Spending more energy elsewhere

I have been spending a lot more creative energy on my other blog lately than this one. I am going to be starting a campaign, hopefully on Thursday, that is play-testing rules (43 AD/Warband) that I may port over for use in my Garnia campaign world, and, given the history of that world, the events of that campaign could provide some more back-story for the entire setting.

I don't have anything else to say on that topic, so here's some stuff I got in the mail over the past few days that I forgot to show you all when it came in.

These guys are just "Arcane Legions" miniatures, they were labeled on EBay as "28mm hard plastic Roman sprue w/shields no bases"; why the deception? I don't know. I got them for $1.00 though and I should have known since I actually have the "Arcane Legions" starter set, I just never found anyone to play with. I did think they looked familiar.

"Creatures of Rokugan" for the 3rd edition of the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, I'd been waiting to get an inexpensive copy of this for a while, I was pleased with the result; although it inexplicably came with about 120 of the CCG cards too. I have now got two different two-player starter decks, a couple of one player starter decks and now these loose cards, maybe I should learn to play. You know, despite my disdain for CCGs. I mean if people are going to keep throwing them in as freebies with my wins on EBay...  

Some Old School Art

I found this piece posted on the Facebook group for Old School Gamers today and thought I'd share. I asked the artist's permission, so it's cool.

The artist's name is Diogo Nogueira, he's from Brazil. He didn't name it until I asked him what the name of the piece was, so it was Christened "At the end of the Tunnel". I think it captures the essence of Old School pretty darned well.

It's a good thing my Mail Carrier has a car.

To be fair, growing up in the country mail carriers always did, but for the years I lived in the city they had a car, but walked the block delivering the mail anyway, and I am pretty sure I'd have been left off the route today. Here's why-

OK, Greyhawk Adventures is post Gygax TSR, but it is still 1st edition and I didn't have a copy. I have read it before, back in the day, my buddy Darryl's dad used to buy him all the new books for birthdays and Christmas and stuff. My parents got religion though and cut me off, so I had to buy my own stuff, TSR quality dropped after Oriental Adventures (some might say before), so I spent my allowance money on stuff I could use; like Dragon Magazine and miniatures and new games.

I actually already owned a copy of this 2nd edition AD&D Celts book, but it was given to my by a friend who had bought it used and the douche-bag he bought it from kept the map and cut the monster section out of the book. Now I have a pristine copy, and I'll be passing this copy on to my buddy Darryl, who might use it as a resource for the Warband 1/2 of our dual 43 AD/Warband campaign.

OK, I know I swore off Legend of the Five Rings RPG stuff because no one else wants to play, but I already have the 2nd module in this series.

And these 2 books were $4.99 each.

These 2 came wrapped in a glittery cotton or polyester protective coat. I got the 1st edition book for Dalton, since I already have 3 and he was interested in the game maybe for his own group.

And this is a board/card game, so I can play it with my friends and family; it's only tangentially related to the RPG I want them to play with me. Plus, at 59.99 on the website, it's probably the most expensive game I own, via the MSRP. I got it for less than 1/2 that with free shipping!

Keeping you all up to date

I have not posted to my blog in a couple of days now because one of my players, Dalton, had his dad pass away. He's 19 years old and now both of his parents are dead. I turn 43 later this month and both of mine are still alive, in fact today is my mother's 68th birthday. I can not imagine being in Dalton's place. His loss has kind of made me think about a lot of different things, mortality being one, my mark on the world being another.

I am not saying that I am going to quit gaming or anything radical, it's just that this blog is, apparently, a part of the legacy I am going to leave behind, so too are the games I have DMed or played in; almost everything I have done in my adult life has been in some way a form of entertainment for, usually, a small group of people. I doubt more than a few hundred people have ever seen the low budget horror film I was in, and I haven't been in a play since middle school. But I have DMed, conservatively, over the last 30+ years, more than 1000 games of D&D of various editions up through 3.5 and Hackmaster 4th edition.

I have also run games in other systems, WEG D6 Star Wars and WotC D20, Twilight 2000 1st, 2nd and 2.2 editions, Boot Hill, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, and who knows what else I can't remember off the top of my head. My wife tells me I should be a novelist, because I am a good GM. I think she's wrong, I set up good scenarios for people to react to, and I am quick on enough on my feet to counter-react in realistic ways. I've never carried anything very good, except academic papers, past about 20 pages. I can write decent short stories, not novels.


I don't know where I am really going with this, it's turning into one of my more rambling rambles, so I guess I will just wrap it up here and show you the picture of the book I got in the mail today.

I bought it so I'd have even more background material for my 43 AD game, but that doesn't seem likely to start soon now with Dalton's recent loss, he's a key player for me and I consider him a protege of sorts. I won't start anything until he's good to go.

Romans & Britons

For days, Romans and their invasion of Britannia have been foremost on my mind. I had, more or less, skimmed through the 43 AD rulebook when I bought it, as well as it's Warband supplement; but for the last few days I've been giving them a thorough read through; and, because of my somewhat perfectionist/obsessive personality, I've also been watching documentaries about the Romans in Britain, the Celts and some movies about the Romans and the Britons fighting it out. I have been prepping for this new campaign like a champ. I've even ordered new books from Amazon, some of which have begun to arrive, just to immerse myself in both the Roman and Celtic worlds. Here are a few that have already made it here, I've only just begun to read them.

"Art of the Celts" actually just arrived today. I may just be using this as an excuse to buy more books though, because it's not as though I don't already have significant library sections on both peoples; as in, they each have their own shelves. I took a course on ancient Rome in college, ancient Greece too, but I liked Rome better. I kept all the text books and bought all the recommended books for that course. The Celts I started studying on my own, just because of their connection to my own Scottish Highland heritage, but I am pretty sure I am at least as knowledgeable about the Celts as I am about the Romans. The Scottish Highlanders descended from the Gaelic branch of the Celtic tree too, but that's beside the point.

So today's mail was almost a system shock, it yanked me away from 43 AD and back to both the OSR and my Oriental Adventures project. Aside from the aforementioned "Art of the Celts", I got Tim Shorts' "The Manor" Issue #2, I read the 'Introduction' and 'Hugo's Healing Potions' all the way through, so far so good; but what really impressed me was the had written note on the envelope it came in. That's the sort of touch that makes you feel like you are really a member of a community instead of just someone typing words out into nothingness. Thanks for that.

I also got these miniatures from EBay. They are old Clan War miniatures, which I started collecting for my Oriental Adventures games, now I also hope one day to actually play some Clan War and some 1st or 2nd edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG, for which, of course, the miniatures are also eminently suited.

I got them at such a bargain, I thought there must be something I was missing in the sale, but, aside from the blister pack plastic being a little smushed in on the Crimson Legion, the miniatures are in fine shape. The Oni no Hida Yakamo was still shrink-wrapped and looks as fresh as the day it was manufactured. Then there was this 3e era module that I had never heard of-

Interestingly, it says it requires the use of the 3e D&D Player's Handbook, but makes no mention of the 3e Oriental Adventures book. It was printed in 2002 and 3e OA came out in 2001, so I don't really get what's going on there, given the obviously pseudo-Chinese setting of this module.

And now for a change of pace and game.

Instead of my planned OSR games or the L5R RPG that I keep hoping will break out here, or even the D20 Star Wars game that I had my players actually make characters for; we're going to admit that my home gaming group is a broken thing and take it on the road with a new game- 43 AD.

There are a lot of reasons why my home group is broken, two of my adult players are in new jobs and don't have time to play. One of the other adult players is the girlfriend of one that just started a new job, and was only coming to spend time with him. My oldest daughter is on medication that makes it too difficult for her to concentrate for any real length of time. My son has decided he really prefers playing 4th edition D&D with his buddies to playing old school D&D at home with his family and his parent's friends. My youngest daughter, oddly enough, only wants to play when one of the family friends is playing. Lastly, my long suffering wife is sick of playing dungeon mom, keeping the party coordinated and moving along, all that sort of stuff. She never really likes the role of party leader anyway, but when it's just her and the kids playing, it kind of naturally falls to her. My son also chafes at that, because he thinks he'd be a more suitable party leader, but when that was tried, he was ineffective and kind of self serving.

So, I've been reading through 43 AD, from Zozer games, I bought it last month. I am pretty sure that's when it came out. See, I have the people I play Dawn Patrol with Big Darryl and Little Darryl, Dalton and maybe my son John would be interested in this; and I think I could get some more people to show up for an RPG; but both Darryls HATE D&D for opposite reasons.

For Big Darryl, who gets first mention out of respect for his age, he hates D&D because it was too abstract, not rules crunchy enough and not realistic enough. He likes games where you might get crippling wounds that last forever, where you only get better at skills you actually use, stuff like that. He was really into DragonQuest back in the day, probably just because it was an RPG written by SPI, a wargame company known for it's strict simulationist approach.

For Little Darryl, he hates D&D because he can't divorce it in his mind from 3e. He actually was none too fond of 2nd edition either, but 3e was the straw that broke the camel's back for him too. I went back to 1st edition AD&D and B/X, he went to FUDGE and other extremely rules-lite games. FUDGE-on-the-fly is his favorite way to play his favorite game, that's how rules-lite he went; although he has expressed a fondness for Savage Worlds too. He also has another gaming group he plays with that have played a whole bunch of different indie RPGs, some of which I've heard of, others not. They are almost universally story oriented rules-lite systems though.

For my part, I think I could use a little experience away from D&D and it's derivatives for a while, despite having a fairly vast collection of games, I really haven't played anything that wasn't D&D, with the exception of Ashli's brief Hackmaster Basic campaign she ran for the family when she was a junior in high school, so 3 years ago or so, I played a different system. I haven't GMed anything non-D&D, unless you really count 4th edition Hackmaster as NOT D&D or 3e as NOT D&D, since I am going to guess the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Dalton is young and has most of his gaming experience at my table, so his horizons could stand to be expanded too I guess. I have given him a lot of books to read, but I don't think he's played any of them, much less GMed them. He does have a core group in Oswego, NY, that he DMs for, but apparently it's as dysfunctional currently as my home group.

Now, 43 AD is a pretty rules-lite system, so little Darryl will be pleased, but it has the realism requirements that Big Darryl likes too, armor reduces damage for instance instead of making you harder to hit, that always got him going about D&D. It also has the advantage of being able to be used as a gateway backstory role playing experience for my Garnia campaign world if things work out as I hope they will. Additionally, we, and by we I mean Little Darryl and I, plan to run simultaneous 43 AD and Warband (the Celtic character's supplement for 43 AD) campaigns, alternating adventures and having an impact on each other's storylines. I suggested that and he agreed that it would be pretty cool. We haven't set it in stone yet, but it is most likely I'll be up to bat first for GM duties with the Roman half of the campaign, which means I get to play a Briton!

Ordinarily, I'd want to do this with two completely different groups of players, but apparently I can't scrape together enough role playing gamers in central New York to make that sort of thing happen. Anyone getting this signal within driving distance of, roughly, just north of Cicero, NY that wants to play in an RPG that will be kind of irregularly scheduled during the summer, and if it lasts, most Saturdays after school starts, is welcomed to leave a comment.

So, here's hoping this new venture works out. It's currently dependent on the old man wanting to try some role playing again rather than sticking strictly to a schedule of wargaming. I hope that won't be a problem, because at 70, his wargaming skills have lost their sharpness. Either that or Little Darryl and I are just that much better than he is now, which I find unlikely. In either case it's sad for me, the man was like a father to me growing up and I hate having to take it easy on him in a wargame.

Eureka Moment!

Lost.

I woke up in the middle of the night, roughly 3:00AM, and, because I log any dream that wakes me up, I was up for a few minutes typing it's contents into my dream journal, it's a new project I have going. Since I was up, I played a few turns of an online game I have going and checked my email too. I got an email from Darryl asking me what I was doing up at this hour, he's a chronic insomniac, so he just hadn't been to sleep yet and was using Stumble to entertain himself when he saw that I'd played my turns in the game we both are playing. I emailed him back, we chatted via email for like 45 minutes before I decided that it would be easier to just call him and sent him an email saying so.

We talked for something like 2 1/2 hours before he got tired and had to sleep, I was tired too and went back to bed, since I'd only gotten a few hours sleep before my dream woke me up. But while we were talking we had one of those moments of intellectual ferment that caused an epiphany about some aspect of the campaign world that we have worked on together for the last three decades. Since both of us were tired and went to bed without writing it down, neither of us can remember it. I can remember a bunch of the other stuff we talked about about the campaign world, spit-balling ideas back and forth, bouncing them off each other to see what was good to go, and what needed improvement. I remember explaining to him the significance and different connotations of the name of the Japanese empire in the world, and how it came about, what the name meant and how it's different spellings mean different things, it changed over the years from Tenchukuo to Tenchuko.

But the big, important, world shaking idea that made me say, literally "I am definately going to blog about this today.", just before I hung up the phone; it's gone. It might as well have never existed in the first place. After I woke up from my next several hours of sleep, I was like "I have to blog about that.....". When I finally got hold of Darryl again, he had no idea either, we spent some time trying to jog each other's memory's, but to no avail.

I also got these in the mail, meaning I am pretty sure I now have everything ever published for Clan War. I actually already had two of them, but these were, the seller assured in the listing, in "like new" condition. The seller didn't lie.

I paid $9.99 for the four books, I regularly see any of them go for that individually on EBay, so I intend to just resell the 2 I already had at a profit.

Some Productivity Today

My wife and I, OK, mostly her, have been more or less renovating our kitchen, that weeks long activity is nearing completion. Out of that I got a new set of shelves in my office area, which is pretty cool because I always need more shelf space. My wife may have other plans for these shelves, but I am claiming them in the name of the empire!

I also hashed out, with my chief co-conspirator Darryl, a bunch of little things that have been bugging me about my Garnia campaign world this morning; so there's a sense of achievement for you right there! The whole thing ends up changing from a more generically Celtic flavored medieval fantasy world to a really Iron Age/ Dark Ages Celts with Magic added kind of a thing; meaning that a lot of the work that I thought was finished has to be rewritten, but I think it makes for a more flavorful world.

Oh, and it's not just Celts, there are other Human cultures represented there too. Spread across one mega-continent, one small continent/very large island, and several island chains we have various ethnic groups that have been brought here to the Realm of the Sidhe for whatever reasons whichever court of Sidhe saw fit to bring their particular group over. I talk about it more on my other blog, and there's another multi-planar war aspect to the whole back story, but you get the gist of it from this.

I also got these miniatures in the mail today. I was surprised because the seller said he was going to be out of town and not shipping anything until the 7th. I must have made it in just under the wire before he left.

I had bid on these before I got the first Celtos miniature that I won. I might consider more monster types like the Fomorian, but the Humans are a wee bit too fantasy for my tastes. Which I guess begs the question, where do you go for Wizard and Priest types when you are using mostly historical ranges of miniatures? Monsters I can grab from anywhere, although I have my preferred companies. But if I have a player that wants to be a Female Cleric in the setting, pretty much any part of the setting? Finding any females in armor is difficult, but not impossible. Finding one with the limited Cleric weapon set, much tougher*. Female Wizards? They're pretty tough to find too, assuming I want the females in the party to match the males in how "fantasy" they look.

*Although I tend not to be a stickler for enforcement, I'd rather do damage by class than by weapon type. For the sake of argument, assume I am strictly enforcing D&D weapon bans.

This is my 400th post

So I thought I'd share one of the coolest flashmobs I've ever seen.



It's not gaming related, I just love this piece. Enjoy!

Kind of an odd day today

I woke up this morning at 5:00AM with my left side more or less paralyzed, it kind of freaked me out a little until I realized I wasn't having a stroke, but in fact somehow my left side had managed to "fall asleep". I knew I was OK when my face was fine and it was just my arm, torso and leg that were numbed, needless to say my wife was at first concerned, and then unimpressed and kind of cranky that I woke her up so early. She went back to bed, I shambled around until I got my blood flow and feeling back, by then I was good and awake, so I just made coffee and started the day.

At about 9:00AM my mother called to tell me they had a bunch of Lab Coats in my size at the Dollar store in Oswego. I was skeptical, because my mom usually buys me stuff that doesn't fit me; this has been going on since I was in high school; but I said to go ahead and give it a shot anyway, since it was only a buck. She bought me two, because they came in white and light blue, and I'll be damned if they don't fit. Why the dollar store in Oswego has a supply of giant sized Lab Coats I could not even venture to guess, but now I can use it to infiltrate all manner of places I am not supposed to be :) I actually just periodically put it on and wandered out of my office and told everyone assembled that "I needed some more test subjects".

The weather is changing and I can feel it in my bones and with a sinus headache that you all would not believe. I never take medication for pain, my philosophy is that if I do, then I might build up a tolerance to the medication and it won't work if I really need it. Today I have been taking double normal human doses of Ibuprofen just to keep it at a level I can live with. I guess it didn't help that I had to do a lot of driving around today too, I swear that minivans are designed for the wee folk. There's no head room, especially when entering or exiting the vehicle, and no leg room while driving. Ye Gods, but I miss my old Impala, she was the best of my truly bad-ass cars. I sold her to my brother and he killed her in something like a month. But when she was mine, she was fast and had enough room inside to stretch out, she was a pleasure to drive. She was fast and beautiful and had enough space in the trunk for four full grown men. I'd never be able to afford to drive the poor thing anymore, gas prices being what they are, she had an Oldsmobile 350 rocket (I got the engine out of a '75 Cutlass) with 4 barrel carburetor under the hood. This is what she looked like-

Anyway, I finally got the rest of my order from Warlord Games in the mail today, here are their pictures from the website-

Mona did manage to snap off the standard at the bearer's hand though when she tried to straighten it. We also had to get every available Mastiff, because we have a Mastiff here. Her Name is Harmony, she is quite elderly, nearly 12 years old now.

I also got this package from EBay, which I won mostly just the things I figured would be a bargain because I'd be saving on shipping, the Vikings were the only thing I won that I really wanted, the rest was just cheap and I figured I'd find a use for it eventually.

These are Black Tree Designs "Unarmored Vikings with Swords", perfect for my current B/X D&D game.

These shield transfers are all Templars, 4 packs for smaller shields, 4 for larger. I got them all for $1.00.

These are Old Glory Ancients, obviously, Hoplites advancing, which I do not currently have any real use for, I just figured since they were cheap and I'd be saving on postage anyway.

The stuff I really wanted from this seller went into a bidding war that got too rich for my blood.

I also finished "The Mongoliad- Book One" today. I am torn as to what to read next, but I am thinking it's probably going to be the "Small Business for Dummies" book that I ordered because I want to start a small business, and I figured a "For Dummies" book would tell me in plain terms whether or not it was a viable option. They've never led me astray before, I am a smart guy, but there are topics I don't know anything about, they are a good way to start learning.

Character Questionnaires

This blog post over at Adventuring Archives got me to thinking about the whole idea of character back stories and how they fit in with the game world and all.

You see, I am of two minds about the subject, especially now that I am hardcore Old School; on the one hand I like the immersion that it brings a new character into the game world, on the other a single dagger blow might wipe that same character out wasting all the time and energy put into a decent, campaign immersive back story.

There were periods in my DMing over the years where I would give bonuses to people for coming up with a good back story for their character, anything from 100-250 XP to start out with, or an "Heirloom" of some sort that would be helpful, but not campaign breaking for a low level character to have that their class could use. Now, there were downsides to this too, I had to give DM approval to any back story. Some were so poorly written that they were just dreadful to read, others were written with power-gaming in mind, a lot of them seemed to skip over the part where I gave them extensive notes about the campaign world and were entirely inappropriate from that angle, and then some players just didn't care enough to try and either turned in crap or nothing, because the reward wasn't worth the effort.

Now, if you really want to go old school on this, just use the "Secondary Skills" table from the DMG and assume that's either what your father did or what he apprenticed you to do at a young age. Unearthed Arcana adds some tables to cover family and social status. Oriental Adventures is where random family generation and family history really shine, but rolling up an OA character can take a while, so you're adding time to character creation to draw the character into the setting, and that character still may not survive the first encounter.

Taking an old school approach, but of newer vintage, both versions of Hackmaster do the job pretty well. The parody version 4th edition Hackmaster, can be played straight, I have done it, but you have to rely less on randomness and more on point buys for Quirks and Flaws, otherwise it can go south fast. Hackmaster Basic is a lot more realistic in it's Quirk/Flaw random assignment. Both versions also build a family for you, so you can rip that section directly to your Old School D&D game if you want, hack D&D with Hackmaster. Now I'll put in a good word for Hackmaster, both 4th edition, which saved me from 3e D&D and Hackmaster Basic, which I have a lot of things I like about it, but it is a little too rules heavy for my current tastes. Seriously, if it wasn't for Hackmaster, I would have quit gaming probably.

So I guess I'd like everyone to come equipped with a basic idea of who their character is and how he or she fits into the world, the Character Questionnaire is a nice idea, it asks not just for a pysical description of your character, but also about your hometown, your place there, your friends and family; all stuff I can use as a DM to make a more immersive experience for my players, but I guess I can see this questionnaire being abused too. Making your acquaintances all Arch-Mages and yourself a Prince and stuff like that.