Go Hunting

I haven't felt like blogging much lately. I was on vacation this week and figured I would pound out a dozen entries, but that never happened. I've been taking a short hiatus from it. One large reason was Modern Warfare 2 came out this week and I've been having fun swearing at the TV since then. I went to the midnight sale and there were two to three hundred people in line. I was surprised. This is not a large town and to see that many standing in line got me more excited to play it. I won't go into the internet problems I had. That swearing at the TV was not so fun.

Seems like my batteries are recharged and I am ready to get more involved in my work involving gaming. Complete some of the billion and one projects I start and never finish. Then I go onto Ebay. Dangerous place. With my renewed buzz for gaming I come across this lot of 19 new Hackmaster Books for $60 bucks with an additional $12 for shipping. Well slap my ass and call me Betty. I've always wanted to take a look at Hackmaster and now I pretty much get the glut of the game in one shot. At the game store I go to all the Hacklopedias are half off and even then those are $10 a piece. So now I wait by my PO Box twiddling my thumbs, thinking of adventures and how to hard it will be to convert my other adventures into this system.

Now I am all set to head to the gaming store in Erie. I'm going to go look at some products and see what they have available. Look at the Hackmaster list of books and see what they might have that is not included in the list. I like going to a gaming store with a purpose. I'm going hunting.

GM Rulings

There will be times when a player disagrees with a GM's ruling. My view is simple. If you think the GM is wrong make your case briefly. If the GM overrules you then that's it. Discussion over and move on with the game. To give an example of a situation that happened recently a GM stated that the players could not see at night in the desert. A player argued that with starlight he could. Both argued about their personal experiences with the same or similar situations. The argument boiled until it was decided to postpone the game for another night. In this case I believe the player is wrong. This is the GM's world based on his experience.

I'm not talking about the times when a GM ignores, disallows or is inconsistent with a rule. In such cases the player has a valid gripe. What I am focusing on is interpretations or laws of the gaming world. If the GM decides you cannot see in at night in an area or you cannot swim across a fast moving river than you can't. Use your imagination to get around the problem or solve it. Don't let the problem ruin the night of gaming. We get precious few as it is.

Good Ugly

Some may argue that Unearth Arcana was the bane of AD&D. I liked having something new introduced into the game, especially the weapon specialization. The classes were nice, but we'd always played with the new classes introduced in Dragon Magazine. But what I liked a lot and thought was necessary for the game was the Comeliness attribute. I don't like the name. It should have just been named Attractiveness.

In AD&D and most fantasy games, Charisma tries to cover that area, but it does a poor job. It's a simple addition and only costs the time of an extra roll. Can Charisma influence appearance...absolutely. It can assist in reaction modifiers when dealing with similar races, henchmen and trying to convince the town guards it wasn't you who burned down the tavern. And now DMs could answer the age old question...how good looking is the barmaid? I know some old schoolers out there are shuttering at the thought of another attribute, but I never saw how it detracted from the game, but added an interesting aspect to it.

I'm curious as what other think about adding Attractiveness as a seventh attribute and of they have used it in their game.

No Evil Religions?

I'd thought I'd comment on Mr. Conley's post today. One, because I think he is wrong and two he's been a good friend for more years than I can remember and sometimes arguing with him can be good fun. The argument is whether there can be evil religions. He uses human history to make his point that at no time has there ever been an evil religion. I won't get into historical relevancies. I don't need to. My argument is there can be evil religions in my gaming world. I'm the GM so 'poof' there is an evil religion in my world.

Is it that simple? Not really. Not if you want to make it fun and have some sort of logic. But it's no more work than having to develop any religion on any alignment. If I were going to argue about what religions would or would not exist it would be chaotic aligned religions. You need structure and cohesion of laws and beliefs to make it work and a chaotic aligned religion wouldn't have that structure. Alignments are not my favorite thing in the world, but since this discussion began with the alignment terms I have used them.

As for something being evil or good it is often a matter of perspective. Again though, I believe Rob was speaking about the mustache twirling baddie who exists only to cause grief and pain even to those who follow him faithfully. I gotta say there is room in my campaign for such a villainous deity. Why not? I would need to do the work to justify why these people would want to adhere to such a god. I would also need to take into account whether the power of the gods in my world is equal to the number of those who worship him or if they are just incredibly powerful beings who can impose their will onto others.

Let's go for the latter for now. Bronson the Dreadful is an evil god whose power is not dependant on his worshippers. He is a mean tempered, jealous, vengeful son of a bitch. But others find value in following him. An example could be they are an enslaved race and Bronson is a huge fan of revenge, sabotage and mayhem. He inspires this enslaved race to revolt even though they know they might be crushed, but gives them hope. Now Bronson the Dreadful could give two turds in a punchbowl about these people, but because they entertain him he will grant a few powers to make the game more interesting. But to get these powers they must sacrifice their most beloved to him. And some will. And more will if they see those who have sacrificed have succeeded. And as people are, even if no laws or codes exist they will begin to develop them.

There are many reasons why an evil religion can exist. I am not talking about the perspective argument, but the cartoon this is good this is bad version. And it can work. It can add a lot to a campaign. And sometimes it's nice to have a bad guy who makes no bones about it. He stands there with a wide stance, hands on hips, black mustache waxed and curled, dressed all in black and with a sinister cackle he looks at all the land and all the people around him and says, "It is all mine. All mine I tell you. Muhahaha."

Horror Comes in Small Packages

I'm not sure about all of you out there, but it's the small things that creep me out the most. Zombies have become a 'how many cool ways can we kill them' past time. Skeletons were never very scary to begin with. Vampires get more moody as the years go by and are more annoying than frightening. Dragons are now a staple at arts & crafts shows. Not so scary. And all those goblinoids that make up the majority of the enemies in a fantasy campaign are trees waiting to be chopped down. But what about the small enemies? Enemies small enough that a sword or mace is useless. These are the enemies that crawl inside of you. Become a part of you. They cause the most horrible and agonizing deaths.

I'm talking about the Ear Seekers, small insects that search for a warm place to lay their eggs. Ears are their favorite place, but an open wound will do nicely also. While you sleep they lay 9-16 eggs and in less than a day the eggs hatch and start feast on the flesh around them.

And I'm talking about Rot Grubs. These little beauties burrow into your skin and tunnel through your body until they reach your heart. It takes1-3 turns for these grubs to finish the job giants could not do.

Here is the problem I have. In both cases the MM says both can be rid of by a Cure Disease, but neither is a disease. The PHB describes disease as a parasitic, bacterial or viral nature. Even though both would qualify as parasitic in nature I don't see as they qualify as a disease. The remedy is already give in the MM that rot grubs need to be burned off and some sort of similar thing I believe would need to be done for the ear seekers. A steady handed player with a red hot needle plunging into the infected player's ear.

These creatures are more difficult to deal with because of the harm that comes with defending oneself from them. The difficult part as a GM is using these creatures and having the possibility of having one of the players die because insect eggs in their ear. Depending on the realism you promote in your campaign this might not be an option. Heroic campaigns don't want their heroes dying from disease or infestations, but leading a battle against insurmountable odds. Not dying in their bedroll the night before the battle.

It's good to change up the expectations of the players. Any group can prepare to go against a stronghold of ogres, but have them go against the creepy crawlers and you'll see those same big badass heroes screaming like little girls running for the door.

This is a great comic from http://badgods.com/rotgrubs.html.

Gaming Props Pro or Con

A couple of weekends ago at the Day of Gaming in Erie, Rob ran a great first adventure with Al and I. He used a erasable marker on a battle mat and we had a blast. A very simple execution that kept the game rolling along.

The second game he used (I can’t remember the exact name of the product or company) dungeon wall props. They were great looking, but it took up time to set up each hallway and room. Of course he did not build it ahead of time because we could only see the dungeon as we explored. The walls did look great, but it was tough to keep the flow of the excitement because each time we moved it took five minutes to setup the walls. This took me out of the game and I would gladly sacrifice the ‘look’ for the ‘play’.

The other con for me was that when you tried to move your figure there was a difficulty level 25 to not to knock down the walls as you moved your figure. I failed my check a lot. And beware of bumping the table. You know how graceful all us gamers are.

Rob was given the dungeon walls and I heard that set ran about $80 to $100 and you could only built a few corridors and rooms with them so the same pieces needed to be reused as we explored. He would have needed to buy at least four to five more of the sets to build the dungeon.

I ask the question is it worth to other out there in blog land? For me keeping it simple and bump the table resistant is the best. Miniatures on a erasable battle mat is about as wild as I like to get. Okay, maybe different color markers to make the water blue and trees green, but that’s only when I’ve gone mad. So keeping it simple on the props, keep the focus on the adventure and to maintain the mood you’ve worked so hard to develop is for me.

Review : Tavern Denizens - Book 1:The Dives

"You walk into a tavern..."

Those five words have been said at every gaming table. Let's face it, the kings can have their castles, priests can have their temples, and mages can have their towers, but the taverns belong to the adventurers. Tavern Denizens provides 25 personalities to populate those taverns.

Let's get the boring, but important stuff out of the way. The formatting was good and made for easy reading. The artwork was minimal which fit this product. The choices of tavern scenes went with the theme. And being a person who prints out his PDFs I appreciated the smallness of the pictures and no heavy black areas.

The heart of Tavern Denizens is the tavern personalities. A table is provided in case you want to randomly choose your personality. The personalities are described in a two cell table. The first cell provides the name, sex, race physical traits and age. Also included in this cell is the generic rating of the NPC's ability. We'll get into this later. The second cell gives a description of habits, history and possible hooks. Overall, the personalities are well done and accomplish the goal. There is enough to get a GM the flavor of the person after a brief reading. The names are colorful and easy to remember. Some of the personalities lacked...personality. Some were just appearance with hints of a back story. I would have liked a sentence or two more of background or current situation.

This supplement runs off a generic system which is explained in the beginning of the book. And this is where I had the biggest problem. Three pages are used to explain the generic mental and physical system. A table and explanation accompany each of the four attributes. I did not feel these enhanced the product. In fact it was a distraction. These attributes are used to explain the competence of the 25 personalities, but 12 of the personalities have no rating at all. If you're using nearly 25% of your product's space to describe 50% of the personalities it should have been left out or the ratings should have been applied to all the personalities.
The last section is Adventure Ideas. Another problem here is the 20 adventure ideas suggests most are situations. Having someone follow a character around annoying him is not an adventure. And the ones that do hint at an adventure fail to develop the seed needed to begin.

Tavern Denizens heart is the personalities to populate your taverns. This it does. But I do wish the generic system was applied to everyone. The adventure ideas don't inspire. I wanted more throughout the product. Each section stopped short of its goal. Tavern Denizens could have been a very good product instead it falls to below average to poor.

Whimpy rolls an 8 for Tavern Denizens.