Reminder: Revenge of the Grognards at Dremation 2012

Just wanted to send out a reminder to all my fellow OSR-ifiles that we're planning to storm the gates of the Dreamation 2012 convention in beautiful Morristown, NJ on February 23-26, 2012.

I'll be running Castle of the Mad Archmage, some old-school AH hex-and-counter wargame goodness, Ogre Miniatures, and hosting a discussion about the joys of older games. I will, of course, be pimping these games mercilessly at the con, and am happy to include others' games as well.

If you would like to run an old-school game at Dreamation and have it included in my advertising efforts, when you submit your event registration to the convention --> HERE <-- put "Part of the Revenge of the Grognards" in your description. Please also mention it in the comments below or send me an email and I'll be sure to hump it when the time comes.

See you there!

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Kicking off a Campaign

I probably just gave my regular players a heart attack with the title of this post, but I'm referring to the general ways and means of starting new campaigns. A new campaign doesn't necessarily have to be in a new campaign world; many's the time I've started a new campaign in Greyhawk, for example.

The question for the GM becomes one of information flow. Just how much knowledge should the players have about their starting locale? Especially in a sandbox style campaign, starting the players with zero or next-to-no information means they are going to be flailing about blindly, with no way to make an informed choice about where to go first. This can be frustrating to both players and the GM; the players because they feel completely helpless, and the GM because they players are more than likely not going to randomly stumble on the neat things he has carefully designed for them to encounter.

Starting the players with little or no information can be difficult to justify in-game as well. If the player characters have grown up in a particular village, why don't they know the layout? The prominent NPCs? The fact that there's a ruined tower just over the ridge to the north? The name of the king?

In the original DMG, Gary Gygax gave some excellent advice on the subject:

As background you inform them (the players) that they are from some nearby place where they were apprentices learning their respective professions, that they met by chance in an inn or tavern and resolved to journey together to seek their fortunes in the dangerous environment, and that, beyond the knowledge common to the area (speech, alignments, races, and the like), they know nothing of the world. Placing these new participants in a small setlement means that you need do only minimal work describing the place and its inhabitants. -- A&D Dungeon Masters Guide, p. 87

This setup neatly solves the problem of the player characters not knowing much detail about their starting point; since they come from a "nearby place" they could very well not know anything about the actual starting village or town.

The question still remains of just how much information should be given, and how. Do you, as the game master, prepare a handout, complete with rumors, maps, and lists of deities from which to choose? Or do you more severely limit the information available to them, dictating that "there was only one temple in the village you grew up in, and so Thor's your deity"?

I don't think that generosity with information concerning some of the broader brush-strokes of the campaign is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, I think that the players can find themselves more invested in a setting about which they have some knowledge, rather than the whole being a gray and misty cipher beyond the 10-mile-radius around their immediate starting locale. Does having the World of Greyhawk maps hanging on your wall ruin the mystique of having a campaign set in the Flanaess? If not, then how does handing a continent-scale map of your homebrew campaign do so? I don't ask this with any specific answer in mind, but invite speculation and discussion in the comments.

Personally, I find the campaign really gets going after the third or fourth session, when the players have a good sense of who's who, what a few of the plots are that are happening in the campaign (at least in their little corner of it), and so forth. I'm wondering if there's a way to jump to that point without simply handing the players a list of rumors and NPCs, which feels less than right to me somehow.

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A Christmas Carol

In the upper-right corner of the blog, from now through Christmas Eve, you'll find a poll inspired by one of my favorite films of all time; "A Christmas Carol". There have been scores of adaptations over the years, and I listed a few which I felt were either influential, popular, or just struck my fancy, but I made sure to leave room for "other" just in case someone just had to share some love for a version I've not included.

Please feel free to share your own thoughts about "A Christmas Carol", including favorite adaptations, actors, and even the book itself (have you ever read it? I have, and it only added to my appreciation for the movies and television adaptations; you can find the original here).

My own personal favorite is the George C. Scott version; Patrick Stewart comes in second or third (Mr. Magoo still holds a special place in my heart-- a product of my age, I suppose), but I don't find him quite as convincing an "evil Scrooge" at the beginning. Scott's transformation is simply brilliant, in my not so humble opinion.

And a bit of Christmas trivia; I always make a point of serving Smoking Bishop at Yule and Christmas, thanks entirely to this work. Try it; it's fantastic on a cold winter's evening when ghosts are about.

I'll be making several Yule and Christmas posts during the season; never forget that I am a true fan of the holiday and the season, even if you might find some conventions overturned and mayhap your own oxen gored.

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Armies of Erseta: Tamaria Mounted Crossbowmen

I'm on a roll! Hot on the heels of my battlegroup of feudal spearmen, painted in the livery of the Kingdom of Tamaria from my own campaign, Erseta, comes a battlegroup consisting of four stands of mounted crossbowmen, similarly attired. Fortunately, my lack of expertise in photographing miniatures sort of hides my lack of expertise in painting them, but once again, they're painted, and based (sans flocking), and now I'm ready to move on to some of Tamaria's mounted chivalry.

These are all 15mm figures from Old Glory 15s, by the way. I found the mounted crossbowmen somewhat tricky to paint; there were a lot of places where it wasn't very clear where the saddle ended and the man atop it began. But I muddled through; at least the crossbows were attached; I shudder to think what would have happened if I had had to glue them on.

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Looking for a Great Deal on LotFP?

James Raggi is selling pdf versions of a bunch of his stuff for just $1.35 until December 10. Looks like a great deal for those who might be on the fence regarding his products, and who want to dip their toe in and see what's what before committing to the hard copies. That includes the highly acclaimed Vornheim module and the "Grindhouse Edition" of his rules. I'd recommend taking advantage of this while it lasts. Avoid the bundles that are listed at RPGNow.com, though; they haven't been re-priced for the sale, and you're much better off getting the individual pieces.

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Armies of Erseta: Tamarian Spearmen

The arms of Tamaria:
purpure, a barulet argent,
with a triangle argent, voided

Well, since my home campaign is now set in my homebrew setting of Erseta rather than the World of Greyhawk, my long-languished miniatures painting project has now been rechristened the Armies of Erseta. And what better way to try to jump start things than to belt out an entire battlegroup of spearmen?

As long time readers may remember, I'm intending to use the Field of Glory rules to do some large-scale battle gaming, and to that end I purchased two starter armies from Old Glory 15s; a Feudal German army and Feudal French army. Plus a lot of extra doodads and such, and others have been kind enough to donate their unwanted 15mm figures to the "Greyhawk Grognard's Home for Unwanted 15mm Figures".

Well, I finally got off my duff and started to paint these bad boys. I don't hold myself to be a great (or even good) painter by any means, but I've got color on them, and a little detail, and they're on bases just waiting to be flocked (I figure I'll do that at the very end, as it's a messy process and better to only have to clean up once or twice rather than each time I finish a base). They're not perfect, but they're painted, and that's better than I've done lately. And more to come; I'm going to make an effort to get the whole starter army done in my copious free time (sigh). Elapsed time on this unit: 4 hours, not including priming.

What I've got here is a battlegroup of feudal spearmen from my Feudal French army, now pressed into service as spearmen from Tamaria, one of the major nations of my own campaign. They bear the colors of the national arms (which you can see at the top of the post); given the dominant religion of the region, triangles and other images dominated by the number three are as prevalent as crosses and variants thereof are in European iconography and heraldry, hence the prominence of the triangle on Tamaria's coat of arms. It is representative of Potaras the Father, Motara the Mother, and Koreyos the hermaphroditic daughter-son; the three gods of the High Church of the Holy Tripartite Family.

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Poll Results: How Broad a Gamer are You?

Earlier this month I set up a poll asking what different types of games readers played, either ever or within the last year. 219 people responded, and it must be remembered that web polls are not scientific measures. They are made up of what is known in the trade as self-selected respondents, and are good for stimulating discussion but little else. Certainly no firm conclusions can be drawn about RPG players in general, OSR players, or even the readers of this blog.

That said, the results are interesting in their own way:
 

Game type	Ever	Last Year
RPG	96%	87%
Eurogame	74%	52%
Miniatures wargame	80%	35%
Hex-and-counter wargame	68%	25%
LARP	33%	3%
Card game	91%	66%

As expected, the vast majority of respondents are RPG players; 96% ever and 87% in the last year. Card games came in second; 91% ever and 66% within the last year. Most of the other types of games named in the poll showed the same pattern; a majority have dipped their toe in the water at some point, but haven't stuck with it over time. My own personal heart-break comes from the fact that although two-thirds of respondents have played hex-and-counter wargames at some point in their life, only a quarter of them have done so recently. Alas and alack!

LARPing does seem to be bringing up the rear; only a third of respondents have ever tried it, and almost none of them have done so recently. That's somewhat surprising to me; is LARPing so different from pen-and-paper RPGs? I would have thought wargaming and miniatures were more different than RPGs, but perhaps that's a function of the audience. Many more of us old-timers came from a heavier wargaming background, so perhaps it's a cultural thing.

Thanks to all who responded, and feel free to discuss the results in the comments.

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