Name Your Poison

I am currently running a Roman themed AD&D (1^st edition, heavy on the house rules) game on Roll20. I am giving serious thought to also running an OD&D (or Swords & Wizardry Whitebox) game there too. I am thinking of giving it a Norman/Crusader theme, kind of roll out with extra medievalisms, like jousting, maybe eliminate non-human characters so everything “other” is special and supernatural. Write up a bit of a culture packet, like I did with the Romans and see how that goes. I don't even know if I'll add Thieves.

The real kicker is that I think I might do it as a megadungeon campaign. My Roman themed “Lost Atlantis” campaign was decided, by player vote, to be a hex crawl and I'd kind of like to run some dungeon delving too.

I think I'd like to run jousting tournaments and stuff too. Maybe I'll have players make their characters like in Mike Davison's Flailsnails Jousting Tourney book.

I guess the point here is that I have a lot of time on my hands these days, since Mona died, and I'd like to fill it with some gaming. Pick either game, or both.

Find me on Facebook here - https://www.facebook.com/wdowie

Look to my gaming Discord server here - https://discord.gg/jYCvjPY

And on Roll20 here - https://app.roll20.net/join/2998862/sQwuRg

Keep in mind that I am a "theater of the mind" guy, so I rarely use minis in person on a real tabletop, I have yet to even try on Roll20.

A New Campaign Setting

I have been working on a new campaign setting, on and off, for much of the last year. I intended that it should be used for my Swords & Wizardry campaign that never quite got off the ground, before I moved across the state in July. I call it "Shattered Empire", and it's a setting that could easily be used for "Lamentations of the Flame Princess", due to it's human-centric nature and it's semi-Lovecraftian feel. I almost went with LotFP when we started play, but jumped back to S&W because that was my starting point when I began the design. I also made fairly extensive use of Delving Deeper in the design, especially with regard to the monster list. Some bits of Carcosa were an inspiration too. I guess this works pretty well with any iteration of (A)D&D, with an emphasis on the original edition; or any retroclone, with a minimum of refitting. Anyway, here's a bit from the gazetteer for the primary campaign area- the most fleshed out part.

The Empire-

Official Name: The Manifest Empire of Divine Providence

The Empire was, at one time, a vast continent spanning entity; at the time of the Apocalypse the Empire was essentially destroyed and devolved into numerous small successor states. The heir to the old Empire that is considered the most legitimate is the one that still bears it’s name and it’s original title; even the other"mini-empires" that make up the bulk of the continental land-mass will grudgingly admit that “The Empire” is the one with it’s capitol at Whitehall and controls the great city of Neopolis. The Empire, for it’s part, still puts on airs like it is an immense entity, but in it’s darkest moments will admit that it is a shabby version of it’s ancestral self, unable to exert real control any further than the reach of it’s armies.

Despite having once been a republic, most positions within the empire have become hereditary – at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. The powerful have become Dukes, Counts and Imperial Electors, the peasantry are attempting, without much success, to stave off the steady encroachment of hereditary serfdom.

The society of the empire has evolved to have a distinct split between it’s urban and rural components, with power largely residing in the rural and prestige with the urban. The urban citizens of the empire consider their rural brethren to be uncultured, uneducated, rude hicks. The rural folk consider the urbanites to be effete, lazy, corrupt fools. They are both essentially right.

Think of it like a cross between the late Roman empire and any decadent bit of Hyboria, only with extra-dimensional and cross-time pockets leaking in and the elder gods starting to sleep less deeply. I also had recently supported the Kickstarter for Silent Legions just prior to starting on this and my wife was diagnosed with cancer, so it is a bit dark.

I have a lot more, I just thought I'd float this tiny bit to see if it was of any interest.

White Star

It's been a long time since I did a "Mail Call" post here on the blog, not for any real reason other than I quit posting very often at all and just showing my cool new stuff seemed like filler. Today I am going to go ahead and have a different sort of mail call though. I got this-

in the mail today. I bought it on EBay last week. I know it's the beta rules, but I figured I'd check out the only official, licensed version of a Star Wars RPG I didn't already have.

Sadly, it came a day late, as, on Star Wars Day (May 4th) another Sci-Fi space opera game had been released into the wild- White Star

I hate to say that I'd jumped on a band-wagon, but this was a good band-wagon. Tenkar's Tavern proprietor +Erik Tenkar had been pimping this game pretty hard for about a day, and since it was being released on Star Wars day, and I am a big fan of D&D as a chassis for any genre, I bought it as soon as it was released. I was not disappointed. I read and then reread the rules. I have decided that this is my new favorite game, and I am, apparently, not alone. +James Spahn has written an excellent, completely Swords & Wizardry White Box compatible rules set and managed to both give us a setting we could use (and an adventure) while simultaneously encouraging us to use it all as a tool box to make it our own. I immediately stopped work on my other OSR projects and began making my own Star Wars and original Battlestar Galactica hacks for it, and I can see a few other licensed properties I could easily hack this for. I already wrote 2 new classes based on the settings I mentioned and have an adventure started. I haven't been this creative in years. This game is the muse I didn't know I needed until I had it. I have to thank Mr. Spahn for that.

So the official Star Wars game I have barely opened up to look at, it loses to White Star. Now go buy it here.

Which version of D&D do I like better? How about you?

     

 

I have consistently second guessed myself while I run (A)D&D games for my group about which version (or retroclone) I like better for play. I range between the simplicity and adaptability of S&W Whitebox and the complexity and completeness of 1^st edition AD&D (sometimes including “Unearthed Arcana”, but rarely anything later). Sometimes I decide a particular retroclone looks like it'll be good for what I want to play- I just started playing S&W Complete for instance, or I'd really like to play “Lamentations of the Flame Princess” (and so would a couple of my players) sometime soon.

I guess what it comes down to is that I like the adaptability of the early edition stuff based on OD&D and it's semi-gonzo SF additions to our standard fantasy fare. I like the simplicity and lower power level of OD&D, B/X and their clones. I have written a few rules sets now using S&W and B/X as a template. However, something in my head keeps dragging me back to 1^st edition AD&D (or Labyrinth Lord+ Advanced Edition Companion- more on this later). I suppose it's because that's my old default. When I was just starting to play AD&D was just arriving on the scene and B/X wasn't quite here yet (I actually started with Holmes Basic).

Now, the power creep/edition (larger HD, more powerful magic items, more special abilities) is what pulls me away from AD&D towards OD&D or B/X. The absolute familiarity with (and perhaps even mastery of) the rules set is what drags me back. My D&D formative years ran from 1980-85ish, AD&D OA makes it under the wire, and UA slips a bit in sometimes, but my core system has always been PH, DMG and MM.

I guess the power creep is something I never noticed before the 3e era, probably because my default system was 1^st edition and I never really looked at it objectively compared to the Holmes Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert sets. 2^Nd edition was largely the same as 1^st, only with a lot of inconsistent or unused (I am looking at you weapon vs. AC) rules being either tossed or overhauled. With this in mind, perhaps I should be playing either LL-AEC or straight 2^nd edition AD&D, but I can't fully commit to either of those systems because I know 1^st edition, with all it's warts & weirdnesses, it's Gygaxian purple-prose (a feature, not a bug- it immeasurably increased the vocabulary of pretty much everyone I knew), I have it practically memorized, even after all these years and anything I don't have memorized I can find in seconds in the book- no lengthy searches or game stoppage, and I know how to house rule it without breaking it in any way. Plus, I own multiple copies of all the books (including the premium reprints I got cheap on Ebay). I have given away complete core sets to my players that don't have them (another feature of Ebay- when I feel I am running low on extras for my table, I can usually find them really cheap there), and each of my kids has gotten a complete core set+ OA. My wife came with her own set.

But then I think about sub-classes, particularly Fighter sub-classes, which irritate me; why should a Fighter not be the best at fighting? Every other sub-class loses something, or at least fundamentally changes something, from the core class to make up for gaining their new abilities, not Rangers or Paladins though, so what's up with that? It's not that I hate the idea of Rangers and Paladins, and I get that it's harder to get the stats to be one of them and that they level slightly slower, but they still make better fighters than Fighters do, and that's what irks me. I don't take issue with creating a new subclass for the purposes of playing exactly the character class that you want to play even, I've made them in the past and I probably will again in the future. I am pretty sure that was the impetus behind the design of every AD&D sub-class. Think of them as customized class options for your role-playing needs.

Now, Labyrinth Lord +Advanced Edition Companion is a game that plays functionally identical to my experience with 1^st edition AD&D, my only real problems with using it as a go-to system are that I already own multiple copies of AD&D and it's B/X based, which means that I need 2 rulebooks and have to ignore a bunch of stuff from the first.

I guess what was trying doing here was get all of these stray thoughts down where I can see them and mull over my options, what it has, apparently, done was talk myself into running 1^st edition AD&D again, with the option of using retroclone ideas as house rule options. Thanks for reading, I am still open to suggestions and differing opinions, because I will, most likely, go back and forth on this for the next day or so before I run something for my oldest daughter Ashli and her boyfriend Rae who are coming to visit this weekend.

Now some other stuff that's been on my mind- if you were going to run a single adventure for three to five players and had access to pretty much every adventure published by TSR for Holmes Basic, B/X, BECMI and 1^st edition AD&D what would you run? I am missing a few from the end of the era, but I have most of them. I was thinking something tournament style, that'll give the group focus and a sense of urgency, plus they won't have to worry about losing a beloved character because these types of modules usually have a bunch of pregens included. I was also thinking something a little higher level, because we never get there in campaign play and I think that they might enjoy playing characters at level 9+ for a change. Not The Tomb of Horrors though, that's a straight out meat-grinder and I've seen parties with all experienced players die in the entryway.

Also, I was thinking about other game systems recently, especially the ones like GURPS that pretty much mandate during character creation how you are going to role-play your character and that's one of those things I've never actually seen the need to have enshrined in rules. Some people think that alignment is unrealistic and too much of a straight-jacket to your role-playing, in my experience these are the same people that want to see at least part of your character creation include at least some options for deciding how you must role-play your character. GURPS has a bunch of these, off the top of my head I can recall codes and berserkerism and addiction as role-playing options that grant you some tangible character creation bonus with a few rules on how you must then play your character as a trade off. I am not a huge fan of point-buy systems in general anyway, I kind of like some randomness in character generation and I don't think all PCs should be created equal (but with the option for a master min-maxxer to really work the rules to make a Frankenstein's monster of a PC).

I am also not a big fan of skill systems, I never saw the point. The way I see it, if you want to do something, you ask your DM if it's possible and he figures out whether or not it's at all possible and then determines how it should work. I guess it helps if you have some sort of background, like the secondary skills in the DMG; although those work best for humans, those are some tables that could use a redesign based on a PC's race, the region they come from (or where the campaign starts) and maybe the general tech level. I guess they'd be best tailor made for every DM's campaign world. Not that I don't use skill systems where appropriate, just not a fan. This is likely because of 2^nd edition AD&D's poorly thought out and ill-named Non-Weapon Proficiency system, which, while optional, was both over used and miss-used in my experience, all the while being extremely unnecessary. Yes, I realize that the 2^nd edition system is a direct descendant of the 1^st edition system which premiered in my beloved Oriental Adventures book, it's just that I am that contrary. Also, I hate that system and have eliminated it in my upcoming retroclone Samurai!, wherein I replace them with a set of backgrounds that grant you the ability to do certain things. But generally speaking, if you can give me a halfway decent reason why you should be able to do something, I usually let you. I base this on the fact that I can speak, read and write English, and to a lesser extent, French and Spanish. I can swim pretty well, do math (even some higher math) and all the other stuff I learned in public schools and just living in rural upstate NY. Usually, no matter how well I min-max a character, there is no way I can come close to what I could do even when I was a teen-ager, much less as an adult, and on top of all that, I am a pretty decent fighter, both armed and unarmed, and an ordained clergyman. That's right folks, I am dual-classed...

What about Henchmen, Hirelings, and other Retainers? I swore by them in the early days of playing D&D, not so much for the extra swords in the fight, but for handling the mundane stuff like carrying the light sources or acting as bearers for the loot we found, but we usually had a couple of “special” guys too, usually a Thief hired on to open locks and search for traps- oddly enough, even when we had Thieves in the party. You can't be too careful in the dungeon. Later, as the games started having more overland and wilderness type adventures, we started having people just for helping out with the horses (and staying with them while we went into dungeons) and some extra muscle to help out with guarding our camp. Now it seems like even the people I played with back in the day avoid them like the plague. I can understand (although not agree with) the notion that Henchmen are experience point and treasure leeches, but what about the ones that only get paid a pittance and don't get a ½ share of experience points? Plus it makes Charisma less of a dump stat if they are included in the game.

What's the deal with people not liking (A)D&D for more pure role-playing type game sessions? There's nothing stopping you from going all thespian with a D&D character, as a DM I actually will give an XP award or some other type of bonus as a reward for good role-playing, it's within my purview as DM. But some players insist that there is something inherent about D&D in particular that stunts role-playing. I don't get it. Sure D&D evolved from wargaming, and there was a certain wargame mentality to the role-playing by association. I don't hate that to be truthful, but I think that it is making less of the game than it can be. That said, there are some things that I can't stand to role-play like, say, buying equipment or any other mundane, somewhat boring task. Who wants to role-play mucking out stables or brushing down their horse? I don't, not as a player and not as DM; some stuff can be glossed over pretty easily and we don't lose anything by doing so. You probably want some real interaction the first time you meet the duke though, and maybe a bit when you are invited back for dinner. These role-playing vignettes are a great opportunity for mini-information dumps as a DM and I think that players and DMs alike should grasp the opportunity to try their hand at being more of a thespian. The exchange between DM and players there can lead to some really cool ideas for your campaign heading down the road.

Changed my Blog Title Back

Returned to Ramblings as it were.

Other stuff-

I have written my own more S&W version of Star Trek, it's not polished and ready for public consumption, but it's more or less playable and I hope to test it soon.

Created a mission based Vietnam War RPG D&D hack. This is another one that needs polishing, but it is playable (provided I am at the table to explain the bits I haven't written yet).

Tossed out both my OA D&D hack and my B/X WW II projects, and started over with some of the design principles I came up with for both 'Nam and Star Trek. Got a complete outline and extensive notes for my OA D&D hack (tentatively titled "Samurai!") and planned a supplement ("Ninja!").  I even figured out what I am doing for art for "Samurai!".

Created a new campaign world for OD&D/S&W Whitebox, as it turns out the implied setting of OD&D is different than it is for AD&D. Both have an implied post-apocalyptic setting, but OD&D is a lot more free and easy with sci-fi elements than AD&D. I actually ran a game in my new campaign setting earlier this month and, while it's reception was mixed, it went OK. I was a little disappointed that the party wasn't terribly interested in the travel brochures from the 4th Reich, and that they decided to kill their tour guide in Helltown, but I have some easy fixes planned for this coming Saturday.

Oh, and I created a new game system entirely, I call it "Simple d20 Mechanics for RPGs or Miniature Battles, including rules for Magic". This one is being looked over by my buddy Darryl in case it needs some rules clarifications or whatnot, he became a professional editor after he and I worked on Paul Elliot's 43 AD. I hope to release it soon as a free download from our newly created collaboration "Great Khan Games" once it's ready I'll provide the RPGNow link.

I have a couple of more ideas in the "brainstorm" phase of development too.

Of course, the trade off here is that I haven't written any of my promised reviews, despite the fact that I acquired even more stuff to review. I recently bought several new OSR products on Lulu, first up will be Full Metal Platemail, but I have been writing more than I've been reading for the last few weeks.

Also- is anyone interested in writing some extensive random tables that are reminiscent of the AD&D OA ancestry tables? I am apparently bad at that and it's costing me a lot of time. Just a thought.

I recently moved

I recently moved and had 4 days without any internet, it gave me a bit of time to read through some OSR stuff and the 5e DMG. I will most likely be blogging about all of them soon, the list of coming reviews is -

Swords & Wizardry White Box Rules
Swords & Wizardry Complete
Delving Deeper Reference Rules Compendium
"Realms of Crawling Chaos"
"Red Tide", "An Echo, Resounding" and "Scarlet Heroes" (lumped together because they all cover the same campaign setting)
"AX1 - D30 DM Companion" and "AX2 - D30 Sandbox Companion" (same author, similar subject matter)
"The Dungeon Alphabet" (expanded 3rd printing)
"Malevolent and Benign"
5th edition D&D "Player's Handbook", "Monster Manual" and "Dungeon Master's Guide" (complete system)
"VA1 - Valley of the Five Fires"

and last, but not least, "The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign"

 I thought I should show everyone my new S&W campaign at Obsidian Portal too.

Recently...

I discovered that, with the purchase of the "Otosan Uchi" boxed set, I had nearly everything printed for the first, second and third editions of the "Legend of the Five Rings" RPG. Everything except the "Tomb of Iuchiban". Imagine my surprise when I went looking for that particular item and saw the prices that it fetches. I am not a collector, I play my games, but when I see a $120.00+ price tag on what has been called "the Tomb of Horrors for L5R", I get a little annoyed. What, did they only print like 50 copies? I'll stop ranting now.

Last weekend I played "Barbarians of Lemuria" and it was pretty cool, met some cool new people and they seem like my kind of playing group, a little laid back, the GM made rulings instead of looking stuff up in the book every 5 minutes. I even had a beer there. Plans have been laid out to make this their summer game and I intend to keep playing. It was fun, my only comment was that we could have played the exact same adventure with D&D or a retro-clone (my current favorite being S&W).

Now I see it's June and I have an obligation to run my contest, the sole prize for this is a box of Warlord Games 28mm scale American Infantry for their Bolt Action line. I haven't played Bolt Action yet, but I did order the rules recently, because I like skirmish scale WW2 stuff. Warlord games sponsored this contest, and usually I like to pick a best adventure, with my judges, to decide who get's the prizes; but I haven't been all that bloggy lately, didn't come up with a working set of OSR style rules for WW2 (yet), so I will choose the victor at random from the comments section.My original idea had been to run an OSR D-Day/Battle for Normandy adventure contest.

For those of you still waiting on prizes from my last Roman themed contest, my wife is busy with other art commitments, but assures me that your portraits are next on her list, in the meantime I am going to just mail the dice to the winners, sorry about the delay.

I've Been Absent for a While

I haven't blogged for a while. I had some health issues, my daughter Ashli has had some health issues and two of my Aunts died this year, which just brought me back to the same depressed funk I was in following my sister's death last September. Mostly though I haven't been writing anything because I haven't had anything to say. I haven't gamed at all since December, and I didn't want to turn my blog into just a series of announcements of what cool new stuff I got in the mail and contests.

Speaking of contests, my last Roman themed contest in particular, I still haven't sent out the dice. I was kind of hoping to mail them with the character portraits my wife offered to do, but she's still waiting to hear from the winners what exactly they want. You can email her directly at monelun AT yahoo Dot com, but I suggest CC-ing the messages to me at WilliamJDowie AT gmail Dot com, so I can catch them too if they end up in her spam folder.

Spring is here now, and aside from plotting my planting and doing some clean up and repairs around the house, I think I may just get a chance to game again soon. I got the entire Basic Fantasy RPG collection available on Amazon and I picked up Swords and Wizardry in both the White Box and complete flavors. I am hoping to do something for Swords and Wizardry appreciation day, but I am unwilling to commit since it falls two days after my sister's birthday and I am not sure I'll be in the mood for anything; this being the first year without her.

I had planned on running a Celtic themed contest in March, but my depression kind of got in the way of that, so I think I'll run it later this year, maybe October so we can get the whole Samhain/Halloween thing going with it.

My more ambitious plan is to put together a D-Day/Normandy campaign themed contest for June, I think an OSR game can handle any genre, Sci-Fi has been done more than once, so why not WW II? What do you all think?

Warlord Games has already generously agreed to sponsor both contests.

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.