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?

My own thoughts on "Homework" in RPGs.

An interesting topic came up over on The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms blog earlier in the week, concerning "homework" that players would have to do to be able to participate in an RPG. The thought started over on Necropraxis, and also spawned a reply at Chicagowiz's Games blog and a followup post on Nine and Thirty.

Now I know I'm sort of riding coat tails here, but I felt it a bit topical as I enjoy a good open sandbox of a game and linear-ish adventures equally. I mean, my white whale is running the complete (ish again) Dragonlance modules, so I can't say I'm total on board for minimal background knowledge on the players part. To run that, you would have to know more then a handful of bullet points as they suggested. Though Chicagowiz has a two step system -a quick page for handing out at games/conventions and a full on wiki- for his campaign world. Which seems to strike a good balance between the two. I would highly encourage you to read what they said, not just because their interesting reads, but their also better writers then I.

My own addition to the conversation goes to both sides: an even more minimal approach, that I used once, simply focuses on the game's overall tone. Conversely, there is a minimum amount of background that would be required to actually be ready for a Dragonlance Classic campaign.

For minimal I present my short lived FATE Starship Troopers game, the set of power point slides I whipped up to show my players, that pretty much summed up my thoughts on the various version of SSTs. 

Using the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly motif, I laid out my thoughts on the game's tone. Keeping their -player's characters- tone in line with the novel or the better adaptions that were the animated movie (Traitor of Mars wasn't around yet) and show, would be okay. Dipping into the movies would cause a nudge from me, and uttering the phrase -after we started; I let them get it out of their systems up front- "Would you like to know more?" would incur a painfully stiff penalty.* Thankfully I never had to use the penalty. The game started well, and if our schedules hadn't caused the game to disintegrate, our group might have had more adventures.

My approach was fairly similar to the keep it simple approaches used in the above posts. My homebrew setting details also only filled the front of a page because FATE is a very off the cuff system to begin with. The emphasis was on enjoyment and playing the game, not being overly detailed.

On the other end of things, the minimum background needed for the Dragonlance Classics modules is a bit more involved. In no particular order, players would have to know about:

• The Cataclysm 
• The Pantheon of gods and their absence
• Various races - Three major races of Dwarves; three races of Elves; dozens of races of Humans; the walking aggravations that are Gnomes and Kender; and the "Goblinoid" races. And thats just what characters might know, otherwise that list is huge. 
• Each races internal "pecking order", and how much all the races distrust/hate each other. Not to mention the various feuds that includes.
• Magic, its three schools/moons, and the rules system that goes with them
• Steel is more important than gold.
• No clerical magic (thus no healing spells) and possible persecution for those that find it  (to start) 

And thats if your not using the Innfellows (characters of the books) for characters and their back stories. Because it is a set of modules, you can't just off the cuff run things, particularly with the fact that many of its pieces are tied to specific locations in the world.**

A final thought, if you were to run a game set in the Star Wars or Star Trek universes, what would you expect the players to know? Just the movies/TV shows? Both in the case of Star Trek? If everyone is mostly familiar with the setting, would homework even be necessary?

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*As you might guess, I really don't like the live action movies, nor Traitor of Mars. The tone is completely opposite of the book's and as much as I like Robocop, Verhoeven blew it when he made the movie. Imagine the shit storm that would have happened if the guys who made the Dungeons and Dragons movie, slapped a layer of Lord of the Rings over it. The second animated movie had the same writer as the three live action movies and it shows.

**I know DLC catches flak for railroading, but it is set in a series of novels, so its kinda of implied. The fact that it pretty much caused all following modules to be railroads is a very valid point, and I don't try to fight it.

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.

Still working

So, I haven't really gotten more done with my Kowloon City. I did print out the lined map and I started sketching areas on it. I've laid out the above-ground and subterranean topography on this as well.

This next one shows all the odd paths from the map I found earlier. Donno what the green dots are originally, but I'm going to use them as a reminder for where to put the lizard man nests.

Last one is just a rough side view to help me mesh everything when stacking it.

Mapping with cashews and fried rice.

Starting out with this meant getting a bit of background and perspective.

“Kowloon Walled City was a densely populated, largely ungoverned settlement in Kowloon City, Hong Kong. Originally a Chinese military fort, the Walled City became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to Britain in 1898. Its population increased dramatically following the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. By 1987, the Walled City contained 33,000 residents within its 2.6-hectare (6.4-acre) borders. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was controlled by Triads and had high rates of prostitution, gambling, and drug use. In January 1987, the Hong Kong government announced plans to demolish the Walled City. After an arduous eviction process, demolition began in March 1993 and was completed in April 1994. Kowloon Walled City Park opened in December 1995 and occupies the area of the former Walled City. Some historical artifacts from the Walled City, including its yamen building and remnants of its South Gate, have been preserved there.”  – Wikipedia

In addition to this I dug into the history and stories surrounding this place. Definitely going to be fun! Well, for whoever is running it...

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Anyway, as I mention in my first post, this is going to be subsurface, with a cenote for the large court yard. It'll be 11 "stories" high, with a "ground"level, a couple of worn down buildings up top and three "subsurface" levels. I'll leave it up to other GMs to sub levels if they want. 


So I started with this map:

After cleaning up the edges in GIMP, I then started looking at the current site, I twisted what I had to match. Matching it topographically will only come into play for the surface location and environs, and how the underground rivers flow. After that I slapped another layer over it and pencil lined all the building. After wards I capped the streets and filled them in. And that leaves us here:

I'm going to print this out with out the filled in roads and start tracing it. I think I know where to find a light box that'll make tracing go alot faster. If so, I'll scan it in and let ya'll see.

Right now, my hands a bit cramped, so I'm calling it a night.

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.