Monster Vault

Another 4th Edition box set has hit the shelves at my not so local Borders.  It's tagged a $29.99, but armed with a 33% coupon and about $8 dollars in the gift card managed to get this for $12 out of pocket.  The price of the AD&D PHB and MM back, back, way back in the day.  If I played 4th Edition I think the $30 price tag would be fair, but since I don't play 4th edition I was only willing to get it for the reduced price.  And it is worth it.  What irked the shit out of me is as soon as I got out of my car I dropped it and scrunched in two corners. 

The main reason why I bought it were the monster tokens.  There are 10 sheets of excellent artwork on sturdy tokens.  I gave my miniatures to Rob years ago because 1) I don't have the space to keep them 2) I don't have the room to store all the paints and dodads you need 3) I don't like painting miniatures.  These tokens are a nice replacement not requiring much space and no painting.  They suit my needs just fine.  There is a wide variety and I like that the three different size tokens, plus they have a handful of 'rings' that makes smaller creatures larger. 

Also included in the box is the adventure, Cairn of the Winter King.  A predictable, but not bad adventure for 4th level characters.  It looks easy enough to convert to S&W or OSRIC.  It's definitely an adventure by the numbers, but most of 4th edition modules I have or read are set up this way.  There is a flip map to assist the adventure.  It provides the location when the undead ship arrives and attacks the town and a portion of the dungeon on the other side.  I wish the map was more generic or been large enough to include the entire dungeon doesn't make much sense to just have it include just a few of the rooms.

Lastly, the Monster Vault book itself.  It has an owlbear as the featured monster on the cover.  That's 4th edition tugging on my old school heart strings.  It's a large digest size book fashioned in the same manner as the Rules Compendium.  A thick and sturdy book with tons of monster stats I have absolutely no use for.  But it has bits and pieces of descriptions of the critters and I always like the small twists of monster ecologys. 

Everything in the Monster Vault, including the box (which I dropped and it still irks me) is top quality stuff.  My main reason for getting this was for the tokens and I am not disappointed.  The adventure is good and it will be easy for me to convert and the monster book has a lot of great artwork and I'm sure will be a good read.  Getting this for only $12 was a good deal.  The $30 price tag would have been too high since I don't play 4th edition, but if I did play 4th edition then I would have had no problem paying it for this product.

GURPS, 4th Edition, and Playtesting for Goodman Games

Friday and Saturday I traveled to Erie to take part in the convention, or more accurately, days of gaming.  Rob and I went up together on Friday to play a game of GURPS.  In the description it said it was an introduction to GURPS to players who hadn't tried the system.  Since it was the only game running that night and a rare opportunity that Rob and I get to play together (instead of one of us being a GM) we went.  We weren't about to let our 20 years of playing GURPS get in the way.

 

We were the only ones to show for the games.  The GM was Jim I guy I'd met during the other days of gaming in Erie.  We fessed up at the beginning that we weren't newbs and told him we'd been playing since the 2nd edition of GURPS.  His response was "I hope this doesn't suck then."  "Not to worry," I said.  "We're here to roll dice and have fun.  And I hope Rob does something embarrassing so I can blog about it."  He didn't.  Jim brought us in each two GURPS books to have!  The remarkable part is I didn't have either of them, I got Rogues and the other was Monsters.  So thank you Jim.

The game itself was a simple play by number adventure that had been in the books as an example for years.  Rob and entered a house started stealing things.  That is until we ran into Max the sleeping guard with the large scimitar.  We ended up killing him which cost us reward points in the end.  It was a short night, but I got some other goodies also.  I found random hit location dice, trap dice and random dungeon dice. 

Saturday I rushed to Erie to get to the Swords & Wizardry game at 9am.  I skipped breakfast because I was running late.  I got there and the GM never showed.  Determined not to let that spoil my day I hooked up with a 4th edition game at the next table.  I played a swordmage, I think.  It was fun just to play.  I'm still not a fan of the 4th edition, but the GM did a great job and the other two guys in the party were good.  I planned on playing a Savage World, Hellfrost game, but the 4th edition ran over an hour and the Hellfrost filled up. 

Once that game was done I was starved so I thought I'd go find something to eat.  Then I saw Rob setting up for one of his games.  He told me to join because they were going to play the Goodman game retro game now instead of at 7pm.  I wanted to play that so I starved more.  We had a full table for this one.  Al from Beyond the Black Gate joined us.  I won't go into too many details about the game because I am sure Rob will give full details of it.  My impression of the game...it was a mixed bag for me.  There were some things I liked and some I didn't care for.  Since I am not sure how many details I can give I won't say too much, but we had a great time.  Started out with 10 guys and ran out with 3.

The good thing about running the game early is I got to go home at 7pm instead of 12am.  So I could finally eat.  I hope your weekends went well and the gaming was as good as mine. 

The Day of the Owlbear Started it All

Last week I had a glorious vacation and scored a ton of gaming stuff. To start off I got an email from Alex that I had a $15 voucher to Otherworld miniatures and I should contact Richard Scott (this is still left over goodness from the one page dungeon contest). I thought I'd just won the Rune Dice, but he said I had also won the voucher. So I ordered the very cool owlbear. Then I went to the post office and my third in the Kingmaker series was there, The Varhold Vanishing. A lich cyclops anyone? Great start to my vacation wouldn't you say?

Then I went to a game store I only get to visit once in a while and bought copies of Pathfinder's Monsters Revisited (This was the book my wife read while I shopped. She didn't know what a bugbear was and started reading more. That was the night I had her go through a few scenarios), I got the Gamemastery Treasure Chest and the box set of Tunnels and Trolls. The manager threw in a starter deck of the Batman Trading card game. Nice looking cards, they were free, but have no idea what to do with them.

Then when I thought I'd scored plenty I got a 40% coupon from Borders along with a $5 coupon off any item over $20. Well Borders has 4th edition D&D and that's pretty much it, but I'd been looking at the 2 DM Guide. Now hold on. Stop throwing things. It is really a pretty decent book. There are some stat blocks (which will make me put a book back on a shelf quicker that the plague) but, it focuses more on the different philosophies about build and adventure and building encounters. So far I've enjoyed it. That said I would have never bought it for the sticker price of $35. I got it for $16 something once all my coupons were totaled.

So as you can see I've been up to my eyeballs with new gaming stuff. Plus, Rob (Bat in the Attic) wanted to try out Runequest and last night we had an honest to goodness sit down around the table, roll real dice game with Dwayne who is in between moves. In his blog he goes into detail about what happened, but man that is one bloody game. Body parts were everywhere. It was a blast, but I doubt we will use that system again. Initially our enemies were supposed to be baboons and ducks. Really? Rob changed them into goblins and halflings.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my wife's blog. You made her day and it won't be the last you hear from her. We have standing plans to buy her, her own set of dice. Something preferably in an orange, yellow or pink. She is thinking of new gruesome recipes to use in game and I plan to use them somehow.

Magic Item Selection

Once upon a time there were a million towers infested with orcs, goblins, trolls evil mages or demons and in each tower was a princess that needed saving. In each tower was a chief, boss, elite, dark, grand, giant, master, or lord this or that with a pile of loot. A million adventuring parties went into these million towers and kicked all the orcs, goblins, trolls evil mages or demons asses and slew the chief, boss, elite, dark, grand, giant, master, or lord this and that. Woo hoo. It's time to count the coins and divvy up the magic items. But what magic items are there? How many? Oh yeah, don't forget the princess.

In the 1st edition Monster Manual each monster has a treasure type. Roll on the table and see what is generated. This is an interesting way to do it, but I don't find it an effective system for an ongoing campaign. I still use it to generate ideas. What I will do a lot of times is see what is populating my dungeon, roll on the treasure type table, then pick and choose what I like or alter something if I believe it is too powerful or too weak. Then instead of piling it up at the end or do the kill a monster, grab the treasure thing I try to make it more organic. Example, if I roll that a group of bugbear's in a cavern and they have a +2 sword and a necklace of missiles I would probably give the leader of the bugbears the sword to use and have the necklace on the corpse that fell into a pit trap. If nothing else to give the magic items a variety of discovery.

On pages 92 and 93 in the 1st ed. DMG a small, venomous rant against 'Monte Hall' style games and how the rules dictate there are no rewards for this kind of play. "No reasonable opponents, no rewards, nothing!" Then the next paragraph goes after killer dungeons, "Killer dungeons are a travesty of the role-playing adventure game, for there is no development and identification with carefully nurtured player persona." My favorite line afterwards is how a sadistic referee takes unholy delight in slaughtering hordes of hapless characters. Great line.

So we have the two extremes kinda sorta. To me the extremes would be Monte Haul and Ebenezer Scrooge, who will give you nothing. Again, I speak of this again and again about players expectations. If they expect to be fed a steady diet of magic items to tinker with, then it's important of the GM to provide a balanced way of doing this. Keep the power level of the items consistent with their level of play and risk. But if you have players willing to go for a more realistic campaign then there may be no magic items at all. Well crafted items become the 'magic items'. And if you look at some of the items listed in the DMG they are not magical at all they are just high quality items. Examples given on pg. 116 were boots and cloaks of elvenkind and +3 dwarven war hammer. Even the low level items, like any +1 weapon, could be argued to not be magical at all, but rather just made very well. But magic item creation is another topic for another blog.

I randomly selected two canned dungeons to compare. First there is T1 The Village of Hommlet (I had it out since Bat in the Attic recently did a blog on it) and then I chose a more recent dungeon Dragora's Dungeon. Both are 1st level adventures. In T1 the magic items are owned by experienced adventurers in the village, but all of them own some. Most own three of more items. So this sets precedence that magic items are common. This is a small village yet almost a dozen magic items can be found. And in the moathouse itself there are magical items. Also in Dragora's Dungeon there are a handful of magic items. So if a party of 1st level characters goes through a dungeon successfully then they will leave with a group of magic items in each instance. Two or three adventures and already the players will begin getting choosy in their magic item selection.

Depending on what system and style of play you prefer I think D&D is set up for the Monty Haul scenario. If you are providing a handful of magic items in a 1st level dungeon then the next one will have a few more or a bit more powerful items. Some games I've been in and GMed rely on magic as a form of luxury and technology. In a GURPS fantasy setting, magic items replace technology. The lesser, but useful magic items are affordable even to the lower class. In D&D the magic items are constructed to make a person more powerful.

Then there are games like Pendragon who shun magic items all together. You know that there will be no treasure hordes of magic items, but you may find something so powerful that if the player uses its power the consequences could be vast and devastating.

This is something I believe is vital to decide before a campaign begins, choosing the scarcity of magic items and their use in the community. Game on!