Submitted for Consideration for Your Next Campaign

I'm still getting settled into my new home, new job, and let's face it, new life, but I wanted to share something with you all that I see every day on my drive to work:

Graymoor either lies to the southwest of the Egg of Coot or exists in a parallel plane of existence. In either case, it is a land where sword & sorcery meets film noir. A land of shadows and mist, conspiracies, paranoia, trench-coated adventurers, and sultry femme-fatales. Sounds like the perfect cure for the high fantasy blues!

Or, it's a lonely county along the Atlantic coast (on either side of the pond), where the waves crash against the jagged rocks, crumbling manors cling precariously to the edge of cliffs, and the nights are broken by the sound of screams or howls that may not be animal in origin.

They were Gods in those Days

Jeff Rients recently wrote two posts regarding the wild and zany antics the boys in Lake Geneva got up to back in the early years of this hobby. Inspired by those anecdotes, I wanted to share one of my favorite old war stories from years gone by. This one was recounted by Roger E. Moore in an editorial on fear that appeared in Dragon #156 (April 1990)

I was in a GAMMA WORLD game that Jim Ward ran a few years ago. It scared me to death. Jim has a habit of rolling huge numbers of dice of damage at the snap of a laser, and his campaign was full of amusing things such as Cthulhu-size lake monsters and deathray satellites that diced up ground targets with impunity. But his most famous creation was the subtly named Death Machine, a nice little military relic of the Social Wars of the game’s background.

What’s a Death Machine, some of you may ask. Here’s a story: A few years ago, when I was in the Army, I told everyone in my gaming group to each pick his or her favorite deity from the AD&D® game, and prepare to role-play that deity in a special scenario I had developed. The next hour was spent in feverish excitement as a large assortment of gods and supermonsters met on a deserted plain and awaited their opponents. Suddenly a huge space-time warp opened up in front of the incredible assembly . . . and out of the alien warp came three brand-new, fully armed, fully powered Death Machines on random programming.

Two gods died in the first 10 seconds of combat, each taking over 700 hp of damage. A third god died before the minute-long fight was over, and two other gods (including Demogorgon) fled the battlefield in utter panic. All the rest of the deities were pounded with atomic missiles, lasers, bombs, rockets, shells, bullets, force fields, and death rays. Thor bent the nose of one Death Machine with Mjolnir but took a nuke in return. If I had not used random attacks, all of the gods would have died in 30 seconds, no sweat. It was wonderful.

I think we need more of this sort of thing. Thank goodness there are still referees who indulge in these sort of antics and keep the wild and wooly days of yore alive.

New Horizons

I am without a doubt undergoing a sea change in my gaming preferences. I’ve lost all enthusiasm for level-based fantasy games in the last few months and I now realize that I’ve hit my saturation point. This doesn’t mean I’m done with them for good, but it will be some time before I’m running D&D in any of its myriad forms again. Playing the game is fine; running it is another story.

This also doesn’t mean that I’m finished with writing for them either. In fact, I just finished up my work for another level-based fantasy game and have another contribution in that vein on my schedule. However, when it comes to my personal life, it’s time to change things up.

The downside of this realization is that Stonehell is effectively in stasis for the foreseeable future. I hate to do it, but my lack of interest in writing dungeon adventures is blatantly obvious when I look over what I’ve written so far. I have high expectations for the sequel and I’m not meeting them. I’ll come back and write the second book once I can get excited about the dungeon again. My apologies to those of you who’ve been looking forward to the sequel, but I’m not going to take the sleazy route of writing a piece of shit and asking you for your money for it.

“OK, Mike, if that’s how you feel, what’s next?” I’m glad you ask.

Unless something gets changed (which is entirely possible), the next issue of Fight On! will feature the first of a series of articles I’ve written aimed at “modern” horror and fantasy. I use quotation marks because the default period is the 1920s (all the better to fit classic Call of Cthulhu) rather than the 21^st century. I’m extremely proud of this series, more proud of it than anything I’ve done for my own enjoyment in some time. The article features a map (a glimpse of which is below)done by cartographer Ravi Shankar who I met over at the Cartographer’s Guild. Ravi does some excellent work and I encourage you to check out his portfolio—especially if you’re looking for a good cartographer.

The series details a quaint little portion of upstate New York located in the Hudson Valley region. In real life, the Hudson Valley has a great deal of folklore attached to it. One finds stories of everything from headless horsemen to Bigfoot to UFOs. After I’m done with it, there will be even more weird goings-on reported. The purpose of the series is to present a sandbox setting in which referees can place their own historical horror games. Tired of Arkham? Come visit Wildwyck County. If I do my job correctly though, the place can be used for more than just Call of Cthulhu. It’d make an excellent Colonial Gothic campaign if you roll the clock back or a World of Darkness setting if you advance the timeline ahead. One could even remove all the serial numbers and turn it into a fantasy-based campaign using Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Realms of Crawling Chaos.

The series has personal connections for me, which is one of the reasons it has me so excited. Wildwyck County is based on real life portions of New York State where I had many happy experiences. The chance to return to that place (even in a fictionalized and highly spookified form) is a great pleasure. In fact, it’s even inspired me to return there in real life for a few days to engage in some R&R&R (rest and relaxation and research). I plan on taking some photos to use in future articles to support the artwork I’ve already contributed (chosen, but not created by me, thankfully) for the initial article. 

Connected to the ‘Wyck (as the locals call their home)are the eternal autumnal lands of the October Country. I’ve been rambling about and designing for the October Country for over two years now on the blog Secret Antiquities and it represents my second big project. I’ve got enough material to begin playtesting the setting and I hope to assemble the finished material into a book once I’ve worked the kinks out. If I had to pick a work that I’d consider my magnum opus, the October Country would be it. I call it my Rosetta Stone setting because any story I want to tell—fantasy, horror, intrigue, pulp, or weirdness—can find a home in the October Country. It’s a personal place, but one I hope has enough common touchstones to be universal.

I’m not sure how I’ll handle that setting in the future. I’d like to see it in print, but I’m not certain I want to go down the road of self-publishing again. I’ve gotten lazy and like it when all I have to do is string the words together and let somebody else worry about the art, the editing, the layout, etc. Unfortunately, I’m hesitant to relinquish ownership of the material, so self-publishing may be the only course. But that’s all carts far, far in front of horses for now.

This brings me to my last concern: the future of this blog. My original plan was to keep it up until I released the Stonehell sequel and then quietly retire it. Now, with the sequel on hold for the foreseeable future, I’m at a loss at what to do. I have no interest in writing more about fantasy games like D&D here for now, but this blog draws a lot of traffic and has a robust following. Do I mothball the blog until I come back around to level-based fantasy games again or do I repurpose it to reflect my new interests? And if I do that, what happens to Secret Antiquities? Frankly, I don’t know.

That’s my future, folks. One which may or may not be of interest to you, but I thought you deserved a heads up as to where I’m headed. Things have been very, very quiet here as of late and this is the reason why. I hope this glimpse at where I’m going and my future plans sparks some interest and you hang around here or follow me where I’m going, but I understand if you’re more comfortable remaining where I’ve been. It’s all good either way.

NEA: Video Games are Art

The National Endowment for the Arts has expanded their list of art forms deemed acceptable for the awarding of grants to include "interactive technologies and media delivered by satellite or internet" meaning that interactive games are now recognized as an art form. Developers looking to create works that enhance the public good are eligible for grants up to $200,000 so long as they intend to release their work for free.

As tabletop roleplaying and technology continue to merge, one can only wonder if this means that traditional RPGs will eventually be granted the same "interactive game" status as video games and what this might mean to the future of the industry. Could we one day see the rise of "roleplaying artistes" who survive on their avant garde gaming contributions to society?

In Order to Discover New Places, You Must First Throw Out the Old Maps

My Labyrinth Lord campaign recently experienced a complete party wipe, which can happen if you decide to let events unfurl naturally rather than guided by a firm yet biased hand. I look upon it with mixed emotions. It puts a damper on campaign momentum, but also allows me to introduce a few changes, ones I was lamenting over in my yearly review not so long ago.

In retrospect, I realize that I made an error in introducing material from the Advanced Edition Companion. Not because the supplement is flawed, but because it essentially undermined my whole purpose for going back to the roots of the hobby for this campaign. The campaign began to resemble AD&D in rules and style, and if that was the case, why wasn’t I just playing AD&D? It was time to chuck all the extraneous material and go back to basics and cultivate anew.

One of my primary goals in keeping to the basics and building from there was that I was hoping to create a game that was uniquely my own and not just another standard D&D world. This has been a mental hobgoblin of mine for quite awhile now, one which gets aggravated every time someone decides to expand the types of playable classes and wanders into the same old paladin, ranger, bard, druid, etc. territory. Having seen some of that appear in my own world, I had had enough and was seriously looking to break out of these same old variations on a theme.

It was a route I had taken before with both my Mule and Octopus class—solid, yet unorthodox player classes that explored what you can do with a class-based fantasy RPG—and one I plan to continue following. So, instead of adhering to the classic fantasy archetypes, I’ve become more inspired by other driving forces: “Is it something I’d like to play?” and “Is it something different?” The answers to these questions so far are indeed inspired.

As an example of where my mind had been wandering, an instance I’m most proud of, I’d like to present you with my latest class: the ghost. That is not a metaphorical name; it is a dead adventurer who continues to practice his former profession, unwilling to let a little thing like kicking the breathing habit slow him down.

I’m continuing to tinker with a trader class, one that relies more on role-playing than combat and avoids the granting of magical powers, which is a route I’ve seen before, but never quite understood. There are a few other classes (or races, rather) in the stew pot and I’ll either debut them here or submit them for publication as they come to completion.

The ghost may not be for everyone, and it is certainly not for all campaign worlds. My vision of what D&D continues to change, even more so after a year-plus of old school playing. It is unlikely that I’ll ever return to what I once considered its default settings, and I’m looking forward to what this new territory contains.

Download the ghost class here.

S&W WB Acquired

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who contacted me in regards to my White Box search. Deals have been made, swag negotiated, and arrangements...er, arranged, so I'm all set. You guys are indeed the greatest role-playing fan base in existance today. I'm proud to be a part of the OSR, whatever that means this week.


Some of my regulars know that I'm a slave to whimsy and odd ball ideas. My latest has me thinking of projects to tackle once Stonehell is complete.

That vein of thought has managed to merge itself with a discussion I had with someone a few weekends ago, and I'm now thinking of coupling it with Swords & Wizardry White Box.

I'm aware that the WB rules remain available, but part of my idea involves taking a seed and nurturing it to its ultimate end--for weal or for woe. Thus, BHP White Box is almost ideal for my purposes.

Having just missed an eBay auction for one, I thought I'd cast my net upon the waters of my readers and see if someone has a gently used set they'll never find a use for. If so, before you put it up on eBay or offer it up to Noble Knight, drop me a line and we'll see if we can come to terms in either cash or swag.

The Acererak Caper

Once upon a time, I caught some forgotten comedian’s bit about men and heist films. His contention was that, deep down inside, men want to participate in a heist. There is some primal, masculine allure to the idea of hanging upside-down in an air vent, spraying aerosol to detect invisible trip beams while another guy sits in a van three blocks away screaming “They changed the code!” into his headset mike. The challenge of defeating the undefeatable and walking away with a fortune is tempting no matter how law-abiding one is in everyday life, which is why the heist remains a popular crime genre in both fiction and film.

As I was out walking yesterday, The Tomb of Horrors burbled up to the surface of my thoughts for some reason. As my readers undoubtedly know, that module is largely considered to be the most challenging dungeon ever written. In fact, the Tomb of Horrors is so notorious that I’ve had younger gamers, ones who’ve never even seen the module in the figurative flesh, tell me with complete and utter sincerity that it is unbeatable and that everyone who enters the Tomb dies. They don’t believe me when I tell them otherwise.

Personally, I’m of the school of thought that there are no truly unbeatable dungeons or deathtraps—provided one has a fair referee and enough time and money to spend. I maintain that the Tomb can be navigated with greatly reduced risk if a) the referee is neutral, and b) you’re willing to take a financial and magical loss on the venture. Again, when I mention this, these younger gamers assume I’m talking about buying every last sheep in town and driving them ahead of the party to serve as mine detectors when they explore the tomb. Not so, my friends.

The key to defeating the tomb is patience, money, and research, not livestock. One of the great things about the Tomb is that, when inserted into a campaign setting rather than used as a one-shot, there is no time limit present when confronting the lich’s crypt. This gives the smart and cautious player all the time in the world to plan his foray before he gets within sight of that skull motif hill.

In a world where sages can be paid vast sums to dedicate all their time to researching the past and unearth forgotten scraps of information, why not do so? When priests quite literally have access to the knowledge of the gods, who wouldn’t consult them to inquire what lays beyond the entrance to the Tomb? Genius mages can cast spells that access other planes of existence or delve into legend to retrieve scraps of knowledge, so it would be foolish to not hire their services. And in a milieu where magic items exist that can detect traps, contain spells of augury or divination, see through illusions, detect poison, magic, and evil, reveal secret passages, and otherwise access the unknown and unseen, why wouldn’t you take as long as was necessary to buy, beg, borrow, and steal those items to take with you?

It then occurred to me that all this prep work was the fantasy equivalent to putting a crew together in a heist film. Why not make the entire campaign one big heist job with the Tomb of Horrors as the once-in-a-lifetime score?

The set-up would be simple enough. First, figure out what treasure makes the players drool and stash it in the Tomb. Staff of the Magi? It’s in there. Hammer of Thunderbolts? Acererak stole it. A diamond the size of a baby’s head? The lich has six of them.

Then start the players off at first level and let them know exactly what’s in the Tomb. Give them a scrap of information to get them started and then let them figure out how to get it. They’ve got 10-14 levels to plan their heist.

The result would be a sandbox-style campaign with a definite end game. The players would have to determine what information, equipment, magic items, favors, assistants, etc. they would need to breach the tomb and then figure out how to get access to that material. This would lead them to tracking down the possible resting places of a gem of true seeing or a wand of secret door and trap location. They might have to do a few favors for the Great Oracle in order to gain her favor so she will contact the gods to see within the tomb. A council of mages might need pacification before they’d agree to use their crystal balls and legend lore spells to peer beyond the veil. And, of course, the Thieves Guild is going to want in on a heist like this…

To make it true to the heist genre, you could even start the campaign with a single PC and have him decide who to recruit. As he puts his list of needed accomplices together, the other players come in as possible candidates, leaving it up to the first PC and his player to best determine how to go about recruiting them to participate in the caper. Now would also be the time to slip in a mole or secret rival too.

Like any sandbox, this would require a lot of prep work for the referee, but with a predetermined campaign goal to consider, he could concentrate his efforts on people, places, and things related to the ultimate heist. No need to design a ten-level megadungeon, just lots of little dungeons that hold secrets and heist-related magical items, for example. You could even use James Raggi’s The Grinding Gear as a low-level dry run to give the PCs an idea of what sort of challenges lie ahead.

One thing that would be required of the referee is complete 100% fairness. The Tomb’s a tough nut, and with it as the focus of the campaign, he might even want to make it 25%-50% more deadly ahead of time. Although, once that’s done, he can’t toughen it up again later on down the line if the PCs become better prepared than anticipated. If the players are smart and take steps to learn and overcome the Tomb’s dangers, they should be rewarded for doing so and not have to face a Tomb “adjusted for their challenge level.” On the other hand, if they fail to make the correct preparations, there’s nothing wrong with the campaign ending with the death of everyone.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I have the concept for the next Labyrinth Lord campaign I run.

Visiting the Kinan-M’Nath

Into the whirlpool
Where matter vanishes
Degenerate star
Arm of Orion

An iron sun
The forbidden circle
Anti-matter is the
Black horizon

Blue Oyster Cult, “Heavy Metal: The Black and Silver

Now that visitors know what to expect once they arrive in the Uncertain Lands, how exactly do they get there? For this, we must turn to the sages of the ages, who, in their ink-spattered wisdom, have determined that there are four known methods of transportation between the Kinan-M’Nath and other worlds.

Method #1 – Spell Craft: Perhaps the easiest method of world travel, this method is restricted to those who have achieved mastery in magic, have discovered a magic item capable of cross-world travel, or can pay someone to provide these means of travel for them. In general, spell craft travel covers cross-world travel achieved by use of astral projection, gate, limited wish, plane shift, and/or wish, or through magic items such as an amulet of the planes, a cubic gate, or a well of many worlds. The benefit of this method is that the caster or item user has some control over where they arrive—provided they have some familiarity with the lands of the Kinan-M’Nath.

Method #2 – Realm Storms: Highly unpredictable, those arriving in the Kinan-M’Nath by way of a realm storm seldom do so willingly. These planar tempests tear the boundaries between worlds, although they appear to be nothing more than extremely strong thunderstorms to those caught in them. More than one party of adventurers has sought shelter in a cave during a realm storm only to emerge after it ended and find themselves in a completely different world. Some powerful mages and learned sages can predict where and when a realm storm may next appear, but finding such an individual and meeting their price is an adventure in its own right.

Method #3 – Etheric Mists: Like realm storms, etheric mists are a supernatural event. They are even more unpredictable than the storms, however, and some sages believe that etheric mists are examples of Fate in action. Appearing as a smoky gray fog, etheric mists are cold, thick, and damp, restricting sight to a mere 5’. Alien noises and weird echoes sound from the depths of the mist, and an occasional phantasmagorical shape can be barely discerned. Etheric mists appear without warning, even on the sunniest of days. They envelop travelers completely, last anywhere from several minutes to several hours, and, once they dissipate, leave the wanderers in a new land.

Image by Stefan Poag. Please visit Knucklebones.net for more of Stefan's wonderful work.

Method #4 – Hangways: These permanent gates were created in the dim past by unknown hands for indeterminable purposes. Appearing as 12’ diameter stone hoops, hangways are typically found suspended horizontally between four massive supports and dangling 10’-12’ above the ground. Usually a set of free-standing stairs or a ramp leads up to the edge of the hoop, allowing travelers easy access to the 8’ diameter opening in the hoop’s center. The air inside this aperture shimmers as if hot, although the temperature is the same as the surrounding atmosphere. Although hangways share the same general appearance of horizontal hoop hanging from supports, details vary from place to place and world to world.

Image by Talysman. Please visit Talysman's blog, The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms, for more.

Hangways, sometimes called “hopgates” due to their method of egress, allow free travel between worlds to specific locations. Unlike the less predictable methods listed above, hangways remain in fixed locations and provide access to a matched site on one or more alien worlds. Use of the hangway is a simple matter of hopping through the horizontal aperture and falling between worlds. The traveler lands unharmed on the floor underneath the other hangway’s matched hoop on a new world. Travel between world can only occur by stepping through the topside of the hangway’s hoop. Attempts to reenter a hangway from below are always unsuccessful.

Image by Talysman

While the majority of hangways are keyed to a single location, some allow access to multiple planes. Hangways with multiple connections are usually time-based, meaning that a single hopgate will connect to one place during a certain time of the day, week, month, or year, and connect to another at an alternate time. Sometimes manuals, instructions, carvings, etc. are found near these types of hangways, but this is not guaranteed. Adventurers intending to travel via hangways should research their chosen hopgate carefully before embarking on their journey.

Hangways are the most common planar gate found in the Kinan-M’Nath. At least two are known to exist within the boundaries of Stonehell Dungeon; others can be found in forgotten places (both indoors and out) across the Uncertain Lands. The most recent wayfarers to arrive through a functioning hopgate are the members of The Society of Planewalkers, currently operating out of Blackpool. These outsiders purportedly originated in the Lands of the Rotted Moon and have displayed talents and traits unusual to the Kinan-M’Nath. Whether they will become a force for the Weal or the Woe remains to be seen.

A Note About the Duration of Stay: Visitors to the Kinan-M’Nath should be aware that their method of travel to the Uncertain Lands may have an impact on how long they remain in that world. Etheric mists and realm storms are notorious for carrying a person or persons between worlds only to return them to their place of origin days, even hours, later. And while spell craft and hangways almost always allow for unlimited visitation, even these methods have been known to abruptly fail, resulting in the traveler’s sudden departure from this realm. In other words, the referee has full control over the length anyone visits his campaign, making it much easier for a guest PC to suddenly fade away and return to his own campaign world if needed at the end of a session.

A very, very heartfelt thanks to Stefan Poag and Talysman for taking the time to contribute their talents to an unconventional idea dreamed up by me on a whim. Your contributions are greatly appreciated!

Immigration Policies of the Kinan-M’Nath

B. Have you ever been arrested or convicted for an offense or crime involving moral turpitude or a violation related to a controlled substance; or ever been arrested or convicted for two or more offenses for which the aggregate sentence to confinement was five years or more?

Answer Yes or No. (Yes! Yes, sir! Yes! No! No! No!)

As stated last week, I’m planning on opening up my campaign world to visitation by residents of other worlds. Since such a plan has the possibility of going pear-shaped quickly, some guidelines are necessary. Below is the rough draft of the Kinan-M’Nath’s immigration, visitation, and customs policies.

Item 1: All visitors arriving in the Kinan-M’Nath must be from a campaign world whose ruleset is compatible with that of my own. Since Labyrinth Lord with portions of the Advanced Edition Companion is the native rules that means that visitors from the following systems are welcome: Original D&D, B/X D&D, Mentzer D&D, 1st edition Advanced D&D, 2nd edition Advanced D&D (without non-weapon proficiencies), Swords & Wizardry (Core, Complete or White Box), and LotFP. I’m probably forgetting one or two here. Other systems will be taken on a case-by-case basis, but if conversion can’t be done in ten minutes or less, it’s probably not compatible.

Item 2: Visitors must be within one level plus or minus of the resident characters’ highest/ lowest level. Exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Item 3: All ability modifiers will be brought into line with Labyrinth Lord’s. Armor class will likewise be recalculated to adhere to Labyrinth Lord. Hit points will be rerolled in the case of different-sized class hit dice if the referee decides there is a sizable discrepancy between the visiting character’s base ruleset and that of the campaign.

Item 4: Due to the laws of the conservation of magic, visitors are allowed to bring with them a total of three magical items plus one potion when visiting the Uncertain Lands. If this policy was good enough for Dave Arneson, it’s good enough for me.

Item 5: Native house rules trump visiting house rules. Native house rules also trump the rules as written, but that's to be expected.

Item 6: With the exception of magically linked companions such as familiars, visiting characters arrive in the Kinan-M’Nath alone.

Item 7: Visitor must arrive by way of one of the three authorized entrance methods into the Kinan-M’Nath (More on this to come).

Item 8: Not so much a rule as good advice: You’re a guest here. Please behave in a manner that would make people want to invite you back. This includes letting me know you plan to attend and arriving on time.

Item 9: I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night. I’ve been playing long enough to know a kosher character when I see one. Please leave your über-PC with all 18s, the wand of Orcus, and the vorpal luckblade lightsaber at home.

Item 10: If the visiting character is active in another campaign and you wish to have your triumphs and failures accounted for in your home game, please provide me with the email address of your regular referee. I will gladly provide him or her with an account of treasures won, magic gained or lost, and any earned experience points acquired during your trip abroad. I have no say on whether they will accept your foreign-won gains, but I’ll provide impartial conformation that you earned it legally.

“Out of the Box” Game Summary

Despite a much smaller turnout than I’ve become used to for one of my gaming sessions at the FLGS, the “Out of the Box” experimental session did indeed take place yesterday. I’d rate it in the 65% successful category whereas a usual Labyrinth Lord session is 85-90% successful (for me at any rate). Only three people attended and it was not the ideal mix for a game, but I forged ahead nonetheless.

Most of the afternoon’s exploits occurred around the Keep (of Borderland’s fame) and the Haunted Keep (from the sample dungeon at the back of the Moldvay rulebook). The session ended with three-quarters of the party dying and the last member escaping with all the loot—about average for an 1st level party right out of the box.

While the adventuring portion of the day was only average, the point of the “Out of the Box” experiment—to see if it was possible to revisit the game without succumbing to the preconceived notions that come with thirty years of involvement in the hobby—was by far more successful, surprisingly so, in fact. Having re-read Moldvay Basic with what I hoped was a pair of novice’s eyes, I came away with fresh notions and a few house rules that I would never have considered otherwise.

The biggest joy of the process, however, was reacquainting myself with the Keep. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve bothered to look back on that stony edifice, but, once I did, what I found surprised me. The Keep gets a lot of flak from folks who’ve never actually experienced it firsthand or did so only in their youth. The lack of names for its inhabitants is often cited as one of the flaws of the place. Having returned to the Keep with more mature eyes, I can only say that it is one of the finer examples of “home base” design I’ve encountered. Gary certainly knew what the hell he was doing when he put that place together.

In my youth, I remember looking at the Keep and wondering why all this “useless” information was provided: details about guild fees, storage of trade goods, the habits of residents after-hours, and the like. Now I found all this to be an immense springboard for not only future possibilities of conflict and adventure, but as a means to bring the location to life.

In yesterday’s session, the thief decided to see if it would be possible to rob the chapel, perhaps acquiring some of its overly-priced holy water as well as cash. That heist, as unsuccessful as it was, was a joy to run as a referee because I had all the pertinent information at my fingertips: the layout of the church, the probable positions of guardsmen, the surrounding buildings and their heights, and information as to whether or not there would be any cash in the donation box in the event that the thief got inside.

When it comes to refereeing style and advance preparation, I’m definitely more in the “free-wheeling, it’ll come to me when it’s needed” school, but the Keep showed me that there is something to be said for sparse, yet precise, game notes. It got me to reconsider, if not revamp, my style of game prep and I’ll be making some adjustments to my notes over the holidays before the Watchfires & Thrones game recommences next year. Even with thirty-years of gaming experience under my belt, Gary can still run rings around me when it comes to game design. Here’s one student who will undoubtedly never surpass his master.

The “Out of the Box” experiment allowed me to walk away with two nifty house rules. One was a complete surprise. With me reacquired novice’s eyes, I came up with a system that determines a PC’s social class, previous profession, connections to other characters, and, optionally, reason for adventuring in a single action. I was impressed with my own creativity and I’ll be fine-tuning that method and submitting a piece on it to Fight On!

The second house rule was a simple method for determining and tracking wear and tear on a character’s arms and equipment. That’s not something I usually pay much (read “any”) attention to, but when the Keep’s description mentioned that there was a smithy that repaired such items, my novice brain told me I had to come up with a way to keep that poor guy employed. And frankly, in a world where a suit of plate mail runs you 60 gold pieces, anything that causes the characters to continue to spend money on arms and armor is a good thing from the referee’s point of view.

The method I developed was this: Whenever a PC rolled a “1” on an attack, his weapon became worn and I had him put a mark next to the item on this character sheet. After three such marks, the weapon broke and became useless. It would have been possible to have some of the damage repaired (have all but a single check removed since you can’t get a weapon back to “new” status) for a fee at the smithy. For armor, I used a similar method. Any time an opponent scored a “20” on its attack against the PC, the player made a mark next to their armor and the rules above applied. It was a simple yet elegant solution to the problem—provided you’re not already using ones and twenties for fumbles and critical hits. I’m on record as being against those things anyway, so it works fine for me.

Nevertheless, I realize that some people expect that there will be critical hits in D&D—nearly forty years of house rulings tend to do that. But I wanted to do something different with the way I adjudicated such blows in the “Out of the Box” game. In a response to this, I came up with a “floating critical hit” idea.

In my Labyrinth Lord game, I’ll tell the players what an enemy’s AC is so that they know what they need to hit the beast. In theory, they have their attack matrix written down at the bottom of their character sheet so it’s a simple matter of looking down to see that they need “X” to hit AC “Y”. I say “in theory” because I have a player or two who still rolls their attack die and then looks at me like a deer in headlights while they wait for me to tell them if they succeeded or not. That drives me up a wall.

So to avoid that, I decided that critical hits would be a result of a d20 roll that resulted in exactly the number they needed to hit their opponent’s AC. It would be the same 5% chance as rolling a natural twenty, but that “20” would change from AC to AC. So, if as a 1st level character, you need a 13 to hit AC 6, a roll of “13” (not counting modifiers) meant that the attack bypassed the opponent’s armor completely and did maximum damage. As one little wrinkle to this, only fighters and demi-humans could score a critical hit. That was my little way of rewarding the otherwise overlooked fighter.

As of now, I doubt that “Out of the Box” will become a recurring campaign. I may return to it as a one-shot from time-to-time, but I think I have too much already invested in my Labyrinth Lord campaign setting to branch off into a second fantasy campaign. It’s much more likely that I’ll take the lessons I learned and some of the neater ideas I came up with for that setting and import them over to the Kinan-M’Nath. Despite this reluctance to return, however, the concept of an “Out of the Box” game is a good one and I’d recommend it to anyone who digs crazy thought experiments of this sort. Revisiting old ground with fresh eyes is a fascinating experience, even an instructive one, for jaded old referees like myself.

Welcome to My World

Since I’ve taken a good look around me and realized that I have a literal box of books that I’ve purchased in 2010 and have yet to crack open, I’ve decided to catch up on my reading. Some of that reading includes the more recent issues of Fight On!, since I got sidetracked somewhere around issue #6 and haven’t had the opportunity to enjoy that publication as of late. However, rather than dive right back in, I started with #1 again and I am slowly working my way forward.

While the premier issue still holds up and contains more than a few nuggets worth mining, what really caught my eye this time around was the editorial written by good old Ignatius Ümlaut, publisher and editor of the fanzine. Entitled “In the Time of the Broken Kingdom,” it is, amongst other things, a love letter to the open game of yore, the sort of campaign where anyone at anytime could stop by, pull out a character from their overstuffed briefcase, and spend a few hours as a guest in an ongoing campaign world.

That is a rare thing these days. As a whole, the hobby has become a place where, to quote the editorial, “we often content ourselves with smaller communities: our own group’s game world, the fandom of worlds like Tekumel, Glorantha, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Arduin, the Forgotten Realms, the World of Darkness, and so on, communities devoted to the particular ruleset we like best, even communities of game designers.”

The way we play these games has changed since they first blossomed out of the organized chaos of the sand tables of the Mid-West. If I may be so vainglorious as to quote myself from the intro to The Dungeon Alphabet, the hobby, like the dungeon, “is no longer the unexplored country it was in its youth. And, like any unexplored land, it has lost its wildness and unpredictability with the arrival of more and more people and the laws and rules that a population brings with them.” Things have been “mapped and codified, rendered predictable with familiarity. It is no longer the Wild West or the lawless high seas.”

It is almost difficult to imagine, as the clock slowly winds down on 2010, that the campaign world was often a much more fluid place, one where people came and went depending on the whims of their schedules and travel times. The gamer of today might be hard pressed to imagine this scenario described in an article from a 1980 issue of New World entitled “It’s Only A Game…Or Is It?”, by Moira Johnston and quoted in the Fight On! editorial:

The liberal immigration policies of [Deanna Sue] White’s D&D-based ‘open universe’ allows characters to visit from other worlds and universes, making Mistigar an intergalactic entrepot. “Whenever I’m in L.A., I call to see if Deanna’s having a run,” says Clint Bigglestone, Bay Area fan and producer of the FRP convention, DunDraCon. His characters adventure through Mistigar, returning to the Bay Area with wounds and stories that spread Mistigar’s network of contact…The FRP network has become so sophisticated that it is now possible for jealous, upstart worlds from all over the country to attack Mistigar. Two attempts to subvert her world have already been thwarted, one by Bigglestone, whose characters discovered, while campaigning through Dave Hargrave’s world near San Francisco, that evil members of Hargrave’s Black Lotus Society planned to attack Mistigar. Loyal to White, Bigglestone’s characters attacked and killed the plotters.

As the date of the article suggests, the situation described above was not an uncommon one even as the hobby entered the boom years of the early 1980s. I remember playing in several campaigns in junior high which featured characters hoping from one world to another in the school cafeteria depending on whose turn it was to referee, bringing their grudges and artifacts of unbelievable power with them for the journey. This style of play was to fall out of fashion as the years progressed and campaign worlds became more insular in nature. Ironically, the open campaign went into decline as the commercial campaign setting began to ascend, a product that, on paper, would seem to make the open campaign more accessible to gamers around the world.

This editorial got me thinking about the way things once were and what they are no longer. There have been and continue to be attempts at “organized play,” moderated events that do what White and others did without the benefit of an overseeing committee or communication methods more advanced than the mailed letter, mimeographed fanzine, or telephone call. Outside of a brief membership in the RPGA back in the late 1980s, I haven’t been exposed to these efforts and I can’t claim to know if they do an adequate job of recreating or maintaining this level of campaign openness. But what I can do is undertake efforts to make my own campaign world more accessible to visitors.

I’m not proposing some OSR-wide organized play: that way leads to madness. Instead, I’ll be taking steps to make my own personal campaign setting, the Kinan-M’Nath or “the Uncertain Lands” that forms the basis of my Labyrinth Lord game, a place where people can occasionally come, experience Stonehell Dungeon first-hand, gain some treasure, and depart with “wounds and stories”…and maybe a bit of loot.

I’ve been thinking about this since I reread the FO! piece and it seems to be a logical step for my own campaign. When I was younger, I always envisioned that I would someday have a massive campaign world of my own, one detailed down to the smallest little square foot. As I grow older though, I see the sense in quality over quantity and it’s becoming quite clear that any and all of my future campaigns will be set in the same small(ish) region that I’m currently playing in. Since the Kinan-M’Nath is based on both an original play map (Outdoor Survival) and original rules (D&D via Moldvay via Proctor), why not go whole hog and assume the original play style as well? I would much rather have more visitors to a well-detailed region than a vast world that rarely gets visited by tourists.

The fact that Stonehell Dungeon has become a popular visiting place for adventurers also makes an open campaign style of play sensible. With a pre-existing axis mundi to rest cross-campaign travel on, it’s a small matter of extending the idea of many Stonehells scattered across the multiverse and allowing travel between worlds (although I claim rightful possession of the Ur-Stonehell!).

Lastly, I run my campaign in a public setting, one where anyone can walk in and see the campaign unfold. And although I may not live in a transportation hub, I am located a short train ride from the most magical city on Earth. One never knows who might be in the area and looking for a game to play during their visit.

Like any nation, my campaign world will have some laws regarding visitation and immigration, and I’ll get to those in posts next week. In the meantime, let it be known that the borders between worlds have grown a little thinner in the Kinan-M’Nath. Should you ever find yourself headed to the New York area, be sure to pack a character sheet or two. I might need help defeating the Black Lotus Society.

Illustrating A Crazy, Cool Idea

I’m spending the long weekend working on the myriad little projects that always seem to clog my mental inbox. One of those is to get caught up on my copies of Fight On! magazine. Since it’s been awhile, I’ve started at the beginning, rereading #1 and working my way forward. One of the articles in that magazine got me thinking and I want to do a more in-depth post on my thoughts in the weeks to come. I’m going to introduce something and I’d like to have an illustration to go along with it.

I’ve posted a rough diagram of something below. As you can plainly see, my artistic talents are limited to the written word (and there are those that would debate even that claim), so I would be very interested to see what someone with some talent could do with the below sketch.

Normally, I’d say send me an email if you’re interested it cleaning this doodle up, but, for my latest crazy idea, I think the more variations on this theme, the better. Therefore, I’m open to as many takes on the sketch as people are willing to submit. It actually works to the idea’s and the upcoming post’s benefit to have plenty of options.

If you are so interested, please take the attached drawing and run with it. You can recreate it as is, take the rough idea and elaborate on it, or just use it for the most meager bit of inspiration. Work in any medium you wish. When you’re happy with it, send me either a copy of your creation or a link to where I might view it. I will post your picture here in conjunction with the article giving you full credit for your work. If it takes a bit for you to finish up, and you do so after the post appears, please send it to me anyhow and I’ll post follow-ups to the original from time to time.

I’m not out to make any money on this idea and the article the illustrations accompany will be posted here for all to see. I can only give you the opportunity for your work to be seen by a fair number of individuals in return for your efforts.

I think my idea has some merit and I’m hoping others will jump on the idea and embrace it once it’s revealed. Please help me with your own talents. You can contact me at poleandrope (at) gmail (dot) com to submit your work or make other inquiries.

Thank you very much in advance.

Referee, Entertain Thyself

There is a central mystery in the Watchfires & Thrones campaign: A secret whose origins lie in the long-forgotten past and, if revealed, could answer some of the big questions that humanity and the other races ask about themselves. If the answer to the mystery was to become publically known, existence itself might change forever. However, unlike many other campaigns I’ve both ran and played in over the years, it doesn’t make a lick of difference if the players choose to never so much as glance at the clues strewn in their path. They’re simply there to amuse myself.

With our tenth game session on the horizon and the first major chapter of the campaign completed, I’ve taken the time to look back on what has occurred so far in order to judge what worked and what didn’t, to see where I can improve my referee style, and consider what kookiness I might want to try next. The result of all this navel gazing is that I’ve realized that this is the most fun I’ve had running a game in years.

As some of you might remember, I literally threw my former campaign setting and a year’s plus worth of prep work out the window at the 11th hour to run a pulp sword & sorcery-style campaign. I went from my plan to allow more than a dozen classes as player choices to restricting them to a mere five. As I mentioned just last week, even the list of monsters that will appear in the campaign has been stripped down to a specific list with albeit vague membership requirements.

The result of all this self-imposed limitation is that I’ve never felt like I’ve had more choices and the gaping holes in the rule material have led me down creative paths I would have never considered travelling if I was still trying to run the same sort of “typical” D&D campaign I’ve been running on and off for almost thirty years. I’ve come to realize that I owe a much greater debt of gratitude to the OSR community than I ever imagined. Had I not spent the last two years being exposed to the creations of almost everyone involved in whatever the hell it is we’re trying to do here, I might never have realized that the definition of “what is D&D?” and what can be shoehorned in under its auspices is so mutable that it need not be a game based around a pseudo-medieval/Tolkien-influenced worldview. In retrospect, I realize that I have no one to blame for this preconception but myself, but I’d point to TSR’s attempts to market the game and establish a brand as being very responsible for encouraging this preconception. But that’s all blood under the bridge of bone, so let’s not dwell upon it. I’ve since been rehabilitated,

To get back to my original point, all this jettisoning of expectations has put me in the position to try out some crazy schemes to see if they’re even possible to do in the context of fantasy role-playing. It’s too early to tell if they will work or not, but the mere fact that I’ve been able to play with them in an unorthodox setting has given me great joy. This enjoyment has naturally led to me maintaining a high interest in both the campaign setting and our weekly meetings. I’ve also discovered that, by letting the players call the tune, I’m usually only dancing a session or two ahead of them, which means there’s a lot of thinking on my feet and conjuring on the fly to be done—both of which really push my Wahoo! button. In short: I’m having a blast.

I’m really blessed to have the players I do at this time. They’ve been willing to go along with my harebrained scheme and to give my offbeat rule additions a try. They’ve persevered under a crushing number of PC deaths (not all of which are completely my fault) and slightly slowed level advancement to start becoming “real” characters in a world that’s still cooking on my intellectual stovetop. As a friend of mine mentioned last week, I got incredibly lucky with this lot considering it was a pickup group of people who’ve mostly never played together before—and that’s somewhat difficult to achieve in this hobby sometimes, as anyone with a “let’s recruit down at the hobby shop” horror story might tell you. I forget which blog I read it on, but someone put forward the advice to simply be the type of gamer you want to attract. So far, that’s worked out well for me. I can only hope everyone is as lucky and is having as much fun out there as I am.

Back from (Stone)Hell

Despite the windstorm and occasional torrents of rain, I made it safely home from my journey to the Northlands. That drive gets a tiny bit longer each time I do it, but the reward is always worth the trip. This time was no exception. Before I get down to recapping the weekend’s events, I want to again extend my thanks to Jim, Joe, Melissa, and Ralph for getting together for a game, feeding me oh so very well, and making me feel a little bit like a rock star.

As I posted on Friday, the main event of the weekend was me getting a chance to experience my own dungeon at the pointy end of the stick for a change. As commentator Chris pointed out, it’s an exercise that every designer should go through at least once. It’s a much different experience than play testing it with you at the helm.

For one thing, it’s an obvious test of keeping one’s mouth shut in order to preserve the mystery for the other players. I decided prior to playing that I would merely follow the other players as to what to investigate, what to poke or prod, and what doors to kick in. Over the course of the session, I regularly chose to search all the places that didn’t contain secrets or treasure (even managing to discover a mysterious key that the referee had placed into his own version of Stonehell), letting everyone else discover the loot that the dungeon conceals in its curious crevices. I was really proud of this group and, if I didn’t express it adequately enough on Saturday night, I was very impressed with everybody’s play style. Even with my self-imposed silence, the group managed to find all the hidden goodies in the rooms that we chose to explore. However, I am mortal flesh and did engage in one spectacular piece of metagaming just prior to the session’s end. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Although I did get a good feel as to how the dungeon flows from the players’ end, I was reminded that every adventure is a highly subjective event whose performance for good or ill relies on not only the referee but the players and the rules themselves. It was because of this that I found some difficulty evaluating the dungeon from the other side of the screen, mostly because we weren’t using any version of D&D rules—or any other published rulebook for that matter.

Upstate, you see, they’re playing something that got cooked up during more than a year’s worth of basement game sessions. I’m not even sure if there’s a name for the rules these guys are using. Some portions of it are vaguely recognizable, such as the percentile-based resolution system that kind of, sort of, looks like the Basic Role-Playing rules if you stand on your head and look at it cross-eyed, or the random character background table which was cribbed from Traveller. But most of it evolved in its own unique gaming environment, which makes going into it cold a little daunting. Even with roughly thirty years of gaming experience under my belt, I felt like a novice when confronted with the system—which was a good thing. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that way about a game.

Despite the challenge to the newcomer, I’ve got to say that this system works for these folks. Even though most of the rules are based on rolling under an average of two attributes and thus employed a bit more math that the standard +1/-1 modifiers, they knew the system cold and were able to banter the nuances of the rules back and forth the same way most grognards can discourse on the finer points of D&D. It’s obviously a system they’re comfortable with despite (or probably because of) the fact that it’s one in a constant state of flux and refinement. Each new player adds something to this rules and I hope I did so as well (in the form of the spell, Milo’s Mighty Mackerel—not just a feast but also a weapon). We in the old school renaissance like to go on about how we’re making the game our own again—these folks are making their own game period. I heartily applaud their efforts and look forward to sitting in with them again sometime.

Alas, our session inevitably drew to a close. With an early start home the next morning and a half-hour’s drive through rural back roads to get back to my brother’s place, we packed it in at 10:30 as the party stood before a closed door. It was at this moment that I broke my own rule about metagaming. Since fate guided us to this specific location in the dungeon and our time was at an end anyway, the session ended with Milo, my character, saying, “Want to see something neat?” He then reached over, twisted a brick in the wall, and revealed the secret door leading down to level three of the dungeon. I couldn’t help myself. Consider it a gift from the mysterious power behind Stonehell Dungeon as a reward for an excellent game session.

The Waaj

Several decades ago, the Cosmic Imperium developed a problem— a sanitation problem to be precise. With over ten thousand world under its control, the Empire was fast running out of places to deposit the massive amounts of refuse its worlds created. With all of the Imperial trash worlds reaching capacity, hundreds of scout crafts and garbage scows were dispatched to the ends of the galaxy, each with orders to find new dumping planets to handle Imperial sanitation levels.

At the farthest reaches of the galaxy, in the nearly forgotten flyspeck of a solar system designated SK-FG, the garbage scow I.S.S. Molly Hammer came across a planet known only as M262 on the Imperial star charts. Initial scans of the planet detected the presence of massive amounts of hard radiation and most of the world’s surface was wasteland—with the exception of a small 3 x 4 mile island whose sole feature was a crumbling stone castle set amidst lush greenery. Assuming the castle to be ancient remains from a pre-cataclysmic age, the Molly Hammer began preparations to redesignate M262 an Imperial trash heap.

As the scow laid out its primary markers, the ship’s LIDAR chirped to life, indicating a human-sized, unidentified object rising from the castle and heading on a direct course for the Molly Hammer. Once in visual range, the bridge’s view screen revealed this object to be a skeletal figured dressed in rotting robes and seemingly flying without any visible means of propulsion!

Attempts to establish communications with the figure were unsuccessful, but, to the command crew’s surprise, they suddenly found themselves in telepathic contact with the flying skeleton. The robed form identified himself as Waldorf, Overlord Supreme of Planet Waldorf, and decreed that the scow was in violation of Waldorfian airspace. Furthermore, the bony warlord pronounced, the penalty for committing such a gross transgression against the Overlord Supreme was instant death.

Upon passing this grim sentence, Waldorf the Flying Skeleton made several passes with his hands and bolts of lightning and blasts of fire streaked from his fingertips to impact on the Molly Hammer’s forward defense screen. The captain looked at his first officer and sighed. His first officer looked at the helmsman and nodded. The helmsman pressed a button on his console and the Hammer’s three-terawatt maser incinerated Waldorf, Overlord Supreme of Planet Waldorf.

With the question of planetary ownership resolved, M262 became the first of the latest wave of Imperial trash heaps, with unmanned ships making regular circuits to waste world. Unfortunately, one of these drone ships carried more than mere trash in its hold. A clan of Waaj had stowed away as well.

The Waaj are nuisance race. Standing an average of one Imperial meter in height, with only their glowing eyes visible in the depths of their traditional scarlet robes, Waaj clans crisscross the galaxy, selling second-hand technologies to primitive worlds. Since most of their clientele have never seen high-tech devices and are easily impressed, the Waaj save on costs by providing their naïve customers with refurbished tools scavenged from trash heaps and waste worlds. The Waaj stowaways had been in the process of searching the drone ship’s hold for choice pickings when the ship lifted off for M262, trapping them onboard.

Upon arrival at M262, the drone ship dumped it cargo of trash along with the inadvertent Waaj stowaways. The Waaj, being a highly adaptable and near-indestructible race, were unbothered by the planet’s high radiation levels and promptly claimed the world as their own, naming it “Utinni,” which means “Glorious newfound garden world of riches destined to improve the lot of our people across the galaxy.” If nothing else, Waajese is a compact language.

Once the Waaj began spreading across the face of Utinni, one small band discovered the green island with its crumbling stone castle. Always on the lookout for good junk, these Waaj found that the ancient stronghold held a bizarre collection of knickknacks, gewgaws, and tsotchkes—many of which had the delightful tendency to discharge energy blasts, render its possessor invisible, or make it wearer impervious the harm. Most impressive, however, was the glowing stone ring that lay in the castle’s deepest sublevel. After much experimentation, the Waaj learned that by the manipulation of certain levers, dials, and switches, the ring could be made to function as a portal to other worlds, many of which were grossly impoverish when it came to technology, but extremely rich with precious metals, gemstones, and weird curios.

Since that time, Waaj merchants have travelled to worlds formerly undreamt off, trading high-tech tools of questionable provenance and predictability for mineral and magical wealth. These tiny traders appear without warning, make as many deals as possible before their merchandise breaks down, then vanish back through a magic portal to Utinni, where they restock and start the process anew on some new world. Occasionally the Waaj will set up mercantile outposts in large population centers, provided that their customer turnover is brisk enough for them to sell the goods to successive waves of gullible buyers.

Still rarer are the subterranean bazaars that some Waaj have established in dungeons and other hazardous underground locales. In these dim marketplaces, Waaj dealers make money hand over robed fist by selling unpredictable wares to rival humanoid tribes and iterant adventurers alike. More than one dungeon-delver has avoided certain death thanks to the strange device he purchased from a Waaj salesman, but many more adventurers have inadvertently destroyed themselves with some faulty piece of high technology. When dealing with the Waaj, caveat emptor…

Frontier Experience Points

This is perhaps the most potentially controversial rule modification that I envisioned for use in an unexplored wilderness setting, so I’ll get it out of the way early to see if I’m completely off the beam here.

I want to introduce a new form of experience points in the setting. These points are completely unassociated with experience rewards for treasure and slaying monsters, and are instead awarded for successfully navigating and surviving the wilderness. They are kept track of separately from normal experience and are abbreviated “FXP” or “Frontier Experience Points.”
FXP is a method to determine how much acumen each PC has regarding the outdoors. As a character earns FXP points, he gains small bonuses and modifiers to accomplishing tasks associated with frontier life and survival. Examples of these bonuses include a +1 bonus to hunting or foraging rolls; a +1 bonus to saving throws to survive outdoor calamities (avalanche, frost bite, lightning strike, etc.); a base chance to craft survival tools in the wild; a base chance to set traps; a bonus to avoid becoming lost, and even a potential +1 gain to Wisdom or Constitution scores.

Each bonus would be gained when the PC reaches a particular number of FXP, but, unlike character classes, there is no actual “level gain,” merely the acquiring of a new bonus and the adding of a new notation to the character’s record sheet. Right now, I’m thinking of using the progression table from 1st edition Gamma World as a base to determine when new bonuses and modifiers are acquired. This breaks down to the following:

3000 FXP
6000 FXP
12000 FXP
25000 FXP
50000 FXP
100000 FXP
200000 FXP
500000 FXP
1000000 FXP

Continuing with Gamma World as base model, I’ve also decided that the modifier each character gains upon reaching each tier of Frontier Experience would be randomly determined by rolling on a table. Thus, one character might gain a bonus to hunting roles upon earning 3000 FXP, while another might enjoy a bonus to outdoor saving throws. While I think the random method helps maintain the illusion that the PCs are picking up knowledge and survival skills through “in the field” learning rather than by formal instruction, I must admit I also just enjoy a good random PC table too.

So how does one earn FXP? The answer is: By survival, exploration, and successful completion of frontier tasks. What follows are examples of FXP rewards based on completed tasks. I’m not wedded to these numbers at the moment and they’re just serving as placeholders, but it will give you an idea of what I’m thinking.

Exploring and mapping one 5-mile hex (requires 1 full day of activity): 100 FXP
Successfully bringing down game for food: 20 FXP per Hit Die of the animal
Trapping animals for profit: 1 FXP per gold piece value of pelt
Surviving an outdoor calamity (landslide, avalanche, blizzard, forest fire, etc.): 50 FXP
Discovering a Point of Interest (borrowed from an idea by J. Rients): Variable based on accessibility and prestige
“Going Wild” (survival in the outdoors with no gear other than a knife): 25 FXP per day

There could be more categories added as inspiration hits.

I enjoy the idea of rewarding the PCs for surviving in the wild, but not advancing them in levels. This way, I can also have crazy prospectors and trappers in the wild who might only be 2nd or 3rd level NPCs, but still able to survive the challenges of wilderness living.

So what do you think? Too crazy of an idea or just crazy enough to work?

Save vs. Paralysis

There is a phrase that gets kicked around my house from time to time: “Analysis leads to paralysis,” which is one way of saying that when tasks become too numerous or problems seem insurmountable, it’s easy to get caught up wondering how to approach the problem and therefore never make any progress. I’m going through such a period at the moment, which explains my negligence in posting. To compound matters, the “what if?” switch in my head kicked on like an oil burner in the dark of night, leaving me with a new idea to contemplate when I should be concerned with more immediate matters. Let me try an organize things a bit so I can move forward.

First off: The Dungeon Alphabet. I know some of you are no doubt tired of hearing about the damned book, but, let’s face it—it’s my book and my blog, so of course I’m going to talk about it. Especially when you consider that the PDF is currently #2 on RPGNow.com’s list of Hottest Items and that the book itself is the best-reviewed product that Goodman Games has ever released. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical as to how people were going to receive the book. It’s not your traditional supplement filled with stat blocks, new monsters, and concrete concepts, and I was worried that people might feel cheated by the book’s format. I wrote a book that I would want to have as a reference source and, luckily, it seems that I wasn’t alone in this regard. Having such a stellar cadre of artists and Zeb Cook adding to my meager prose, all with a $9.99 price tag, took the book to places that I couldn’t dream of doing alone, so as proud as I am of the book, I know I’m but one member of the remarkable team that ensured its success.

I know there are issues with certain sites having the book on backorder or with unreasonably long shipping delays. Unfortunately, this is something that I not only have no control over, but also have no information regarding. As much as I’d like for everyone to get their hands on a copy, I’m unable to assist or expedite the process. My apologies. As for reviews, Goodman Games has done a fine job of collecting online reviews of the book on The Dungeon Alphabet’s web page. One that doesn’t appear there is the review that will appear in Realms of Fantasy magazine, which hits the newsstands on February 4th. I also believe that Allan Grohe has provided a review of the book for Knockspell #4, available in the near future from Black Blade Publishing.

In the last bit of DA-related news, the winner of The Dungeon Alphabet Pre-order drawing was John Seibel of Milwaukee, WI. Congratulations, John! You’ve won yourself a copy of the book autographed by Erol Otus—something that not even its author owns.

Next up: Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls. Sales of the book and PDF have finally seemed to have plateaued. Although this was expected, it was expected much sooner and I’m extremely grateful that the book has done as well as it has—almost 220 copies have been sold when I predicted I’d move around 50. The book continues to sell, albeit slowly, and if you’ve yet to pick-up a copy, Lulu is having a 15% off sale today and tomorrow for Groundhog’s Day (of all things). Just enter the code: SHADOW upon checkout. If you’d rather not pay for a copy, you can always test your luck in this year’s One Page Dungeon Contest. I’ve donated a copy of the book to the prize swag bag; I thought it only fitting.

I intend to start on the sequel next month. I’m currently enjoying the downtime I have, but ideas are beginning to percolate in my mental stewpot. I’ve also seen the preliminary sketch of the second book’s cover piece (done again by J.A. D’Andrea) and it has gotten me excited to revisit those halls. I will be upfront about one thing: Some people felt that the first book’s format (the two-page dungeon) and the organization of the dungeon into quadrants lead to an artificiality in the dungeon and that it was the book’s biggest flaw. Although I can and do see the validity of their argument, I have no plans to change format for the sequel. There will be certain modifications—most of which were planned well in advance and hinted at by the evolution of the maps as one descends—but no gross changes. I leave that to the referee to do should he wish to.

On the home front: The Eldritch Frontier campaign and a new Long Island Meet-up group. I’ve gotten one definite player and one possible lined up for my intended Labyrinth Lord campaign. My flyer has been up a week and somebody else has taken one of the tags off it—but that means nothing, as anyone who’s posted one in a game store knows.

In an attempt to both dig up players and to determine how big of an interest there is on Long Island for old school gaming, I’ve created The Role-Playing Game Historical Society, a Meet-up group with an emphasis on older titles. There is already a Long Island Role Players Meetup group, but they seem to be mostly playing current titles and all of their meets occur in Nassau County, which isn’t very accessible to those of us in the wilds of Suffolk. The Role-Playing Game Historical Society is my attempt to determine if A) there is a dedicated old school gamer community on Long Island, and B) see how many are not located in Nassau County or willing to cross county lines to play. My lease on the group is for three months. If it dies on the vine, no harm, no foul, but if it helps some OSR people connect, I’ll consider it a success. All L.I. area old-schoolers are encouraged to join.

Speaking of Long Island-related gaming, I’ll be attending ICON 29 at SUNY Stony Brook this year (March 26-28). The guest list doesn’t do much for me so I fully expect to be haunting the gaming area for the weekend. If anyone else is planning on attending and wants to say hello or have me sign a copy of Stonehell or the DA, drop me an email and we can try to coordinate schedules.

The thing I’m thinking about when I should be thinking about other things: The Dismal Wilderness. This is the idea that sprang into my head and doesn’t seem to want to leave. While doing pre-work for the planned Eldritch Frontier game, I watched a few frontier/pioneer-themed movies and read a few books regarding similar subject matter. My intent was to inspire myself, but not in the matter I did so.

As it stands, the Eldritch Frontier sandbox is set up to be a traditional old school setting: town, dungeon, and wilderness. But the wilderness in the EF is more along the lines of borderlands between political states, with small duchies and free city-states separated by tracts of forest and mountains—plenty of places for a PC to carve out a holding while still being able to introduce wars and political maneuvering between rulers if that’s what the PCs are into.

The Dismal Wilderness idea, on the other hand, is nothing but wilderness. Vast miles of unexplored, unnamed, and unbelievably wealthy (and dangerous) wilderness. A place where treasure is comprised of rough gemstones and raw precious metals sifted from streams or the pelts of giant lynxes and beavers that dwell in the forest primeval. A place where crumbling ruins of eon-dead civilizations still can be found in deep valleys and atop soaring mountains, guarded as sacred ground by the barbarian tribes who haunt the forests.

I’m not certain if this type of wilderness setting has been approached before, but it’s gotten under my skin. During my lunchtime walks, I’ve started fleshing out a few sub-systems and rules modifications for a pioneer-style wilderness campaign, and I’ve spent a few hours sketching out a very detailed wilderness map on a Judges Guild 17” x 22” hex map. I’d like to play test a few of these ideas, so I’ve decided that the Dismal Wilderness can be found to the north of the Eldritch Frontier. If the PCs ever want to try their fortune in the undiscovered lands, they’re free to do so. Depending on whether or not I get to play test these systems and ideas, there is a chance that I might write up a digest-sized book covering this type of wilderness campaign and the rule variants to help run it.

I also had to beat to death the desire to run a White Box Barsoom game last night. Some things are just better put down before they start to occupy the mental landscape.

As you see, that is a lot of mental inventory and it’s with little wonder that I’ve been stymied to put words together for a post. I didn’t realize myself how much I’ve been pondering, but it does feel better to get it out into full view. I’m going to try and get one of the rough ideas I’ve had for the Dismal Wilderness into a post in the next day or two, just to see if anyone salutes that particular flag. Additionally, once I take care of one more pressing real life issue, I might be a little more relaxed to start outputting some more material. Stay tuned.

Custom Handwritten Fonts for Your Campaign World

For many years now, I’ve been labeling the various maps of my campaign world with a specialized style of handwriting I call “Shaky Hand.” It is a purely creative adornment, but one which makes my maps easily identifiable as my own fantastical creations. In addition to Shaky Hand, I’ve created a customized alphabet or three to use in ciphers, lost languages, and other alphabetical conundrums. Like Shaky Hand, these alphabets reside in my commonplace books when not needed, requiring me to reproduce them by hand each time I need to create the various player handout or other props that I sometimes use.

Over the break, I discovered fontcapture.com, which converts handwriting into True Type fonts. The service is free and requires only that the creator have access to a PDF reader application and a scanner. With these, he can upload a sample of his own handwriting that is then quickly turned into a True Type version. Although intended for signatures and other personalized forms of correspondence, if you’re like me, you quickly see the role-playing applications this service provides.

Intrigued by the possibilities, I took fontcapture.com out for a trial run. The process from start to finish only took about five minutes, and I now have two versions of my custom alphabets available for use in Word and Photoshop, which is pretty much all I foresee myself ever needing it for. The more perfectionist-types might find the process takes a little longer as they fiddle with their handwritten font sheets to produce the cleanest and most uniform version of their handwriting, but even ten or fifteen minutes of fine tuning will leave you with a completely unique font for use with your own role-playing game creations for years to come. If you enjoy making maps and other player handouts, and want a little spice to flavor them with, you must give fontcapture.com a try.

Bibliomania

As both a bibliophile and one who makes his living in the world of books, I’ve a special place in my heart for grimoires, tomes, and codices. D&D is not lacking in books, both magical and mundane, but I’m nevertheless not always satisfied with the manner in which they are presented. The problem for me is that tomes in D&D are binary items: one can either use them or not, and, if use is allowed, the results are always clearly defined. This is acceptable for most campaigns, but I’ve been looking for a method to spice things up.

While I like the method presented in Call of Cthulhu for reading occult grimoires, it doesn’t lend itself easily to wholesale incorporation into D&D, something that the D20 version of CoC had to wrestle with. Rather than use the D20 method, which isn’t very OD&D friendly anyway, I’ve been cobbling together a system that somewhat simulates the dangers of the ineffable grimoires of CoC, yet is still rooted deeply enough in D&D. I think I’ve found a solution.

Taking a hint from Expedition to Barrier Peaks and Gamma World, I landed on using a flowchart to simulate the process of deciphering occult tomes. While I wouldn’t use this method for run-of-the-mill spellbooks and the pre-existing magical books in the game, it’d work well if I wanted to drop my own version of Al-Azif into my campaign world. I’ve presented a rough cut of it below.

Deciphering Strange Tomes

Step One: The PC attempting the read the text must either know the language it is written in or possess suitable magics to translate it (read magic, read languages, helm of comprehend languages and read magic, etc.). Additionally, the text must be suitable to the PC’s class (arcane texts for MU and Elves, religious tomes for Clerics).

Step Two: The referee determines how long the character must read the book before a D10 roll is allowed on the chart below. Shorter texts may allow the PC to roll on the chart once per day, medium-length texts might require three days in between rolls, and dense tomes might require a full week to pass before a new roll is allowed. During each increment of reading, the PC may not adventure or conduct any other actions other than attending to his or her basic needs. Any interruption of the PC’s perusal of the text requires to character to start the current reading period anew.

Step Three: After the appropriate passage of time, the PC rolls a D10 modified by his INT or WIS score (see below) depending on his class and the adjusted total is applied to the flowchart to determine the character’s progress in his reading comprehension and the effects (if any) that occur as a result.

Reading Comprehension Modifier

INT or WIS of 9-12 – no adjustment
INT or WIS of 13-15 – minus 1 to roll
INT or WIS of 16-17 – minus 2 to roll
INT or WIS of 18 – minus 3 to roll
Step Four: Once the modified D10 roll is determined, the referee consults the chart above to determine the character’s progress. If movement along the flowchart results in anything other than one of the empty circles, an unforeseen effects occurs as a result of the PC delving into forbidden mysteries. Based on the PC’s current location on the flowchart above, roll the appropriate die on the table below apply the effect. If the referee chooses, the character may make a save vs. spells to avoid the effect.

Minor Malign
1 – Reader ages 1d4 years.
2 – Reader develops the compulsion to drink ink once per day.
3 – Reader develops bibliomania and will go to extreme lengths to acquire new reading materials.
4 – Reader begins to speak in tongues and is incomprehensible without the use of magic.
5 – Reader is struck illiterate.
6 – Reader is afflicted by a geas to finish the book.

Minor Weird
1 – Reader’s hair turns white or falls out.
2 – Reader’s fingers & tongue are permanently stained black.
3 – Reader becomes near-sighted (-2 to ranged attacks).
4 – Reader has an insight about the book (-1 modifier to future Reading Comprehension rolls)
5 – Reader experiences vivid hallucinations of non-Euclidean cityscapes.
6 – Reader develops an odd habit or behavior (facial tic, nervous fidgeting, odious personal habit, etc.)

Major Malign
1 –Reader is permanently blinded.
2 – Reader is struck feebleminded.
3 – Reader suffers a stroke and becomes completely paralyzed on one side of his body.
4 – Reader’ soul is snared by the book (as the spell, Trap the Soul).
5 – Lose 1d3 points of INT or WIS (depending on class).
6 – Reader turns to stone.

Major Weird
1 – Reader suffers violent nightmares (no natural healing or memorization of spells allowed).
2 – Eyes turn an unnatural hue (lose 1 point of Charisma).
3 – Reader uncontrollably broadcasts his thoughts to all creatures within 60’ (as ESP).
4 – Reader gains either the ability to use infravision (as the spell) or x-ray vision (as the ring) once per week.
5 – Reader learns 1 new language regardless of INT score.
6 – Reader gains the ability to read language (as the spell) once per week.

Strange Event
1 – Reader loses 1 point of WIS and gains 1 point of INT (or vice versa).
2 – Reader gains deeper understanding of the universe (may ask three questions as per Contact Other Plane).
3 – Reader suffers an alignment change.
4 – Reader makes a new discovery (learns new magical item construction method, learns a command word, discovers a power being’s true name, etc.)
5 – Reader gains 3d6x100 experience points.
6 – An invisible stalker appears to slay the reader.

Note: Any time a strange event occurs, the reader realizes that he is failing to grasp the contents of the text as intended or has otherwise drawn false conclusions about the book’s subject. He must start the research process anew in order to fully comprehend the work.

Skull & Crossbones
Character either goes permanently insane or must save vs. death or perish (50/50 chance). If character must save vs. death, a successful save still results in the loss of 1d3 points of both INT and WIS.

Step Five: Once the” Finish” circle is achieved, the tome reveals its full contents to the reader (new spells, magical formulae, sinister knowledge, advancement in level, etc.). Although the reader is never compelled to complete his study of the tome (unless geased as a result of his readings – see above) and may put the book down at any time, only by reaching this final spot on the flowchart may he make use of its contents.

There are a few rough edges that need filing down, but the premise strikes me as the correct avenue to pursue. I'll tinker a bit more when time allows.

Impermanent Landscapes

I had a post mostly completed for today but I wracked up my back yesterday and aggravated an old injury. As a result, I’m finding it difficult to spend too much time sitting before the keyboard. And before idle speculation begins, I did not injure myself in the mosh pit at the Fear show on Monday. As an old friend once stated, “It’s hard to mosh at twenty-five,” and I’m now well past the time in my life where such endeavors are even timidly considered.

Until I get a chance to polish up that post, I want to present an idea that occurred to me just a day ago. As I mentioned Monday, I plan on using geomorphs to mimic the impermeability of dreams in constructing the initial city. It has since occurred to me that a similar method might work well for the lands outside the city gates.

Drawing on a mechanic from an old board game I once owned, Survive!, I’m tempted to draw the initial wilderness map using an oversized hex grid. On that map, certain locations will be indelibly marked - places like cities, coastlines, some mountain ranges, etc. In other areas of the map, the hexes would be left blank and perhaps tinted a generic grey. These areas would represent territories in the dreamlands that are in constant flux.

Using cardstock cut to the appropriate size and hexagonal shape, I’d create numerous tiles marked with symbols and/or colors representing forests, fields, swamps, lakes, deserts, hills, etc. These tiles would then be placed in an opaque container. As the party moves overland and approaches these areas, I’d draw from the container and lay down a tile or three on the map to determine what terrain is currently encountered there. The party would then have to determine if they wish to continue through that area or search for a more desirable area through which to travel.

As with the city system, familiarity would eventually cause the terrain to stabilize in areas regularly visited, but to remain in flux on the outskirts of the “known lands.” Through careful note keeping, I could make each such section of the map unique to the party that explores it and two adventuring groups might have a different mental map of the dreamlands.

I suppose I could produce the same effect with random tables and a dry erase marker, but the tactile mechanical device of using tiles appeals to me greatly, even if it results in a greater initial workload. I’m a sucker for board game elements in role-playing games and I do like widgets and gadgets to a certain extent.

This idea of nebulous territory also brings to mind the possibility that some or all of these areas may be growing in size, which could indicate that there’s something wrong with the dreamlands. Perhaps something or someone is causing the dreamlands to erode and seeking out and stopping that force could become a major campaign goal for the adventurers.

I’m just turning ideas around in my head here. Would this sound like something you would find fun and unique to such a setting or would it just piss you the hell off?