Obligatory 5th Edition post

My experience with an D&D beyond 1st edition could fit into a thimble. In the early 90’s one of my players wanted to run D&D, so she went out and bought the 2nd edition stuff. She ran a few games, but I don’t really recall the major differences in systems.

One of the main reasons I stuck with 1st edition all through the 90’s was probably because most of my players tended to have very little gaming experience until they came to my games. “I always wanted to play but never go the chance” people. I of course was the “seasoned veteran,” and was able to lead these gentle lambs through many a campaign with 1st edtion. Hell, they didn’t care. That was a time of wide-eyed wonder for my players, it seemed. And I often had a lot of females in games then (at one point in the mid-90’s outnumbering the guys at many sessions), and in my games they tended to lean heavily towards role-play (especially shopping trips, which in D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions was always great for developing those “winging it” DM muscles), so task resolution was not the main source of fun during those times. We’d have these amazing several hour session with minimal combat or action.

From around 2000-2008 I was not gaming, and not even really keeping up on what was going on with D&D. My stuff was all in boxes in a garage, and my internet interests were more about comic books, music, and movies.

Then out of nowhere *BAM* I’m running games for a regular group, reading about D&D and other games constantly online, and started this friggin’ blog. Gaming and D&D was all up in my grill. Still, I’m not exactly Grognardia James in terms of my knowledge of the history of gaming, and what is going on in the OSR. Obviously I’m a much better talker than a listener. Powergame Dan sometimes marvels at what I know that is going on in gaming and the OSR, but really it’s reading Grognardia and a couple of other select forums that gives me any particular knowledge on what is going on. And that knowledge is not exactly deep even after three years.

And in all honesty, looking at online stuff about gaming is starting to lose it’s luster. “G whiz” factor is gone. It might be different in my case if I was back in semi-retirement gaming-wise. I’d look online and do a shitload of “remember when.” But with a full and regular group going, I’m trying to enjoy that more. In some ways because I’ve slowly realized that it is a fairly rare and precious thing.

As for 5th edition, well, it’s not very relevant to me. I don’t think D&D is relevant at all any more. You don’t see it getting played by characters in films or TV shows like you sometimes did in the 80’s and 90’s. You never hear it getting joked about. Even the Ubergeeks on The Big Bang Theory don’t play it. In dorkdom these days, it seems pretty bottom of the barrel. If you watch Attack of The Show for a week you might hear a smarmy D&D reference, but even in venues like that it is rare.

So I don’t much care. I have a KOTOR campaign going, a Runequest campaign just started, a 1st edition setting to get back to, a player who is regularly running 1st edition games for us, and am itching to do some Call of Cthulhu before too long. I have plenty on my plate. So let me join the throngs of “happy wanderers” and toss my own “I wish them well” into the ring. That’s it, Mac, Smile and wish them well. But it’s ok if inside you just don’t give a rats ass.

Paul Jaquays - Wow!

This news will probably be all over the OSR in the next day or two, but just thought I'd do a quick post on it. Paul Jaquays, one of my favorite JG designers from back in the day, has had gender reassignment this weekend. Apparently he has been unhappy for a long time, and this is bringing him happiness, according to his Facebook page.

Last year he answered a couple of my silly questions in the comments section of his Grognardia interview (I think regarding Fred the Amulet and his old Star Trek parody in The Dungeoneer). He came off as a pretty cool guy, who is now I guess a pretty cool gal.

Anyway, as a nod to PJ here's a post of mine from a year or so ago talking about wanting to get back into some of his old material I loved in my gaming olden days. Good luck with your new life, my friend.






Night of the Walking Wet

Even though it is maybe months away, I keep thinking about what I would like to do for the early part of my next campaign, so I have been going through my older game stuff for ideas. Over the weekend I took another look at my old and beaten copy of The Dungeoneer Compendium.

The first 6 issues of The Dungeoneer from back in the day each had a featured dungeon. Each of these were great examples of Judges Guild’s wild and wooly take on Dungeons and Dragons. For one thing, the entries for rooms and areas were just like I did mine in my game notebooks, specifically, poor spelling, grammer, and amusing misuse of words. A lot of the time, you could barely grasp what the author (usually the great Paul Jaquays) was getting at in some of the entries, just like one of my players might find my notebook jots to be if they snuck a glimpse. This stuff was so very amateurish, and for sure that was a good thing. It was one of the charms of the stuff; it was written the way I wrote for my games, and how could that not appeal to me? It was homey and warm, and you automatically felt like the author was your buddy, a regular guy in a way Sir Gary never could came off in his flowery prose.

At one time or another, I ran each of the dungeons featured. Borshak’s Lair, The Pharoah’s Tomb, Merlin’s Garden, etc. Actually, I ran most after the Dungeoneer Compendium came out and collected the dungeons of the first six issues. That great book not only contained all those dungeons, but also placed them all on the land map of Jaquays’ great Night of the Walking Wet setting. All those places, and more, were right there in the Castle Krake area, and I used that to my advantage.

I made a decent mid-level campaign out of it. My teenage sweethearts’ Elf character Noradama “Nord” Calingref won Castle Krake in a card game, and took her adventurer pals along with her to clear out the Slime God, and the Type 4 Demon and ghoul army of Krakesbourough. That Walking Wet scenario is hella cool, and is pure Judges Guild.
I have great memories of all those dungeons set near Krake. In The Pharoah’s Tomb, one player had a desert ranger, and he was able to scramble over all those sand-trap rooms while other characters struggled and got trapped. He loved using an ability I gave his character that he thought he would never use. He was so jazzed, his character skittering over the sand floods and ululating “ayiayiayaiyaiyai!”

Within Borshak’s Lair, a magic tomb invaded by orcs, one character found the hilarious “Fred the Magic Amulet.” The sentient, +1 protection amulet had awesome illusion powers, and I would have it transform into a giant, inanimate shark that still spoke in Fred’s high pitched Mickey Mouse voice. Dark Tower was great, but this shit was Paul Jaquays best work as far as I was concerned. Was he as stoned as I sometimes get when he was writing these scenarios?

All these dungeons featured old school D&D staples, i.e. plenty of magic affect statuary, and traps that were usually more weird and scary than deadly. I had so much fun with this stuff as a teen. Sadly, I eventually got more serious with my adventures, heading more into “High Fantasy” despite sticking with 1st edition.

But I think it is time to revisit some of this classic cheese of time past, so I may just be making the dungeon-heavy Castle Krake area and it’s interesting sandbox surroundings the setting for the next campaign.

Spider Baby Bombs

The last few weekends I have been camping out and working at a California Renaissance Faire, where friends and I do several music shows a day at one of the stages. I’ve done this on and off for a couple of decades, and it is still big fun. Running around in baggy peasant clothing all day, and getting cleaned up and into street cloths for nights of partying out in the woods and under the stars in this amazing village that gets recreated. It’s sort of my mini-burning man. One of the ale stands opens up around 8PM Sat night, and I often hit the bar scene, sucking down 3 dollar Bass Ales fresh from the tap, which is what I like to do when there is no particular party going on that I want to be at, or some girl I am trying to hook up with.

Last Saturday night I staggered back to camp with a few folk right after midnight, and we were sitting around the fairly quiet camping area having a beer and shooting the shit. Suddenly up comes an old friend of mine, shining his flashlight into his pewter Ale mug. Inside was a monstrosity exactly like shown in the picture above. A wolf spider, apparently, with its little baby monsters clinging lovingly to its back. It was around the size of your thumb.

Needless to say, I freaked. I normally like spiders, but this thing is especially brutal looking, and the babies were icing on the cake of fear. I’ve lived in California my whole life, and although not an avid camper I have had countless such weekends in the woods. As others around us freaked when they looked in the disgusto-mug, I thought about how I was going to go to sleep that night thinking about these bad mamajammas toting there tots around beneath my covers, or dangling on the tent ceiling 4 feet above me. In fetal position, that’s how.

So naturally one day I am going to have to have a giant version of this thing show up in a D&D game. But what would set it apart from other giant spiders? The ability to use the babies on its back as missiles, that’s how. Every round the mama could lunch one or two of these things, baseball sized spiders that could latch on to you and inject some nasty poison. Or hell, why could they not explode in a mist of deadly gas? Perhaps act as a firebomb on contact? I dunno, it’s D&D man. But in the game, those babies gotta do something besides look for a free ride from mama.

Campaigns End

Well, there you have it. Last night we finished up my Night Below campaign. At a bit over two years in duration, it is surely the longest campaign I have ever run. It was cause to party, and I was sucking down the brewskies with the satisfaction of a long run concluded.

No combat went down in the session, although towards the end during the final treasure shares, Krysantha the Drow and Vaidno the Bard seemed prepared to whip out there weapons and throw down, specifically over what to do with the Crown of Derro Domination. That would have been cool; finally a character death, at the hands of another character no less. But they managed to table further discussion on it and leave it with Vaidno for now. I have to say, it was really nice to relax and watch the characters, more vocal with each other than ever, pretty much take the ball and run with it. Some great role-playing went down.

Back at the surface and cleaned up, the characters were taken before the Queen of Tanmoor, Libertine, who had secretly come to town with some royal guards to see what all the fuss and kidnappings were all about. Meeting with the characters and hearing their story, she gave them modest rewards, and each a Royal Medal of Valor.

The group all went to Terry’s long-time hobbit character’s castle on the border of the Halfling lands for a party in their honor, with all kind of food, kegs of ale and wine of the finest hobbit make, and musical revelry. Lumarin the high elf MU amused himself by giving Terry’s hobbit’s children Tenser’s Floating disk rides in lieu of a pony.

Although rolling in dough from the adventures (I think most characters ended up each with somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 thousand golds worth treasure, not counting magic items), nobody is truly rich, so there will be plenty of reason for them to set out and adventure again in the future. I have a couple of high level modules in mind I might like to use on them.

But for now, the characters can go on with their normal above ground lives. Vaidno can go visit the tower the Deck of Many Things provided him (along with his 18 charisma), and Terry’s fighter Helena can marry the NPC soldier she got hooked up with in the course of the adventures . What the others will do, time will tell. But all characters have earned a deserved time of rest in the sunlight of the surface world.

Considering that three years ago I was on year 4 or so of gaming retirement (and dying to run games), I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to run a fairly intense and complex campaign for such a great group of players. Most of our games were like little parties, and were big fun. I want to give special thanks to Andy for hosting us at his place; his wife’s backroom workshop (thanks to Andy’s wife Kara are in order as well) which, with its kitchen and nice garden backyard patio, was a nice place to play. For Andy, Terry, and Dan who have been there pretty much since the inception of this group over two years ago, I give wide thanks for being there for the whole ride.

Andy and the wife are probably going to be renting out the back room at some point in the near future, so we are losing the space to play most likely. Our best bet after that for our regular games would have been Dan’s spacious house up on Mulholland Drive, but he is still having construction done on the house and his wife is apparently days away from having her baby. So the games I run may lessen for awhile. A break might be nice, but I’m hoping to put AD&D aside for awhile and do a little of the Knights of the Old Republic thing I want to run. Some more Champions would be nice with just three or four players, and you know I’ve always got my precious Call of Cthulhu in the back of my mind, waiting for the right time to strike from the shadows. Game dreams and hopes galore.

But whatever happens in the near or far future, I’m just damn glad to have been able to run a long and fulfilling campaign. Here’s to more gaming goodness to come! “Excelsior,” as that old bastard Stan “The Man” Lee would say.

The Cliched End Game

There are a lot of things that quickly evolved out of my 1st edtion AD&D. Old school concepts such as henchmen and hirelings, endless dungeon crawls, and strictness about character creation are things that got old long before the 80’s where over. I didn’t really mean for my style to take the high fantasy road, but that was where I went. That later editions of D&D did much the same was a coincidence (my non-attendance of cons or other game groups kept me out of the loop more or less of what was going on in later edition core books).

It’s weird I guess, but the end game of classic D&D, that of clearing a hex in the forest, killing it’s monsters, and building a keep (per the DM guide fretting over the cost of every brick and every mook with a shovel) so a village would build around it and you could collect taxes didn’t seem to appeal to my players by around the mid-80’s. Sure, MU’s need to have somewhere to research at later levels, and clerics (maybe) need to set-up a place of worship, but for the most part, it did not tend to go the classic way of becoming some kind of lord over barony.

Maybe it stems from my DMing style and game setting, or perhaps I’ve just had exceptional players, but characters in my games just seemed too cool and colorful for basic stronghold building when they got to higher levels (or “name” level). Things they often chose to do instead were to use their hard-fought wealth to perhaps buy/build a tavern. Some might buy horses and land and start a ranch to raise ponies. Maybe a garden house in the nice part of town with a view from a hill. MU’s in the big city didn’t need to go live in some cobwebby tower to research. There was the Wizard’s Guild where all the proper areas and equipment were available to members. And for clerics, well, the big city already had huge temples to the major god, with high level clerics already in charge. So if a cleric character didn’t want to go to some bumblefuck bumpkin part of the kingdom to start a new temple, they would usually settle in as a respected cleric/troubleshooter for the main temple of their god in the city.

All the manpower that comes at high level, to fighters and clerics and whatever as in the books at name level, were often turned down by the players. Hey, they would only have to house and feed them. If they don't advance as characters with a passle of henchmen and hirelings along for the ride, they don't get into that "gang mentality" where more is merrier. Most of my players don’t seem to find that appealing. Micromanagement. It ain’t always fun. And if you’ve ever read King Conan, you know that heavy is the head that wears the crown, especially if that head lead a life of action, derring-do, and a new wench every night. There was a great Twilight Zone where the guy thought he died and went to heaven because he was getting everything that he ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter. Turns out that was actually hell, bub.

So I don’t really look to the end game by the book, and my players tend not to as well. To them, settling down with a keep and managing a garrison maybe sounds too final to them. I think they would rather tend bar at their tavern telling tall tales of their adventures, or sit on the porch of their hilltop garden house with the ocean view, sipping wine and waiting for that next big adventure to come along. To most characters in my games, it seems like the end of the adventure life might as well be the end of their fun.

My Weakness is Strong - Monks

It seems to be the opinion of many that the Monk as a D&D character class being based on old kung-fu movies is a no-brainer. I don’t think these folks have put much thought into it. For one thing, how many of these old chop socky guys can speak to animals at an early level? Sure, there is the HTH damage (pitifully low at 1-3 points damage for a 1st level monk). Not being able to use swords or some other higher damage weapons, they have to settle for 1D6 staves and spears. Sure, they slowly do more damage in both HTH and weapons as they go up in level, but this is shamefully slow progression. The monk isn’t even doing broadsword damage until the mid-levels. No Dex or strength bonuses seem like a screwjob to be sure. Yeah, it’s hard to imagine a monk who isn’t high level being a kung fu badass per a thousand horrible Asian karate movies. Perhaps if they wander into a tavern full of unarmed, zero level NPC’s. But how often does that happen in D&D?

I played a Monk character for the first time in 25 years recently. Big Ben from the regular group is doing his own side thing with some of the other regulars, and it’s a low level evils campaign. I know from my own experience that evil campaigns are weird (worthy of a post themselves, maybe this week). They usually don’t have long legs, and eventually fall apart under their own hubris. My Monk came in on the second session, and it seems a miracle that the other sarcastic, murderous characters didn’t kill my guy just for showing up (why do people running evil characters always choose to portray them as confrontational, hand-rubbing stereotypes?).

Really, there isn’t much fun to be had running a 1st level monk. They seem like a watered-downed thief class that can run fast. The majority of the other characters could do, and take, more damage than my guy could. So the Monk was sort of relegated to being a humble, helpful coolie, toting fallen characters to safety. This is likely his role for at least a couple more levels, should the campaign go on that long.

By mid-levels and up, Monks can dole out some decent damage, and start to get some decent skills (if you call talking to animals and being resistant to ESP great skills. I don’t). But it’s a long road to have to run a humble character as more or less an MU who can’t cast spells. “I’m a seeker of ancient knowledge…and, uh…a day laborer.” Sheesh.


Edit: I just read at Wikipedia that the D&D monk is based directly from the martial arts in The Destroyer series of novels (of Remo Williams fame). "Sinanju" in The Destroyer was a martial art of ancient assassins, and gives superhuman abilites, such as the ability to rip steel doors down, or destroy automobiles in a single blow, and superhuman falling and jumping abilities. That for sure seems to jibe with higher level monks.

TPK in The Night Below

At least that is what I thought it was going to be. I know, false advertising. But in the previous game two weeks ago, the party went straight from the brutal fight in the Kuo Toan Priest Kings palace in The City of The Glass Pool, and depleted in hit point and vital spells went next door to the very Glass Pool itself, within the huge-domed Temple of The Sea Mother, to try and finish the job.

Not only did it turn out that the newly claimed Crown of Derro Domination would not contact Derro from a distance (the nearest ones were across the city), but on the way into the temple dome a stone giant had thrown a boulder, crushing NPC Dia into the negatives. Still, with all that against them ending last game, Andy’s bard Vaidno took up the sword Finslayer from Dia and led the charge into what was more or less the final fight of the campaign. That last game they had defeated the high priest and some others, but it left a couple of characters under Hold Person. They started this game severly down in manpower. Three strong fighters, including the badly wounded Dia, where unavailable for this combat. I confided to Terry a few days ago on the way to the Pub Session, running the held Helena, that she should not be too shocked if she lost this character and could do nothing about it. It was the decision of Andy and the others to take on the temple straight after another huge fight. I thought it would be the death of them.

So much happened in this fight. So much high level stuff. There was not just a couple of giant lobsters In the pool, but a large water elemental as well. And within a few short rounds the entirety of the Kou Toan army would be busting in. The big challenge was the statue of Blipdoolpoolp that the party came to blow up with the dwarvish bomb (their last). The statue was basically an avatar of the Sea Mother, and it was next to invulnerable to almost everything but weapons +2 or better. It also got a deadly bite if both claws hit you (for 2d8 each); if you were held in both claws and the head bite got a natural 19 or 20 on the hit roll, the victims head is taken clean off, and the body thrown into the pool for the giant lobsters to tear apart. Krysantha the drow druid turned into a bird an bravely flew the bomb over to the statue, but attacks from both the water elemental and the now animated statue made it hard to light a bomb fuse. Krys got grabbed up in those arms, and I made the bite roll in the open, telling them that a 19 or higher was the end of the character. I don’t think I have ever seen a roll watched with more baited breath in my life than Dan watching that dice I got a 15 and it hit, but no head off.

Unfortunately, I would get no more chances at the cool head bite. My rolls for the monster, which are usually notoriously good, were not so great. I think I only hit a 20 crit twice at most, and that was for lobsters and normal Kuo Toa. Man, I coulda used that 20 with the statue, or at least a water elemental attack.

At one point Lumarin the high elf MU broke out his magic gong, and summoned the Asian Gong Warrior, who held off some of the tougher Kuo Toa captains for awhile before succumbing to the hoard that was rushing in. Lumarin also had an Invisible Stalker holding back the hoard from another entrance, so plenty of good magical stuff going on. Vaidno used his gem found long ago in a dwarven forge to summon the fire elemental that had promised to help if ever released from the gem, but the water elemental quickly left the pool to extinguish the fire elemental, and hit some of the characters with some pounding wave actions.

By the time Krysantha fell down at zero hit points, the statue was already badly tore up, and when Vaidno’s final blows from his flashing blades (including Finslayer) broke the statue to bits, the kuo toan mobs fell to madness and the battle was over. Not one damn character death in this fight. Wow. I was so sure this would be at least a near TPK. Perhaps surviving characters taken down to the Sunless Sea as slaves for the Aboleth.

We ended with characters headed back to the tower in the Derro Town they previously claimed from the Mind Flayers. So it’s looking like next time will be the campaign epilogue game. They still have to deal with the slaves they saved, but there are still political groups around, including both the formerly dominated Derro, the Renegade Derro the characters dealt with, Avatara and the other drow who took over the Derro tavern (and their gang of Quaggoths), and a few other random bits. Unless the party heads back into the City of the Glass Pool to try and do some looting (although the city is insane right now, it doesn’t mean they won’t have to fight their way around the city; Kuo Toans are notoriously more dangerous insane than sane), it should be a nice and fun game to run. The campaign finale after more than two years. Wow.

Tegel Manor Dynasty

Tegel Manor is one of those love it or hate it old school items. Even by Judges Guild standards, it was an especially wacky and crazy funhouse dungeon. It’s so chock full of wild shit (a huge undead, demon, and monster population in a relatively small area), it has the almost random feel of something written up on a weekend of heavy marijuana usage. I mean, just the butler in one of the front main rooms is described as a “Balrog Ghost.” That seems so random. And do demons like Balrogs even have ghosts when they die? Don’t they just go crying back to hell when you kill them?

I guess I can’t throw stones. I added even more weird crap to the mix as a very young teen with this. I had Green Warhoon Martians with radium rifles in one of the big rooms off the main ballroom, and pretty sure I had some kind of robot created by a mad scientist roaming around as well. As I got a bit older, I stopped trying to use it as a dungeon to be explored, and used it here and there over the years mostly as a mission based location. Characters arriving to find an item lost in the Wizard Tower or something, and only moving into a small area of the Manor and then leaving.

In these OD&D games I’ve been doing here and there since last year, I’ve thought about Tegel a bit more. I think all those old Dark Shadows episodes I’ve been watching on Netflix have affected me.

I thought of using the super-haunted house for these sessions, but the problem was my OD&D games are set around 200 years prior to the current time period of my 1st edition game setting. So rather than expect that the manor has been around in maximum haunting form for several hundred years, I thought that it might be interesting to check out the manor and the surrounding area before it was taken fully over by evil and the Tegel family (yes, I do not use the name “Rump”) more or less died out. A sort of Tegel supernatural soap opera like Dark Shadows.

I decided that the evil curse on the house/land began very early on in its existence. That even the first few generations knew something was wrong, and minor haunting went down. The house grew in size from additions, and the family carried on, despite certain cries, screams, moans, and whimpers from older parts of the mansion at night. And the people of Tegel Village carried on as well, generation after generation being used to weirdo happenings.

So I took four family members from portraits that were together in the list: Lady Rubianna, Riven, Rotcher, and Ruang. I don’t believe the 1-100 portraits are in fact linear and meant to be taken as having been in order of family members as they came along, but I thought it would be easier to take some who where next to each other in the list. I kind of also went with the description in that entry to some degree, thus “Rotcher the Radiant” is a handsome, charismatic, and fun loving person while alive. Here’s the family members in question and what I did with them for the current, living lords of Tegel.

Lady Rubianna: Mother of Riven, Grandmother to Rotcher and Ruang. Fled the mansion as a young lady 20 year ago, to have her child Riven in the big city of Tanmoor.
Lord Riven: when he reached adulthood, took his mother back with him to Tegel to reclaim the birthright. Brought loyal Tanmoor butler “Slappington” as well. Married a local girl soon after returning, and had two boys, Rotcher and Ruang

Rotcher and Ruang: Riven’s children with his wife Rhian (who has no Tegel Manor portrait). Rotcher is happy and handsome, Ruang is dark and brooding, taking delight in the suffering of things. Rotcher is a hit with the other local teens, and on Friday nights Riven lets a chaperone (in this case Terry’s elvish fighter/MU “Rose”) take them on an outing to the Tegel Tavern.

There are portions of the mansion that are now very haunted, and dangerous for strangers to wander into it. Even for Tegel family members; Lady Rubianna one day wandered into the East Wing, and was possessed by the vampire portrait of an ancestor when she stopped to admire it. Since then she has laired in a nearby sea cave, and has been gathering undead to pester the land.

So with Terry’s Rose character in place working for Lord Riven as a bodyguard to the teens, the rest of the party are a group of adventurers passing through on their way to the big city. This particular one-shot (more or less) is supposed to be telling a story to a degree, so a bit of a railroad job compared to my dungeon sessions for OD&D. So I just thought that a couple of decent role-play situations, combined with some breezy location based fights, would fill up the session and give me some good “phone it in” ease of DM’ing in a semi-public setting. Nothing too complicated for me, or ponderous for the players.

So after camping near some gypsies, and getting their fortunes read (including some semi-vogue warnings of what might be in store in Tegel), the party came up on the village proper. They passed the large monestary that is to the north on the Tegel area map, but alas there was no monk character so didn’t feel compelled to get them to go there. They decended upon the town hollow, and found zombies prowling the town square in the rain. Nice combat (wherin one character almost died, but I decided to go for -10 and die rather than the -5 I had been using for OD&D), and got the party involved in Rose and the Tegel kids who were at the tavern on their Friday outing. So a bit of tavern role-playing, with the happy go lucky teens of Tegel hanging out with Rotcher and Ruang, and the older townsfolk brooding in their beers over strangers and walking dead being afoot.

Lord Riven came with some guards from his manor eventually (the characters learned that the local constabulary were cowardly Keystone Cops who rarely showed up when there was monster trouble) to investigate the zombie fuss, and offered the PC’s a job. In the less-haunted part of Tegel Manor, Riven had butler Slappington serve drinks, while he and his wife skittishly told of the mother possessed, and the need to stop her haunting the area for the sake of the Tegel kids if not the village folk. The party agreed, and went to spend the night at a two-story several room guest house nearby.

The PC’s took up residence in some of the rooms and the lounge, falling asleep to the occasional howl or spooky laughter from the haunted parts of Tegel Manor across the way. The vampiric Lady Rubianna came to Rose in the master bedroom, and offered her info on some of her own family secrets (Rose came to Tegel because her uncle had mysteriously died in service to Riven and the family) if she convinced the party to leave Tegel. She fled the guest house before summoning a hoard of rats to attack all in the house. That was a fun little scramble, with PC’s fighting rat packs as a thief character ran around behind the scenes using secret passages in the walls.

The next morning it was off to the sea cliff, where before the stairs down to the waves they had to pass a local mausoleum. A small hoard of skeletons, led by a couple of wights, came pouring out of the mausoleum to combat the party. The cleric of St. Cuthbert tried a bit of turning here and there, but the battle was ultimately won through cold steel and elbow grease. Fun fight.

Then down into the caves, to first face Rubianna’s Wraith, then on to the lady herself. It was a fairly quick battle, as the cleric used hold person and the save was failed. I know, I would probably not let a hold person work on a full vampire, but Lady Rubianna was still alive and human, just possessed by the vampire spirit. After a bit of treasure looting, the group dragged Lady Rubianna out to the daylight, where the ancestor spirit retreated back to its portrait, and Lady Rubianna was cleansed of evil and returned to her family. Happy little ending to a nice little session.

I’ve really loved this idea of a Dark Shadows inspired Tegel Manor prequel setting, and I’m for sure going to do more with it. Plenty of opportunities for chilling adventures as the current tenants of Tegel Manor try to hold off the encroaching evil; even though we all know how it will eventually turn out in the long run. So more Tegel Manor family fun in the future I hope, with at least some of the same great players.

Who says a wrestler can’t play Conan?

I like to toss that out there in comments on posts about the upcoming Conan dud. The reply I usually get is that wrestlers are hoarse-voiced morons who can do stunts but not act. OK, often they concede that The Rock can act, but I don’t think he’d be a good Conan. Way to ethnic for a character off Celtic roots. But is there anybody else in the WWE roster that could make the grade?

Well, to a degree gruff would be the way to go. I know fans of the books like to make it out like Conan spoke like some refined Rhodes Scholar in a high society tea room, but I don’t think that was the case. It doesn’t really matter how he came off in the text, we are talking about people who supposedly lived over 10,000 years ago.

Everyone after Ah-Nuld who played Conan, or any other barbarian for that matter, comes off sounding like an American Indian. Just enough of an inflection to give it that old world brute sound. In all honesty, I don’t think there is any getting away from that. C’mon, admit it, when you run barbarians in games you do that American Indian voice. You can do variations on it, but if you are going to be speaking in English there isn’t much else you can do. You are going to sound, one way or another, a lot like Daniel Lewis’ Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans at best. “Stay alive, that’s all I ask. I will find you.”

So who are my wrestler picks to play the big bounding barbarian? Let me first say that although I enjoy watching wrestling from time to time, and have a “Smart Mark” understanding of the ins and outs of the industry (I’ve read a couple of biographies of folks in that business), I’m not a fanatic. I know a couple of dudes who are, and they always know way more than me about what is going on in the weekly shows than I. But yeah, I guess I am a fan.

Randy Orton: son of old school wrestler “Cowboy Bob.” Randy has a lot of lean muscle, and is still in his 20’s. He has a steely stare, and can look both mirthful and melancholic when called for. A year or so ago he could barely cut a “promo” (you know, when wrestlers talk to the camera and say stuff like “I’m going to rule the world!”). Wrestlers typically don’t get acting or speaking coaches. They buff out rough edges in their speaking by doing promo after promo, for years. Randy Orton has gotten a lot better, and I’m sure he could pull it off verbally. Plus he just has a killer look for a younger Conan.

Triple H: my choice for an older, “King Conan” era Cimmerian. Triple H rose to fame in the infamous “Attitude Era” of the late 90’s, when wrestling was less for the kids and more salacious and violent. Eventually, he married Owner Vince McMahon’s daughter Stephanie in real life, and is the heir apparent to the WWE Empire. He can speak well (although, yeah, a little gruff), and has the big muscle body and long hair perfect for the barbarian wearing a heavy crown.
Hell, if you are going to go with a dude best known for his role on Baywatch Hawaii, then you can only make it better casting Randy and Triple H as Conan.

As an aside, I want to say that despite having been a RE Howard fan as a kid, I still loved the Ah-Nuld Conan. Fanboys say there was not much Howard in it, but I disagree. The tone, the ethnic make-up of the populace, the primitive yet still fabulous cities, and even Conan’s little archer sidekick struck a chord with me. Walking around Zamora, munching Black Lotus and punching out camels. Whining and wenching, and scooping up handfuls of gems. How is this not Conan? I loved it, and think it still holds up as a great movie.

Mary Bloodyguts

Mary is a Penanggalan from The Fiend Folio. In the real world they are part of Malaysian myth, and are female vampire types whose head can pop off the body, leaving to fly off for a feeding with the guts of the girl coming out also and dangling hideously from the neck.

Sometime in the 80’s I was of a mind to use the creature, but was sort of stuck as to how to go about it. At the time I was very into special wilderness encounters; things like the regenerating Black Knight from Monty Python guarding a crossing or other weird encounter.

I decided to have my Penanggalan be one of these encounters, and decided she would be “Mary Bloodyguts,” the sort of urban myth creature that children would chant at the mirror in a darkened from to scare each other (much like Bloody Mary that we had as kids). Of course, the player characters travelling out in the forest or fields would not remember the story of Mary from childhood (until it was too late), even though the lovely young girl they meet out on the crossroads might be named Mary.

The party would always invite Mary to join them (those horny male players always happy to have another girl around, PC or NPC), and it was not until late at night around the campfire, when one lone character is on watch, that Mary will detach her head and go on the attack (the PC who was awake to witness it generally going bonkers). Whether she escapes or is killed, Mary is never really gone. She’ll appear again on a lonely road or trail sometime time in the future, asking unwitting adventurers to escort her to the nearest town. Then that night *pop* the head comes off again.

To mix it up, you could have Mary in another circumstance. Classically she would have dark or red hair, but make her a blond and put her in a village tavern (maybe the pickings on the road are poor that month) getting harassed by thugs. When Mr. High Charisma PC saves her and gets her upstairs, you can imagine some great moments for that head to come off there alone in a small inn room.

As Mary is only good for a one shot for any particular group of players, I’ve only used her two or three times in the past. Around once per decade. As some of my players will likely see this post, I won’t be using her any time soon (I’m too busy with “the campaign that would not end” anyway to use her). But Mary Bloodyguts is always out there, hungry and waiting.

Hugo Weaving and The Red Skull

Captain America wasn’t one of my favorite Marvel characters, but for a time in the 80’s and early 90’s I was a regular reader. You could not deny his importance. Captain America was the one dude in the superhero community that all the other Marvel Characters trusted to open up to. From Spider-Man bemoaning his Aunt May’s latest heart attack, to The Black Widow complaining about that not-so-fresh feeling, Captain A was your go-to guy. His inspiring words got them back up n’ at ‘em.

In continuity, Cap was really the first superhero in the Marvel Universe (if you don’t count various wild west heroes). He fought through World War 2, and up till modern times has been the pinnacle of human perfection. His sparring partner, German bellhop turned Hitlerian super soldier named The Red Skull, came to modern times with him to continue the eternal dance.

In the media Cap never got a fair shake. He had a horrible TV pilot (he was a surfer dude, if I recall) back in the day, and in 1990 he finally got the big screen treatment. Despite a great back-up cast, including Ronny “Total Recall” Cox, Ned “Squeal like a pig!” Beatty, and Darrin “Kolchak” Mcgavin, it was a real stinker. Matt Salinger as Cap was uninspired casting. Plus they made the Red Skull an Italian. Huh? Wha? Was that even necessary? Was one of the producers German or something? Chalk that up to one of the most head scratching changes in comic to film history (making the 5’2” Wolverine a skinny 6’1” guy is a close second).

Now we are getting a new Cap film, one based in the new Marvel cinematic universe. The movie trailer footage looks great, with Cap in his WW2 natural environment. Cap is in the Nazi killing business, and brother, business is a’ boomin’! Iron Man set a high bar for this new generation of movie heroes, and both Thor and the upcoming Avengers film are going to at least be feasts for fanboy eyes (but hopefully better stories and continuity than the last Wolverine and X-Men films).

Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull is a no-brainer, and from the pic above you can see they are going the right direction for him. Since childhood I dreamed of comic book movies that didn’t suck and at least half-assed tried to get it right. For a fanboy of any age, this is looking like a good time to be alive if you love these iconic ink and paint characters.

Comedy Team Alignments

Just for fun, and to get distance from my last fairly heavy post (and also it’s a game night), here’s the Muppet alignment chart. Do you agree with them?

What about some other comedy classic teams?

Three Stooges:

Moe: Lawful/Neutral – clearly Moe believes in order from chaos. He’s willing to strike out with righteous anger at the first sign of nonsense. He still wallows in his own greed and selfishness from time to time.

Larry: Neutral – Larry seems to be caught in the middle philosophically. He often finds great amusement in the antics of Curly, but also has only a certain amount of patience for it. He will generally just try to stay out of Moe’s way to avoid a stray tolchok or eye poke. He’s happy to let Curly take the brunt of it. Ultimately, he finds that both law and chaos have a place in the universe.

Curly: Chaotic/Neutral – almost a force of nature, the Bald One surely means no harm in his chaos. But freedom of will, and to destroy pricey furnishings, shall be the whole of the law.

The Marx Bros.

Groucho: Chaotic/Good – Groucho often attains a place of leadership, but he finds he cannot help but fall into the madness that his brothers share. The joke is everything, but in the end Groucho has a kind heart and is helpful to those in need. When the chips are down he can step up and lead the masses from the valley of true evil.

Chico: Chaotic/Neutral – Concerned only with his own needs (first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women). A fast buck and a hard fuck are the meat and potatoes of this scammer.

Harpo: Chatoic/Evil – lewd and rapacious, Harpo would knock you out and rape your wife and daughters if given half a chance. He gives in entirely to his base needs and instincts. No one who crosses his path is safe. Bar your doors!

The Rat Pack

Frank: lawful/neutral – although a party god and user of mind altering substances, Frank rules his kingdom with clearly lawful tactics. He calls the shots, and serves as the brain of the brain trust.

Deeno: Neutral – a basic sycophantic drone, to please Frank he at least pretends to be a drunk, plays the part of the king’s patsy, even going so far as to take part in the constant skewering of the king’s fool. To keep his place as second in the pecking order, Deeno does what he feels he must to maintain his status quo.

Sammy: Lawful/Good – the king’s fool wants nothing more than to perform and bring happiness to the attending court. He wants to make people smile, even if he must force his own smile in the wake of abuse and derision from his king and the king’s royal knight.

Radio Rivendell

I’ve always loved having music going for my games. Whether it’s some soundtracks or just the classical music station on, I think it adds to the atmosphere and mood and can be very inspirational. And as we all know, gaming is one half mental masturbation and one half inspiration (or some compound mixture thereabouts). The few games I’ve sat down as a player in where the DM was against having at least some soft music on where generally sucky. Nothing worse than a quiet room and a boring, uninspiring Game Master.

The ambiance of the infamous Star Wars group I ran a few games for the other year was dominated by yapping, barking (and smelly) mutts and was seriously lacking in much needed music. The host(“ess”) would not even let me at least put on the soundtrack to my beloved Knights of the Old Republic video game to try and get the juices flowing (although I am sure she would have loved to have had the horrible prequels on TV in the background).

It may not be possible in every gaming situation to have good music going, but for our regular sessions at Andy’s house we have always appreciated some background mood. I used some video game soundtracks and other stuff, but that was a little limited. And Andy horned-in on the music with some much hyped computer set lists to play (which sometimes included some inappropriate stuff like Butthole Surfers). But we have really settled on Radio Rivendell going on his computer for our ambient sounds.

Radio Rivendell is an internet radio station created in Sweden and devoted to tunes for gaming. Streaming live 24/7, they play a great variety of orchestral, Irish music, neofolk, dark ambient, and video game soundtrack tracks (and hopefully in the future some tunes from me and the boys in the Bruno Band; we’re going to send in some samples that might make good tavern tunes). The music goes great with fantasy gaming, but I can see it working for my upcoming Knights of the Old Republic games pretty handily.

The first night we tried it was during some heavy underworld evil city combat, and the music playing was dark and dramatic and could not be more appropriate. Sure, it doesn’t always match the action, but it is always good.

Check it out and get a little music going to enhance your games.

Symbol: Insanity

In last week’s Night Below session, you could tell things had gotten really high level. The party continued the assault on the Kuo Toa Priest King’s palace, and took on the king (a 12th level fighter/cleric), the last Illithid in the city (as far as the players knew), a couple of the kings 10th level fighter guards (complete with good armor and magical great swords), and a handful of 5th level “whips” (fighter/thieves). The main temple of Blipdoolpoolp might have been a better strategy, in that the destruction of the statue in that place would reduce all Kuo Toa priests in power, including the king. But the decision was settled on to take on the palace because the Illithid there bore the Crown of Derro Domination. And they managed to get their hands on it, in addition to fairly handily take care of the royal guards and the king.

A really high level spell was encountered in the king’s chamber, a Symbol of Insanity that the king inscribed upon the floor of the center of the room to hopefully catching any foolish enough to charge right in. Well, Vaidno the Bard was so foolish (actually, a pretty brave character who comes off these days more like an acrobatic fighter), and he tripped up the symbol.

What a powerful spell this is. See, the king had the spell per the module, and I hadn’t really studied on it significantly. So when it was set off and I looked up the save, it said “special.” The Symbol spells have a variety of affects, but it turns out in the case of this one there is no save. On the spot I could not really figure it out, and we even looked in the DM guide. The only indication of save is in the Confusion spell that you are directed to for rolling on a table for affect (run away, fight your friends, etc). That spell gives a save -2. Anyway, not wanting to burn the player with a permanent spell that only a Wish or Heal spell will cure (ironically, it was a player complaint that kept Terry from running two characters some time back, depriving the party of high level hobbit cleric Kayla, who was the only character that could provide a Heal spell), I decided to give that save as per confusion. “Surviveno” made the save, as usual.

Was it wrong to not go by the book and mess up this character, effectvly taking him out of the game for the final session of the campaign? Well, I wasn’t sure of the spell, and basically decided it was better to decide in favor of the character in case there was some addendum to this spell that we later would find, after Vaidno had already ran screaming into the Underdark or was dispatched by the others for attacking them.

In all honest, I know we are dealing with high level spells, and some of them can just mess you up, saving throw or not. But a spell that a character would just step on and be really messed up with no kind of save seems kind of bogus to me. The character could easily have missed his save and been jacked-up anyway. It seems much more exciting to make a save of some kind. A freaking fighting chance.

Anyway, I’m going to have to take the time to better understand these higher level mess-you-up spells for the next session for sure, so I can decide in advance if I want to nerf them or not.

Love and the Monster Manual

Look at it now, and the first edition of the Monster Manual doesn’t look like much on the outside. Looking at it as an adult, it seems like a 12 year old painted the cover in elementary school art class.

But as a kid in the late 70’s, it was a wonder to behold. After having only the little brown books and various cheapie Judges Guild items, the bold colors of the MM cover really hit you over the head. And showing monsters above and underground told you almost all you needed to know about D&D; fighting beasties in the wilderness and in the dungeon.

And all those monster inside; boy, I must have poured through that book day and night for a year after getting it. For future fanboys like me, the MM was the first gateway drug to Greek Mythos. Hydra, Gorgons, hippogriffs, and all that lot right out of Bulfinch’s. And leave us not mention the Tolkien based stuff, including no less than three types of hobbit!

Man, that first copy of the MM got a lot of use, and still does. I still get a chill looking at the artwork, especially the Trampier stuff.

And one night years later, as a confused and sensitive mid-teen, the Monster Manual got me through my first real hard night. After a brutal dumping by a girlfriend at a Sci Fi con near LAX, I went home that Sunday night and was heartbroken. I could not sleep and had no idea how I would make it through the night.

I had a project in mind before that, which was doing the old Tunnels and Trolls classic Monsters! Monsters! But for 1st edition AD&D. So I broke out the MM and a notebook, and started to work out how each and every intelligent creature in the book could be used as a player character. Assigning of classes and class combinations, bonus and minus to stat blocks, and abilities gained through level progression. To this day it is the most work I have ever done on gaming material in a single sitting. And eventually I got to run that game. One player ran a young Frost Giant, another a Carnivorous ape, and things like that. They took a village apart that session, and the atrocities committed were horrendous. Half that party died when they tried to attack an actual walled city. The hail of arrows put an end to their madness.

And a happy ending too. Me and my ex-girlfriend reconnected for a time not long after that lonely night. There is always hope, but you just gotta get through the pain so you can feel good again. Thanks to the Monster Manual, I got through that dark night of the soul and came out smiling on the other end. Thanks, MM! I’m not sure my heart even has nerve endings anymore, but it’s nice to know you are there if I ever had to stay up all night again simmering in my own juices.

Dark Shadows

Since I got Netflix awhile back, I’ve been catching up on some of my favorite childhood shows that are available on the instant play feature. So on some nights since the holidays I’ve been watching a lot of The Rockford Files and Kolchak:The Night Stalker.

But with me having Tegel Manor on the mind a lot in the last few months, and possibly doing a sort of sequel to that great module for my OD&D games, I remember that unique soap opera from the 60’s called Dark Shadows.

Dark Shadows’ original show story bible had no supernatural elements, despite being mostly set in a spooky old mansion on the New England coast. Besides the unusual setting, Dark Shadows featured the typical romantic and dramatic subplots of the usual daytime soap opera. Some six months into its run the show introduced the supernatural by having characters encounter ghosts. But when flagging ratings threatened to end the series, the character of Barnabas Collins was introduced. A polite and unflappable man who claimed to be a lost cousin of the Collins family living in the Collinswood mansion, Barnabas was actually a 200 year old vampire, released from a local tomb by a trouble making drifter.

I was but an infant during the show’s original run, but as a kid I discovered the it through reruns on UHF, and loved it. Flash forward to the 90’s, I had another chance to see a couple of episodes, and was bored as hell. But inspired to check it out again now, I’ve watched several of the first Barnabas episodes and I’m loving it.

For one thing, the frequent stock footage of Collinswood outside at night and day looks just like the outline of Tegel Manor! And the interiors of Collinswood and the dilapidated old house next door practically screams “Tegel!” Even Barnabas’ speech early on describing the creation of Collinswood from local lumber and imported stone seems to be a description of the building of the great house of Tegel. This is super inspiring stuff for Tegel adventuring.

Many scenes so far also take place at the ramshackle but cozy seaside tavern The Blue Whale. The bar has its own sort of haunting moodiness, but that is broken up by the constant Beatnik music in the background and the surprisingly lovely 60’s chicks, both featured actresses and background extras, enjoying their cocktails the way the 60’s folk seemed to love to do.

The episodes are only 20 minutes long, and last night I actually watched around four of them back to back for mood as I was working on my Tegel Manor material. This is going to be a stormy weekend in Southern California, so I plan to watch a lot of DS. I understand that in upcoming episodes there will be homage’s to werewolves, Frankenstein, and even Rider’s “She.” Time travel, parallel universes, and “The Levianthans,” old dark gods in the HP Lovecraft mold, are going to be featured as well.

If you’ve never seen Dark Shadows, do yourself a favor and check it out. Just be sure to start with the first Barnabas episodes. Otherwise you are just watching a soap opera set in and old house. Yawn.

Note: Tim Burton is working on a Dark Shadows film this very minute, with Johnny Depp as Barnabas. I really don’t want to see a campy, Cirque De Soliel trannyfest that Burton might make of it, and I am tired as hell of Johnny Depp. The one saving grace is apparently Depp has been a fan of the show since childhood, so hopefully that will add something special to his portrayal of the iconic vampire.

Verisimilitude, Dude

OK, I’ll admit that although I was always an excellent reader, “Verisimilitude” is a word I was fairly unfamiliar with until my return to gaming the other year. I’m pretty sure I read James at Grognardia using the word first in relation to gaming, and I’ve been using it ever since. A big word I have used for a long time in relation to gaming is “Gravitas.” I’ve known that big word for at least a decade (but my source was dubious; I think Howard Stern and his crew were goofing on a sound bite of Keiffer Sutherland saying that was his favorite word. I then looked it up). I’ll say something that sounds profound such as “I like my game world to have a certain amount of gravitas.”

But verisimilitude is what I say now. Me like that big world. The big “V” word is sort of philosophical in nature, so it can be expressed to mean a variety of related things. Officially, it is a philosophical concept that denotes amounts of truth or degrees of error. Articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer to the truth than another false theory.

In games terms, it’s about doing what you can for your game world to feel real in terms of it’s own qualities. Back in the day all you could say (unless you were an encyclopedia of big brain words like Gary Gygax seemed to be) was “I want my game to be realistic” followed by boos and jeers from your gaming fellows who chided sarcastically (in the Comic Book Guys voice) “It’s a fantasy game man. Fantasy isn’t supposed to be realistic.”

Bullshit. If you just want to have your world be no more than a tavern, a supply shop, and a dungeon, or you are just playing the original Chainmail wargame, then fine. That is sort of how I approach my White Box games. But even then, I cannot help but want things to feel as real as possible, even in a dungeon as mythic underworld. Just go all wacky baccy like Arduin Grimoire or The City State of The Invincible Overlord, then you are getting closer to a fantasy world like Alice’s Wonderland, or The Beatles Pepperland. Cool fantasy worlds, but not one’s I want to seriously run a character in.

I know it is all ultimately silly fantasy. But to make my world feel like it has a little weight to it for a non-existent thing, I like to have a little versimilitude-itude. See that? I took a big word and the word “attitude” and made my own cool word. You can use it if ye like.

Don’t rush the campaign, bro

After several years without so much as a cold (good times wherein I got to use almost all of my sick days for fun things), I got hit hard by this flu that is going around late last week, and am still trying to shake off its evil grip. So last night instead of getting back into the heat of things with the assault on The City of The Glass Pool, I had Big Ben do a session of his elf-centric campaign since I wasn’t really feeling on-point. In a couple of weeks we’ll get back to my campaign, but this has given me a chance to rethink some things about how I am letting myself feel about my now high-level campaign.

In the last few months I feel I have been thinking a bit too feverishly about finishing the current Night Below campaign, which has been going on strong for around two and a half years now (the actual underground portion being about two years). I have enjoyed the epic nature of the adventure, but I think I have let my desire to run other things make me too obsessed with the end of this thing. I keep saying “two or so games to go,” but the fact is that I don’t really know how much more there is too do. The party has taken care of one or two goals that are required to cause the breakdown of the Kuo Toan society in TCOTGP, but there are still a couple of big things to be accomplished to bring it all home. Plus, who knows what other plans the party might have in terms of some looting and other activities they might engage in after the fall of the nasty little city. And of course a long campaign like this will require at least a full session of epilogue for the characters after all is said and done (the return to the surface world, personal affairs, etc). So although I judge that the immediate adventure should take 2-4 more sessions, I’m not going to rush it anymore.

The fact is I’m having much more fun running for higher level characters than I thought it would. It’s been many a harvest moon since I did regular games for characters over 7th level. I’m usually ending a campaign after about a year and moving on to do new characters. Not that the higher characters careers end or anything like that; but their presence in the game world in the past has often been relegated to cameos.

So, even thought I will be starting some Knights of the Old Republic sometime in the next couple of months (the gang seems to have come up with some interesting characters for that – most of them have downloaded PDF’s of the rules). I’m going to go ahead and let book 2 of NB play out, without any sort of imposed ending by me. Does this mean I’ll go right into them going into the lowest depths and into The Sunless Sea of book 3 of Night Below right away? Maybe not. Book 3 ends in an assault on an evil underground city as well. So I think I may have some mods to make, and will probably want some time to pass so the players don’t get bored. Judging from my online research on NB, the majority of campaigns barely make it to the end of book 2 before all involved are fed-up.

But it has been a fun campaign, challenging and rewarding to run, so I’m not going to be in such a rush to put a stopper in it any more. Let it go where it goes.

When NPC’s Chime In/Super NPC’s

When I was first introduced to D&D as a kid, and for years afterwards, it was very common for Dungeon Masters to use what has become known as the “Super NPC.” A classic example I can remember is from a game some dude ran at the Santa Monica Jewish Center on Santa Monica Blvd when I was in my mid-teens. Yes, that was kind of a trippy place for a catholic kid, but one of my D&D buddies at the time was Jewish and we often had games there on a Tuesday night. I was going there almost every week for a year at around the age of 14 to play. I had been to this pal’s Bat Mitzvah as well. Maybe these experiences are why I have such love for Israel and Yiddish people worldwide (I would run into this guy a few years later when I was going to some Society of Creative Anachronism events with a girlfriend of the time. He had been a good kid, but by then it was obvious he was growing up to be a grade-A dipshit; I hope D&D didn’t do that to him).

Anyway, one night an older guy, probably in his early 20’s, ran a game for us. I don’t remember the particulars of our characters, but I remember our asses getting kicked in the game. We ended up needing help, and helpful locals pointed us out to what was obviously a favored character of the DM’s that he was using as an NPC. That was as easy as it could happen. Mr. DM is winging it in a game, needs a strong character to save the day, and then *taadaaa* he just inserts one of his characters from some other DM’s game he’s played in into the mix. Oy vey!

In this case, it was some badass fighter with twin magic blades who could cast Haste on himself. I can recall our PC’s walking down the city street with this super-character, who was whirling his blades around at Haste speed and juggling them and generally showing off before the big fight. Some big fight. I think his guy mopped up the bad guys while our PC’s stood on the sidelines shouting “hooray” while doing a respectful golf clap.

I have to admit that I fell into this heavily in the 80’s. The very first character I rolled up as a kid, a ranger named Arcturus Grimm, was my first major NPC in my homebrew gameworld, and I still use him to this day. Although as a player character I probably had only gotten him up to around 5th or 6th level before he became a super-NPC in my world. But what with all his misadventures over the hundred years or so of game time that has gone by since around 1980 (no worries, he’s partly elf) he stands today, a ranger in the upper teens of level and on the verge of some kind of godhood (yeah, that is very high level for my world). I’ve used him quite a bit in the early portions of this current campaign, but only as an advisor really. He has some sons and daughters as NPC’s involved in the ongoing campaign shenanigans.

I could easily give a dozen examples of other favored super-NPC’s (one or two actually former characters like ol’ Arcturus), but the overall point to this is that I don’t use them so much anymore. I never really used them as in the example I gave about the DM at the Jewish Center, but I have toned down their general involvement. And after so many years, some have retired or disappeared altogether. After some bad experiences in the last couple of years, I am inclined even more to use them less.

Like when I went to a couple of Sunday Star Wars Saga sessions in Santa Monica (trying to little avail to get to know the rules so I could run for the infamous Hollywood Star Wars group). The GM, a 20 year old, pretty much just ran tactical combats with his super-NPC Jedi’s jumping in and doing most of the work. It really sucked.

The months later when I went to run KOTOR for an established group, the “lady” who was “in charge” was almost fanatically against NPC’s. She even talked about the young dude in Santa Monica’s use of NPC’s, which blew my mind (she knows somebody who went to one of his games). I said “no problem,” but I did have an NPC involved with the group as part of the ongoing adventure and I learned later that was one of many things that bugged her. Not that I care about what bugged the clueless dolt, but it did make me give some more thought about my use of NPC’s.

When player are having confabs as their characters, I have a bit of a habit of jumping into the conversation with an NPC (hey, the DM is supposed to have some role playing fun too, ya' know?). This is usually when there is information to give or it is just an appropriate time for them to speak, but I realized I was doing just a bit too much of it. I should be encouraging characters to speak more. Given, I only really have two players who really have conversations in character, with the others speaking up here and there. But I’m trying to lean more to letting it be the characters words that rule the day (good or bad).

So in our Night Below session last week, there was a point where a player or two were cooking up plans for another assault on The City of The Glass Pool, and rather than be a part of the conversations or have to hang on every word, I spent time doing other things. Looking in books, stepping outside, etc. Just listening to enough to catch good role play. It’s really only the DM’s job to react to what the players try to carry out, but in this case my distancing myself from the planning there were a few misunderstandings. So there needs to be a fine line. Me listening to important stuff, without feeling compelled to speak out as an NPC.

Now, I’ll readily admit that a lot of speaking up as NPC’s has come from a certain degree of my having to give information to move the game along. This group is kind of quick to action and short on understanding. They aren’t stupid, but I believe a “thinking man’s D&D” is not necessarily what they are after. They want combat and cool set-pieces to have it in. Hey, I can relate. As a player I like action over politics and making the proper decisions to move storylines along.

Also, for me, NPC’s have been an integral part of how I present my world. I’ve been using my homebrew game setting for going on 35 years , with well over a hundred years of game continuity. This is the gaming James over at Grognardia likes to speak of; starting with a tiny section of a game world and expanding from there. That was the beginning, like, 1978 for me. In the many years after that, I have expanded upon the gameworld big time, and I’m not just happy with that, I’m proud of it. I have a personal connection to my gameworld (and therefore to my own childhood) that I think is rare. My players can often feel that. So yeah, I take NPC’s seriously. If it is more than just an innkeeper or farmer the players will never see again, then it is an NPC worth investing in. But like I said, there needs to be a fine line when NPC’s are involved, so as not to gyp players out of character time. NPC’s should complement the character experience, not supplant it.

Should they just be extra muscle? The clichéd hirelings of old school D&D? Or should they be an integral part of the group sometimes. After all these years, this is still something I am trying to figure out.

Taking Pride in your Group

(pictured above: Our usual host Andy, and also a group that is not us)

As it has been pointed out here and there occasionally in my post comments, I don’t necessarily lean towards the positive all the time when talking about my games or my players. Let’s face it, some of us deal with happiness by just enjoying the happiness without making a big deal out of it. We deal with things we aren’t necessarily happy with by ranting about it. It’s sort of like guest reviews on a hotel’s website; you see so many negative ones because it’s mostly people unhappy with the experience who are compelled to review in the first place. I actually love my group, and I want to talk about it a bit from that perspective.

Currently there are seven of us regulars in the group, which is perfect really. Our games at maximum occupancy are one GM and six players. Perfect amount of players, because you can still have a fun and epic game with 5 or 4 players. Even with three players available we can do alternates or whatever. I keep the player count at a max of 6, but usually have sort of a waiting list of people who want in (a problem I have not heard that other locals groups have). I hear on an almost monthly basis from locals from various sources wanting in on the games. So many that I have considered trying to get a second, separate group together. But it’s hard enough to put together the time for one such group, so I think that is going to have to be my one and only group. Fine by me.

Four of us have been there pretty much since game one (or “game zero” as I like to call it), two and a half years ago. Me, Andy, Dan, and Terry (our token chick player). For around a year we had two or three players come and go, which is usually par for the course in any groups that weren’t all friends to begin with. Then Big Ben and Paul came along around the same time around a year or so ago, and we have had the same steady group now for close to a year and half. Little Ben, who played for a bit the other year but had work obligations, returned a few months ago. He has missed a few games since then, but more out of happenstance of his schedule more than anything else.

So, a solid group for many moons now. That seems to be a bit rare, at least in the Los Angeles area. Most groups I have seen or have experience with don’t seem to be able to keep it together the way they would like to. Not a knock at them, just part of my gratitude for a steady, steadfast group of great players. One experience I had was with a DM in West LA with a presence here in the old school blogs that resulted in my freshly created character being slain by an unfriendly and somewhat hostile player less than an hour into the session (I won’t include any links or names here. Regular readers can figure it out; I don’t wanna be starten’ nothing or cause any epic weirdo freak-outs), who turns out is the DM’s ONLY regular player over the years. Hmmm…wonder why. Regular player and co-founder of my group, Andy, had similar experiences with that GM and that player. As a matter of fact, Andy’s experience with these same people a few years prior to mine caused me to see Andy in a whole new light after my own shitty time with them, and to gain new appreciation for him and his play style. Andy seems just as happy to have a great and friendly group of regulars as I. With what is locally available out there, no wonder.

So yeah, I am happy with, and proud of, my group. For anybody in the past that has commented that perhaps some of my unhappy experiences outside my group is perhaps my own doing, I can only put forth my evidence against that theory: I have 3 people who have stayed over two years for my games, a pair who have stayed regulars for well over a year so far, and one who came back after a several month absence. My running of some OD&D at a local mini-con and then an Orange County Gaming Con last year were very well received, although I will admit that I think some of the friendships I made at those may have been affected by some of my harsh words in my blog about some of my other local experiences. Even Bob over at Cylopeatron, who I think looks at me with an eyebrow cocked lately after initially being fairly friendly, will admit that in his Gamma World session at the MiniCon event that I was the player MVP of the day (helping take the one-shot session to a solid conclusion when it was looking like it would end in a cliffhanger or forced conclusion at best).

So in regards to myself, my conscious is clear despite the occasional kerfuffle: I’m a very decent, fun and welcoming GM whose decades of experience shows, and as an occasional player I put a lot of my priority into the good time of the GM and the other players at the table besides my own. The proof has been in the pudding for anybody who has met me and played with me or under me.

Enough kissing of my own big ass. Let me kiss some butt and heap some praise on my worthy regulars a bit (in order of appearance in the group):

Andy: Sometimes drinker, sometimes toker, always smart-ass. Andy pretty much co-founded the group with me. He saw me on meetup.com looking to run some 1st edition (after a several year break), and after some of his less than satisfactory experiences with local groups he wanted to be in on something new. Andy usually hosts us, with his lovely wife Kara giving us the use of her fabric workshop in the back. It’s a nice cozy area, not too small and not too big, with a patio for the smoker/tokers. I was initially annoyed with Some of Andy’s play style choices, but in the long run I have come to really appreciate his excellent attitude towards role playing, and general welcoming nature to new folk who came along over the short years. Along with Dan, Andy is a very vocal player who loves to run his characters in an outgoing fashion, and any GM knows that is a valuable person to have at the table. Not everybody has to be real vocal, but a couple of people need to be. More than anybody outside of Terry, Andy is the most accepting of playing whatever genre I want to run. Can’t `put a price on that. I’m glad we have that. In the main AD&D campaign Andy runs Vaidno, a half-elf bard. In my occasional Champions games he ran a very cool Chop Socky Jackie Chan sytle Hong Kong cop, and in my Metamamorphosis Alpha/Mutant Future sessions he ran pretty much a mutated Billy Bob from Slingblade.

Dan: Big guy originally from South Africa (white) who has lived and travelled around the world. He has swum with sharks, trained in mountain rescue, and all kinds of crazy shit. He is some kind of computer related international business man, and has a nice pad up off Mulholland where we have played occasionally. He recently married his hot girlfriend. Dan has it all, and it’s one of the reasons I give him so much shit. A very outgoing player much like Andy, Dan also tends to be a little powergamey and argumentative with his characters, but funnily enough not in a negative way that you would usually find those traits in gamers. It’s fun to play the put-upon DM to his Munchkin play style. Dan loves the escapist nature of the games, and loves to kill things. I’m hoping he doesn’t one day decide to kill the DM. Dan’s main character in the 1st edtion games is the controversial Krysantha, a female drow raised by druids. She isn’t evil, but is for sure one hell of a bitch.

Terry: I have known Terry for over 20 years, and she has played on and off in my games for that long. I met her at the very first Renaissance Faire (formerly in Agoura Hills) I ever worked in the late 80’s. I actually posted about my appreciation of Terry as a friend and player a few months ago (inspired probably by her treating me to a weekend in Las Vegas), and you can check out that feel-good post here.

“Big” Ben: Call him Big Ben, because we have another Ben in the group who Big Ben has a few pounds on. Ben has a lot of 1st edition experience from the past, and actually knows the rules btb better than the rest of us, without being a rules lawyer. Ben has actually been very valuable in looking up things in the books when I don’t feel like it and am ready to just house rule something (Andy is handy that way too). Ben runs a high Elf mage, Lumarin, in my main campaign. Ben also runs the occasional 1st edition game for us so I can take a break and be a player. In his campaign, he had us all required to run high elves or half elves. Can you see a pattern? Yeah, Ben seems to have an elf fetish. If he was skinny with long flowing blond hair it might seem to explain things, but Ben is around 6 feet tall, burley, and bald with a goatee. Hmmm…

Paul: a young college student with no tabletop D&D experience, he has a lot of experience with the D&D video games, and that seems to pay off at least in game concepts being familiar to him. For a new player, Paul has really taken things to the grill with the MU/Thief, Lily, that he ran. He eventually betrayed to the party to former allies of his, basically screwing himself out of getting to run the character any more. And it was not just to be a dick like a lot of experienced, anti-social type players might. He was actually role-playing what he thought that character might do, in the process having to start playing an NPC provided by me to continue in the game. In the Met. Alpha/Mutant Future mini-campaign we ended this week, Paul ran a mutated tree. He is very cool, with a powerful shriek and acid sap damage abilities. This character was probably the most interesting in the entire campaign. Paul sort of inadvertently named out group last year. I started a private Yahoo page for us, and needed a name for it. I didn’t want some dorky gamer name, so Paul said “you should make it something abstract, like “Waves of a Forgotten Box” or something like that.” Thus, a group name was born. Call us “The Wavies.”

“Little Ben”: not really little, but smaller then Big Ben. He played for a bit the other year before his schedule got involved, and is now back playing again. A good guy, he is a solid player despite running a non-combatant in the Night Below games. His gnome, Ormac, chimes in with the occasional illusion. When another player murdered a captured NPC a few games ago, he refused to accept a magic item (want of magic missile) that had belonged to the victim. To me that is some pretty good role playing of a good character. How many spellcasters, especially one with few combat spells, would pass up a wand of magic missles?

There you have it, the current group, and I’m damn proud to be a part of it, much less the main GM. Without them, I would be awash in the gamer sea of flotsom and jetsom out there. How I got so lucky, I’ll never know. Or maybe I’m just that damn good ;)

So, tell me about what makes you proud, or at least happy, about your group…