Preview of Races for Adventurer: Elves from before Legolas, and why we dare not go a'hunting.....

Fey

The fey are typified as long-lived, highly intelligent, magically proficient humanoids, often more slender and sometimes taller or shorter than mundane men. While it may be simply Fey propaganda, they are usually more intelligent, graceful and beautiful than mundane man, often having much higher technology (or magic) than is available to mankind. They can be an alternate evolutionary track that evolved in a high magic environment, dwellers in or from an alternate plane, decadent survivors of an earlier race, or embodiments of nature or sprits of the air (or some such). 

They tend to be aggressively secretive, dwelling in magically hidden refuges from the grubby, human infested world.  Their homelands are very dangerous to the uninvited, combining cunning illusions, traps, and good old arrows to the liver from ambush.  Those few that do venture out into the world are often aloof, and always have their own agendas and goals, which will dominate their behaviors.  Humans and other such are either treated as annoying pests, barely sentient savages or, at best, cute, but none to bright pets.

Being extremely long lived, they are certainly possessed of far more skills and spells than a typical human could ever learn. Despite these advantages, they suffer from some weaknesses: they cannot break a promise, harm their guests or enter a house uninvited, nor can they abide priests or holy artifacts; taking a -3 on all rolls while within sight of a holy artifact, and 1 pt of damage each round they are touching either.

They cannot be magically healed by priests, and can never be resurrected.  Finally, they are traditionally unable to tolerate iron and take 1d6 from any contact with iron, and double damage from any iron weapon.  Alloys of iron (such as steel) may or may not reduce or retard this effect at the game master’s discretion.

Fey player characters must be assumed to be very

young members of their race, perhaps outcasts, or youths on a walkabout before settling down.  Any fey character is rolled with a +2 DEX, -2 STR and a minimum INT of 8.  Available careers include Fighter Mage or Other. Fey may always choose to make one skill roll per term on the Mage tables.  Fey that fail enlistment automatically spend a term in Nobility.  All All have an indeterminate age, do not

suffer from aging, but may not spend more than 5 terms in their career.  For a variety of literature related reasons, all elves gain Notable(spellcasting) and Notable (weapon: sword or bow)

For a less elf-welfy nicey-nice earth-spirity view of the Fey, add the following ability to either the Lords of the Fey,  or to all Fey (for maximum effect).  Fey are natural, but limited shapeshifters.  They can take the shape manners and voice of any creature they know of or imagine, gaining all of its basic physical abilities within certain specific limits.  They may be as small as a (human) thumb, or as large as three times normal human size.  Their mass and strength remain the same regardless, and as a result most forms tend to human size or smaller.  The Fey gains any ability or skill that is based on physical structure, subject to the physics or lack therof in the campaign world.  Thus, wings let you fly regardless of mass (in most fantastic realms), and stingers produce poison, but invisibility is not possible.

Additionally, while any type of form may be chosen, they may never take the form a specific creature.  Thus, the form of a huge tiger might be chosen, but not the specific one eyed tiger-king of the local jungle; likewise an inhumanly beautiful human or humanoid may be taken, but not the specific form of the king, or an adventurer.  Essentially, their inherent self-centered ego and lack of empathy  makes it impossible for them to  take the form of any recognizable individual other than themsleves.   

Finally, while they are able to switch forms as humans do clothing, they definitely have a favored form, which is highly individualistic, and in many ways, intended to distinguish them from other Fey.   Note that fey forms are treated as a unique possession of a particular Fey –much as with Coats or Arms, or less majestically, clown faces.  The prohibition on imitating another individual applies to the favored form of another Fey.

If the shapeshifting option is used, players should not have access to it; this may or may not rule out player character Fey, or it may limit it to very specific areas or situations if the GM so desires . An example would be only to allow Fey shapeshifting only in their home forest (or other very local home area), or perhaps requiring players to renounce it so as to be able to wander the world and not be bound to  their home.

More non-humans for Adventurer: VarGnolls !

This week: another easily identified race for Adventurer. When reading this, do keep in mind that the intent was to model Traveller into D&D as is written for traveller by Gary and Dave.  This may seem to some a poor excuse for rehashing Traveller tropes with some serial number removal, but since I'm not one of those, I regard is as an opportunity.....

Non-Humans of varied and oft terrifying forms

Non-Humans

Non-human characters are optional, and somewhat of a deviation from the norm of Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
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ord and sorcery campaigns.  Nonetheless, players invariably want to try out every possible combination , some for the variety of roleplaying experience, some to maximize advantages.  Accordingly, Non human examples suitable  for play are presented in part II; these are simply those used in a suggested baseline campaign, and the gamemaster , if interested in using nonhuman characters, is encouraged to create such species as fit best with their own campaign.

Non-humans do  not use the cultural modifiers; as we know, while Humans and Human varieties have a wide variety of cultural types, aliens and non-humans are invariably culturally and racially homogenous; thus their baseline is the only culture available.

Vargnolls

Vargnolls  (aka Vargs) are a race created by powerful sorcery rather than the gods.  At some point in the past, they were created as slaves and slave warriors by a long forgotten likely non-human civilization.

Other than during breeding and laying time, there is no differentiation between males and females, both sexes performing all social functions, and, unless raising the young, all are warriors to some extent or another. 

Physically Vargs are generally a bit smaller than the typical humans of the world, and resemble upright wolves with four fingered hands (one of which is opposable) on their upper limbs.  Some are furred, some are not, but while all are warm-blooded, the females, once fertilized, lay a clutch of soft shelled egg like sacks in which the young mature in about six months.  The eggs are capable of bringing the embryo to hatching by internal resources, but are semi permeable, and if kept in a pool of replenished nourishment (regurgitated or liquefied food in general, although blood or carrion will do in a pinch) the young will be much larger and stronger.  The young are raised in packs, with a few teachers who are past reproduction age or unable to fight.

A Vargnoll hatches after six months (regardless of nutrients), is fully adult at four years, old by twenty, and seldom live much beyond thirty years.

Note that by virtue of their creation, Vargnolls have no religion or connection to gods; and thus have no access to spiritual spell casting whatsoever. It is postulated, and believed explicitly by the VarGnolls, that they have no souls, or access to an afterlife.  As a result, they are highly fatalistic, and believe in living life to the fullest in the present moment, are extremely impulsive and never attempt a task half-heartedly. .

As regards magic, they are by design vulnerable to spells of control and compulsion, and take a -2 on all tests against such. Also, they are unable to learn any spells from the school of mesmerism.  Being a created race, their physical form is fixed, if variable, and they may never be shape changers.  On the whole, Vargnolls very seldom learn magic, not least because, as a race, they deeply hate spell casters.  Culturally, they realize that they were created as tools, and show no particular gratitude to those who created them.

Vargnolls are invariably tribal, and use the PACK stat instead of SOC

Vargnoll have Notable STR (+2) and Weak END (-2), and have an EDU They do +2 damage in unarmed HTH combat.  They automatically gain Brawling-1  All limitations and benefits of the species apply to characters Character professions allowed are Barbarian, Other and Commoner.  The fighter profession can be entered if EDU is 9+, and the mage profession can be entered if SOC is 3-.  All professions except mage are resolved in two year terms, with aging beginning after term four.  Vargnolls who become mages still use four year terms, begin aging rolls after term 2, and make two aging rolls per mage term thereafter.

Non-Ranting Adventurer Post.....

So, I've got a pdf available for the AAACS (Alternate Adventurer Abstract Combat System) available for perusal; and yes, I'd appreciate comments, and any actual playtest reports will get me to buy you a beer if we ever meet.

http://www.box.net/shared/tzgjs9vyrm

(UPDATE:  Links disabled.  check latest posts for current version)

Reviewsday Tuesday. Spinters of faith part 1: Railroad or Sandbox ?

Reviewsday Tuesday Presents:

Splinters of faith, Adventure 1: It started with a chicken.

Gary Schotter & Jeff Harkness.

 Frog God Games. 2010(ish)

Caveat: FGG sent me a bunch of free and unsolicited PDF product after I wrote a raving fanboy squeeee about Swords and Wizardry, Complete edition. All he requested was a fair review, which I hope to provide, but be aware that I did not pay for this, so that will color any comments I have.  See, maybe it's me, but whenever I buy something, I always read it with an eye to “Did I just waste X dollars that I could have spent more enjoyably on Beer.”. Needless to say, anything involving beer being wasted, even potentially, can inspire some serious nerd rage, which these kind of reviews will lack.


First question: was it worth the Beer ? Absolutely, as it was free. The only way to up its Product to Beer rating would be for FGG to send me Beer with the PDFs (are you listening ?). Would it have been worth the beer if I paid for it ? Read on.

SOF:ISWAC capsule review for the attentionally challenged.

Splinters of faith (SOF) is the first part of a ten part adventure series, intending to start players at level one, and work up from there, probably to level ten; oh yes, and save the world, while they are at it. They visit a village, get some well intentioned but incorrect information about a chicken, deal with the real problem, and discover a dangerous way to kill some time with a bunch of ghouls and such. Ideally, they realize that this Is Part Of Somthing Bigger and More Important than the chicken or their loot from the crypt.

So, okay, I liked it, although I may not have ever bought it on my own, mainly because there are so many damned modules, and I'm a snob (see note at the end) . Note that I did read it all the way thru (which says a lot) , and am very tempted to use it as a start to running D&D for my son and his overly sugared up friends.
 
It is easy to run as a basic railroad style “ read the backstory to the players via a bard, ancient tome or annoyingly intrusive wizard buddy of dad’s or something , and send them to save the worlds by visiting a bunch of places”; or, and this is key, a spooky mystery with threads buried throughout the more mundane bits of a campaign.

Regardless, it’s a nice module with a village, some wilderness and a nice crypt full of undead. It should challenge beginning characters, and actually hose them if they are really stupid. Otherwise, they’ll likely win, but know they’ve been in a fight. Which, really, is the point of adventures, right ? 'cause:

“As his vision faded and filled with the sight of the Lord of the Nazgul standing over the bodies of Glorfindel and Aragorn, Frodo surrendered to despair and cast himself into the foaming river, the ring slipping from his drowning fingers. It was lost again, but still whole and would soon find its master; nothing now would stop the tide of darknesss, nothing but the worlds end."

Is depressing.

More stuff, lots o' blather and actual information occasionally .

Objective part:
What you get: a 16 page PDF, with some nice cover art which can be used to illustrate why elves are not nice benevolent angels like Frodo thought (Read the Hobbit again, and pay attention). The title is great: juxtaposing portentous (not pretentious. Look it up) phrases like “splinters of faith“ and the word “chicken” is always good postmodern fun. Actual text starts on page 4, and as foretold in prophesy, the last page is OGL stuff. So, twelve pages of actual stuff. Art isn’t excessive, and seems evocative; lots of maps (IE real content) are included. The campaign back story runs to page 9 before we get to the part that the players are in. The module can either be run as a one off (although it will lack some resolution, sometimes life is like that, and at least you get some cool stuff and a good ghost story), or as part of an organized campaign To Save The World By Remaking an Artifact.

I should mention that I'm reviewing the version for swords and wizardry, presumably the complete edition. This is great, and really convenient as it is the rules I want to run, and gush about. Probably why they sent me this one instead of the pathfinder version. Clever lads, them Frog Gods. That's about all I have to say about that, except that it nicely shows a wonderful benefit  of the rules lite and OSR approach to gaming: minimalist stat blocks. Let me say this here, MINIMAL stats and technical rules exposition  REALLY Helps Make the text more READBLE. No kidding. I have to read statistics books and software manuals for a living, so when relaxing, too much techtech makes my eyes threaten mutiny .
The Subjective stuff (aka dogheaded opinions)
Okay, it has an epic backstory, an evil icklord, and a McGuffin scavenger hunt. Pretty straightforward, and honestly, nothing new or surprising. The task (fix the mcguffin, stop the baddie) is cryptically spelled out on the door to the tomb, in case the bad guy comes back. Why they went with poetry and not a big skull and trefoil logo with warnings and instructions in in seven languages and stick figures is a mystery, but that’s priests for ya.

The actual play parts consist of one village, a small extra-dungeon wilderness, and a small but evil-encrusted barrow. One moves from the mundane (kill the fox that is eating chickens) to the surprise (oh, look, it isn’t a chicken) to the dangerous and spooky (Where does this go….oh man, so that’s why they are here…). The village is good and mood setting, the interim setting is an expected surprise, and the crypt is a very nice small dungeon which actually makes sense if you you know the backstory. If not, it’s a good undead fight, with clues that something very odd happened here. This is crucial to the point of the module. It’s the gateway to a long epic campaign, which always means, how to keep the players on script without chains and whips ? SOF1 has an unusual, and, I hope, intentional, approach to resolving this dilemma.


A digression about the Backstory:
Interestingly, apart from some cryptic poetry (in a crypt –get it ?) Most of the backstory is unavailable to the players without him tediously reading it to them : “The ghoul in life was an unspeakably evil man, servant of the big bad dude who was, as you all know, imprisoned here by and artifact of great puissance which was forged by the elder blah blah blah.)”. So, one can just hand them the backstory (ADD module XYZ123 style) , but me, I think that this lack of explicit exposition is a feature, not a bug.


In other words, the players should at most get the impression that something very odd, unpleasant and unfinished has happened here, and possibly something that is hidden in their histories –or lost. The module states that the players should have a definite feeling that the McGuffin needs to be reforged. Me, I’d play it as a Close Encounters like compulsion , or at least an itch to find out what the heck happened there.  At the very least they may be motivated to find out who the heck killed and left after having robbed the.....oh wait, spoiler. Buy it yourself, since I didn't have to, so they can make money. Geeze, what is it with you kids these days ?

So...?
So what’s the solution to running it as part of a  campaign ? Like I said, one can vomit forth the backstory and then highlight the cryptic poetry so they know what there mission is, or, alternately, and I like this, it is VERY easy to leave them baffled.

My opinion of a good horror story (which this is, with  a dark claustrophobic settings, Dark Lords and a side order of cannibalism, entombment and betrayal) is that you spend most of it going "WTF ?  Seriously, what was that about ?", then, "Oh gosh  ! I think its.... ", until you get to  "AAAAAAAAA we're screwed !".  This is an excellent vehicle for that kind of start to a campaign.

 The module claims that the following installments can be linear or in any order, and that suggests to me that the whole plot can be buried and only slowly uncovered between the lines of normal adventuring. At which point you start to discover that there’s something you should have done, and maybe you didn’t, and perhaps its not too late to make it right…..

Or...?
Or, if your players hate to think, or don’t have lots of time, or just want to play epic mcGuffin hunt, one can easily give them the tour guide and a reservation on the Acheson, Topeka and Dungeoncrawl Railroad. Don’t knock it, kids, it can be a very fun style of adventure if you know what it is going in. Sandbox is not the only way.

 The Note at the end:
Confession: I never have liked adventure modules. This is an adventure module. Bear with me before I draw any conclusions. See, in the classic D&D era I snootily avoided them, proclaiming “why buy imagination that I already have in spades”; and then went on to run whatever, often as not no less derivative, railroady, unjustifiable and confused as any AD&D XYZ123 module. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Possibly it was because I was cheaper then, being a highschool/college student, and plus, too, there was always the onerous amounts of beer and textbooks to pay for. So, I didn’t get a lot. Some classics, yes, and I always was a sucker for sandbox or city modules. But basically, I’ve always been a roll yer own kinda DM.
Now, however, I find time limits press upon me, and my gaming group. The time needed to build up a decent adventure is scarce, valuable, and often disrupted by (insert beer reference here) and family, too. So, my secret shame has been shopping for and using modules, pregens and etc.

This looks like a good mix of prebuilt and DIY....sort of like a module from IKEA ?  Oh well.  There goes any hope of beer from FGG.....

A Rant about Stupid ideas of how we Gamed in the "0eLden" days

I posted this over on Zaks marvelous blog, and suggested, as its rather OT, that people should come over here to give me grief and lumps.  So, I'm reposting it here -I mean, why should his readers have all the fun ?
 [BEGINRANT/]
And, oh yes. Just to further obfuscate rational discussion, I'd like to point out the following comments from the comments [unsourced as these stand for many]:

"Most of the time the old school characters felt like checker pieces. Larger because, in my experience at least, they were treated as checker pieces by the DM."

"Just yesterday I was talking with one of my players who mentioned how he dislikes that in many old games he was in it was like his character materialized out of thin air mere minutes before the start of the first adventure like some damn MMO. "Poof" - First Level Fighter appears. Came from nowhere. Knows nothing. Doesn't matter if he dies. Prepare to die. Hit. Killed. Dead."

"The (very) old school treats characters like checker pieces - I don't cry in my beer when I lose a checker piece. I've got more and if I lose all of them we can just play again. It isn't some kind of grim ethic that makes me do it - I'm enjoying it."

This is utter, utter bullshit. Where in the hell did this come from ? I mean, other than your hat ? "Most of the time" ? "In my experience " Really.   When ? Crap and retardedness. Look, I was there. Maybe you have mistaken the miniatures wargaming and gamers that did use checkers because that's what they are, with the RPG players because that where we all came from. Maybe. But look here Sherlock, the overlap between D&D ('cause thats all RPGs were then) and Minis was far from complete; why ? Because the gamers who didn't give two damns about character, backstory, campaign or fantasy literature, or even god forbid, roleplaying, didn't play. Get that ? The first generation was self selected for caring about those issues. We were the hippy trippy weirdo character playing fringies of mini gaming. Characters and all the above mattered, and the idea that most or all games used up characters like cannon fodder is idiotic -miniature wargames set in dungeons or the wilderness did that, perhaps, but those are skirmish games, and often, post 75, explicitly that way to avoid all that "D&D crap".  This was not the vast majority of D&D games in the "0eLden" days.

Why the bunch of enthusiastic creative character and backstory oriented folks have become stereotyped as boring non-gaming farts is beyond me. Possibly we have, as a group become bitter at finding ourselves stereotyped by a new wave of gamers, some vocal few of which don't seem to be able to make a contribution stand on its own without knocking someone else down to use as a prop (I dig confusing mixed metaphors). Perhaps its some kind of unresolved rebellion against parents crap, prompted by the fact that most of us are parents -or at least look like them. Whatever. Just Stop It. Now. Or you're going to be grounded this semester, kids. 
[ENDRANT/]
Next rant:  When the hell did "Grognard" become an insult ?
Or maybe I'll finish up setting the Anti-Thief lobby straight.
Or maybe....who knows.  The stats on this blog suggest that sarcasm is my best drawing point.

Ancient wilderness Map Part IV

So, to continue, what this became was a framing wilderness where I could put all the cool dungeons and adventures (well, mostly dungeons) I was ran or wanted to run.  So, looking at the Map, you'll find quite a few Judges Guild locations, and some "blackmoor" kind of places. There are some locations from the game Lizards, but the names are well changed: but they are there, for sure.

For me, it really was the first fantasy campaign (FFC, by Judges guild) which guided my thoughts of a wilderness, although it has been suggested by some old players that a sense of whimsy (or possibly brain damage) was what made me cleave to things Arnesonian; probably true, but the environment and atmosphere presented in the FFC has always been my goal.  if I had to describe it, its kind of like much terry Pratchett crossed with catch-22; a loving parody (the Pratchett part) combined with some mean but accurate humor that is interrupted by real world consequences in the midst of a belly laugh....where you go, "HA HA HA...Oh SHIT NOOOOOOO......" (this is the catch 22 part).What the FFC presented was (to my mind) exactly that - a somewhat joking dangerous environment -with lots of very mundane human interactions at all levels.  Also, it was a small kingdom sandbox, which makes it more personal - one can become a king, abeit not king of much...still, that's all there is, so go for it !

As a GM, I'm probably more akin to Pratchett than Heller, (although please note I make no claims as to having similar quality and skills of either author) so I probably err too much on the side of slapstick and post modern irony ("look at us ! We are medieval people played by modern people who act just like modern people who are nothing like us...!) ; but I've always felt that in an RPG, if you can't get yourself killed, you aren't playing an RPG. So, there need to be serious moments -but on the other hand, I've always believed that Serious does not equal Joyless, so there you go. Sometimes getting killed is as important as levelling up; and sometimes, there is no choice but to die well, or at least amusingly.


More later, I suppose. Probably about the history of ReSquIs.

My ancient wilderness campaign map.......

So, about a zillion years ago, I started GMing original D&D, and, as suggested, got a copy of the wilderness survival map (mailorder spare part from Avalon hill; yes I was already a profound gamer-geek in 1975).  I copied, messed with, accidentally destroyed, replaced and redrew it on and off for years.  Its most constant use was as "The Remarkably Square Island" allowing me to run dungeon crawls and associated hex crawls in any overall strategic campaign I wanted, or for impromptu pickups with no particular continuity (Grad school period of my life). 
I was dithering about scanning it when I found a rendering of it online recently here(at Bat in the Attic); so I downloaded that, and modified it according to at least one of the incarnations -as L'isle d' Carre, aka ReSquIs.

Roads and baronies added. More details later. BEHOLD !

(see next post for downloadable and larger version )