Mongol Month Draws to a Close

It's a little sad that this month didn't produce a better contest than it did. I was really trying to use it to springboard back into writing and really caring about gaming after my sister died. I spent most of the month though either sick or just depressed still and didn't really promote the whole Mongol thing or my contest particularly. As I write this I am 5 ½ hours from the submissions deadline and I have one short adventure here. I am afraid that I am going to have to call the contest off for lack of participation and interest and I am going to take a hiatus from blogging until I get my self more straight.

To be honest, the holiday season is probably going to be rough for me, so I don't imagine I'll be posting much in December. I have a plan for January though, so I hope that taking December (mostly) off will recharge me and give me the break I need to get my self together.

In the meantime, I still have like 50 of those refrigerator magnets; so anyone who wants one should just send me a SASE to-

William J. Dowie

32 Risley Drive

Mexico, NY 13114

If you already requested one and didn't get it, it's because Mona has been swamped, so this is just easier. Sorry, they probably will lack the art.

I'll be lurking around and reading OSR blogs in the interim, I just don't really have anything to say right now.

Fight ON!

Thanksgiving Update from the Great Khan

Mongol Month hasn't been a great success for me largely due to the fact that I have been sick for most of it. Cold, followed by the flu, it's been a miserable couple of weeks; once again, I blame my kids for bringing these sicknesses home from school :) Still, I had hoped to be more inspiring for my contest over the course of the month and I have dropped the ball. I haven't even done much gaming-wise except play some Civilization 4 and design a medieval town in the Sims 2 for a D&D campaign; complete with NPCs that have interactive relationships, I don't know why I never thought of this as a tool before.

I have been reading blogs and trying to keep up with the OSR, D&D Next and general gaming news, but I just haven't been compelled to do any commenting on anything until today. Today I figured, since I have the time and I am feeling better and it's been over a week since I posted anything to my blog, I thought I'd mention a couple of things.

First- I got my free miniature from The Assault Group for “Liking” their Facebook page. I really thought it wasn't coming, that I had missed a deadline on that or gotten lost in the shuffle or something because it had been so long since I had “liked” their page for their free mini promotion; as it turns out they mailed it in September. I am guessing customs held things up. Anyway, serendipitously, it's a Mongol General miniature and he's pretty cool. 28Mm scale and way more detailed than I am accustomed to seeing in a miniature from a wargaming manufacturer. Definitely RPG standards of quality there. Maybe I just don't buy enough 28mm wargaming minis.

Second- I just found out that there is an Up Front Kickstarter running. Up Front Was Avalon Hill's Squad Leader card game. I loved that game and I am going into that Kickstarter hard. I have the original version and all of it's expansions and I have been waiting for someone to bring it back into print and expand it some more. My original has been played hard and is starting to get a bit ratty and buying just a replacement set without expansions is generally more expensive than going all in ($125.00) on the Kickstarter. If you like Squad Leader, WW II games or fast paced card games I recommend this one.

Anyway, if you are in the US and you are celebrating Thanksgiving- Happy Thanksgiving!

Community World Building- Name That Khanate!

In addition to seeking the help of an experienced cartographer to help me make a good looking map of my new “Yassa: Legacy of the Khans” campaign world, I also have been stumbling a bit on names for the lesser Khanates. See, in our world Khanates, or Hordes, are named after the ethnic make-up of the people in them, like the Kipchak Horde*, or a color/metal like the Golden or White Hordes, or they are named after the founding leader, like the Chagatai Khanate, or just the geographical place where they are, like the Crimean Khanate. Now I have done this all, but I have also been trying to give them some more flavor, some descriptor that evokes something when you hear the name. Frankly, the well is running dry.

So I decided to run another contest- here on my blog: Name a Khanate (or Horde), I'll put up a poll and the top entries will be put into my new campaign world and you'll receive a credit, my thanks, and if you send me your mailing address, a cool refrigerator magnet! The envelope it arrives in will probably be decorated by my lovely wife Mona too! Send me your prospective Khanate or horde name at williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com sometime before the 27^th of November and we'll run the poll from then until the 1^st of December, finishing both of my Mongol themed contests at once. Four days of voting should be enough, right? I picked the 27^th because it's my anniversary.

Now, while this is a fantasy world, it is more Swords & Sorcery style, there are no “common” monsters, no tribes of humanoids roaming around. The commonest “monster” is man. Think “Conan the Barbarian”, but in a world where the Mongols stomped every other kingdom into the dust. Now it's a couple of centuries after they peaked, and they've broken into a bunch of squabbling sub-empires and the ethnic groups that they conquered are re-asserting themselves in an attempt to overthrow their steppe descended overlords.

Essentially this world's Genghis Khan is a mixture of our Genghis Khan and Conan the Barbarian. He has Genghis Khan's background and ambition and Conan's absolute bad-assery. Think of him like a Frazetta Mongol leading a horde to conquer the world, kind of like this guy-

Anyway, I'll repeat my request for artists again, since I got no response last time. I always bury the lead on these things, ARTISTS AND CARTOGRAPHERS NEEDED, contact me if you are interested in helping out with this world design project. I am married to an artist, I appreciate the effort it takes and that you don't want to work for free. That said, this is not a commercial product, but a gift to the community. I can give credit and I'll be happy to send a refrigerator magnet to anyone who helps on the project at all, but as much as I'd like to, I can't afford to budget for artists on a project that's going to be free. I just wanted to get that out there so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings or anything. More art is better, more artists is better too. I'd like to put this together with a cool piece of cover art, some interior illustration and nice maps.

*Yes, I am aware that the Kipchak Horde is an alternate name of the Golden Horde.

Mongol Adventure Contest and Friday Night Update

I was sick with a cold for most of this week and didn't blog at all. I also put aside my world building project in favor of playing some Civilization 4 and reading to recharge my batteries some. I am largely better now and will be DMing one of the entries in the Mongol Adventure Contest for my home group tomorrow. The contest is going OK, but I'd be happier with some more entries. I hope you all are still working on yours because I am still working on more prizes.

World Building, D&D and Me

I guess this is really what my last post was all about. So, rather than reply to all the comments on that post I decided to write this post.

What got me thinking about the whole thing was the fact that I am knee deep in a new world building project right now; my working title is "Yassa- Legacy of the Khans". It's more or less based on the idea that, in a world much like our own, there arose a Genghis Khan type figure that united his people and that he and his descendants conquered the entire known world in their 13th century. The campaign is set in the dawn of their 15th century as the empire has fragmented into rival khanates and their subject peoples are starting to rebel and reassert themselves. Many of the local Khans have "gone native" and adopted the culture and religions of their subjects, causing tensions, and outright wars, between the various parts of the once unified empire. I am not as far along on this project as I'd like to be at this point, but these things happen; it's a pretty ambitious project.

I also am reminded of the various other world building projects I have done.

I had a Greco-Roman themed world where all of the Dwarves were male, born to Human families and considered to be the sons of the God Vulcan. There were no other Demi-Human races. All of the Humans and Dwarves were native to a single large island archipelago and they had just developed the maritime technology to begin their age of exploration. The rest of the world was populated by bestial Humanoids that were the descendants of mankind that had been cursed by the gods for lapsing into Evil ways, Pig-Faced Orcs, Dog-Faced Kobolds, Jackal-Headed Gnolls, etc.

This one lasted one session, and I didn't even get to DM it. Darryl and I were co-DMing this as a project, he DMed the first session. Everyone had a good time. A person who showed up late and didn't play spent 4 hours explaining why this setting was lame and "regular" D&D would be better, but if he had to play here, he'd be OK with playing a Half-Ogre.

One semester of college I developed an Anglo-Saxon themed world where humanity clung to a fringe of coastline west of a huge forest, beyond which was a vast steppe land dominated by a Sauron type dark lord and his Humanoid minions. The Elves, the only Demi-Human race that had appeared in the campaign before the end, had fled across the western sea and only a small band returned on a quest for a magic sword buried in a mound.

Mona and I played this one as a solo campaign for most of the semester and petered out around finals. I resurrected the setting a couple of years later for a larger group, but it didn't last more than a few sessions. Nobody was really thrilled with having Anglo-Saxon names, they wanted a more "regular" D&D game.

Then there is the grand-daddy of all of my world building projects: Garnia. 30+ years in the making, it's finally getting a serious reworking for eventual public consumption. That's 30+ years of notes and revisions and retcons and stuff that's only stuck in my head. I have a whole other blog devoted to it. Garnia is (mostly, at it's core) a Celtic world where Gauls and Britons were literally brought to a different world via magical means. Once they got there, they conquered an Elven empire and then had to take over their mantle of defending pretty much everything from the marauding armies of Humanoids. They aren't the only ones that made the trip, and other creatures made the trip from other worlds too. Garnia is the closest to a "standard" D&D world as I have ever created, which makes sense, I started it when I was a kid and wanted to include all the stuff from my brand new AD&D Monster Manual.

Garnia has actually absorbed two other entire world building projects that were based on a similar theme, one with Romans and one with Vikings. I just placed them on different, far away, parts of the world.

Garnia has been my default campaign world for over 30 years, some campaigns have flourished there, some have died after one session; it's tough to say why. I've run every edition of D&D, except 4th, and Hackmaster there, plus a Homebrew system and we're working on another homebrew system now. Hell, I've even run GURPS there. Once.

I guess the world building is important to me because it lets me understand more fully how the NPCs are going to react to any given situation. A cultural/political/religious/whatever context is important to me as a DM for figuring out the motives and justifications for actions that these NPCs or Monsters are going to use. I guess that's worth more to me to get into character than it is for the minor difficulties of players having trouble pronouncing exotic names or being expected to read a couple of emails or a cultural background sheet before we start.

The comments on my last post were largely supportive of my deep world building for every campaign I run, except for one that said I was trying to tell my story instead of letting the players tell theirs. I guess that might be true to a certain extent, D&D is interactive group story telling to each other, but the DM is responsible for the setting, the plot and all of the non-main characters. You can't really play the game without the DM's input, because there would be no story to tell.

Just out of curiosity, which of these worlds sounds the most compelling to you from the brief synopsis?

New Contest Sponsor

Just in- Mick Leach from Easternfront Studios (Makers of fine Metal and Resin miniatures) has just agreed to sponsor the November Mongol Module Contest with prizes for first, second and third place.

The "Odin" from their "Myths of Legend" line.

Some Mongol Inspiration

Since I spent today in other pursuits, working on projects and reading through "Delving Deeper", I thought I'd share some inspirational and evocative art for those of you who might be working on an adventure for my contest. All of these were done by an artist from Mongolia who goes by the handle Daldbaatar on Deviantart. According to his profile he is currently an art student in Tokyo.

Enjoy.

Mongol Conquest of November Contest

Since the Mongols have pushed on into November, I thought it would be best if I reiterated the terms of the contest for everyone, especially since there are some new faces here.

The contest is for short adventures with a Mongol theme, featuring the Mongols as the heroes. I am sick of seeing them as the bad guys.

Short adventures CAN be in One Page Dungeon format, but they do not have to be. The Village of Hommlett was a short adventure, I just don't want to have to judge 20 mega-adventures, or pit a huge adventure against a One Page Adventure- it's not really fair.

The adventure should be designed for OD&D, B/X D&D or AD&D or one of their retroclones (Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord, etc.), because those are the games I know best and those are the games I play and it's my contest.

I'd like to see the adventures have at least a "wilderness" component to them, because outside is where the Mongols are going to shine, but I am only one judge and if you have a dungeon based adventure that's cool enough, even I can be swayed.

Multiple entries are fine.

Every entrant should email a copy of their adventure to me at williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com along with their postal address so I know where to send their prizes. Every entrant receives a refrigerator magnet at least and the other prizes are pretty cool too so far.

First Prize - Tom Wham's "The Great Khan Game", it's theoretically both a Forgotten Realms product and a 2nd edition AD&D product from the labeling on the box, but in reality it is neither. Instead it's just a fun beer and pretzels game. My copy has been played a few times, but not since it was new. I gave it to my brother and he never played it despite loving the game, because he couldn't find opponents that were interested. Eventually it made it's way back to me. The box has some serious shelf wear, so it's to play not collect. Now it can be yours!

Additionally, easycanvasprints.com is providing an 8x10 print to the first prize winner.

Second Prize - Al Qadim: A Dozen and One Adventures boxed set. This is an AD&D 2nd edition accessory for the Al Qadim campaign setting. I liked it and read through the short adventures, but never ran an Al Qadim game, so a lot of the specifics were of little use to me. This box has some shelf wear too and I can see one corner torn, again, not a collector's piece, but in good shape otherwise.

Third Prize - The Double Lankhmar Combo pack, 1st edition AD&D's "Lankhmar: City of Adventure" and 2nd edition's "Lankhmar: Thieves of Lankhmar". Both are in reasonably good shape for their age, but are really meant for play rather than a pristine collection.

Entrants to the contest should be aware that I intend to collect the adventures into a single document and freely distribute them on the internet after the contest is over. If you do not want me to include your adventure in the collection for this contest, you should make it known when you send it to me.

If you don't intend to enter the contest, but are still interested in helping out, email me at the above address and become a judge! I'll send you a refrigerator magnet too.

If you are affiliated with a company that might want to sponsor the contest in some way, I'd be happy to hear from you too.

Lastly, Richard LeBlanc, one of the hardest working men in the OSR has already come up with some helpful stuff for making Mongol themed adventures here and here and don't forget to check out his new Mongolian monsters here, here, here and here. I also did just the one thing here.

Steppe Warrior Class

The Steppe Warrior is a hardy nomad from one of the tribes that range across the steppes from the taiga in the north to the deserts and mountains of the south, they are the bane of more settled, civilized lands when they are united and a scourge to each other when they are not. They live by following their herds, hunting wild game, gathering wild fruits and vegetables and by raiding their neighbors. I introduce this class as the warrior elite of their society. I might have picked the Scythians, the Turks, or the Huns as my model, and there are a great many similarities among steppe peoples, but I chose the Mongols, because it's Mongol Month. Feel free to give me feedback and/or use this class as you will- I present it as a gift to the OSR community in baroque AD&D 1st edition format; absolutely unplaytested because I have been beating my head against a brick wall with this class for the better part of a month.

Enjoy!

The Steppe Warrior is a sub-class of Fighter. Steppe Warriors have no Prime Requisite and therefore receive no bonuses for high Ability Scores. In order to become a Steppe Warrior a character must have 12 Strength, 12 Wisdom, 15 Dexterity and 14 Constitution. Steppe Warriors are born horsemen, as such they receive no penalties for shooting from horseback and have a number of advantages to being mounted as they level up. They may be of any Alignment, but only Humans, Half-Elves and Half-Orcs may become Steppe Warriors. Half-Elves are limited to 8th level as a Steppe Warrior, Half-Orcs are limited to level 10. The Steppe Warrior receives 1d10 per level gained for hit points plus 2 hit points for every point of Constitution they have above 14. Steppe Warriors make Saving Throws as a Fighter of the same level.

A single classed Steppe Warrior may Specialize in one of the following weapons-

Composite Short Bow

Scimitar

Horseman's Mace

Light Lance

Experience                              Level               Hit Dice                       Title

0-3000                                      1                        1                            Khazak

3001-6000                                2                        2                            Nokhor

6001-12000                              3                        3                            Ba'atur

12001- 20000                           4                        4                            Noyen

20001-40000                            5                        5                            Orlok

40001-80000                            6                        6                            Darugha

80001-145000                          7                        7                            Taishi

145001-225000                        8                        8                            Gurkhan

225001-310000                        9                        9                            Khan

310001-625000                       10                     9+3                   Khan (10th Level)

625001-950000                       11                     9+6                   Khan (11th Level)

950001-1250000                     12                     9+9                   Khan (12th Level)

All Steppe Warriors are virtually born in the saddle; riding and mounted combat are their birthright, as such attacks made from the saddle are made as though they were one level higher. They are unlikely to ever be thrown from their mount (85%) and if they are they are equally unlikely to be injured, this percentage increases every level by 1%. Furthermore, as mounted archery is integral to their mode of warfare, they suffer no penalties for firing while mounted, even while moving, and may fire at any point during their move in any direction.

All Steppe Warriors also have the following abilities-

-Hide in Natural Surroundings: with the same percentage chance as a Thief of the same level using his Hide in Shadows ability.

-Surprise: In Natural Surroundings a Steppe Warrior can Surprise an opponent on a 3 in 6 and is only surprised 10% of the time. This only applies in natural surroundings.

-Leadership: When dealing with other Steppe Warriors a Steppe Warrior adds his experience level to his Charisma score to get an effective Charisma with other Steppe Warriors.

-Survival: a Steppe Warrior can effectively survive in the wild by hunting and gathering, he can build shelter and make fire.

Tracking- A Steppe Warrior can track as a Ranger of equivalent level, but only outdoors.

The Steppe Warrior only continues to improve in horsemanship throughout his career-

-At 3rd level they can vault into the saddle, regardless of how heavily armored they are, and have their mount underway in a single segment.

-At 4th level a Good Aligned female Steppe Warrior may handle and ride a Unicorn as a steed.

-At 5th level a Steppe Warrior can urge his mount to greater speeds than normal, adding 2" to the movement rate for up to 6 turns. This causes no damage to the mount.

-At 7th level a Steppe Warrior can urge his mount to jump further than normal.

-At 9th level the Steppe Warrior can ride Pegasi, Hippogriffs, Griffons or other flying horselike creatures at the DM's discretion.

Summon Horde- Starting at 8th level the Steppe Warrior gains the ability to summon a Horde of his people, he is a recognized leader among them. Take his experience point total and divide it by five to get the size of the horde. Therefore an 8th level Steppe Warrior could summon between 290-550 men to his side, while a 12th level Steppe Warrior could summon between 1900-2500 men, this horde is in addition to their normal followers.

The Horde must have a stated purpose for gathering, (plunder the wealthy city of Kashgar, rescue the Great Khan's Daughter, etc) and it will take a week to gather in the Steppe Warrior's home territory. A Horde will disband after a number of weeks equal to the summoner's level. A Horde may be held together for an additional 1-2 weeks if there are exceptional circumstances (23 or higher effective Charisma, massive plunder distributed to the Horde, stated goal within easy reach, etc), but never longer and if a Steppe Warrior has a Horde disband under him, he is disgraced in his homeland and may never raise another Horde.

The Horde will also have two aides equal to 1/2 the level (rounded down) of the character summoning it and those aides will each have two assistants each equal to half their level (rounded down), thus a 9th level Steppe Warrior summoning a horde will have two 4th level Steppe Warrior Aides and four 2nd level Steppe Warrior assistants. Clerics, Shamans or Witch-Doctors (depending on the nature of the Steppe Warrior's tribal religion) may also be present at the DM's discretion.

Multiclassing- Steppe Warrior/Cleric 1/2E, 1/2O; Steppe Warrior/Druid- 1/2E; Steppe Warrior/Magic-User 1/2E; Steppe Warrior/Thief 1/2E, 1/2O; Steppe Warrior/Assassin 1/2E, 1/2O; Cleric/Steppe Warrior/Magic-User 1/2E; Cleric/Steppe Warrior/Assassin 1/2O

Optional Starting Money Table-

To show just how cash poor the steppe is and to reflect the normal equipment found there I came up with this-

Roll 1d6x10 for starting gold- buy anything with that. For interesting, exotic fun let them buy stuff from the Oriental Adventures book too. Currency exchange rates are on page 38.

New items-

Dried Meat- 1GP/Week

Koumiss- 1SP/Gallon

Ger, Small- 150GP

Dried meat could be mutton, beef, camel, horse or some variety of wild game, it is typically placed under the saddle when riding so the horse sweat and crushing action can soften it enough to eat. Koumiss is a drink made from fermented mare's milk. A Ger, also known as a Yurt, is either a very sophisticated tent or an easily dismantled and moved cloth covered house used by nomadic and semi-nomadic people throughout Eurasia, depending on who you ask.

Roll 1d6 on this table for an armor, weapon and horses package.

Assume everyone starts with one set of clothes which includes a furry hat, if they have a bow, it is a Composite Shortbow and that they have a quiver for the arrows. They also start with a saddle, bit and bridle.

1- Leather Armor, Light Lance, Dagger, 1d4 Steppe Ponies*

2- Padded Armor, Bow, 12 Arrows, Hand Axe, 2d4 Steppe Ponies

3- Shield, Light Lance, Scimitar, Bow, 12 Arrows, 2d4 Steppe Ponies

4-Leather Armor, Shield, Dagger, Hand Axe, Bow, 12 arrows, 2d4 Steppe Ponies

5-Chainmail, Shield, Scimitar, Bow, 12+2d6 Arrows, 4+2d4 Steppe Ponies

6- Lamellar**, Hand Axe, Light Lance, Bow, 12+2d6 Arrows, 4+2d4 Steppe Ponies

DM's should, of course, feel free to adjust this table to their needs, there are way more combinations of armor, weapons and horses that I could have done, I just wanted to keep it simple. The Steppe Ponies are pretty essential though, even a poor Steppe Warrior should have at least one horse.

*Steppe Ponies should be treated as Light Warhorses, but with better morale and AC 6, they also forage on their own and thus do not require fodder and are hardier than most horses with better endurance, they almost never come up lame.

**Treat as Scale armor, I threw it in for flavor and accuracy. Truth be told they had leather lamellar too, but I didn't want to be confusing.

Roll 1d6 on this table for extra stuff.

1. Horseman's Mace, Winter Blanket, Small Iron Pot

2. Guard Dog, bone whistle, Large Sack

3. Pack Camel, Pack Saddle made for said Camel, 25lb sack of rice flour

4. 1d6+2 Sheep, Sheep Dog, Iron Shears

5. 1d4 Yaks, Wagon, Small Ger (12')

6. Helmet, Horseman's Mace, Dagger

Obviously, this was just off the top of my head and DM's should feel completely free to adjust the "extra stuff" as they see fit. My intention here was to throw the Horseman's mace into some starting kits and add some more culturally fitting, but not necessarily of obvious immediate use, items into the mix. "What am I going to do with 4 Sheep?" a player might ask, I say think outside the usual box. Sheep are walking provisions, trade goods and a bit of an early warning system, although the dog that comes with them is better at that.

Common Medieval Mongol Names-

Mongol Female-

Altani, Bargujin, Borte, Chabi, Chagur, Chakha, Checheyigen, Chotan, Doregene, Ebegei, Gurbesu, Ibakha, Khadagan, Khogaghchin, Khojin, Khorijin, Khugurjin, Khulan, Nomolun, Onggur, Sokhatai, Sorghaghatani, Tekine, Temulun, Yesugun, Yesui

Mongol Male-

Abagha, Aguchu, Ajinai, Akutai, Alagh, Alchi, Altan, Bögen, Babür, Bagaridai, Bala, Barlas, Bartan, Batu, Baykara, Begter, Berke, Chagatai, Chanai, Chigu, Chilagun, Chiledu, Dagun, Daritai, Djebe, Dodai, Esen-Buga, Günkan, Ghazan, Gughlug, Harghasun, Horkhudagh, Hulegu, Husun, Inalchi, Inancha, Iturgen, Jurchedei, Khachi, Khachigun, Khagatai, Khogaghchin, Khudu, Khuyildar, Kokochu, Koksegu, Kubilai, Megetu, Morokha, Mungke, Munglig, Nakhu, Nayaga, Nogay, Noyan, Ogodei, Okhotur, Oljaitu, Oronartai, Sahruh, Sencer, Shiragul, Shirgugetu, Soyurgatmis, Subotei, Suyiketu, Taghai, Tamachi, Temuge, Temujin, Temur, Toghoril, Toghtoga, Toktamis, Tolui, Torolchi, Turgay, Ukhuna, Ulugh, Utudai, Yegu, Yesunge, Yokhunan

OK, so, I pretty much adapted this from the Unearthed Arcana Cavalier and Barbarian classes and toned their abilities down for the most part, so they wouldn't be overpowering, but like I stated above, this is all completely untested. I had a bunch of other ideas for them and I really wanted to include some stuff I cut, but when I thought about it I kept thinking that "This is like the Cavalier's whatever" or the "Barbarian's Horde summoning ability is important"; and it is, the English word "horde" comes from the Mongolian "ordu". So in the end I decided to default to Gygax and mix and match and alter most of the stuff I wanted from those two classes with a few of my own ideas and cut a bunch of stuff out. I guess in the end you know it's done when you can't cut anything else, right?

Questions, comments and criticisms are welcomed, particularly if there is something glaringly obvious that I left out.

Mongols Conquer the Month of November!

Seriously though, announcing a new contest part way through the month was probably not the most well thought out idea, so, after consulting my wife, I am extending the contest deadline through the end of November. Now all entries must be received by me no later than midnight on November 30th. This will give everyone time to put their short adventures together and time for me to seek out more sponsors for more prizes!

This also means another month of Mongols! Which is good, because I have had some epic writer's block while working on my projects related to the Mongols myself and maybe I'll be able to actually put out some content with another five weeks to work with, eh? So far Richard LeBlanc of the Save vs Dragon blog and New Big Dragon Games has done more to promote my themed month than I have, and I appreciate it, but I have got to turn this around.

I am currently working on, in no particular order, a Mongol style Steppe Nomad class for my AD&D OA project, which is morphing into a LL AEC project; a new campaign setting that is heavily medieval central Asian/Silk Road/Mongol flavored; a board game set in that campaign world; a short story set there too; and I have an idea for a card game to go with it too, not collectible though, I don't like CCGs. I have been working with a couple of collaborators on these projects and maybe I could use a couple more. Art is especially a problem, I can't keep my wife chained to the drafting table 24/7.

Anyway, the writer's block problem becomes a bigger issue when you see my project list. It's full of great ideas that I just can't seem to articulate properly. I have tried to just push through it by writing about other things, but they come off kind of rambling too. I tried taking breaks from writing and just doing other stuff, like reading other people's blogs, reading books, painting miniatures and I watched every episode of "Sons of Anarchy" in under a week. I tried getting inspired by looking at art with a medieval or fantasy Mongol theme. Nothing seems to work, so I am just going to try and bull my way through the writer's block. I am going to take another run at the easiest project today- the Steppe Nomad class and hammer away at it until it's done. Good, bad or ugly it'll be posted here by tonight.

Old School D&D with my wife and kids

And a few other women and children. Now, to be fair, my kids and most of the kids I am talking about are at least in their teens. My oldest daughter turned twenty this month, so I am not talking about little kids, just the next generation, with a couple of exceptions. My kids and their friends have made up the majority of my D&D groups for the last decade. I introduced them to old school gaming both B/X D&D and 1st & 2nd edition AD&D. My oldest daughter Ashli led the gaming charge at about 14, so most of the gamers that came to the table were her friends and her younger siblings. Mom came along for the ride as a den mother for the pack of newbie adventurers and helped to keep them on task, a leadership role she never really liked or really felt comfortable with, but performed admirably.

Aside from my wife and kids and Ashli's friends, the other main player in the group for the past few years has been Lee Ann. Lee started out as an SCA fighting buddy of mine* and, since she lives close to where I live, and she was training my daughter Ashli to fight, we started gaming together too. She's fun to play with, but we've all learned the lesson about letting her DM when you are sick or tired- DON'T DO IT. She knows this, we know this, it's all good now. Her characters tend to be an incarnate force of chaos in the party, but it keeps the game interesting and moving along. She's funny too, and that brings my youngest back to the game- if Lee doesn't play, neither does Em.

So, I don't know where I am really headed with this ramble, but I just feel that there is some observable difference in play style between the kids I introduced to Old School D&D, the grown women that are my own age-ish that play the game with me and the guys that I played the game with back in the day, that I still play with every now and again; and it drives Lance a little nuts. Worse, he brings his new-to-D&D girlfriend Audra with him and she is slightly confused because his other gaming group is "all business" and ours is way more social. I get this, my other gaming group plays a lot more "old school", "all business" style. That group is almost all male, it was all male until Big Darryl convinced his wife to play Legend of the Five Rings with us, then Lady Blackbird. We'll be playing D&D next probably, I don't know if she'll stick.

Now, I don't know if gaming with women and gaming with kids should have been different topics; it's hard for me to separate the two. Two of my kids are young women after all. Maybe if I could play a game with just the young men and see how that goes? That'd be like my late 1990's crew I'd imagine, but Mona ran with them too, again as a den mother/older sister, and there were more of the old men like me still around to teach the younger guys how we played. That, and we were all playing the then current edition of D&D, so it hadn't evolved away from it's roots so much. No real competition from MMOs either.

My son's other D&D group just went on an "indefinite hiatus", the DM canceled the game for the foreseeable future. I told him I'd be happy to step up and DM for the group, he's still weighing the pros and cons, to figure out whether or not the group would be willing to play some Old School D&D or not before he even asks them. Angsty. That group played 4th edition D&D and Pathfinder, I'd love to start them out on B/X D&D so they could experience the less-is-more, Zen purity that D&D can be; when players are freed from the bondage of all the excess rules they can experience the game anyway they want- it can be an interactive, storytelling experience or it can be a tactical room-clearing exercise or anything in between, or something else altogether; the choice is yours.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a tangent there, but it's my blog and you were warned by the title of the blog that it'd be ramblings, some days it's worse than others. My original point, if there was one that could be gleaned here, was that the women and kids tend to be a lot less mission focused and goal oriented in their gaming than the adult male dominated groups I have DMed for and instead they tend to be more social with each other, we enjoy a lot of comforts at my house when we play D&D. There are always copious amounts of snacks, usually cheese, crackers and summer sausage, and usually a meal break; sometimes the meal is themed to the adventure- we've done Viking foods twice now for our Norse campaign, we regularly had Japanese or Korean food for our Oriental Adventures games, etcetera. Mona takes time from playing to prepare stuff and we all appreciate it greatly.

At the guys games, we have chips and pretzels and beer and soda and when we take our meal break we eat quick, talk about the game and have whatever we could either not have to fuss over too much to cook there, or was easy to make elsewhere and reheat at the game site. Don't get me wrong, we all love food, so the food is good, but it's secondary to the game; at my house it's about as important as the game, so is the conversation, which isn't limited to the game at hand or even gaming in general.

I have been DMing for my wife and kids for so long now that the "social" style of play doesn't bother me, I kind of expect it. I lapse into it when I am DMing for the "guys group" without thinking sometimes. I don't care if people aren't exactly on time, or if we finish an adventure in one sitting, or if the game stalls for a bit to talk about current events. Most people are OK with this to a limited extent, some people hate one thing about it more than others. Lance was made crazy by Lee knitting a scarf during a D&D game.

Another weird quirk- the group with my wife and kids will pretty much only play old school D&D, 1st Edition AD&D is their preference, but they'll play B/X D&D or 2nd Edition AD&D. The young men in the group are always game to try something new, that's how I managed to push them into a brief foray into L5R, but D&D is their thing. The other group is always looking for a non-D&D game to play. They leapt into 43 AD, L5R and Lady Blackbird, but only reluctantly agree to play D&D because of it's "problems". One member thinks D&D is too rules heavy, although, to be fair, his last D&D experience was with 3.x; another thinks that D&D is too rules lite- but he is cool with 43 AD, L5R and Lady Blackbird? L5R specifically had armor make you harder to hit, rather than reduce damage, which is his biggest complaint about D&D.

Anyone else playing with a mostly female group? A group heavy on teenagers? How about men aged 40+, what are your experiences? Are your experiences similar to mine or different? How social is your gaming group? Is your group all business at the game table? Do you hang out with them outside of gaming? How long have you known them? Are you related to them? Anything else noteworthy?

Next-

I know this entire post is off topic for my Mongol Month theme, but at least I am writing again, that's something, right? I still need submissions for my Mongol Themed Adventure Contest see here and here for details and here and here for prizes so far. We're running out of October people, and I hate to be a downer, but if I don't get at least three submissions I am going to either have to extend the deadline or cancel the contest. I don't want to cancel the contest. On a happier note, I might have another announcement about the contest soon, stayed tuned!

*There are some gender politics still in SCA heavy fighting, I don't play that game. There is no gender on the field to me, everyone out there deserves my best performance, to give them less because they are a woman would dishonor us both. Besides, nearly everyone is smaller and weaker than me- I don't cut short men any particular slack, if I did I'd just be a moving pell on the field.  

My Mongol Adventure Contest

First- I want to point anyone who might be working on an adventure for my contest to Richard LeBlanc's Save Vs. Dragon blog because today he put up something that might prove useful to all of you- Creatures of the Steppe.

Second- We have officially gotten a sponsor: easycanvasprints.com They are providing an 8"x10" canvas print to the first prize winner. I am still looking for other sponsors too, but that's a pretty good start, eh?

That's about all I can think to write now, it's been a long day. I just wanted to update everybody on the contest and the awesome new resource available thanks to Richard!

Time to up the ante

I haven't received a single entry yet for my new Mongol themed contest yet, so I am going to open the vault and declare my prizes, regardless of what any sponsors pledge additionally.

First Prize - Tom Wham's "The Great Khan Game", it's theoretically both a Forgotten Realms product and a 2nd edition AD&D product from the labeling on the box, but in reality it is neither. Instead it's just a fun beer and pretzels game. My copy has been played a few times, but not since it was new. I gave it to my brother and he never played it despite loving the game, because he couldn't find opponents that were interested. Eventually it made it's way back to me. The box has some serious shelf wear, so it's to play not collect. Now it can be yours!

Second Prize - Al Qadim: A Dozen and One Adventures boxed set. This is an AD&D 2nd edition accessory for the Al Qadim campaign setting. I liked it and read through the short adventures, but never ran an Al Qadim game, so a lot of the specifics were of little use to me. This box has some shelf wear too and I can see one corner torn, again, not a collector's piece, but in good shape otherwise.

Third Prize - The Double Lankhmar Combo pack, 1st edition AD&D's "Lankhmar: City of Adventure" and 2nd edition's "Lankhmar: Thieves of Lankhmar". Both are in reasonably good shape for their age, but are really meant for play rather than a pristine collection.

So, I am hoping this will entice at least three people to write adventures for my contest!

Other news - The last contest's prizes will go in the mail today. I keep missing the Post Office, but I am really going to make a concerted effort to get the Magnets and Modules in the mail today.

Mongol Adventure Contest- Things I Forgot

Eventually I'll remember to mention everything in one post when I announce a contest, but it wasn't for this one.

The adventures should be Swords & Wizardry, B/X D&D (Labyrinth Lord) or AD&D (AEC) compatible. Those are the gaming languages I speak best.

Multiple entries are allowed.

The contest will be running through October 31st, 2012.

EDIT- I have extended the deadline to November 30th, 2012.

The prizes, if none of my prospective sponsors come through, will include sweet loot from my personal hoard. Last grand prize was a copy of "GDQ 1-7 Queen of the Spiders". This time I am thinking of a matched set of "Lankhmar: City of Adventure" and "Lankhmar: Thieves of Lankhmar" for the grand prize and working my way down from there, but I am flexible.

That said, if you want to sponsor the contest, send me an email and we'll talk!

To clarify my earlier post- it doesn't HAVE to be a wilderness adventure, any type of adventure is cool, as long as we make it Mongol themed. Use your imaginations!

If you are interested in being a judge, email me and I'll send you a magnet too.

My email address is williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com in case you all missed my late edit to my last post.

That's about all for today, today is my daughter Ashli's 20th birthday and I hope it's a good one, she's had a rough year with learning to live with a disability and depression stemming from that. I pray 20 will be easier for her than 19 was.

New Contest

In keeping with Mongol Month the theme of the contest is Mongols*- the twist is that the Mongols should be the heroes, not the villains that they are generally portrayed as. This doesn't really preclude there also being Mongol villains, but I'd like to see some Mongol heroes for a change.

The format is short adventure- not necessarily a One-Page Dungeon style format, but it can be, although I'd like to see more "wilderness" type adventures to take advantage of the Mongols horse archery skills; but I am not limiting people to a single page this time around.

This is a real chance for you all to show how much you know about the Mongols (or learn something new) and win some cool prizes for doing something fun!

I definitely intend to compile all of the entries into one file after the contest for ease of download, just an FYI for anyone contributing an adventure, if you are uncomfortable with me redistributing your work please mention that when you send your entry and I'll leave yours out of the compilation, otherwise I will assume that you read this and are OK with my redistribution.

As before, I will send everyone who enters the contest a cool refrigerator magnet. For some of you this will be a second or fifth, but I still have a bunch, so while supplies last they're up for grabs.

As to the other prizes, I haven't decided yet, because I am waiting to hear back from potential sponsors, but if nothing else I'll come up with something good from my own collection probably for the top three this time.

I'd also like to recruit a couple more judges for this time around, last time the contest was really close and I think the points might spread out a little more if the adventures were graded by more people

EDIT- it probably couldn't hurt if I told everybody where to send their submissions, my email address is williamjdowie AT gmail DOT com, sorry about that omission. 

*I suppose I should point out that the "Mongols" should be a D&D facsimile of real world Mongols, based on their culture, with their names and social structure, mythology, etc. This gives a little more room for the fantasy part of fantasy role-playing.  

One Page Dungeon Contest Winners

Deep into Mongol Month we have finally gotten the results from the last of the judges and I tallied them up today.

Before I announce the winners of my top three prizes though, I'd like to share where I got the cool prizes from - all of the magnets, both refrigerator magnets and bumper sticker magnets I got from BuildASign.com . They specialize in banners and signs, but were able to meet my magnet needs easily and I am most pleased with their product, both in price and quality, and the service, which was speedy.

They have a sister site easycanvasprints.com that I can see myself using in the future too.
In case everyone doesn't remember what the magnets look like, here they are again -

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the One Page Dungeon contest, all of the judges agreed that it was really tough to choose a winner and the top three were separated by a single point each.

Third place and a cool bumper sticker style magnet goes to Richard J. LeBlanc Jr. of New Big Dragon Games for "Þrymjahellir" which is available for download at his Save vs. Dragon blog in both one and two page versions.

Second place and another bumper sticker magnet goes to Gustie LaRu of the "Dungeon of Signs" blog for "Hel's Crow's Final Rest", which is available here.

So, the grand prize, the big, bumper sticker magnet and a choice of old TSR modules from my collection goes to Bard Bowman of the Clash of Spear on Shield blog for "The Dødsbakken", available here.

Congratulations to the winners, and I have to say this was great fun. I really look forward to next time.

Now, because it is Mongol Month, I feel I need to at least give you all a bit of trivia, so here you go- The Mongol Empire was the largest land based empire ever seen on the face of the Earth. It encompassed the bulk of Asia and part of Europe. The last ruling direct descendant of Genghis Khan was deposed by the Czars in the mid-18th century, more than five centuries after Genghis Khan died.

Mongol Month Continues

With Viking content - I DMed my "Vikings of Dvergrholm" campaign yesterday after a month long hiatus. The PCs (and 1 NPC) left the Dwarven village of Nordlund and headed out towards the ancient Dwarven fortress (mega-dungeon) that they are supposed to be liberating as the focus of this campaign. The entire thing almost got sidelined when they got a random encounter with a pack of wolves, that's a tough encounter for a first level party and there were nine wolves encountered. The wolves also won initiative and attacked on the first round, taking down two of the party's Fighters, although this is an almost entirely Fighter based party, so pretty much no matter who got hit it was likely to be a Fighter. Viking Campaign Sourcebook rules in effect limited choices and the only Magic-User in the party had already died in the first outing. Nobody else wanted to play a Magic-User because they were limited in their spell selection by school. They beat the encounter ultimately though and then had to turn back for town, empty handed, to heal up and try again later.

The second go was much easier. They had no random encounters on the way to the dungeon and didn't get lost or stumble across any planned encounters. When confronted with the choice of three identical entrances though, they chose the one on the left, because they didn't think to ask the Dwarves for anything more than directions and these Dwarves don't really volunteer a lot of information; so, of course, it was one of the two trapped entrances, but not the worst. In fact, you might not consider it a trap at all under different circumstances, but it did lock them in the dungeon with no way back out (they don't have a Thief to pick the locks, or any excavation tools), and the only way forward took them to the third level of the dungeon.

Once they got down to the third level they discovered that their entrance was in the back of a tiny room and it was a secret door on the dungeon side, so it's really more like a secret escape tunnel from the third level to the surface, but it unfortunately locks automatically when the doors close and the doors close when the next door is opened, if you haven't already manually closed them or made some provision to jam them open. Anyway, they left their tiny room and entered the dungeon proper and immediately got a random encounter with five Ogres, which you would think would have smeared a first level party, but in a 10'x10' corridor they could channelize the Ogre's approach and only one at a time could move to attack. The party easily used superior tactics to defeat the Ogres and the Ogres refused to fail morale checks, and thus kept coming on to the slaughter. All five were dead in three rounds of combat, but Mona's character Grimhild did crit the leader on round one for 23 points of damage, one-shotting him after he missed her. Two rounds later, she did the same thing again to the last one.

We wrapped up the session after that, we had started late and ended a little earlier than usual, but it was a pretty good time and we had a ton of awesome food to go with our game too. Maybe I should get a picture of the food Mona makes for the game sometime?

Anyway, in other Viking news, I hope to announce the winners of the OPD contest I ran last month tomorrow. I am waiting to hear the results from a couple of judges still, then I'll tally up the points and declare the winners. Good luck to everyone, and thanks to everyone who participated.

I also got this stuff on EBay, just to use as inspiration for my Viking campaign, I don't remember if I shared the pics with you all-

Now, something related to the Mongols just to keep my theme for the month. Did you all know that Genghis Khan invented the concept of diplomatic immunity? The Mongol Empire also strictly adhered to a practice of religious freedom and tolerance.

Three Days In...

And I haven't got much to show for Mongol month yet. I have some ideas, but getting them down is a little rough right now. I am working on a Steppe Nomad type class for Labyrinth Lord (B/X D&D) and I keep adding too much to it and needing to scale it back. I am a bit of a Mongol fanboy I guess.

Anyway, I have been doing some refresher reading through the Mongol section of my library to keep things fresh for me, and I got this book in the mail from Amazon today-

I kind of like these "Life in the time of" type books, so I am a little surprised I never had one for the Mongols, although I guess they are a bit of a specialist topic.

Anyway, between writers block and fanboyism, I also tried to find some decent mongol type miniatures to paint up for Mongol month, but I keep coming back to The Assault Group and they're a British company and therefore pricier than I really want to go with for wargame quality miniatures, so anyone who can point me elsewhere would be a real help.

Anyone got anything Mongol oriented they'd like to see? Any questions they'd like answered? I am planning on visiting my longtime collaborator Darryl tomorrow and we are the go-to Mongol answer guys. I think we should put together an adventure featuring my, as yet unmade, Steppe Nomad class and post it here for you all to use and enjoy. Maybe as a finale to the Month? That would give us time to come up with something cool. I don't know, I'll ask him what he thinks tomorrow. I am tired and rambling more than usual, so good night everyone!

October is Mongol Month

I declare it to be so, for no other reason than I need a focus to bring me back to writing regularly and drag me out of my depressed state. I figure it makes a good focus because I haven't already done it, I know a lot about the Mongols and their history, but haven't really applied it to gaming particularly, and it'll drag me back to work, tangentially anyway, on my Oriental Adventures project - at this point I think I should start calling it a magnum opus, but that may be presumptuous. That said, I do refer to myself as "The Great Khan", so I guess we can expect a bit of presumption from me. I digress though.

September was a long, sad month for me. My sister's memorial service is next Saturday at my parent's church and I hope that by saying my public goodbye that I can start putting some of this sadness behind me and get back to some of the productive uses of my free time that I had in the past. I did start designing a new RPG the other day, almost by accident, because I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to wake up my wife. I think it's a pretty good start, but we'll see where it goes; if it amounts to anything good I'll present it here for everyone to check out.

So, I'll try and get back up to at least a couple of posts a week here and this month will be filled with Mongol themed goodness. I'll also have the results of the Viking themed One Page Dungeon contest within a day or two when I hear back from the other judges on their final opinions.

Lastly, does anyone know who manufactures good Mongol/Steppe Warrior miniatures these days? 28mm is preferred, although 25mm is acceptable usually and I'd also prefer a US manufacturer or at least a US distributor to keep shipping costs down.