ISS Warden a couple levels bigger than what is shown in the rulebook. With a few subsection modules for areas that are high risk/danger. They’ll be jettisionable, so bad rolls might just wipe a party out! I’m thinking the players would start as villagers in a mixed normal/mutant village, with a small bit of flawed information about their world. I thinking of setting it up like Megaton from Fallout 3, but the reason for the nuclear device sitting where it’s at is up in the air for now.

- Converting MtG’s Slivers into some nasty little DCC critters. I was reading an old copy of Shadis (only bought for the extra that came with it!) and of course it had old game ads from the late 90’s, which got me all nostalgic and reminiscing. Back in the 90’s I was in high school, where I played ALOT of Magic and had several decks, all of which eventually got traded to friends for Star Wars CCG cards. One of my funner decks, when it worked, was a Sliver deck. The more of them you have out, the more abilities they get. From +1/+1 to Trample to Regeneration to spawning 1/1 Sliver token creatures, they could get annoying quick. So perfect as a DCC creature! I imagine them as a kind of failed interplanar magical/psionic experiment. They’ll be a recurring monster of the week, with maybe a source that can be stopped, leaving rampaging nests all over the world.

And for me, the BIG KAHUNA of them all:

- Making a semi sandbox adventure path out of Dragonlance’s DL 1-10, 12-14! I’ll probably dig out the Dragonlance Classics volumes, the 15^th Anniversary book, and the 3^rd Ed books to see how each area and event is handled differently.

Dragonlance will always have a place on my shelves because it is what got me into Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which got me into roleplaying games in general. Before reading the Legend of Huma, I had really only ever read science fiction. Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Hammer’s Slammers, and anything similar my father handed me. I had only dabbled in fantasy through the Lone Wolf Adventure books. Not finding anymore LW books, my trying-to-be-helpful mom just glanced at a few books on the sci fi/fantasy shelf of the used book store we frequented and pulled The Legend of Huma down*. But it was the hook fantasy needed, and what got me reading the Chronicles Trilogy. And the rest as they say is history.

Now, I’ve read a lot of the criticisms leveled at Dragonlance over the years, Tolkien rip-off & railroady being the most used, and not being a literary critic, I will stick to dealing with the campaign railroad problem.

First off, the players will have to want to play this epic adventure. No sense in forcing it on them.

Second, they are going to be the good guys. Raistlin style antihero maybe, but no outright bad guys.

Finally, all Kender are not like Tasslehoff Burrfoot. He IS off his ADHA medication and I feel rest of the Companions knew this, and as such kept him in check. So PC kender are not going to be sticky fingered children that can do no wrong. Oh hell no! No, everyone knows they aren’t kids, and will treat them like a thief if they act like one.

As for the actual campaign it won’t be a railroad, but more of a boat on a river at the bottom of canyon. Sometimes the canyon is really wide and you can wander a bit on bank or into the bushes past that. Other times it’ll be shear walls. I might cut the extreme side quests off and if possible fit a heavily modified version into the path either earlier or later. Or maybe treat them as one shots. I’ll deal with them when I get to them.

Anyway, I think I’ve prattled on for enough for one night. There are enough ideas here for me to work through for a bit. 

 *I still have that dog-eared copy in my books somewhere. I’ve read it about a dozen times. I might read it again just to get back into the world of Krynn.