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.

The Society will now come to order.

Yes, it’s May and the month-long A-Z meme has come to an end. At last, I feel free to emerge from my cave, blink the bright spring sunshine out of my eyes, and eat a hiker. For those of you who participated, I’m glad you all had fun. It wasn’t to my liking because I thought it was too forced and too long a meme (I thought the same about “Hot Elf Chicks” but that was only a single day so I grinned and endured it). Happily, I get to have my own opinions without caring what everyone else thinks or needing to justify them just like you do. I nevertheless hope this turns out to be a one-time experiment.

While everyone was alphabetizing themselves, I decided that it was a perfect excuse to dodge out of the blogosphere and attend to other business—and I got a hell of a lot done. I didn’t miss composing posts at all, leaving me even more certain that my decision to draw things to a close here on the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope is the right one. It’s definitely getting to be time to move on to the next thing for me. What that is, I’m uncertain, but this is the final year of the Society for sure.

April saw the near completion of the two projects that stand between me and committing myself full time to the Stonehell sequel. There likely remains a little cleanup work to be done on those, but I anticipate that in the next few weeks, Stonehell 2 will be my main concern. It’s time to finish that once and for all. More details on the mystery projects will be forthcoming when I’m allowed to speak openly about them.

Somehow I managed to fit in a sci-fi and fantasy convention during the 90k words I was writing, and I spent three days annoying the hell out of Frank Mentzer and the rest of the gaming guests at ICON 30. Having first attended ICON 7 or 8 and sporadically returning throughout the years, this was the first time I felt that I was on the other side of the wall. I was not attending as a fan, but as someone with a vested interest in the state of gaming. In the past, I’d be doing the celebrity Q & A thing. This time, I was attending workshops on the future of RPGs or how to sustain your interest and finish a freelance writing project in order to keep yourself and your publishers happy. The last one was responsible for one of those “Holy shit, I’m actually a writer” moments. Ending the convention by playing OD&D with Frank Mentzer was a nice way to bring the weekend to a close, although it didn’t really end then. I left the con to run my Labyrinth Lord game and promptly killed the entire party when negotiations with a young red dragon broke down.

Between the TPK and breaking for Easter, I think the year-long campaign has started to lose momentum, something which can be terminal for a game if not corrected. Today’s game had to end early because I was in too much pain from an old back injury to keep things going until our normal stop time. Plus, we lost 3 of the 6 replacement PCs on the first level of Stonehell (exploding flame toad & two potions of poison) so it was time to call it a night. With Mother’s Day next weekend and a playtest of something else the week afterwards, it won’t be back to Labyrinth Lord until May 22nd. That’s a long break and I hope we can recover.

A lot of my uncertainty about the future of the campaign can be blamed on the fact that it’s now spring. My long-time friends know that as soon as the weather changes, I get spring fever and go a little flaky. The last thing I want to do is sit inside and pretend to be outdoors when there are woods to be walked, beaches to be visited, and friends to see. But I can’t pretend this is the sole reason. I’ve been running hot and cold on vanilla fantasy for a while now and it might be time to do something very different. I’ll have to see how things play out in the next couple of weeks.

On the “News of the Highly Implausible” front, due to some strong suggestions by unnamed individuals, I finally broke down and got on Facebook. Some of you have already discovered this and sought me out. I’m pretty open about befriending fans and contemporaries, but don’t expect exciting insights into the mind of Mike and whatever I’m working on. I did join the Stonehell fan group though, and I might release advance looks at the dungeon through that page a week before I post them here. We’ll see.

The blog roll will be returning slowly starting tonight. I’ll undoubtedly overlook some folks, so please don’t take it as a slight if I do. There’s just so much more out there now and I can’t (and don’t) follow everyone’s work. There are more comprehensive lists than my own.

And there we go. I hope we have some fun again together before I turn off the lights and lock the door.

An Evaluation of Watchfires & Thrones: Year One

Please forgive the cross-posting as this article appears on both Archive of the Rotten Moon and The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope. It appears on the former since it concerns the Watchfires & Thrones campaign and has been repeated on the latter as it deals with old school roleplaying campaigns in general and may be instructive to those thinking of starting or at the beginning of a classic D&D game.

This Sunday marked the one-year anniversary of our Labyrinth Lord campaign. In the past twelve months, we’ve met thirty-nine times for a rough total of 150+ hours of gaming. The original intent was to have a game schedule of three weeks on/one week off, making for forty meetings a year. As you can see, we came very close to hitting that mark.

The Hard Numbers and Mechanics of the Campaign

When the campaign began, each player created two characters to help them survive the very lethal first two levels of campaigning. Many of those characters have come and gone, and with the exception of one player, no one has an original PC left on their roster. The largest experience point total for a single character is 14,848; the lowest is 2,500. We’ve had two players leave the group due to real life issues and a third player who had to take two extended leaves of absence for the same reason. Of the original three players from the first session, two remain active.

Player character deaths were rife in the early months of the campaign, but stabilized as the survivors advanced in level, a change was made to the critical hit house rule, and the players themselves learned from the mistakes of the past. There have been a total of twenty-two PC deaths (two of which were later raised from the dead) and three NPC deaths (including two dogs). The most PCs lost by a single player is nine.

The campaign itself has spanned two worlds: the original pulp sword & sorcery venue largely centered in and around the city of Rhuun and my traditional D&D campaign world of R’Nis. Between those two worlds the party has explored a dead sorcerer’s tomb, a temple dedicated to the Black Goat, a megadungeon that was built by aliens, Stonehell Dungeon, the ruined cellars of a wizard, a series of insect-infested caves, a ruined monastery holding the blood of a goddess, and (tentatively) a crumbling temple inhabited by hobgoblins. They’ve also participated in a street fair gone amok and defended a frontier homestead against an army of goblin raiders. Although many of the adventures have been homebrewed, other material has come from “The Ruined Monastery” by James Maliszewski, Night’s Dark Terror by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, and Phil Gallagher, The Horror on the Hill by Douglas Niles, Temple of the Ghoul by H. John Martin, The Veiled Society by David “Zeb” Cook, and “The Pits of Bendal Dolum” by Doug Lyons.

There have been many rule selections and changes over the past year, and some have worked better than others. The campaign began using the Original Edition Characters rules for Labyrinth Lord, but changed to straight Labyrinth Lord minus thieves after two sessions, mostly due to the fact that I wanted to have monsters with variable damage dice. Character generation was 3d6 in order and two rolls allowed for starting hit points. Once the PCs left the pulp campaign world, Advanced Edition Companion rules were added to the game and starting attributes changed to 4d6 arranged where desired. Thieves also became available to players at that time. Critical hits were initially handled as a “20” results in double damage. This rule changed around the middle of the campaign to a roll of “20” meaning full damage. This resulted in less PC casualties. Clerics cannot cast spells at 1st level and must wait until reaching 2nd level to access their first daily prayer.

My intention was to run an open sandbox campaign where the players could choose what adventure seeds to pursue against a backdrop of a vibrant, constantly changing, living world. The plan was that the PCs would build their fame and fortune and eventually acquire or build a stronghold of their own. This endgame would effectively bring this portion of the campaign to a close.

Evaluation of the Campaign and its Progress

In my eyes, the Watchfires & Thrones campaign has been a successful one. I approached the game with an equal mixture of excitement and trepidation. This was to be my first time in the referee’s chair for more than session or two in almost a decade. I was confident with my decision to use Labyrinth Lord as the ruleset, but simply knowing the rules cold is by no means a guarantee of success. There are too many X factors that can scuttle a campaign before it hits its stride and I was out of practice in how to handle them. To my relief, the rust came off quickly and I’ve been able to handle most of the in and out of game issues with aplomb.

It is the rare campaign that is 100% successful, however, and Watchfires & Thrones is no exception. Looking back on the past year, I can see several missteps that I wish I had avoided and paths I should have taken. These might not have always been noticeable to my players, but they were glaringly apparent to me.

My first mistake was succumbing to gamer A.D.D. on the cusp of the campaign’s start date. Although I had been preparing to run things in my longtime campaign world of R’Nis, I decided at the last minute to switch gears and do a more hardcore pulp swords & sorcery setting instead. This meant that I effectively put myself back to square one in regards to prep work, which would continue to haunt me during the early sessions. I felt that the setting never really came to life for the players as I myself had no clear understanding of the campaign world outside of a handful of idle thoughts stung together on the flimsiest of frameworks. I was constantly trying to do work on the campaign world and was barely a step ahead of the players at any given time, which if you’re trying to use your roleplaying game as a recreational escape is not the best route to take.

That constant scramble led to my making the decision to transport the entire party to my regular campaign world via a magical portal. This allowed me to keep the campaign moving with the established characters while giving me access to all the work I had already done. But there were unforeseen, long-lasting ramifications to that decision.

The swapping of campaign worlds also occurred not long after the release of Advanced Edition Companion for Labyrinth Lord. Since the world of R’Nis had been forged in my days of playing AD&D and its inhabitants skewed in the direction of those rules, I threw open the floodgates of character generation for all subsequent PCs starting play in the new world. This meant that formerly verboten classes like thief, assassin, monk, and others were now playable. It also affected the manner in which attributes were rolled. Rather than using the 3d6 in a row method, I allowed “roll 4d6, drop one and arrange.”

While this decision didn’t result in a gross unbalancing of the game, I personally feel that it didn’t add anything to the campaign either. I had been concerned that the campaign was missing something by reducing the probability of someone rolling scores good enough to play a ranger or paladin and I wanted to allow those classes to be played. But after representatives of those classes entered the game, I discovered that they really don’t bring all that much to the table and, like I discovered with thieves, a campaign can roll merrily along without their presence. After having seen both methods of character generation in play to compare and contrast, I’ve come to the conclusion that 3d6 in order is the superior method for classic style play and I will likely be sticking to that system of character creation from now on. I’ll also be limiting other material from AEC in future games as well, preferring to rely on homebrewed materials that make the campaign world more uniquely my own over “stock fantasy D&D.”

My other major issue was my failure to take the desires of the players into account when working on the campaign. I should have questioned the players more often and earlier to better determine what they wanted out of the campaign. The problem, to my eyes anyway, was that I had anticipated running this wide-open sandbox world, one where the players would be free to chose from any number of adventure seeds. I did a lot of preparation to allow for this once we swapped worlds, only to discover that the group was pretty enamored with Stonehell and would happily continue delving there until they reached name level, uncovered all its secrets, or the campaign collapsed—depending on which came first. As the old line states: “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight…and don’t bring the whole sandbox when the guys just want to play in a hole in the ground.” It’s not a game-breaking issue by any means, but it does mean that I could have used my energies in a more productive manner by concentrating on my campaign tent-pole instead of the surrounding, never-to-be-visited locales.

There were (and remain) a few minor quibbles and reevaluations, but since this campaign was intended to get me back up to fighting weight, referee-wise, I’ve looked at these as lessons rather than problems. Amongst them are whether I will have future starting players roll up two characters and run them off and on. There are benefits to this, especially at starting level, but the dividing of experience amongst multiple characters makes for a slower level progression, which in turn limits me in regards to what fun monsters and magic I can throw at the party. I may allow a player to run multiple PCs in the future, but this would be by player choice rather than campaign design.

Somewhat connected to this issue is the use of training to advance in level, resulting in a time and money cost. I’m currently using training in my game, but I’ve come to the conclusion that this is baggage from AD&D that doesn’t have a place in original or basic D&D and their retro-clones. I’ve got a simpler system in mind, one that allows for more player choice when it comes to advancement, and I think my next and subsequent campaigns will do away with training completely if this other system works as intended.

One final problem bears mentioning as it is something every referee who runs a game long enough encounters: burnout. A few weeks ago, I was feeling this to great effect. My energy levels were running low and there was even one session that I really didn’t feel like having because I was at the end of my creative tether. I thought the campaign might be overdue for a temporary sabbatical as I recouped and regained my energy. However, I’ve continued to push through these feelings and it seems that I’m getting back into the groove of the game. The last two sessions have done wonders for my attitude, and although other real-life concerns remain to plague me and I have a tendency to want to do anything but sit inside and play once spring arrives, I’m hopeful that by continuing to work through the slack times the campaign will continue until it reaches its natural ending. My advice to other struggling referees: Keep pushing until you break on through the wall. It’s worth it.

Despite all these concerns, which may be more apparent to myself than my players, the Watchfires & Thrones campaign has been a great source of fun for the guys who come to the table each week. Some have stated on more than one occasion that this campaign is simply the best one they’ve ever played in. I’m prone to be modest in the face of such praise, but so long as everyone else is having a good time and keeps coming back for more, I’ll accept those compliments as intended.

That Word You Can Only Say In German

It's been a quiet week here, I know. Things have been very busy on my side of the screen, but they've been a productive sort of busy so I don't mind. I finished another project and managed to chew a very large chunk out of another. I suspect that that second project will see the light of day very, very soon, so keep an eye on this blog for further details.

This Sunday is the 25th session of Watchfires & Thrones, something I'm extremely happy about. When we started the campaign back in March, my intent was to just play and let the details take care of themselves. There's no metaplot marching things along and I'll keep guiding the players through my world for as long as they keep showing up. I've got a little something special planned for this coming game and it should be fun.

The real surprise of the week is how much fun I've been having writing material for Secret Antiquities. While I'm still flailing about somewhat trying to determine where I'm going with that project, the lack of any firm guidelines has produced some cool ideas and I'm looking forward to figuring out how it all gets stitched together.

With that in mind, I was turning over a concept this evening and I lack the necessary linguistics to treat it properly. I dare say the majority of people reading this are familiar with the "doppelgänger" in game terms if not in its origins. Five seconds of research tells me that doppelgänger means "double walker" in the original German. Now my question for those who speak German is what would you call the doppelgänger of a place, location, or country? A locale that looks exactly the same as the one you call home, but isn't. I hope that makes a vague sort of sense. I'm poking at an idea and, should the German term for this concept work just as well as doppelgänger does, I might go that route. Suggestions are most appreciated.

“Egads, there are a lot of you!”

The Watchfires & Thrones group has developed a glandular condition and grown to an unnatural size. Last Sunday’s game saw me staring out at a sea of faces crowded around a single kitchen table. With the return of one player who had been away for two months on personal business and the addition of a new player, our formally tiny little band is now nine people (eight players plus me behind the screen). This tread seems to be continuing, too. Next Sunday, we’re going to have a guest player (a gamer who’s up visiting and will be playing the dwarf hireling) and possibly introduce another regular player to the group. It seem like just a few weeks ago it was me and one other player meeting up at the FLGS to try and drum up interest. We we’re looking for two more players to start with because, as I said back then, if we could get three, we could get more. My oracular powers are truly astounding.

But it’s an often-repeated fact that while size does not matter, being entertaining does (case in point: the 1998 version of Godzilla). This has been my number one concern since our group first began to show signs of growing robust. This campaign has been my first true refereeing gig since my brief turn behind the screen to playtest Stonehell—a session that revealed to me exactly how out of practice I had become during my time away from the hobby—and I’ve been anxious not to screw it up. Yet, from all indications, my players are seemingly having the time of their lives. The phrase “best campaign I’ve ever been in” has been used within my earshot on at least two occasions so I must be doing something right (either that or my players have suffered through a long string of completely abominable games before meeting me).

I’m continuing to fine tune the game as we go, allowing it to develop organically through play and by where the PCs’ interests take them. Some house rules continue to be modified (we had a change in critical hit protocol last session) and others wait in the wings to be unleashed (counterspelling is going in the first time the adventurers meet up with spell-throwing enemies). I’ve planted the very first seeds to get people thinking about the D&D endgame now and to start casting their eye towards the frontier.

The biggest issue I’m wrestling with is when and if to say, “No more.” There is part of me (a very big part) that says, “Keep ‘em coming. I can take on all challenges,” and see if Watchfires & Thrones ever reaches the mythic numbers of Eld that required a Caller to keep things running smooth. I can’t lie: having a huge group of people playing old school D&D would be amazingly cool, especially since there’s plans underway to greatly increase our FLGS’s available gaming space so that it could accommodate a large group playing a single RPG. However, I’m not so self-deluded that I fail to see that my own ego is largely behind this desire.

Another option would be to investigate the feasibility of splitting the group into two separate parties that meet at different times and/or days. I’m not certain everyone would agree to this because the camaraderie of the players is one of the reasons to attend each week. Having to divide the players would impact the social aspect of the game now that we’ve gotten comfortable with one another over the last eighteen sessions.

The last course is to firmly set our limit and to turn away any newcomers. That number should be one lower than the amount of players I feel I can't comfortably handle. Unfortunately, I won’t know that number until I reach it. Back in college, I ran a very short-lived World of Cockamamie Darkness game that had either ten or eleven players running all types of critters from WoD titles. I’ve organized LARP games with thirty-plus players, but that sort of controlled chaos doesn’t really compare to sitting everyone around a table and keeping things flowing. The number of players I can handle in a Labyrinth Lord game remains an unknown. However, the fact that I spent all of last Sunday’s game literally on my toes (refereeing standing up) suggests that we might be getting close to that magic number.

All this brings me to the Number One Lesson I have learned since February of this year. It’s a pretty harsh-sounding one and some people might misinterpret my tough love for simply being a dick, but here it goes:

With very few exceptions, if you’re not playing the game you want to play, it because you’ve made the choice not to.

That’s a solid truth, people. If you want to play a certain title, go out there and make it happen. Don’t stop trying until you find the absolute minimum number of people you need and then start playing. If that group falls apart, find another one. Just keep at it. You might have to make some compromises (play online rather than face-to-face, letting the complete stranger who hangs out at the game store sit in on a game, coming out of the gamer closet and asking some non-gamer acquaintances if they want to try, or meeting once a month rather than once a week), but you will be playing the game you want to. To give up before you reach your goal is a choice on your part and you only have yourself to blame for it.

Jim Raggi’s got some excellent advice on how to go about drumming up a group. I’ll admit that I thought he was being abrasive in his presentation when I read the piece a long time back, but, after being out there and playing the game I want to play, I’m now in complete agreement with him. You’re the reason for your predicament, pal. Take this as your wake-up call and do something about it.

I no longer expect to ever be not playing the game I want. Should I find myself in a position where I’m not playing the game I wish I was, I’ll take steps to rectify that situation, and should I fail to do so, I’ll know that that is because I either consciously or unconsciously made the decision to. In some cases, that decision might be the correct one (like in the case of having a newborn baby or having to meet financial necessities), but it is still a choice I made.

A Classically Good Game

Today’s session of Watchfires & Thrones saw three of the characters deciding to foray into Stonehell to earn cash and experience while everyone else trained for next level. What was intended to be a simple sweep of the gatehouse turned into them getting dragged into the middle of the great Orc-Goblin War of Stonehell Dungeon.

The three 1st level characters (a fighter, magic-user, and fighter/cleric) led an attack into the orc lair, urging their war band of seven goblins (including their newfound friend “Schnot” from the gatehouse) and a mangy wolf against the orcs’ superior numbers. The result was fourteen dead orcs, six dead goblins (including their newfound friend “Schnot” from the gatehouse), one dead wolf, and one PC reduced to zero hit points. The orcs won the battle, resulting in the two mobile characters dragging their unconscious friend towards the exit of the dungeon. When one last wandering monster turned up SOMETHING coming their way, the PCs dodged into a side room where they are currently praying that whoever’s coming down the hall passes them by.

We’ll pick up with them next week to see if they escape the dungeon and meet up with the returning players’ alternate characters, or if they too will be rolling up new characters to play. Their reward for the brashness: 100+ silver pieces and slightly more than 500 experience points each. Two of them made second level due to their brashness—provided they make it out alive.

This was one of those classic sessions where I had no idea what to expect going into it and I was just as surprised and entertained as players while we watched the day’s events unfold before us. And it all hinged on a single reaction roll and the fact that the dice determined that one of the goblins spoke Hobgoblin, allowing the PCs and monsters to communicate. This session was one the best we’ve had so far. It had humor, suspense, PC-NPC interaction, funny voices, a big fight, and not a single railroad track in sight.

I love it when the dice know what they’re doing.

Watchfires & Thrones Session #11

Although slightly covered in the video, the complete text recap of this week's shennanigans is up on the Archive of the Rotted Moon.

Fencing the Loot

In my youth, I always had issues with the way we handled gems and jewelry. Not with the fact that you could pay for a room at the Ol’ Pig Sty Inn with a 5,000 gp diamond and the innkeep would have change— that was fine since we had little idea about market economies or business overhead and the like. Instead, it was the manner in which we would cash in gems, jewelry, and objects d’art that troubled me.

Back then, if Hugo the Fighter found a 100 gp gem in his adventures, he knew he could always visit the jeweler or moneychanger back in town and get exactly 100 gold pieces for it. Even at a young age, I knew something was amiss with this system. How did this benefit the jeweler or moneychanger? There was no profit to be made so was he simply providing a community service? Once I learned about things like luxury taxes and the like, this method of equal exchange made even less sense.

If you’ve been following this blog long enough, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that I’m not a simulationist by any extent. Although I do make friendly nods to reality most of the time, I’ll readily jettison reality if it gets in the way of a good time or a great game. Nevertheless, perhaps since I’ve had this peeve for so long, I wanted to come up with a quick and easy system of dealing with gems, jewels, and art objects once the PCs hauled it back into town. And, since I hail from the school of thought that “Charisma is not a dump stat,” I settled on the following:

Whenever the PCs visit a merchant to sell or exchange non-coin treasure, I have the PC doing the negotiations roll 2d6 modified by their CHA reaction adjustment and other nebulous modifiers. I then compare the adjusted roll to the list below. The final result determines what percentage of the item’s actual value the merchant is will to buy it for.

2 – 100% of actual value
3-5 – 90% of actual value
6-8 – 80% of actual value
9-11 – 70% of actual value
12 – 60% of actual value.

Think about it: A grizzled, muscle-bound guy who hasn’t bathed in a week and looks like he slept in his armor comes into Gerry the Gem Merchant’s shop and wants to sell this sapphire he claims to have found in those caves just outside of town. You know, the ones that nobody ever seems to come back from? He’s got nothing to prove the jewel’s provenance other than his word—maybe that of a couple of other gnarly looking characters if he’s lucky—and he’s looking for some fast cash so he can buy a horse to ride off to his next “adventure”… or so he claims. If you were Gerry, would you really give this guy the full value of the rock?

For all you know, this guy swiped this rock from some powerful warlord or wizard and is looking to ditch the loot ASAP. You’ll probably have to sit on it for a few weeks just to be safe or work it into a new piece to disguise its original appearance. That’s time and effort, both of which cost money. Unless he’s really, really persuasive or you’ve dealt with him in the past, you’re going to offer a fraction of its real value.

Although the PC’s CHA adjustment plays the largest role in modifying the dice throw, I do allow adjustments for roleplaying (usually -1 to the roll) and for repeated dealings with the merchant (again, usually -1 but I will go higher if the party maintains good relations with the same dealer over a long period of time). These relationship adjustments are fickle, however, and can easily change if the party isn’t careful. Just recently, the PCs visited their usual merchant and weren’t satisfied with the deal he was offering. There was some debate about marketing the gems around town to try for a better deal, but they decided to take the offer in the end. Had they started trying to move the stones through another dealer and their usual guy found out about it, he would have been less likely to give them a good deal in the future and the die roll would be adjusted accordingly.

In addition, most jewelers have a personal quirk regarding gemstones and, if the PCs can figure these personal likes and dislikes out, they can use them to their benefit. For example, the party has recently learned that their regular go-to jeweler, Seno, has a particular love for pearls and is always willing to pay top dollar for them.

I should mention that, regardless of what the party gets for this type of loot, I always award them experience points equal to the items real value. My intent is to mimic the fluctuations of the market and to try and keep the PCs money-poor for as long as possible, not retard their level advancement.

The above chart is just for legitimate dealers and plundered loot. I have a second one which is reserved for fencing stolen goods, but it also does double duty when the characters want to sell their used armor and other goods after they’ve upgraded. It works the same as the above table, but the percentages are much reduced.

2- 50% of actual value
3-5 – 40% of actual value
6-8 – 30% of actual value
9-11 – 20% of actual value
12 – 10% of actual value

This Is How We Role

A lazy Sunday afternoon, a group of guys, some dice, chips, and a few hours to kill.

Although we might not have built-in audience of other role-playing group videos, we're perhaps more typical of the hobby in general. The video runs just under seven and a half minutes and splices together three different parts of the game session.



By posting this, I must have reached the point where I feel that most of the rust has been knocked off my refereeing gears and that I'm confident this is an acurate representation of how I run a game. My thanks to player Rob for recording and editing the video.

New Spell: Know Age

One of the joys of running a slightly unorthodox campaign with a central “big mystery” is that certain aspects of the game world are bound to include subject matter not normally covered by the rules as written. It is those cases that really make the campaign your own, regardless of whether you’re running a completely homebrewed campaign world or one which came in a box.

The following spell is probably of little value to many typical campaigns, but for those of the same peculiar frame of mind as my own (or for those who have a similar oddball referee); this minor piece of magic might be found useful.

Know Age (Magic-user and Elf spell)
Level: 1
Duration: 1 round per level
Range: Touch

Upon completing this incantation, the caster intuitively knows the age of any object or creature touched with a ± 1 year margin of error. Living beings are allowed a save vs. spells should they wish to conceal their age.

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.

Sunday's Game

The recap of yesterday's game is now live over on the Archive of the Rotted Moon. Looks like the Temple of the Goat wouldn't allow the party to leave without at least one more corpse to satiate it's unholy hunger.

Eat Me, Drink Me

If you’ve had the opportunity to check out Stonehell Dungeon or anything else I’ve put out there in the recent past, you no doubt noticed that I enjoy conjuring up themes and then riffing off them in my adventures. Some of these themes are more concrete than others, but they almost always pervade the scenario or location, giving the adventure a central support upon which to hang ideas. It doesn’t matter to me whether the players pick up on these themes or not. Their presence serves to entertain me and help guide my design choices.

Yesterday, the party finally put the Temple of the Goat behind them (although the possibility always remains that they may one day return to deal with the chamber of ambulatory, character-smiting statues). Having done so, I can now reveal that the theme of that location was “mutation” in all its negative forms. From the bizarre toadhemoths to the fungal dead to the weird murals that decorated the site, the temple pointed to things not being as they should.

This theme led to thoughts of physically altering the characters as well, so I inserted two substances that could lead to strange mutations if sampled. My players did not let me down.

As an aside, Maggu Mani is a corruption of Magna Mater or “Great Mother”, a term that refers to the god/dess, Ishnigarrab, which was who the Temple of the Goat was dedicated too. Some of you may know Ishnigarrab by another name: Shub-Niggurath.

Fruit of the Maggu Mani: This strange life resembles gooey yellow-purple polyps the size of cantaloupes. They grow in grape-like clusters and are covered with a slick, sticky film. This material is a plant native to Nihil and was brought down by the Overpriest to serve his nutritional needs. The strange fruit can be either profoundly stimulating to the human body—or a nasty toxin. Anyone eating one of the polyps must make a CON check. If they succeed in the roll, their body shrugs off the alien matter, but they become horrible sick in the process (equal to the bite of a giant centipede). If the roll fails, however, the alien fruit causes their body to undergone a slight and visually unnoticeable change, resulting in the gain of 1 point of CON permanently. There are enough fruits here for ten (10) such meals. They rot quickly after being plucked (within 4 hours).

Milk of the Maggu Mani:This grey fluid is the milk of Ishnigarrab him/herself and produces strange effects on living tissue. Anyone who samples this liquid must make a save vs. poison. If successful, the drinker immediately gains the benefits of a full day’s food and heals 1d3 points of damage. If the save is failed, they undergo a spontaneous transformation. Roll on the table below:

1	1d4 sightless eyes grow on the drinker’s hands
2	A second mouth sprouts from the drinker’s throat. This mouth can only make whimpers and horrid smacking sounds.
3	Hair follicles secrete urine regularly
4	Drinker’s mouth fills with puss-containing blisters and boils. Drinker can breathe through nose but cannot eat or drink.
5	Wormlike tendrils sprout from the drinkers nostrils.
6	Drinker’s body absorbs a random body part – 1: left arm; 2: right arm; 3: left leg; 4: right leg; 5: reproductive organs; 6: head (this is fatal).

Roll each time the liquid is drunk, rerolling on duplicated results. If the character is afflicted by all six effects and continues to consume the liquid, each additional failed save results in the PC losing 1d4 points from a random ability score. Any score reduced to 0, the character is reduced to a viscous puddle of proto matter and is slain.

NOTE: the need for rules for what happens if a character continues to sample the milk may seem strange to some people, but not if you've spent a lot of time on the other side of the referee screen. As it was, the milk was drank by the same character not once but twice in my campaign, demonstrating that it's never a good idea to underestimate the rashness of players.

Liftoff Has Been Scrubbed

Despite having a perfectly good opportunity to dive through a strange glowing portal in pursuit of an unknown squid-faced assailant, the party demonstrated remarkable restraint and chose to let the creature flee.

Damn it.

Had they not done so, the campaign would have taken to the stars as the adventurers found themselves on the surface of the lesser moon, Nihil. And oh what fun that would have been…

Instead, it looks as if the party is headed out beyond the Dune Sea to investigate the legendary dungeon complex know as the Black Gut—which will be fun in its own right for I have some interesting plans for that megadungeon.

But still, a trip to the moon would have been legendary.

Signs of Life

Somehow, it got to be Thursday and I never finished all those posts I was working on for this week. Uff da. So, for want of more complex and well-thought out material, I’ll leave you with these recent moments of satori:

1) Roleplaying gamers are probably unique in their irrational tendency to argue that the rules of their games are not sufficiently” realistic” (and I include wargamers and other fans of simulation games amongst the roleplayers in this case). Imagine how many of the hoary old chestnuts of debate (alignment, wizards with swords) would no longer be fodder for arguments if gamers simply remembered that they are playing games, and that games, by their very nature, have artificial rules and limitations imposed upon them. I very much doubt that, over on the Monopoly forums, there are debates raging about how “I should be able to move farther on my turn because my piece is the guy on the horse. That horse has got to move faster than the iron!” or “I’m the car. Why can’t I just run over the dog and take Bill out of the game completely? That’s not very realistic!”

2) One of the unforeseen benefits of running a campaign that draws primarily on pulp sword & sorcery tales as inspiration is the ease of stocking dungeons and creating wilderness encounter tables. No longer do I find myself having to choose between kobolds, goblins, xvarts, or jermlaine. Instead, I just try to picture Elric, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, or Conan fighting a certain creature. If I can, that beastie makes the cut. If I can picture Conan as depicted by John Buscema & Ernie Chan fighting it, I know for certain it’s the right monster to use. There’s not going to be a lot of pegasi or chimeras lurking in the Watchfires & Thrones campaign.

Speaking of Watchfires & Thrones, for those of you interested in such things, the recap of last Sunday’s game is live over at the Archive of the Rotted Moon. I may squeeze in real post on the SoTPR before the weekend depending on what I accomplish today. If not, please enjoy yourselves, friends, and happy gaming!

Obscure Octavo: Water Spider

No. Enc.: 1d4 (1d4)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120’ (40’)
Armor Class: 8
Hit Dice: 1+1
Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1 + poison
Save: F1
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: None
XP: 27

This creature is not an aquatic arachnid, but rather a poodle-sized spider composed of water. Sages argue as to the origin of these creatures with some maintaining they are minor elementals and others claiming them to be the restless spirits of spiders who perished by water. In either case, they are always found in or near water and they can lurk in narrow pipes and tiny drains in order to ambush their victims. They do not spin webs.

Water spiders are venomous and their toxin, although weak (+2 to save vs. poison), is lethal. Their liquid state makes them resistant to harm and they suffer half damage from non-magical piercing or slashing weapons. Bludgeoning, silver, and magical weapons all do normal damage. Water spiders are also partially immune to fire spells (taking half-damage from these effects with a successful save negating all damage) and are merely slowed by cold-based magic.

From Around the Watchfires: Heavenly Bodies

Since the campaign world is a work in progress, I tend to avoid thinking about aspects of it until they become important. Take geography, for instance. Currently, I don’t even have so much as an inkling of what’s to be found past the edges of my rough map. I’ve composed thumbnail descriptions of the three closest nations, which has given the players some ideas as to where their characters originally hail from, but that it. There is, however, one big exception to my seat-of-the-pants world building: the skies above. As events would have it, I’ve had to give some thought to the night sky—more than I imagined I’d have to at this early stage of the game.

It started simply enough. In my initial notes for the campaign, I decided I wanted to employ a fantasy cliché that I’ve never personally used before: multiple moons. In this case, two of them. If there’s one thing that fantasy artwork from the 60s and 70s taught me, it’s that multiple moons are shorthand for bizarre alien worlds. With this in mind, I made a quick note about them. One is a big, bright moon, similar to our own Luna. The second, however, is a smaller and more battered body, cracked by some ancient catastrophe and trailing large chunks in its wake. That moon has a pallid, even putrid appearance, earning it the nickname of the Rotted Moon.

Although it looks different from the mental picture I have of the secondary moon, I used the broken moon from Thundarr the Barbarian as my quick “elevator pitch” sketch when trying to explain how the night sky appears. Just recently though, I discovered this promo image for the video game, Shattered Horizon, and it look much more like the picture I have in my head than Thundarr’s broken moon.

I was content to leave it at that, but then one of my player’s decided that his cleric worshipped the god, Uun (a name of his own creation). I let him run with the idea, leaving it up to him to decide what Uun was like, deity-wise. He decided that Uun (the Unknowable, as we dubbed him because we knew nothing about the god during the first game session) was a moon good and the guardian of cats. That’s all I needed to hear before I decided that the big moon’s name was Uun and the smaller moon was called the Rotting Moon. Done and done—or so I thought.

Then something started to cook on my creative stove top and I knew that I’d have to learn more about the Rotting Moon. For starters, a name was required, and, because of what was percolating in my mental pots, I decided that Nihil was best for my purposes. Since then, there’s been much more added to Nihil, but I can’t talk about that material just yet. It’ll have to wait until after I see what the characters end up doing in the next few game sessions.

But the stellar fun didn’t end there. I found myself in need of a suitable “red planet” to serve as an origin point/launch pad for another idea I’ve been noodling with. I also recently re-watched the first season of Rome and recalled Titus Pullo’s and Lucius Vorenus’ discussion about stars. Thus, Raka Ma’ad, the War Star, came into being. This “star” is one which sages believe may actually be a wayward moon, one that lies “hundreds of miles” up in the sky. If crimson Raka Ma’ad comes into play, the campaign will have taken a very interesting turn.

As a last point of note, it should be mentioned that the general populace believes that Hell, in its many guises, does not lie beneath one’s feet, but in the sky above. That dismal realm of devils and unknown gods lies in the night sky, in a territory just beyond the stars. This is a concept that I borrowed from my previous campaign world, solely on the strength of having a “cold hell beyond space” where things like this can come from.

Archive of the Rotted Moon

As I anticipated, I’ve found that using Blogger for the Watchfires & Thrones campaign is a much better method for organizing my game material than Obsidian Portal. Nothing against those guys, but I’m already more adept at organizing information using the blogger format than I am with a wiki. I’ve moved most of my game notes to a new blog and, while I will still feature posts such as new monsters, magics, and lessons learned from that campaign on The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope, game recaps and other content of limited reader interest will be posted there in the future.

That new blog is Archive of the Rotted Moon (http://rottedmoon.blogspot.com) and a recap of Sunday’s game can be found here.

House Rule Additions & Modifications

I’ve been using Trollsmyth’s “Shields Shall Be Splintered” house rule since the start of the Watchfires & Thrones campaign with great success. Seeing as how Ian from Swashbuckler’s Hideout took the time to present his own take on the “using a shield to save your bacon” rule, I thought I’d chime in briefly with my own modified version of Trollsmyth’s house rule.

In my game, in order to use a shield to absorb the damage intended for your character, you need to make a successful save vs. death. I realize that this gives the clerics and the dwarf a slightly higher probability of success than the fighters, but I wanted something that was easy to remember and, since the shield splinter rule is most often used to avoid dying, this seemed like the best category. If push comes to shove and an explanation is required, I’ll just say that the gods look out for their own and, with the short stature and inhuman fighting techniques, dwarves are plain harder to hit sometimes.

I introduced the need for a saving throw because in Trollsmyth’s original version (whether it may have changed since inception, I do not know), using a shield to save your hide was a matter of simply saying so and I wanted there to be an element of chance involved in order to keep the players on their toes. That’s merely my own bias. So far we haven’t had to use the rule to avoid spell-inflicted damage. I’m curious to see how I’ll end up using this rule once that occurs.

I did have to make an on-the-fly ruling regarding this permutation during the third game session, one which so far seems to work fine. When one of the PCs was attacked by killer frogs and reduced to his last hit point, he attempted to block one of the frog’s two successful attacks. He rolled a natural 20 on his saving throw vs. death, which I ruled meant that the shield was able to take the blow and remained intact. Then, unbelievably, he invoked this rule to attempt to block the second attack and rolled another natural 20! I again ruled that the shield survived the attack and he remained unscathed by the blow. I could have stated that the shield, already weakened by the first strike, broke regardless of the 20, but I’d rather reward everyone with a really cool game memory, which is exactly what has seemed to occur. Conversely, in our most recent session, another character attempted to block a blow with his shield and rolled a 1. I took this to mean that the attack was so powerful that it not only splintered his shield but carried past to damage him despite his efforts to turn the blow.

Killer Referee

And another PC is slain by my horde of evil minions!

It was a hot afternoon for the referee: four natural twenties during three hours of play, one of which was responsible for the death pictured above. However, the party's two surviving clerics finally made 2nd level, and a cache of healing items was discovered. I think the party's survival rate is in for an sharp increase in future game sessions. I'm quite thrilled at that notion.