Mutant Future Campaign done and done

Really, last night I was finally able to admit to my players that we have really been doing Metamorphosis Alpha, just using the Mutant Future rules. The big reveal. OK, they didn’t really know what Met Alpha was. Makes me feel old.

The forest valley is not the entirety of their world, and they finally passed into the between decks areas and eventually to the command deck to meet starship captain and other unfrozen crewmembers, who are striving to save some of the ships failing systems, all the while fighting an ongoing war with androids who have taken over sections of the ship.

The characters learn of the original home known as “Earth,” and that the world they know is a starship that has long since passed it’s intended destination, and now hurtles through space. It was fun role-playing all this, and seeing character reactions.

Actually Andy knew, as he had read many of my blog posts after a mysterious emailer hipped him to my blog, that was formerly only a rumor amongst my players. Well, with the big reveal completed along with this campaign, I was able to go ahead and inform the others about my blog, which they can now read with impunity.

Two secret things, my blog and the Metamorphosis Alpha nature of the Mutant Future sessions, were never that important to keep secret. It’s easy enough to refrain from foreshadowing game events in the posts, and as far as any hard talk about Andy or Dan or any of the others, well, it’s nothing I don’t really say to their face. I think I can continue to be open and honest about my player’s headache inducing foibles without offending anyone. And for the starship nature of the characters world, well, Met Alpha was not designed as a game with keeping the secret. The players knew what they were playing in Met Alpha originally back in the old school heyday of that game, and that fact that only the PC’s were ignorant of the true nature of their world was fairly superfluous. Fun gameplay is fun gameplay no matter how you slice it.

For Posterities sake, here are the characters from this campaign:

Gamo-Ik (Andy): with a hillbilly persona and look inspired by Billy Bob Thornton’s Slingblade character, Gamo has teleport and disintegration powers. He also has Slowness, which makes him take actions every other turn. How did a slow moving humanoid survive the dangers of the valley? Well, he also has Teleport. So he cannot run faster than any of the characters in the party, but his still often appears in front of them when they travel. Slow of body, he is the most intelligent and wise of all the characters, so he is more accepting of the true nature of the world once it is revealed.

Rizgar (Dan): I mutated bear with Quickness, Telekinesis, and Dwarfism mutations. Belligerent and contrary (like most of Dan’s characters).

Will O. (Paul): a mutated tree-man. When travelling with the group, some characters keep a distance from him. See, he gives off a damaging Shriek when damaged to those nearby, and also bleeds out acid sap when he gets damaged. At one point got his hands on a large cell-powered chainsaw that he uses to great affect. One scary tree. Often damages himself in combat to get the Shriek power activated.

Korm (Big Ben): no obvious mutations and looking very much like a normal human, he has Weather Control and combat intuition powers. He also has increased metabolism, so the character is always looking for his next big meal. His use of weather control on the forest valley level over the years may have made the breakdown of ship atmospheric systems occur more quickly than they otherwise would have.

Donald “Don Juan” John Garth (NPC): a ship engineer who got trapped on the forest level over a year ago, he has become a known as a wise travelling shaman to many of the valley people. Let himself be known as “Don Juan” to many as an inside joke to himself – he was a big reader of Carlos Castanada. Eventually led the party out of the valley level and to the command deck at the end of the campaign.

Also, little Ben played in one game as a lizard man from the valley, but actually I forget his name.

Oh, in last night’s final game I got to use classic beasties from The Barrier Peaks D&D module in encounters, including VegyPymies and hostile Android weight trainers in a gym area. Nice.

So there we go, one little campaign wrapped up. We usually played this alternate when Terry could not make a game, so we’ll have to find some other alternates for the future, including White Box OD&D, of course.

WOTC I do not wish you well

In a recent post over at Cyclopeatron. Cyclo talks about a new trading card element for D&D from WOTC, and of course it is just a lame move by this company to try and recapture a collectable card fad that had its heyday over a decade ago; plugging it into a game with a name that has serious geek zeitgeist. This was the first I heard of it, and I still do not know all the details, but jeez, what utter shit this once mysterious and wonderful game has been made into by these modern marketeers. No wonder so many of us hold on to the retro.

But what strikes me even odder is the commentary you hear from blog followers who do not play current WOTC products, but “wish them well.” What kind of “happy happy joy joy” mentality does somebody have to have to wish this corporate crapola well? Who that does not play with current WOTC merchandise would give a flying rats ass about WOTC and it’s chickenshit schemes for its product. These well-wishers are more Pollyanna than the chipper gay policemen from Demolition Man.

OK, you say “it’s good to get new people into the hobby.” Why? Because you can’t get/keep a group together? Do you hope D&D will take off gigantically like the mid-80’s again when groups were too full and closed to new players, starting a soup line of hungry players wanting to play at your table? Or is it so it becomes more mainstream and therefore you no longer have to have some weird guilt/shame thing in your gut when you are around people who are talking about wine and cars and The LA Lakers and who think this kind of activity is for the proverbial geektards?

I mean, when I started D&D the late 70’s, you talked about it in school in whispers. Just like comic books and being into Sci Fi movies instead of cars, it was like we were part of this little secret society. “We” watched Star Trek and Dark Shadows reruns, “They” watched C.H.I.P.S and Movin’ on (you may not remember it, but it was an action drama featuring truckers that all the dipshits in “special” classes watched in the early 80’s). Even in elementary school I remember the class voting on it's favorite TV show, with "That's My Momma"( a piece of junk Sanford and Son rip-off) getting the winning nod, and me being jeered for voting for Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

By high school, I would sneak away after football practice to run Tegal Manor for the Fantasy Role Playing Association meeting in some unlocked classroom. If word got out to my teammates what I was doing, I’d have probably gotten goofed on relentlessly in the locker room, and the cheerleader dates would have dried up. I loved that this was a small, underground, niche hobby. That was half the fun for me.

Patton Oswalt, D&D playing geek comedian, puts how I feel well here in one of his rants about underground geek culture:

“…Admittedly, there’s a chilly thrill in moving with the herd while quietly being tuned in to something dark, complicated, and unknown just beneath the topsoil of popularity. Something about which, while we moved with the herd, we could share a wink and a nod with two or three other similarly connected herdlings.

When our coworkers nodded along to Springsteen and Madonna songs at the local Bennigan’s, my select friends and I would quietly trade out-of-context lines from Monty Python sketches—a thieves’ cant, a code language used for identification. We needed it, too, because the essence of our culture—our “escape hatch” culture—would begin to change in 1987…”

I don’t think anybody needs to hate WOTC, and if they actually play their products then more power to them. But if you don’t, you at least wish them well? Do you actually know the people who work there? The top brass all the way down to the lowest goof-off file clerk who after hours pisses in the office coffee pot? Fuck them. I don’t wish them anymore well than I do any other souless corporation in this country. That they are in the game-making business holds no mystique for me, and does not for sure automatically garner my well-wishes. James Raggi I wish well. Geoffry McKinney I wish well. Goodman I wish goddamn well! WOTC I wish them all a jolly springtime standing in the goddamn unemployment line.

Wizards of the Coast, please fail horribly and die a miserable bankruptcy court death. I still have my copies of OD&D and 1st edition, and it is all I will ever need for my D&D.

Unafraid of the High Level Game

Well, this week we got in another session of the Night Below, and the second game of the assault on The City of The Glass Pool. The final stretch of the campaign.

I was sort of fearing this part of the campaign for a couple of reasons. One, I don’t have all that much experience with levels above 7th, even after all these decades. I’m not saying characters haven’t hit 8th, 9th, or even higher in past games. It’s just that my preference is to run for low to mid levels (1-7), probably because a campaign would end and I would be interested in new groups of PC’s. Secondly, I just thought that an assault on a city would be a logistic nightmare of the type I haven’t run for many a moon. Sure, I’ve had characters involved in wars and great battlefields, but an urban location being attacked by players is rare in my games.

One thing I do like about high levels is that things get more like comic book battles, which is what I was brought up on. And the last couple of games have been no exception. The COTGP is somewhat in lockdown mode, which means the streets are not exactly crawling with enemies. There are some large patrols, but in the first foray into the city the party used the 100 hydra teeth to create a small army of skeletons to run interference with patrols, and also Krysantha had whipped up an insect plague to mess with part of the city while they attacked the Illithid building and then in this game the slave pens before hoofing it out of the city and back to base for a rest (with some help from allies blowing up part of the city gate for easier exit). They got out and back to the safe place with around 100 slaves, many of them dwarves with skills that might come in handy. This was all much more fun than I thought it would be for me. It really is just like running a dungeon, just with much bigger corridors!

Back at the “Derro Town” captured mind flayer tower, the party found out that a band of drow, Avatara and her crew from games early this year, had taken over the tavern in the deserted under-town. Their goal is to eventually make their way to the site of the old drow city on the Sunless Sea. This is why they are rooting for the party to destroy the COTGP. Just one of many evil groups the party is forced to deal with.

As we are on the last couple of games of the campaign, here is a list of all the PC’s and NPC’s who are the “heavy hitters” of the campaign. For posterities sake if nothing else.

Vaidno (Andy): 8th level chaotic/good half elf bard from the big city up north. Not a btb bard, but my own more musically inclined bard class (based off the old houri class from White Dwarf magazine). Vaidno has survived many near death encounters, leading me to call him “Survivno.” Acrobatic, skillful with blades, Vaidno faces the nightmares of the Night Below setting with great bravery and is more like a fighter in mentality. Often gets short-shrifted on magic items. Recently gained both a tower and an 18 charisma from the Deck of Many Things.

Krysantha (Dan): 8ish level fighter/druid. Female drow raised by druids. Formerly lawful neutral, decided recently she was plain neutral. I think she is chaotic, but I’m tired of arguing with players about their alignment. Remorseless murderer of NPC’s, and big time grudge-holder. Along with Vaidno takes the most vocal leadership role in the group.

Helena (Terry): chaotic/neutral with good tend. 8ish level fighter/thief. Does not live a thiefly livestyle, is actually a kleptomaniac. Was raised in a house with several fighter brothers who taught her sword and shield. Has a knack for talking the other players out of magic items without even having to steal them. Like many of Terry’s characters, is obsessed with marriage. Got wishes from the Deck of Many Things, and used most of them for fairly petty gains.

Kayla (Terry): 8th level hobbit cleric of Sheenara and Sherriff of the southern hobbit border. A character of Terry’s since the early 90’s, I let her join the party pretty much just because she was in the area (and they did not have a cleric). A player kind of complained about Terry running two characters, which has some merit because Terry often takes a long time to take a turn for a character. As the other players did not defend her presence, I had her go back to her castle, where her new band of followers awaited her anyway. A high level cleric would be a big boon to survival right now, but since the players have not requester her they can lump it. If Terry’s Helena dies in the next couple games, I’ll have Kayla appear.

Lumarin (Big Ben): 8th level high elf lawful good MU. The main party magic user. Lost several points of intelligence from a Deck of Many Things draw. Originally joined the party early on in The Night Below campaign when the party saved him from being eaten by Gnolls.

Lily (Paul): chaotic/neutral (later evil) 7ish level thief/MU. Greedy harlot who was saved from Gnolls along with Lumarin. Got in many confrontations with Krysantha over stealing items from treasure troves. Eventually betrayed the party to her boyfriend Xavier. Ran off with Xavier and his gang after the fight. Officially out of the party, but still active in the campaign in case the characters want to find her and kill her. They kind of have bigger fish to fry right now.

Zith (Paul): I had sort of planned to have some Githyanki (extra dimensional anti-mind flayer warriors) show up at some point in this campaign. I didn’t, but when Paul could not run Lily anymore I just gave him an 8th level fighter Githyanki to run in the party. Paul seems to dig that character, but ultimately this is just a player running an NPC. If anybody dies in the next game or two, they can run a Githyanki as well.

Ormac (Little Ben): 6ish level gnome illusionist. Ben played for a while the other year, but had to drop out for work. He returned a couple months ago and so did Ormac. Ben misses a lot of games in general, so Ormac is kind of a “there not there” side player in the whole thing.

Major NPC’s

Dia: teenage ranger and (unknown to her until recently) daughter of Woodlord Arcturus Grimm. She pretty much got the party together over two years ago to go explore a dungeon. They got sidetracked by The Night Below. She is from the same town as Helena, and they knew each other growing up. She eventually took possession of the anti-Kuo Toa sword Finslayer.

Arcturus Grimm: One time Woodking of the ranger kingdom of Woodaria in the far north. A controversial figure, he is also known for having been possessed by evil decades ago when he caused great suffering in the land. He now lives in the southern frontier area in a garden temple dedicated to his sister Sheenara, goddess of the wood. Arcturus was my very first character as a little kid, and I kept him in my game world to use over the decades ( one of the few “super NPC’s” I indulge in). Arcturus has apparently spent the last few decades siring children all over the land with different women.

Clovis Grimm: underdark ranger in the Night Below, and son of Arcturus Grimm. Unlike Dia he is in frequent contact with his father, and has helped guide the party in some of their travels below. Currently protecting the freed slaves the party has saved.

Avatara: a fighter/MU/thief drow NPC and drow city expat I have used for decades in my games, going by a variety of names. She is best known for living in Tanmoor and acting as guild mage for the elvish thieves’ guild there. In the current campaign she is on some kind of mission with other, younger drow to find the lost city of drow on the Sunless Sea. After an encounter with Krysantha and Vaidno awhile back, Krys has sworn to kill her, but she is an asset currently (Avatara wants the party to destroy the City of the Glass Pool so she can travel down to the Sunless Sea). This NPC is personally responsible for killing one of Terry’s characters back in the 90’s. At one point in the late 90’s I successfully had her seduce a female wood elf PC.

Spotlight On My Campaign/Group

Hats off to this interesting post at The Tao of D&D for inspiring me to ask these questions about my group and campaign to myself. It is actually pretty self-enlightening to question yourself like this from time to time.


1. How long has this present campaign been in existence?

The Night Below has been going on for a little over two years. The year before that was leading up to a high level dungeon crawl, but then I bought NB and said “what the heck” and switched gears to an Underdark based campaign.

2. How many players do you have, and how many right now were present at the beginning of the campaign?

Steady full group of the same six for over a year now. Andy (our host), Dan, and Terry (who I have known for over 20 years and played in a lot of my groups of yore) are still with me since day one.

3. How many of your players are family members?

Zero. Nobody in my family has any love for the rolling of the dice (unless it’s in Vegas).

4. How many of your present players began playing after the halfway point in the existence of your campaign? How many in the last year (if that applies)?

Big Ben and Paul started a little over a year ago. Paul is 20 and it was his first table top gaming (after playing a lot of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights). Little Ben (also known as Ben 2.0, Ben-ny and The Jets, and “Ben Dover”) played a couple of years ago, had to stop for many months for work, then started again a few months ago.

5. How many long-term players (played for more than a third of the campaign) have you had that dropped out? Were any reasons given?

All my guys who played for more than the first three months have stuck with the group.

6. How many short term players have you had since the campaign started who did not come back? How many of them gave a reason?

For that first year I think a total of four temp dudes played for a couple months or so each. Various reasons given such as work, school etc. In all honesty, I’m not sure my freewheeling style and lots of house ruling appealed to them. I was disappointed in a couple of them, because there was a certain amount of investment. “Caleb” is his own story (search his name in my blog if you want to read about that, but not really worth going into at this point), but one of these past guys before he came to the game called me on a Sunday afternoon while I was sunning and sipping beer in the back yard, and proceeded to grill me about the game. It was like an hour long job interview. I should have said “no thanks” at that point, but I kind of wanted more players. He showed for maybe two games. Waste of my time.

I’m more happy with all my current players than I would have been with those other guys anyway. A Couple of them were a bit weird (and not in a good geeky way). I hope they found gaming happiness, and managed to avoid the couple of groups I had terrible experiences in the area outside of my own. These experiences gave me new gratitude for the group and players that I have put together. Honestly, despite past gripes (what, me gripe?) about some of my players, there is not one "Rod-turd" in this punchbowl. I feel very fortunate as a GM to have these people to run for.

7. How many of the players in your world have never played a roleplaying game before?

21 year old Paul was a noob, but played a lot of fantasy video games. He is a natural at it, and has even caused controversy in the games (without being a trouble making douche).

8. Estimate the appearance rate of your players. How often does your campaign run?

Couple times a month. As I want all the long-time major players (Andy, Dan, and Terry - my original varsity team) there for my main campaign, we have often had to wait a month or two to get back to the Night Below. In those times I mostly ran some Metamorphosis Alpha (with Mutant Future), some OD&D, and a little bit of Champions. Terry makes more games than she used to, but still has a tough time scheduling. “I have a life,” she often says, despite the fact that most of us have more of a life than she does (sorry Terry, but “having a life” is not a rare condition, even among gamers).

9. Name the three principle reasons for people not appearing in your campaign.

Vacation, business trips, school, etc.

10. How often is it that players in your campaign do not appear without having given a reason?

Never.

Birthday Game/Birthday Wishes

I have never made much of a deal out of my own birthday. I for sure usually don’t skip work, and don’t talk it up there like a lot of people do (there are people here with balloons in their cubicle from 8 months ago). I don’t like parties in my honor, and I don’t like discussing my age (after I hit 40 I stopped telling people, at least at work, how old I am) even though most people who know my true age tell me I look at least 10 years younger than I am. Must be all that clean living *cough*.

As it just so happens, it’s a game night tonight, so for the second time in three years I’ll be spending my birthday night with the gaming group. Thank God most of them are drinkers. Anyway, I enjoy DM’ing on my birthday, and tonight I’m going to continue our occasional White Box old school dungeon delve. Some nice relaxing fun compared to the uphill struggle that is my AD&D campaign (a torture of my own design). I just gotta find a way over to Andy’s and home without risking a birthday DUI.

Anyway, I would like to divide this post into two parts, each where I ask your input/experience. OK, first one: have you ever run a game on your birthday, how was it, and did you eventually wish you had just had a traditional birthday party (y’know, a night at the Super 8 Motel with a couple of hookers, a pizza, and bottle of Gray Goose)? Have you ever DM’d or played on a birthday?

And secondly, have you ever made a “Bucket List” of things to do before you die? I haven’t. To travel the world? Outside of some visits to Scotland back in the day, I don’t leave America (although I often hear Amsterdam calling my name). If you gotta pee in the street and poop in a hole in the ground, I don’t go. Date a supermodel? I think that boat passed me by. Get rich? Man, I’m tryin’. But anyway, below are some of my favorite Bucket List items from Adam Carolla’s new book In “50 years We’ll All be Chicks.” I relate very much to the pop culture nature of some of these, and I choose these things to do before I die. Do you have any?

*Disclocate my shoulder to get out of a straight jacket.

*Pull a fake mustache off someone and shout “Ah Hah!”

*Shout “Release the hounds!”

*Stop a crime by throwing something. A guy steals a purse and starts running. I throw a can of corn football style and knock him out.

*Catch a punch and twist the guys hand until he drops to his knees

*Get shot and blow it off “I ain’t got time to bleed”

*Put my hand over the mouth of a beautiful woman to stop her from screaming and alerting the bad guys.

*Punch out my undercover partner who is about to say something he shouldn’t and blow our cover.

*Get kicked out of a casino for winning.

*Have a cape removed on stage.

*Be killed by the person I told to kill me if I start turning into a zombie.

*Dry-shave with a machete

*Drive my car off a pier onto a garbage scow.

*Box a kangaroo

*Fight somebody on top of a moving train

*Pop the locks on an attaché case full of money and slide it across the table.

*Silently communicate/point to my watch underwater.

*Fend off a Kodiak bear with a torch.

*Track somebody. I get off my horse, squat, then do that thing where I pick up a clump of dirt and let it sift through my fingers.

Top Ten Craziest AD&D Rules (part 2)

5) Nearly Anything in Unearthed Arcana

Sure, the cantrips were nice, and weapon specialization was popular with players, and already in-use in many campaigns -- but the unbalanced "new" PC classes (mostly cribbed from Dragon Magazine), the new sub-races of elves (why play any elf but a grugach or drow anymore?) really embraced the new "risk-lite" era of gaming, in which munchkin-ism was an assumed part of the game, and characters being anything less than superhuman was unthinkable. UA also introduced the new format of most TSR products from there onwards; the half DM/half player supplement. Which obviously never worked. DMs couldn't surprise players with the new info, since most of them obviously read the "for the DM's eyes only!" material. There is no honor amongst thieves, nor amongst gamers when it comes to players trying to beat their DM.


My take: UA blew me and my friends away when it came out. We used the new classes shamelessly, to the point where pretty much every character in games for around a year were classes out of this book. Cantrips, spells, whatever, I loved them. Never really used proficiencies, and don’t really use anything out of it in terms of characters these days. I let Big Dan run a female drow. There will be no more female drow PC’s in my game. Nuff said.

4) God Stats

If you don't want me to kill Loki, don't tell me how many hit points he has. It's as simple as that. Deities and Demigods went to great lengths in gaming-up pantheons (both real-life and fictional -- including the Melnibonian, Nehwon, and Cthulhu mythoi that would be excised for copyright issues in the third printing), which was sort of cool--but giving the divine stats is really just begging for them to be used as high-level monsters. Which, it was constantly claimed by TSR, was not the point--though the fact that TSR's own module Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits includes a climax in which it's very possible (if not exceptionally easy) to kill Lolth herself makes this claim somewhat dubious. Later editions have had their cake and eaten it too in claiming that these stats aren't the gods themselves, but their avatars on the material plane. Which is sort of cheating, but then again, so is claiming to have killed Zeus fair and square.


My take: Heh, I love that first sentence. Deit & Demi’s was a fun read on the toilet, but never got much in-game use out of it. Especially when I had created my own gods for my game world at around age 13. I actually got more ideas of of the book for my Call of Cthulhu games than I did for my D&D, although it was my reference for a Lovecraft inspired D&D campaign I did in the 80’s.

3) Material Components

Ah yes, the rule that turned all magic-users into ghoulish souvenir-hunters and gem-hoarders. This is one of those rules that some DMs used just to piss their players off--I mean, Identify is one of the most common spells cast by Magic-Users, and the material components are a 100gp pearl, and an infusion of an owl feather in wine with a miniature carp both swallowed whole. (Minature carp? Is that even a thing?) And at higher levels, the components get ridiculously expensive -- Shape Change requires a jade circlet worth at least 5000gp, Duo-Dimension requires a similar ivory cameo of the caster worth 5000-10000 gp, and even the fifth-level Wall of Force requires a "pinch" of diamond dust. It's pretty ridiculous, and with all the weird stuff that wizards would have to cart around for all their spells--gloves for the Bigby spells, balls of guano and sulphur for Fireballs, and rotten eggs for Stinking Cloud (you don't really even have to cast the spell--just throw the damn egg) -- it's surprising that Magic-Users in D&D don't come across more as the fantasy equivalent of cart-pushing bag ladies.


My take: yeah, it gets pretty stupid. In a lot of ways I think some of this takes the piss and fun right out of spell use. I really don’t like to have any component be all that rare or expensive. I for sure don’t make Big Ben’s high elf MU Lumarin in my game swallow a fucking miniature carp when he does one of his ID spells. Then again, in his particular case maybe I should just for laughs. Ben is sort of “by the book. ”Take that, sucker! Make a con roll to avoid choking on that fish and owl feather.”

2) Encumbrance

The ultimate rule that almost no one played with. There's no denying that it makes sense -- if you're striving for realism, there's no way that your character is carrying around much gold at all, especially if you're a thief relying primarily on stealth and agility. And especially in that case, encumbrance rules are pretty generous. But still, they're a pain, and most groups tended to fall in to one of three categories: those that ignored it completely, those that really only paid attention to it when it was egregious, and those that were granted a plethora of bags of holding in order to "realistically" be able to ignore it completely. And why? Because it's a dumb, real-life rule that gets in the way of, you know, actually having fun. It's the same reason most characters are still carrying around that one-week supply of iron rations, and generally don't worry about food unless they're in a tavern. It's the same reason that there aren't rules for potty breaks in the dungeon. It's the same reason there's not a table for seeing if you have a stiff neck from sleeping on a dungeon floor. Because it's a game.


My take: I’m pretty easy going on this. Although sometimes it irks. Recently Andy told me he was carrying three weeks worth of food. What, for a fucking hamster? Do you have any idea what three weeks of food would be like? And not just for a 6’3” fatass like me, but even skinny Andy’s three weeks of jerky and trail mix would be three shopping bags worth. Ah well, best not to think on it too much. Like alignment and components, Encumbrance is a pain in the patoot.

1) Grappling

This system has never worked in the history of the game. Non-lethal combat -- even just grab-moves in weaponed combat -- has always been a nightmare of a process, in every edition. Which is a shame, because a good tavern brawl should be easy to have. It would also be a pretty fun way to make combat more interesting--instead of just trading blows, you could actually grab that evil fighter by the hauberk and throw him across the room. But no, it's not so easy as just rolling to-hit. You have to consult percentages charts, figure out how many increments of 10% your strength is over 18, compare it to how many points over 14 your opponent's dexterity is, determine the kind of helmet your foe is wearing (open-faced? nasaled but otherwise open? visored or slitted?). And then, at some point in the process, you consult the "do you no longer care about actually following through with this move?" percentage on Table F.I.2: Loss of Interest. And if you're like 99.9% of the players who tried this, you eventually determine: "Ah, fuck it. I swing my sword."


My take: when AD&D first came out when I was a little kid, I could already tell by the weaponless combat rules that Gygax had never been in a fight in his life. Not only did I have two older brothers who were quick with a punch (go tell dad and he’d say in his thick Scottish accent “better learn to git yer hands up” before bopping me on the noggin with his huge, coal miner hand), I grew up in a poor version of now rich and trendy Venice Beach, and had to make the occasional statement to creeps who were usually smaller than me but thought they could box me around. Even before getting into boxing/kick boxing later in life, I knew how to take it to somebody’s grill. Needless to say, I had my own brawling rules very early on. I’ll post on that one day, fight fans.

Night Below: Murder Below

We are finally in the home stretch of this Night Below campaign, which is getting close to the two year mark. I’m guessing we have about two games to go. I could easily have stretched this out. The Derro town urban location I created as a last stopping point before the City of the Glass Pool could have provided a ton of role-playing opportunity, with its marketplace and slave trade and all. All sorts of humanoid types mixing it up there. But with the previous game more or less being one giant waste of time (taking place almost entirely in a small cave two characters were recovering from going into the negatives), I feel I should not dilly dally. Personally, I am starting to feel a bit burnt out on running AD&D. Not for good mind you, I just want to spend the upcoming year focusing on a Knights of the Old Republic campaign, and maybe a bit more Metamorphosis Alpha and some Champions. I need some quality time with a game where players cannot argue with me on every point.

I’m going to do a long post with my final thoughts for posterity on this setting when the campaign is over, but for now I’ll say that it is not just challenging and often brutal in terms of combat, but is also a bit of mental grinder. Besides the oppressive underground setting, there are around half a dozen mostly neutrally aligned tribal forces that have to be dealt with, either through some kind of appeasement or with a huge fight. I see online that there have been groups that have had campaigns go for the better part of a decade with this module. Sheesh, good thing I am stopping with book 2.

So in this game the party carried on, meeting and counseling with the group of Derro Renegades who oppose the Mind Flayers who have enslaved many of their people. Jump ahead to the party going into the Derro Town, meeting the few allies they have there, and making an assault on the Mind Flayer tower where the Crown of Derro Domination is supposedly held by an Illithids. If it is there or not, the group decided that if they were going to assault the City of the Glass Pool, they didn’t need this place at their backs with evil reinforcements. So we ended the game with them beginning assaulting the tower, and the giant Derro cavern rocking with explosions from the Renegade Derro causing distractions for the party.

OK, but the most significant thing that happened this game was while among the Renegades. The Renegade leader had offered to purchase the party captive, Prentyss, the young female thief member of the slaver group from the previous couple of games (and a group that, with the exception of the added NPC Xavier, was a set encounter in book 2 of the module). Yet another argy bargy started (see last game for an example of such) over what to do with Prentyss, but Krysantha the Drow put an end to debate about the teen girl by taking her scimitars and murdering the helpless thief in front of all. It was kind of a chilling moment. I tried to give the other players a chance to do something, but with the Githyanki ally I had Paul (of Lily fame) running also ready to kill Prentyss to end arguments, there was not much they could do.

Let’s talk about big Dan and his drow character Krysantha for a minute. Dan is a big beefy dude from South Africa (white guy) who has also lived in Australia for a long period. He is an international businessman with his own internet-related company (and he lives up on Mulholland in a big house with a view and a hot wife, so I’m guessing rich or on his way to it). He has also worked in the past with some kind of mountain rescue, and you can for sure picture him coming down a mountain with a fucked-up hiker over each shoulder. Dan was one of our group’s original players along with me, Andy, and Terry. He is a funny guy, with a great enthusiasm for the game. Dan also justifies what I would call “powergaming” as just letting off stress and getting some escapism, which I truly believe. He is by no means a problem player as a person, but his character Kryantha has gotten my goat a few times in the past.

When we started this group I was just off of a more or less 7 or 8 year gaming hiatus. The year or so leading up the formation I was dying to do some gaming, but didn’t want to seek out other groups because I wanted to run my own games (plus I wanted to pick and chose the type of people I would sit for hours with and pretend – you know what I mean). So when we got together and my players base turned out to be pretty cool I was tickled pink. One of those side effects of the pink tickle was that I was pretty open with what I was going to allow for characters. Thus came Krysantha.

Krysantha is a female drow, and a fighter/druid. I didn’t really look up drow in the Unearthed Arcana to refresh myself on them before I said “OK, you can have one”, nor did I think of the power gaming ramifications of a female drow (females being the more powerful of the species) combined with fighter prowess and druid spell ability. Ultimately, this turned out to be a powerful character. How much of this did Dan count on? I dunno. See, in the 90’s I ran tons of games of all kinds for a couple of different long-term groups. Most of these people had at most a little bit of gaming experience. So they took what I had to offer without much complaint. Sure, somebody would occasionally point out an inconsistency or something, or ask for something for a character that was out of line. But for the most part, as long as they were having fun they didn’t care how the sausage was made. This is how I got in the heavy (and lazy) habit of house ruling so many things.

Well, as it turned out, when I got these much more experiences players for this latest group, I had house ruled myself into a corner. Both Dan and Andy had a lot of gaming background, and had played under different kinds of DM’s. This did not fully gel with my laid back style, but over time they mostly acclimated. Andy especially has stopped being a pain for me almost completely with this stuff. I think he now gets how I do things, and approaches things a bit more in a way that is more enjoyable to me. Dan as well to a degree, but there is still a side of me that sees the big guy as a shamelessly powergaming bastard. And I made it all possible.

But hell, Dan is fun and really into roleplaying and I would not give him up for anything. But his actions are still a bit frustrating. Before this last game, he emailed me saying he would like to change Krysantha from lawful neutral to neutral. “Oh brother” I said, “he wants to be more difficult with the character now.” That hasn’t panned out yet, but to avoid more argument against his characters wishes, he committed murder on a helpless (and not fully evil) captive and his neutral status prevents any kind of forced alignment change. My call, because Krysantha claimed to have done it for the good of the group (whereas I think Dan just wanted to kill something).

Anyway, it sets up an interesting dynamic. Big Ben’s Lumarin the high elf is lawful/good. Terry is neutral/good (actually, I think neutral with good tendencies), as is little Ben’s Ormac the gnome. Andy’s bard Vaidno is staunchly chaotic/good. I think the shock of this murderous act was palpable for a minute or two. Personally, I had more I would have liked to do with the Prentyss character in the future, but a part of me was glad because her death made a couple of things easier on me (like I didn’t have to have her boyfriend Xavier and friends try to bargain for her release).

But what next? These basically good characters could not really do much about Krysantha, even the lawful Lumarin. I mean, Krysantha is a deadly character with her two magical scimitars and all the rest. Plus they are in the “belly of the beast”, so to speak. More dissension in the group at this juncture could result in a total party kill. But considering this was a basically evil act, the good PC’s are unlikely to associate with the drow once this is all over. Also there is the party NPC, neutral/good ranger Dia to consider. She was obviously miffed at Krysantha for the blatant murder, and she carries the sword Finslayer. Finslayer, besides being and anti-Kuo Toa weapon, is also anti-drow.

The “epilogue game” after this adventure is going to be a hoot. That is, if they all survive the next couple of games.

The Icewind Dale Trilogy

Drizz’t Du’orden. Sure, a cool character twenty years ago, but like a lot of people I’m pretty Drowed-out these days. Hell, a player in my current campaign and his Drow character have me pretty much never wanting to see or hear of another Drow ever again. In the 80’s they were one of my fave species, but nowadays blah.

So the fact that I have been reading a book about D&D in general, much less one with a Drow as the main character, is pretty WTF. Much as I love the game, I never had a desire to read a D&D based novel.

From what I understand, R. Salvatore created Drizzt at the last minute, when his publisher asked that he include a backup character to the ones already created. So comes a Drow, not just a good and kind one, but a ranger no less. Drizz’t lives in the snowy North, fighting Yeti and Frost Giants and generally helping out the ungrateful humans who live in the snowy hell. Other main characters include a dwarf, a young barbarian Drizz’t trains in combat, and a female human child raised by the dwarves (that I guess the Drow gets to nail sometime later when she hits that age, or a decent mirkin is found for her).

I’m not a huge reader of this kind of stuff, but I can tell it is very basic writing and very basic storytelling. But the big draw for me is the D&D references. It’s fun to hear about encounters with Verbeeg, frost giants, and white dragons. This is the same reason I enjoy the Baldur’s Gate video games; you get to fight rust monsters and beholders and gnolls and all that good stuff. If it is something out of Monster Manual 1 & 2, then consider me tickled pink.

I picked this thick book up at the Socal Minicon as a freebie earlier this year during the summer. I’m only a third of the way or so through it, so that gives you an idea of the level of thrill I get out of it. Let’s put it this way, yesterday I read almost 100 pages of a book called “Blood Meridian” (by the author of “No Country for Old Men), something it took me months to do with Icewind. So there, that’s my review. I get some enjoyment out of the D&D references as I said, but it is unlikely that I will finish this book. Especially right now when I have about three other books I am more excited about and trying to pound through. But when I feel like some light, Jr. High School level reading about creatures out of D&D, I can always grab up Icewind Dale. It’s in the back of my Jeep…waiting for me to finish the others.

Should I have titles this post "Icewind Fail?" Yeah, that would have been funny...

The Serious sides of Gamma World/Mutant Future

Today in his “Free Friday” post, James over at Grognardia started a discussion on taking this genre more seriously, pointing out a Jim Ward article at “Wizards of the Cost (spelling mine).”

This hit home for me, as it reminded me of a bit of a conundrum in my recent attempts at doing a Metamorphosis Alpha game (using Mutant Future). We have played around four games or so far, and in the most recent game a couple of weeks ago the party came close to where they are going to exit the level and find out about the world “outside” the fields they know. The next session should be both interesting and exciting as they find out they are on a spaceship, and just how large the universe actually is.

But as far as Grognardia James’ post is concerned, it really struck a chord with me. You see, those first few games came off just so goofy. We had big fun with the powers and disabilities (nobody wanted to be pure human because we had such a gas with the random mutations), and character creation was a hoot. Unfortunately the hilarity did not stop with the wacko mutations.

In Gamma World and Met. Alpha games of my youth, we had some giddy fun, and there were laughs galore in the games. But we always approached it with a certain degree of seriousness. There may be insane powers abounding, but the game is still set in an apocalyptic setting. It is a game of survival even more than D&D, and at least in the case of Gamma World you are adrift in a decaying world full of danger. Now, I actually played in Cyclopeatron’s Gamma World (my first time sitting down as a Gamma World player in around 30 years) one-shot earlier this year, and the game was full of good chuckles. But even though this GW setting was more akin to what you would find on a classic heavy metal album cover (our characters were mutated rock stars of the far far far future), and was almost more high fantasy than any kind of serious science fiction, it managed to find enough of a dramatic tone to balance out the goofiness.

But goofy is just how my first few of these recent games I ran. But before this most recent game I put my finger on the button of what kept certain seriousness from drifting in along with the crazy mutants. And what the problem was comes right down to me. You see, without even thinking about tone, I went into the games laughing more than anybody. And I set the scenes and encounter with a certain comedic tone without even realizing it at first. All the laughing is great, but this isn’t fucking Toon or Paranoia or some other game where laughs are first and foremost. It’s basically Gamma World, and it should be more frightening and chilling than pure guffaws.

So before this last game I decided that the world could be as goofy as hell, or whatever the players wanted out of it. But for me, as GM, I needed to try and not share in the laughs. I had to approach my game setting and the session more or less serious as a heart attack. Instead of describing an encounter with a flock of sheep that turn out to be carnivorous with a big grin on my puss, I need to think in terms of just how scary this could be. A pleasant postcard scene of sheep on a hill, then suddenly this flock is tearing into you like fluffy wolves. Lovecraft could easily present this weird situation in a non-goofy manner, so why can’t I?

The funniest movies are the ones that act like they are not in on the joke. Austin Powers was funniest in the first movie because he wasn’t in on the joke like he seemed to be in the later films. And the funniest Jim Carry movies have everyone in the foreground talking about some serious matter, while in the background Ace Ventura is jumping around with an alligator or whatever clenched on his ass. Or, you can even turn that around a bit. The home invasion and rape scene in A Clockwork Orange has in modern times become sort of a comedic punch line, but at its core it is one of the most frightening scenes in any film ever made. It all depends on approach.

So in the last game I took a more serious stance, and although the players still had a jolly good time with their sicko super powers and crippling disabilities I think there was a bit more respect for the setting, and what I was trying to do with it.

The things that happen in any role-playing game very often elicit laughs and humorous ironies, but sometimes it is best if the GM doesn’t act like he is in on the joke.

All that in-game argle bargle

After several weeks we managed to get back to The Night Below. Until last night I figured it would be maybe three games to finish this up. Now I feel I could not have been more wrong.

I can’t say it wasn’t fun. It was a mostly role playing session, with a short bit of combat at the end. But it was not meant to be hugely talkative, because in this game I expected the group to meet the Derro Renegades, and then spend around half the game in the Derro Town (the last stop before The City of the Glass Pool). I’m no railroady DM though, so things rarely pan out the way I would like, especially in relation to the amount of time things take.

I have a group where the players are all often of a different mind about things with each other, and it is for sure like that with the characters. Not generally especially argumentative with each other, when it comes to the handling of captured NPC’s or treasure they can argie bargie (using the terminology of my Scottish parents; “argle bargle” counts as well) up a storm.

The thief member of the slavers that were fought (to a standstill more or less) last game was charmed by Kyrsantha the drow, so she returned at the beginning of this game from running away from the cave-in. Two characters, Big Ben’s Lumarin the Grey elf MU, and Terry’s Helena the human fighter, were at negative hit points and therefore pretty damn jacked up. The slaver’s young thief Prentyss was then taken into custody (but treated friendly at this point) and the group backtracked a few miles and found a perfect side cave to take the several days rest required for the negative hit point nellies to recover. On a side note, Helena was negative 8, and it had been a long time since anyone in my game was that bad at such a high level (Helena has around 50 hp). My impulse is to at least have some minor crippling of some kind, but that is always tempered by the fact that D&D isn’t really set-up for that. In the long run, I didn’t have anything be wrong once the time period went by, although I am likely to give her a minor thing next game, like a minus 1 to the strength in her shield arm or some BS like that.

Anyway, let the hours-long never ending argle bargle commence. Ultimately, both Kryantha the drow and Lumarin the elf felt fairly harsh measures where called for. Not killing (I think), but at least stripping Prentyss of her stuff and sending her off alone into the Underdark. Now, both these characters are lawful in alignment (Lumarin lawful good; Krysantha lawful neutral) and it seems that the last couple of games I have to constantly remind them. I’m like “If you are going to choose a lawful alignment, fucking own it! I didn’t make you choose that alignment.” Man, nothing is more tiring than fretting over alignment issues. The people that don’t use them for sure have a point.

It seemed like they were ready to send Prentyss away to the surface world along with an Invisible Stalker escort to protect her, despite the now uncharmed and tied up Prentyss telling them that gang leader Xavier has a map of the City of the Glass Pool and would probably trade it for her. It really seems that both Lumarin and Krysantha are taking out a lot of their anger at Lily for her betrayal last game on this thief NPC. It all smacked of chaotic actions to me. Even ol’ chaotic good half elf bard Vaidno has become a voice of reason aimed at these guys. Only Vaidno, Helena, and Ormac the gnome seem to not have become bitter at the heavy experiences they have had in the Night Below.

Dia, the NPC ranger and bearer of Finslayer the anti-Kuo Toa, Aboleth, and Drow sword, finally spoke up, and the sword demanded that Prentyss be kept as a useful hostage. Finslayer only cares about what will help the goal of destroying it’s hated enemies. Meanwhile, both Lumarin and Krysantha seem more bottled up with their own vendetta’s against a couple of young female thieves than in destroying the true evil power in the area. In this game for sure they seemed somewhat unlawful to me. Both Ben and Dan are stone sure they are correct in their thoughts and actions (and I have to admit that it is often hard to figure out what is supposed to be coming from the characters, and what is being vented by the players themselves. Here is where it starts to feel like work).

So it is decided that they will take the hostage Prentyss along with them. So begins the hour long bargle over who gets what out of Prentyss’ belongings. Hoo boy, another long spirited debate. At one point Andy was yelling at hard-headed Dan here, and it was a comfort hearing somebody else having to raise their voice at the sometimes obstinate and power gaming Dan.

Poor Paul. Paul is a young guy who came along late in the group, and had no tabletop experience before (although he had lots of D&D type video game experience, such as Neverwinter Nights). He turned out to be a great roleplayer though, and his actions as Lily last game netted him more experience than anyone else has received in one game in this group. Just outstanding stuff. Paul got a kick out of all the trouble Lily was still causing in the group despite having run off with Xavier and gang, but lets face it; sit around for three hours listening to the arguing with no character present is tiring, and finally he was picking up his stuff and ready to book. But I had him stay, and for one little combat encounter with a Derro patrol I had him show up with a Githyanki NPC to run and join the party. In the little bit of time we had, he got right into the character (he had Githyanki experience from them being a major plot point in one of the Neverwinter Nights games).

So there we had it. A spirited game, but one that had way to much in the way of debate. Fun on one side of the coin; exhausting as the chapter in LOTR where they all argue at the meeting in Rivendell on the other side of the coin. Just in the spirit of getting the campaign to a conclusion sometime this millennium, I am going to have to cut these debates short, putting some kind of 15 minute time limit on any subject on the table. It was a special case though, in that they all spent a week in a small cave, and that added to the slow down in game play. I’m hoping we can now move into a nearly all combat phase of the campaign finale. In those brutal and deadly last hours of the campaign, these guys are not going to find me to be the softy, pushover DM I tend to be just for the sake of shutting people up.

Time to pump it up a notch.

Thinkin’ about campaigns for 2011

November always seems to be the time I start to look towards what will pan out for the game group in the coming year.

I’ve been doing pretty much the same 1st edition campaign for over two years now. So, with maybe three or four games left for my AD&D Night Below campaign (actually, the first few months of gaming in this group had nothing to do with the NB, I hadn’t originally planned for the party to end up in that grinder of a setting) I have to start thinking of what to do next.

A part of me wants to get right into a new D&D campaign. It has now literally been years since I ran for a group of low level characters, and it would be fun to start something fresh after all this time steering the destinies of higher level PC’s. But really, I love running other games besides D&D, and I want to have an opportunity to do more of that without it just being an alternate. So what I will do is take a break from running D&D for the first few months of 2011 (with the exception perhaps of the occasional White Box game) and do something entirely different.

Big Ben has been running his AD&D elf-centric game here and there, but I think for the first couple months of the year we’ll play a bit more of that, plus Terry has expressed interest in revisiting her old 2nd edition game world so we will maybe be doing a bit of that as well. So D&D, which Andy and I basically started the group to play, will be well represented without me actually running it. But run something regularly I will, but what?

As much as I love Call of Cthulhu, I’m still not sure this is the right group for it. Role playing abounds with these guys, but lots of combat also seems to be a big preference. That just don’t happen in CoC. I have done a few street level Champions games with Terry, Andy, and Paul, but I’m not sure that doing that or full blown superheroes will fit the bill for what I want from the group right now (I find Hero System, like all crunchy systems, to be best for small groups).

Basically, I have recently that I would do a space game of some sort for next year’s early months. But what would these guys like? Star Wars? Dune? Aliens/Firefly/Traveller type settings? Anyway, I posted those choices on our Yahoo Groups page, and out of the five who voted so far, Star Wars is the clear favorite. So I think I will do a short SW campaign. This is good for a couple of reasons:

One, I really have a bad attitude about Star Wars. All the Muppets and the childish, unfunny humor. The three prequels that put a bullet in the franchise for me. Sure, I find them watchable on TV here and there, but have zero desire to live in that universe or to know any of the people in it. What, you ask yourself “This is a good reason?” Well, as much as I think much about the films are lame, I love the Knights of The Old Republic setting with a passion, based mostly on my experience with the XBOX game of that same name. 4,000 years before the hubris of George Lucas. And less Muppets because less Outer Rim planets have been discovered. Lots of epic things happening too, like the end of the brutal Madalorian War, and the beginning of the Jedi Civil War. Jedi and Sith are all over the place, and Lightsabers more plentiful than empty beer cans on the floor of a Culver City bus. No stupid “Rule of Two.” Really, there are a million reasons why it is a great Sci Fi setting despite the silly films.

And reason two, well, I had a pretty shitty experience with running this game last year for a group of middle-aged Star Wars freaks who treated me like an employee and stuck around when I left to discuss my game performance at the end of the day (yeah, I know, much more to that tale but I have pretty much moved on from just another negative experience in a fairly overall shitty year). What, you ask yourself “This is a good reason?” Well, yeah. I like my regular group, and I put a lot of work, time, effort, and a certain amount of money (I owned no Star Wars books when I accepted the “assignment”) into the few games I ran for that Hollywood group. I think we can have a lot of fun with it, and light Sci Fi is something I can practically phone in like my D&D games.

So Knights of the Old Republic it is, for the first three or four months of the year, anyway. Besides the KOTOR games, I will of course throw out that odd OD&D White box dungeon crawl as an alternate, as well as some bits of Champions when the group is lacking players on a game night. I’ll alternate my games with whoever does some of their D&D. I’ll let Big Ben and Terry slug it out for those slots.

I just gotta finish up the year, and finish up this damn Night Below campaign. Fun, but jeez, it’s starting to feel like I’ve been walking uphill with this setting over my shoulder forever. Gotta wrap it up (and kill some characters if at all possible). Stay tuned for details on that (finally back to AD&D next week).

Player drops the DM Bomb

Old friend and current player Terry dropped by on Monday night this week to play video games as she often does (Champions of Norrath, Baldur’s Gate, etc.) when she has a dance practice on the West Side.

Handed her a Fat Tire Ale, we horked a shot of Tequila, and before we got to the game she talked about the game regular player Big Ben ran last week that I missed. I had a hell of a busy week preparing for the final blowout weekend of the Northern Ren Faire, and had also just bought a new car (a nifty black Jeep Compass), so I was just feeling a little too stressed to run one of the last games of my two year Night Below campaign. But hey, I wanted an alternate D&D game going besides my own for just such an emergency. That way, I don’t have to feel like I HAVE to provide a game if I am not feeling up to it.

Anyway, out of the blue Terry mentioned that she would not mind doing a little DM’ing. I was not too surprised; early this year while liquored up in the Mirage Casino suite while we were listening to tunes and taking a break from the slots, I brought up the idea that she might try it again. You see, in a way I feel I owe her that.

Around 1993 or so Terry declared she wanted to run some D&D. I had three major campaigns going on at the time with the group; AD&D 1st ed, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions. So we had plenty to do, and by that point in life I had already decided that I wasn’t cut out for the player experience. My joy came out of providing a setting and some challenges and watching the proceedings bloom like a flower. So there were in fact good reasons to not have yet another game by somebody else going on. But on the other side of the coin we did manage to find time to play long sessions of Talisman at the time, so I guess another D&D campaign was not out of the question. So it was like “sure Terry, go for it.”

Terry bought some books, and of course by that time it was 2nd edition they were selling. That was the first thing that got my goat. I would be playing the new version of D&D. Another thing that I was worried about was that despite her having a lot of acting and performing experience I wasn’t sure Terry was aggressive enough to run D&D. OK, it was one of my misconceptions of the time (remember, I was still in my dumb ass 20’s then) that somebody had to be very outgoing and outspoken as I was to run decent games. Terry is often sort of reserved. Don’t get me wrong, she can be a firecracker. Get her mad and you are getting yelled at. And when we are fighting a boss in Baldur’s Gate and she keeps getting killed, her shouts of frustration have me worried the neighbors will think I am killing a hooker in the workshop or something (that’s more of a Saturday night thing).

But in retrospect Terry set-up a decent setting with a fairly clever campaign in mind (adventurer’s coming to a new frontier continent with no civilizations known of), and there was plenty of room for role play among the characters. I came up with a character I loved, Micah, a big tanned sun-worshipping barbarian from some tropical island local (I used the great Conan figure available at the time).

We had a few games over time, but two things frustrated me. One, Terry didn’t seem to have studied the rules very well (something that I could be called guilty on a time or two in my Gm’ing career), and because they were different enough from AD&D I could not be that much of a help (plus I had house ruled so many things away in my game I wasn’t sure I even knew 1st ed. that well anymore). When Terry had to look something up during play, it was often a 20 minute deal. I know, I counted. Later I would realize that the skill of just winging it over spending nose-time in the books is something that you eventually learn as a DM, but Terry didn’t have that yet. So at some point we were in one game where our travelling overland to get to some location spilled over from the previous game. That game had ended with us fighting wolves. Then this game started with us fighting…wolves. Then a few hours into this game we were still travelling and fighting…wolves.

So I made pleas to Terry to just ignore the fucking wandering monster tables and either give us something different to fight, or just get us to the damn location. But I was unheeded. She was determined to go by the book. So some time in the 5th or 6th hour of the game, and maybe 12 beers in, I sort of blew my top. Fellow player Planet Janet and I had already talked a bit on the side about how the games were going, and she was frustrated too (Terry had her boyfriend playing the games, but he wasn’t really into games anyway so he was of the opinion of just being supportive of Terry’s efforts).

But when it came to the zero hour, I was alone in my confrontation, but I felt an intervention was necessary. We were putting hours into this thing every few weeks, and she was taking zero player input (another skill that has to be developed) about how it could be more fun for us. At that time, these were cardinal sins to me. Plus I was having a very broke year then, and I didn’t have wheels for a few months. I was taking three buses over two hours + to get to The Hollywood Bowl area from Venice, and for that you want to be rewarded with some stellar gameplay, no?

So I just told Terry the games were sucking big donkey dick (paraphrasing), it wasn’t fun, and that I was done with it. In a nutshell, that was it. Terry didn’t like it, she dropped out of my games altogether, and we didn’t even talk for almost three years until the mid-90’s when I had a big group in full swing and asked her to come play again. We stayed friends ever since.

But now you see why I maybe owe Terry another shot. She has supported my return to gaming after several year hiatus by being an important part of this group, and that is another reason to let her have a go. But of course, I would want there to be a caveat that she would be more open to player input on the games. Sure, I don’t always have that kind of sympathy for my players, but I have around 35 years of experience, and half my players are shameless power gamers (compared to Terry anyway, who is about as low maintenance a player as you could ask for), so I try not to cut too much slack or they’d eat me alive.

So sure, what the hell. Let’s have Big Ben continue to do his alternate 1st edition a bit, and maybe into next year before too long we’ll let Terry have a go. And of course it will be 2nd edition. But that is OK, I kind of look forward to posting about playing another edition (and one that isn’t 3rd or 4th). This will free me up to do Star Wars KOTOR, Champions, and Call of Cthulhu that I am chomping at the bit to do. But the group was started to do D&D, and we need that going on too. I have to admit, after a two year campaign I’m ready to rest up on the D&D DM’ing a bit.

So sure Terry, you have my vote. If the other guys are up for it, then go for it. Just, uh, go easy on the wolves, eh?

Powerful Little Women

Normal size women who display super strength are nothing new. Even before Elly May Clampett and Granny were seen picking up fallen trees and flinging full grown men around the room, the voluptuous chicks of L’il Abner were running men down, throwing them over their shoulders, and schlepping them off to the Sadie Hawkins dance. In the case of Elly May and Abner’s girls, it was that hard livin’ mountain life that instilled tensile, long muscled strength. Of course for Granny it was her moonshine (a potion which also appeared to give her super speed), also known as “rumatiz medicine.”

I was always especially fascinated by women who were much stronger than they look. Actually, anyone who is way stronger than they look is pretty interesting. I think it started with Marvel Comics for me, where a little skinny dude like Spider-Man could bend girders and punch through brick walls. Even Daredevil, who could (according to the Guide to the Marvel Universe) bench press the same weight as a gold medal winning Olympic weight lifter, was fairly normal of build. And the super strength of werewolves, vampires, and other creatures of more or less average build who could lift grown men over their heads with one hand were always cool.

I think it is that comic book background that has me giving people a break as far as how muscular they look with their strong characters in my AD&D or Champions games. Very often you get somebody who has a 16 or higher strength character, but they envision that PC as being fairly normal of build, sometimes even thin. Sure, even in real life you get wiry dudes who seem to be able to perform great feats of strength.

One of my older brother’s friends when I was a kid was this fairly short and not especially muscled dude, and I remember him getting in a fight and literally picking up a guy who was bigger than him over his head and throwing him into a wall. From what I was told that was not unusual for him. I heard stories about him getting in bar fights, where he would slam a guy onto the bar and then slide him across it face first like in a saloon from a cowboy movie. Now, my big bro is a 6’5” former football player, and not only have I seen him do things like that in the distant past, he looks like he could. At 6’2” and only having bench pressed a max of 275 in high school football (probably the pinnacle of my pure strength), I might have been able to lift a man over my head. I never tried though, much preferring to go for the immediate take down on any past opponents over pluck n’ throw. The point is in our cases we looked like the strength we had. Big dudes doing big things.

But it does seem to take a little suspension of disbelief when there is a female character with a 17 or higher strength, and she doesn’t look like one of those beastie chicks doing the caber toss down at the highland games. For example, my player Terry has a female fighter named Helena who she started with a 17 strength. Far from looking like a beast, Helena is around 5’7” and although maybe a little lean and hard-bodied she just does not appear to have that kind of strength. Or does she? She is a broadsword and shield fighter, so you can imagine her developing decent upper body strength; muscle long on the bone.

I don’t really oppose that, and I let characters look like whatever the player wants them too. Sure, it gets a little nutty when somebody with an 18/50 strength wants to look like Kate Moss or whatever, but it is a fantasy game after all. A woman can be as strong as an ox, and not look like one if that is the player’s preference.

Call of Cthulhu Friday: Mythos Card Game

In the early 90’s I decided I wanted to do some Call of Cthulhu with my regular D&D group. It had been a few years, and I was just chomping at the bit to do a new campaign. But most of my regular players, including my two long-time female players Terry and Planet Janet, did not have much interest. Pretty much none of my players at the time were even aware of the great works of Mr. Lovecraft.

But like other genres I would introduce to this group (the main other one being Champions), it only took one game to win them over. Both Terry and Janet came up with great characters, and often when we had a D&D session planned they would request I make it CoC instead. I remember one great game where only the three girls in my group showed up, so I just let them wander the map of Arkham, poking their heads into antique shops and bookstores, shopping at various clothing boutiques, and having lunch in a diner, all the while being stalked by agents of the evil they were then facing.

When I discovered the Mythos Card game and began collecting them, Terry and Janet got on that boat as well. Soon we all had enough cards for various theme decks, and for a couple of years we spent many a Saturday or Sunday afternoon doing tequila shots and playing session after session. We seemed obsessed with the game at one point (although I think it was only I who managed an almost complete set of all the releases).

In Mythos, you selected one of various Lovecraftian heroes, such as professors, students, journalists, and doctors to be your character de jour (one of my faves was The Pragmatic Hobo). The deck consisted of location cards, event cards, phobia cards, and monsters. In a nutshell, you would place various location cards to indicate your current spot (or that you were travelling there or leaving there), and use its resources to be able to lay out artifact and tome cards, allies, and use the gate at that location (if it had one) to summon monsters to your “threat” that would attack another player at the end of a full round of playing. Both damage and sanity losses were what could take you out of the game. Ultimately, you had a variety of “story cards” that you held on to, because there were various conditions you had to fulfill in order to get the points off that adventure. Get enough points, and you won. Or you could just say “screw the story” and try to take out the other characters exclusively with your threats and phobias. Sanitarium locations existed as places you could go rest and recover some sanity. Appropriately for a Lovecraft themed game, some asylums had a risk of monster attack or some kind of botched medical procedure.

According to Wikipedia, In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Mythos as one of The Millennium's Best Card Games.[3] Editor Scott Haring said "Mythos was a very deserving game, with great art and gameplay that involved more than just monsters fighting each other."

In the end our sessions sort of petered out as we did other things, such as focus more on actual rpg games rather than a card game. I actually think Planet Janet stopped playing because I kicked her ass so thoroughly in almost every game. She claimed it was because I had more cards than her, but that wasn’t really the case. I was damn good at the game. Terry was a good player, but she just made her decks too big, restricting access of cards she really needed to get to in order to fulfill her stories.

Last year Terry came over to play Mythos a couple of times, but then she got hooked on my Champions of Norrath and Baldur’s Gates Playstation games, and ended up preferring those to anything else we might do whenever she stopped by.

But I have fond memories of this card game, in a way I don’t really for Magic the Gathering, which I think I have outgrown. I’ll always be up for more Mythos down the line. Do you have a deck?

Charisma & The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

She is a loner. Aloof at all times, and surly to everybody, she downplays her looks by wearing black make-up and rocking a variety of piercings. The large dragon tattoo on her back is grotesque, appearing to literally be bursting free from her body. None of it is appealing to anyone but the most die hard goth/emo puke. Most normal people on the street who have more than a passing encounter with her find her repellant. Yet after you see this girl in action, getting a glimpse into her private life, you find her fascinating and you cannot look away. Inner beauty reveals itself in the form of steel-trap intelligence, physical pound for pound power, and certain invincibility.

Lisbeth is the titular character in the amazing Swedish crime thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In the film, this young woman, who already comes to us with half a dozen lifetimes of bad baggage, gets involved in one horrifying situation of another, whether in her own private life or in that of the famous journalist she is “cyberstalking” for the high end private investigation firm she freelances for. In a business monotone Lisbeth talks to a room of suit and tie professionals; fully out of place and almost bizarre in her macabre fashion statements. But the men in the room know her work, and have nothing but respect for her amazing computer research talents. These older, experienced private investigators look to her for the deep information that they cannot dig up on the streets. Lisbeth can find out anything about anybody.

Out in the urban jungle, Lisbeth is swift and canny, escaping one deadly situation after another, whether it be drunk punks in the metro looking to humiliate her for her appearance, brutal state imposed mentors who look to abuse her for sick pleasure, or even serial killers, Lisbeth comes out of each and every situation she enters on top. In the rare times she does not, she survives to return to exact brutal vengeance on any man who looks to harm her or the few people she is loyal too.

This weekend I saw the sequel to that great movie, The Girl Who Played with Fire, at an Academy of Science Fiction screening in West LA. Almost as great as the first, it got even deeper into the character of Lisbeth and her private world of violence and vengeance.

And it had me thinking about Charisma, in game terms, like it did when I watched the first film in the trilogy. This repellant and generally unattractive girl, so unlikeable on first meeting, actually turns out to have an almost irresistible, edgy charm. You only have to get a glimpse of her life to find yourself rooting for her in all of her misadventures. Those who see the true Lisbeth see an amazing and powerful charisma.

There are so many examples of repugnant individuals real and imagined who have big charisma, from Hitler to Hannibal Lector, who somehow have a strange magnetism. So many factors are involved. I think we have all hated somebody not knowing them at all, but after some acquaintance we change our minds completely about them.

Out of all statistics in a game like, say, D&D, I think charisma is the most difficult to apply in any kind of realistic manner. Even the somewhat abstract concept of Wisdom is easier to figure out in a real life way. In D&D, charisma helps you with how many henchfolk you can have, and give you a base reaction in encounters where it is appropriate. But let’s face it, that is more of a cartoony “winning smile” charisma. Tony Curtis in The Great Race flashing those white, gleaming choppers so charismatically that thrown pies won’t even dare sully him.

But how to make charisma more like it is in the real world? I’m guessing for a game like D&D it is just too much trouble. You’d have to take in both the persons speaking manner, their body language, looks, and actions. Plus you would have to look at any number of factors involved in the person we need a charisma related action from.

What can you do? I guess we’ll just have to keep charisma simple until a renowned gamer psychologist comes forward to put a better spin on it. Any out there?

Earthlings in your Fantasy Soup

I started thinking on this after reading a recent Grognardia post.

People from Earth ending up in fantasy worlds has an ancient legacy. “The Blazing World” of the late Renaissance, regarded as the first true fantasy world/science fantasy story, featured an Earthling stumbling into a strange world of humanoid animals. And Earthlings, even lepers and dumbass English kids who get locked in wardrobe cabinets, have been going to fantasy land ever since.

So how do I feel about a connection between my fantasy world and Earth? Well, over the decades I have been of differing minds on the matter. I still use the same game world I came up with as a kid, “Acheron.” But in those early days I was up for almost anything. Things like the multi-universal Arduin and The City State of The Invincible Overlord inspired me to do all sorts of wacky things with my world.

In those few short formative years I had gods from Earth myth as the gods of clerics; Thor, Odin, Zeus, etc, just like The City State did. It wasn’t until my mid teens when I started coming up with gods for my world from whole cloth, or expanding upon gods my players created, that I started rethinking that. Eventually I would eliminate those Earth gods from my world and stick with the original ones, so in thinking upon those early days I cut my young self some slack. But into the adult years of gaming I only very rarely had any sort of Earth connection with Acheron. When I did, it was not to use any normal sort of Earth human or Earth setting. It was my futuristic Hero Systems/Champions setting that I used.

In the 80’s I had a brother of my major ranger NPC (my first true D&D character, actually, that I ended up using for my own world) get trapped in my Champions setting, and become a sort of rustic superhero in that. So clearly I had established a link between worlds. And once or twice I had dimension hopping characters from my Champions games spend brief times in Acheron when I felt it was appropriate and I wanted some fantasy elements (in one case, heroes chased down some dimension-bending super-hunters who were going to Acheron to kill unicorns and other cutesy creatures).

But just having some d-bag professor or leper or whatever show up to dick around in Acheron? Naw. It isn’t that interesting to me. Maybe because I found Thomas Covenant and Harold Shea to be total bores. It has to be something very appealing to make me break that line between worlds, and the typical “Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” type stuff seems pretty played out to me now. Just a busted, old concept.

These days, I just like to keep my fantasy world pure. I do, however, like chocolate in my peanut butter. That will never change.

Character betrays party: film at 11

We got to do our Night Below game two weeks in a row, which is a rare treat. Let’s just say that Andy promised to take the trash out and mow the lawn for the wife for the next 30 years so we could get that extra access to her workshop.

Anyway, this session would prove to be just as memorable as the last Deck of Many Things session.

Let’s talk about the character Lily for a second. When a couple of new players came along last year, both of their characters began in the hands of a fierce tribe of gnolls in the sub-surface caves above the deeper Underdark. First captives of surface world slavers looking to make a buck from the Illithids way down at The City of The Glass Pool, the gnolls came along and picked up a little something for dinner, slaying most of the slavers in combat, and taking the already bound captives to a larger cave to butcher and munch them. Seconds from becoming a nice meal as the gnoll chopped up one captive after another, Lily and the other new character Lumarin the lawful good Grey Elf MU, were saved and became a part of the overall quest against the COTGP and the Aboleth in the Sunless Sea.

Lily is a local of the frontier settlement Overtown above, and her upbringing was less than ideal. She was a child mostly of the streets, and at a young age learned both to steal and to sell herself. At some point Lily learned magic from a mage “john” (yeah, I am allowing human multi-classing in some cases), and hence began her adventuring career as a Thief/MU. In her notes on her history, Lily described a gang leader boyfriend in town named Xavier who had tricked her into killing her own estranged father. When Lily was captured by the slavers, she was on the run from Xavier.

I should mention that Lily’s player, Paul, is a young guy very new to tabletop, and most of his experience is with video games. It was kind of refreshing to have this rpg near-virgin come to the table, as in stark contrast to most of my other players he comes with no baggage from previous years/decades of game play. Paul’s character actions, which might be pretty munchinky from more experienced players, take on a sort of innocent quality. Pretty much Paul is just trying to run a character with a broken soul, and nothing he did with Lily comes from just being a prick or anything. That in itself is refreshing, no doubt.

Lily had proven herself mostly unworthy of trust by sneaking around stealing and hogging treasure while others fought the good fight in encounters. Krysantha the Drow was especially hard on her, and in at least one case Vaidno the half elf Bard kept Krys from letting loose with violence on Lily and her nihilistic attitude. Things had gotten bad enough that when Lily got wishes from the Deck of Many Things in the last game, she offered one to Krysantha if she would agree to leave Lily alone in her endeavors from now on.

OK, as for the current party in general, they had left the Jubilex Shrine slime caves and were well on their way further down. Beaming from their fabulous rewards from the Deck of Many Things, nothing impeded the party or broke their spirit. Several wandering Displacer Beasts were handily dispatched. Further down the road, a Purple Worm (fixed encounter in book 2 of NB) attacked, but they managed to defeat it in fairly quick time (only Vaidno took a hit from the tail, and making his save was one of at least three close calls he had this game. I took to calling him “Survaivno”).

But the next encounter proved to be a bitch for everybody, even me.

In book 2 after the purple worm area, there is a set encounter with a high level group of slavers. A 7th level fighter in plate, a 7th level female human MU, a 6th level human cleric, a 6/6 high elvish female figher/MU, and Prentyss, a 9th level thief (and “Frienemy” of Lily who vied for Xavier’s attention). All these NPC’s have magic items up the yin yang besides their own decent powers and abilities. Some time ago I decided I would include Lily’s old gang leader boyfriend Xavier (a fighter/thief 6/7) to round out this group. Tall, dark, and sadistic, I gave him (besides other things) a magical tattoo that could turn into a giant rattlesnake once a day that would help fight for him.

Of course, I based this all around Lily, having previously rounded out the NPC personalities in relation to having known Lily before, and I also had given Lily notes about them before this encounter (“in case she ever ran into her old gang again”). So yeah, this was all about a cool encounter with people from Lily’s troubled past. I rarely use high level groups of NPC’s in encounters these days, although I did that a lot In the past. I feel it is not just a great challenge to players, but it often comes off like a cool comic book hero/villain group encounter. With my comic book upbringing, this is a great thing and I just don’t do it enough anymore. Here I was going to make up for it in spades. A possible battle royal, and finally a real challenge for this party.

So down in the tunnels, the Xavier gang is heading towards the party. 9th level thief Prentyss, invisible, scouts the way up ahead, and comes across the party while they are encamped and preparing for a rest period. Prentyss recognized her old friend Lily, and listens to the heated discussion going on (as the party tends to have). After a few minutes Prentyss returns to Xavier to tell him about Lily and her new friends. Xavier assumes Lily has joined up with some other gang, and decides he can use her to make capturing the characters easier. Xavier sends his fighter and bodyguard Groznyi to the character party to ask Lily to go speak with Xavier while Groznyi stays with the party as a hostage. After some arguing, Lily is allowed to head down the tunnel alone.

At this point I need several minutes with Lily’s player Paul, so I throw everybody out and tell them it’ll be a bit. Almost all of them smoke something or another, so it’s “smoke ‘em if you got em’.”

Xavier is there waiting with his badass gang for Lily. Basically, he asks a bit about the party, then asks her to rejoin him and help him take the party alive for sale down at the City of the Glass Pool. Now, although Lily’s alignment is pretty much chaotic neutral, Paul told me early on that she has a tendency towards evil, but not fully. So when I designed this encounter for Lily I had no idea which way this character would lean. At least for now, she agrees to lull the party into a false sense of security and lead them past the Xavier gang.

Finally back at the camp, Lily tells the party that her old friends are willing to let them pass without a fuss. Krysantha, ever the angry paranoid, is unconvinced. The drow goes ahead and uses her detect lie on Lily, and proceeds to give her the third degree. As still invisible Prentyss is listening close by, she goes and tells Xavier that the plan is not working, and he and the gang move in for the attack.

All hell busts loose as 6 powerful player characters and 6 NPC’s lock it up. Well, 5 player characters, because Lily turns invisible and hides. She seems unsure of what to do. I will admit that at this point I figure Lily will help save the day, but it is not to be so. She sneaks up behind a badly wounded Vaidno (one of her main defenders in group arguments regarding her) and attempts a backstab.

This was a big “oh shit” moment for me. Paul likes the character, and you would imagine that if for nothing else he would help the party to still stay in the game. But no. Lily decides that the ultimate quest is doomed to fail and figures helping Xavier is the best way out of the horrors of the Night Below (or as I call it after this game, “The Hurt Locker”).

Anyway, Lily misses her backstab on Vaidno! The bard lucks out again, because Lily’s extra damage would possibly have killed him. Lily hits herself with Mirror Image as attacks begin to come her way.

Although the NPC high level cleric is quickly killed early on in the battle by Vaidno and his flashing blades, most fight to a pretty good standstill, great blows being given and received. The NPC party has a high level MU and a mid level fighter/MU, and they use their decent amount of spells for good effect. But since Xavier wants the party alive, they hold off on fireballs and lightning bolts. But as damage is mounting on both sides, both Lily and the high level MU burst loose with fireballs. I describe the tunnel shaking badly, and Xavier tries to pull his people back from the fight, yelling at the characters to do the same so nobody else dies. Most comply, but Lumarin the high elf MU decides he hasn’t had enough and lets loose with some chain lightning on the NPC’s (an unusual move for the lawful good and reasoning Lumarin, but he had just come out of unconsciousness so he gets a pass).

At this point the game had gone until 11:30PM. We usually stop around 10:30, but this fight was bigger than I thought it would be. I was getting a big exhausted and cranky (I went into this session tired as hell). I described a roof shaking and possibility of collapse, and I was a bit pissed when the chain lightning went off because I had so far been lenient on fireballs and explosions from the party in the games. I just had not taught the players a lesson about not being careful with that shit underground. So I went for a cave-in roll. Got a 5 on a 6 and here comes the cave in.

Now, the players got scared and thought I was super mad when I called for a saving throw vs. death magic. But it isn’t instant death, I have just traditionally used that save for natural disasters like cave-ins and floods and the like. It was just a save for no damage. Those who failed got several dice in damage, and a couple of the characters went into negatives, including Terry who assumed her character Helena was toast at this point. All the NPC’s managed to make it out alive and kicking, and it provided a decent way to have them escape without any more fighting. I even had Prentyss, who was charmed, turn and run out of self preservation.

I was fairly generous letting the dying PC’s be gotten to and saved by the others in the dust from the collapse, but still, with one of the party fighters and the MU now in a world of hurt and needing a week of rest to be at full capacity (or at least a full heal spell), and many of the others battered and bruised and plenty damaged, the party is in a bad place. They are at the literal front steps of the Derro area before the City of the Glass Pool, and they will be needing every hit point for that.

This was a really exciting last couple of games. Unlike the last Deck of Things game where I got to negotiate characters dreams with them, this one was brutal dice rolling and bookkeeping game. Trying to do the turns of several powerful NPC’s in quick fashion (in many cases my doing turns for all those NPC’s was shorter than most of the single characters turns) is a bit of a challenge, but rewarding in the end. It was a hell of a battle royale.

September was the two year point for this campaign. 3-4 more sessions, and this ride is over – or is it?

(added note: Lily escaped with the bad guys, much to the party's chagrin!)