Dreamation Pre-Registration Now Open!

Pre-Registration for the Dreamation convention in Morristown, NJ is now open. The convention runs from Thursday, February 21 through Sunday February 24, and you can pre-register for $50 for the whole weekend. You can pre-register and submit event proposals (for you to GM) here. Along with its companion convention DexCon, Dreamation is a blast. Just about every type of gaming you can imagine is present (board games, RPGs, miniatures, card games, video games, LARPing, computer games), plus there are a lot of neat special events and a great dealers' room.

I've submitted the following events. I'll keep everyone posted when the actual schedule is put up and I've got times and event numbers.

• Steading of the Hill Giant Chief (AD&D 1st edition)
• Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl (AD&D 1st edition)
• Hall of the Fire Giant King (AD&D 1st edition)
• Last Sub Out of Bristol (Ogre Miniatures)

Also, if Steve Jackson has the Deluxe Ogre game out by February (which might be dicey-- heh), I'm sure I'll be in the board game hall most of the time I'm not running something else, helping run endless sessions of Ogre.

Hope to see you there!

Read More

WotC To Publish New AD&D Material, Encourage AD&D Campaigns

I'll confess that I've never been a particular fan of the A1-4 series of modules. I fully understand that they've got an excellent reputation among many of my colleagues in the OSR, but they just never did much for me. I don't particularly dislike them; I just don't gush over them.

That said, I found the following to be of extreme interest (in the advertising blurb for the upcoming hardcover version of the Slavers modules, due from Wizards in June 2013):

Against the Slave Lords is a hardcover collection of four classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules that form a series -- A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, and A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords -- complete with original black-and-white interior art.

Added to the collection is an all-new fifth adventure -- A0: Danger at Darkshelf Quarry -- that you can use to kick off an AD&D campaign that pits a group of adventurers against the evil Slave Lords! Module A0, designed for levels 1-3, sets the stage for events that unfold throughout the remainder of the "A" series.

While it's neat to see another famous old-school work being republished, what struck me was in the second paragraph:

"you can use to kick off an AD&D campaign"

Wizards of the Coast is not only republishing old material, and is not only publishing new material for a version of the game that is ostensibly out of print, but is actively giving encouragement and assistance to DMs who want to start up a campaign using those out of print rules!

The implications of that simple fact are enormous. I think it signals a shift in their corporate attitude away from "the latest version of the rules is the only one we'll even acknowledge". It also demonstrates their lack of confidence in the ability of 4th Edition to carry the flag until 5th Edition is ready for the public (which is now scheduled for 2014). That means they have all of 2013 to play around with previous  editions, and more than that, continue reaching out to the fan bases of those previous editions.

An official micro-revival of AD&D? Bring it on! And if you should want to play a mountebank or a mystic when you take on the slave lords in Highport, boy have I got a book for you!

Read More

Oh, Just Roll a 14, Fer Chrissakes!

I'm sure we've all had this happen.

There's a big combat against a large number of lower-level opponents, and the PCs are triumphant (yay!) and there's just mopping up to do.

Trouble is, they just can't seem to do the mopping up. All they need is for one or two of them to roll something higher than a 10 "to hit", and more than a 1 on damage, but they just can't seal the deal. Their dice are laughing their asses off, as they roll an endless supply of 3's and 4's, round after round. Finally, someone mercifully rolls something with double digits, and the last skeleton is finally vanquished.

First of all, it's ridiculous. You can dispatch 12 zombies in two minutes, but that last super-zombie keeps bobbing and weaving for five minutes while four trained warriors keep swishing? Bah.

"Bored now!"

Secondly, it's tedious. Everybody knows the inevitable outcome. Is it really worth going through the aggravation of rolling all those dice over and over just to see if the cleric takes another 3 h.p. of damage before the last orc goes down? FOR THE LOVE OF THOR, JUST ROLL A 14!

When presented with this scenario, I'll just say "you kill it" and move on. But there's another alternative.

It should be possible to come up with a simple table for such (relatively) low-level mooks. Spare us the tedium of rolling over and over just to hit the magic 14; if there's a mook with X hit dice, and the party has Y levels or armor class, someone takes Z damage (some piddling amount, if any) and we move on to greener pastures.

I'd still leave it up to the GM to implement; basically it's a way to justify taking a hit point or three off without the bored "fine, let me roll a d20 yet again" to play it out. The percentages aren't that hard to work out; the basic idea's been around since Chainmail.

But man, I hate when that happens. Just want to finish it without such a blatant "the GM is bored now" finale.

Read More

The Flanaess as European Analogue

It may seem odd to have to make the case that the Flanaess-- the region of the World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting-- is an analogue of medieval Europe, but it must be done nevertheless.

Kenneth Hite

At the recent Metatopia convention in Morristown, NJ, I attended a seminar given by Kenneth Hite (who has written a number of GURPS titles as well as many other works including two different Star Trek RPGs). During the seminar, he used the World of Greyhawk as a punching-bag, accusing it of being a mish-mash of disparate cultures stripped out of place and time and slapped down with wild abandon, leaving it suitable only for picaresque adventures (the implication being that real "story-driven adventures" would not be suitable there).

Let us say that I disagree with his assessment.

I see the Flanaess as a fairly straightforward analogue of Medieval and early Renaissance Europe. Obviously, it's not a straight one-to-one comparison, but there are enough strong analogies there, and only a few outright inventions, but ones which serve to secure its place as an original fantasy world based on the model of Europe, rather than attempting to be an alternate history setting.

Most certainly wrong is Mr. Hite's contention that the Flanaess consists of a wild amalgam of disparate Earth cultures. During the seminar he glibly spoke of "the Roman area" and "the Egyptian area" of the Flanaess. I confess in decades of play, study, and writing about the setting I don't recall seeing them. Such places have been hinted at over the years in far-off regions of Oerik (particularly in the Far West, where we see places such as Erypt and the Tharquish Empire), but never actually detailed. To say they're simply crammed into the Flanaess willy-nilly is factually inaccurate.

The Flanaess is "guilty as charged" when it comes to having a "Viking area" (the Thilronian peninsula, where we have the Schnai, Fruzti, and Cruski barbarian nations), but that hardly disqualifies it from having a mostly pseudo-European character. The Vikings, after all, were a feature of early Medieval Europe.

The comparisons between the Flanaess and Medieval/Renaissance Europe go deeper than merely sharing a Viking-esque culture on their respective peripheries. Both have a large and unwieldy empire made up of very strong, quasi-independent states loosely governed by a central authority. In Europe this was the Holy Roman Empire, and in the Flanaess this is the Great Kingdom of Aerdy.

The overwhelming political structure used by states throughout the Flanaess are feudal monarchies. There are, of course, exceptions; the Yeomanry is a sort of "warrior's democracy", while Perrenland is quite obviously closely modeled on Switzerland. The Scarlet Brotherhood is obviously an invention (although there does seem to be just a little bit of the Jesuits peaking through those scarlet robes). While it is true that there are more regions directly ruled by clerical authorities in the Flanaess than there were historically in Europe, this is not at all unusual when one considers its polytheistic nature. With multiple religious authorities, it's only natural that there could be multiple religiously-ruled nations. And, of course, the Papal States in Italy were the model there.

Aside from these (and many other) specific comparisons, there are also more broad thematic similarities. There is the theme of regaining the lost golden age; in Europe, it was the drive to recreate the Roman Empire, while in the Flanaess it's the lost Suel Imperium. There's the imminent threat of a foreign culture on the doorstep; in Europe, the Muslims in Spain, the Mediterranean, and Balkans; in the Flanaess, the Baklunish in Ket and the lands beyond. The Flanaess does seem a bit more insular than Europe, but this may be a function of the fact that none of the lands of Oerth beyond the Flanaess have ever been officially described in any great detail.

As far as the suitability of the Flaness to larger, story-based games as opposed to episodic "capers", thirty years' worth of thousands of gamers playing in the setting give the lie to that. Just a quick look at Canonfire! will show that the Flanaess is able to support games of all types and stripes; from pure dungeon-crawls to sandbox wilderness play with the occasional tentpole location to full-blown epic story arcs spanning decades of in-game time.

The notion that Greyhawk lacks an internal logic, or that it is somehow the result of throwing around Earthly cultures without any regard for how they might have evolved side by side, is simply false. While it does display many original concepts and constructions, the Flanaess owes a lot of its broad strokes to Medieval and Renaissance Europe. To claim that it cannot support anything other than picaresque adventures and dungeon crawls is likewise an untenable position, owing to the fact that GMs have been running epic story-based campaigns in it for many years. I would hope that those who propose to lecture others on game design, and especially RPG settings, would have a bit more familiarity with their subject before making such sweeping and inaccurate remarks. 

Read More

Making Failure an Option

One idea that was floated at the Metatopia convention a week ago was the idea of failure. It came up in the context of a seminar on indie RPGs and their influence on mainstream RPGs. Normally I eschew the "indie RPG scene" because it tends to look down on the OSR (of which I count myself as a proud member), seems  overly involved in self-referential navel-gazing, and is consumed with being new and edgy for the sake of being new and edgy. But I'm certainly not above acknowledging a potentially neat idea when I hear it.

The idea in question was in regards to failing rolls. When a thief has a 20% chance of picking a lock and blows it, or someone has to roll a 14 in order to use their Intimidate skill, or has to make an Intelligence check to do something. Someone on the panel mentioned that some "indie" games don't allow for failure in such instances. The character always performs the task at hand. But if the player fails the roll, Something Bad happens story-wise. It's almost like the player is paying karma back in order to succeed in the mechanical task.

This sort of concept has direct applicability in a game where The Story is paramount. When a character blowing a chance to find a secret door could potentially threaten the ability of the characters to continue with the plot, having such a mechanic in place makes a lot of sense.


Now, picture such a mechanic in an Old School context.

I can see reasons to include such a thing in an Old School type game, where there isn't necessarily a plot that must be followed, so much as there are cool things that the players might otherwise not have the opportunity to discover. Think of it as "the game would be more interesting if he makes the roll." While that runs counter to the ethic of "the dice rule", I think it's a perfectly legitimate attitude to take in some circumstances, inasmuch as it short-circuits the impulse to fudge a dice roll, because failure actually makes the game more interesting all around. I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing (bearing in mind that "the dice rule" can also make the game more interesting, depending on the circumstance).

If the thief misses his pick locks roll, he still manages to open the door, but there's an automatic wandering monster the next round.

If the bard misses his Charisma check, he still talks his way into the Duke's daughter's birthday ball, but one of the courtiers develops a crush on him, and clings to him for the entire evening, making whatever his actual mission is very difficult.

If the savant misses his Scholarship roll, he still knows where to find the book that has the nugget of information he's seeking, but it's in a private library under the care of someone he studied with as an apprentice, who hates his guts and will doubtless throw up all kinds of road blocks to accessing the book.

Etc. etc. etc.

I don't think such a mechanic would work universally in an Old School game, because one of the tropes of our style of play is that you're not a superman and often when you fail that means you need to use your imagination to think of an alternative. But, given the ethos of "fun is better than tedium", I can see a GM employing such a mechanic in specific situations or at his whim, if it's obvious that doing so will open up new opportunities for interesting interactions.

Given that criterion, I'd probably not want to open it up to the players' choice (by earning "story points" or whatever the kids at RPG.net are pushing nowadays), precisely for the reason that they can't know where the best opportunities for such exist in the game. But I do think it's worth considering, and offers a neat mechanical alternative to simply fudging a roll; if you do fudge a roll, it becomes an opportunity to bring in more consternation for the PCs to have to manage.

And, as long as it increases the fun, I'm inclined to like it. 

Read More

Am I A Proper Wargamer?

Apologies for coming late to the party on this one, but we only got power back a few hours ago, 12 days after we were blacked out by Sandy.

Phil, over at The Wargaming Site, came up with a clever little quiz to determine whether or not one is a "Proper Wargamer". It's pretty simple, but bear in mind it's aimed at the miniatures game crowd. (I'm sure some clever wag will soon come up with a similar list for RPGs.) Have I ever...


* Spent at least £500 on figures / tanks - and you get extra kudos for every £500 you've spent

Oh sweet Gods yes.

* Pricked your finger or thumb on a pike block - several times

Pike block, no. Spearmen stand, yes. I'm going to give myself this one.

* Tried at least 10 different rule sets and vowed never to play half of them ever again

Actually not. I've got my comfort zone and I rarely stray too far from it.

* Bought an army off EBay

Yes.

* Sold an army on EBay

No; I can't imagine anyone would actually want anything I painted.

* spent months painting an army - then used it in anger once

Umm... does "used it in anger never" count?

* tried several different periods and genres

Ayup. Napoleonics 15mm Ogre/GEV 6mm, medieval 15mm, renaissance naval 1/2400...

* dropped a box of figures on the floor from a great height

I am sad to say yes. They fared well, however.

* lost a battle on the last throw of the dice

Yes, at this year's DexCon. Damn you lord Percy!!!

* made at least one enemy for life

Well, yes. But I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be about gaming.

* had a proper, stand up argument over a wargamers table

Hehehehehehee... Oh yeah.

* thrown a dice across a room

No, I tend to take my frustrations out against walls and pillars with my fists.

* rebased an army for a different rule set

No, but I certainly foresee it happening.

* inflicted a whopping defeat on an opponent

Oh, yeah. Ogre, anyone?

* suffered an embarrassing defeat due to a stupid tactical decision

Yes, when given the choice of having the table broad or narrow, I chose broad, despite having an overwhelming superiority in cannon. I paid the price for my lack of vision.

* joined a wargamers club

Yes, and eventually became treasurer of the Boston University Simulation Society. Since disbanded.

* bought a ton of lead that remains unpainted

You've been peeking in my office, haven't you?

* been to a wargamers show

I assume this means a convention. Oh, Hel yeah.

* have more dice than is logical or necessary to own - and have used most of them

Yes. You buy them because you "need" them, then use them once, and realize that you prefer your old dice. I've got a pile of dice like this.

* have taken boxes of troops down to a club just to show them off to your mates

I'm going to count the time I had people over to the house and showed off my 1/2400 renaissance ships, despite the fact that they've never actually been used in a game. I'm still looking for proper rules, honest.

Read More

Down, But Not Out

Just a quick note-- being a New Jerseyian, our town was hit pretty hard by Sandy, so I'm into my second week without electricity, heat, or, naturally, internet access at home. (The "13 Days of Halloween" posts were pre-scheduled prior to my losing power.)

I'll continue with regular posting once things calm down and I at least can be in my house without seeing my own breath by flashlight. Lots of cool stuff I want to post that I thought of at the Metatopia convention last weekend!

Read More