A few quick Halloween hits…
- I’ve been getting a kick out of Zombie Fluxx lately, after a while of being burnt out on Fluxx. It adds some new neat things to the game, and hey, it’s got lots of zombies and classic zombie references.
- I’ve been hearing good things about Last Night on Earth as a bigger zombie board game, complete with full photographed production.
- Or maybe some of you will be roleplaying tonight or this weekend. I generally like doing something weird for my Halloween games. I don’t know if I’ll come up with anything for this weekend. My favorite Halloween games from the past have used certain Tropes extensively to make a really unique adventure…
- If you’re in a bind for a costume, there’s always one really creepy option.
Messiah CompleX: Not Quite the Second Coming (Non-Spoiler)
General: When Jesus was born, there were wise kings, gifts, angelic visits, and immaculate conceptions. When the X-Office at Marvel kicked off its brand new crossover Messiah CompleX, they hired old artist Marc Silvestri , released tons of interviews with major comic book industry entities, discussed tidbits about the X-Men status quo after the event, and revealed two new titles that were pending. Jesus was born, and it was great, but apparently the infant of God was just about the same as a normal infant with more pomp and circumstance. Similarly, Messiah CompleX is a competent start to a new huge Marvel event, but is ultimately nothing amazing in and of itself.
RPG Superstar!
Paizo, the fine folks behind many awesome Dungeon and Dragon issues (until recently), have started a new contest to attract people to the RPG writing biz. They’re calling it “RPG Superstar“, and the first stage of the contest, a completely open call, starts today and accepts submissions for the next two weeks. The first thing they want is a new Wondrous Item: fluff, crunch, and all, in under 200 words. From there, the field will be narrowed down, until only one Superstar remains. The ultimate winner will be given a commission to write a new product for Paizo.
For those of you who want to break into the RPG biz, this is your chance. But you’re going to have to write one damn good 200-word wondrous item to be one of 32 out of potentially hundreds.
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Halloween Special!
This is a boring, repeating preface nobody reads anymore. It links to stuff I wrote some time ago that has a vague thematic link to what I’m about to write here…
Actually this is a Very D&D specific Trope post. It features a lot of Crunchy bits… like the candy I’m eating right now…
The kids are trick or treating with my adorable gamer-friendly wife. My five-year old Sith Lord and my 4 year old Faerie Princess are out for some serious candy shakedown hustling. I’m sitting at the kitchen’s breakfast bar, waiting to see who’s going to try to hustle me out of my hoard of candy bars, chip bags and other jellied treats. Wifey told me, gently but quite sternly, that I had to give them out…. (grumble grumble, my poor preciouses, grumble)
Well, as you can see, I’m already way up there with all that Halloween mood. Since everybody on the RPG bloggosphere seems to be doing it, here’s my stab at my very first Halloween post, Trope Style! (linky for my European and Indian readers…)
You see, since Halloween is about muddling one’s identity in order to threaten suburbanites into giving you loot, the link to RPGs is quite evident! Seriously, when one thinks about further applications of the Rule of Cool in a RPG you don’t need to look too far to dress up your game world:
Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot (Woot!)
Short for Robot Ninja Pirate Cowboys With Katanas And Revolvers And The Power Of Friendship Fighting Vampire Nazis With Dark Magic Riding Cyborg Dinosaurs With Head Mounted Lasers On A Submarine Jet With Desert Polar Bears Crashing Into An Ancient Zeppelin With Alien Anacondas IN SPACE With Chuck Norris And Time Travelling BikiniWerewolf Catgirls wielding Febreze!!! (Part 2)
(Well, maybe not all in the same adventure mind you…)
The idea is a specific variety of Rule Of Cool, where something is cool because it is either a combination of two cool things (for example, chainswords, a sword with a motor and chainsaw blade instead of a cutting one, from Warhammer 40000), or taking something mundane and combining it with something either odd or cool or equally as mundane, and ending up with something with a coolness that exceeds the sum of its parts (e.g., snakes and planes).
The latest version of D&D is filled with all kinds of Crunchy rules that allow a crafty DM to combine cool monster or equipment concepts with one another to spice things up. Of course, sometimes the result can become more than scary.
But still, without throwing common sense through the window, one can mix and match things in D&D (and any other RPG for that matter) to make everything cooler.
- A Dracolich (Skeletal Undead Dragon)
- A Half-Demon winged Troll Monk
- A Chainsword powered by “Pure Chaos”(TM)
- Exploring a Spaceship-turned-into-a-temple
- (Post publication edit) A Mind Flayer riding a Beholder
- (Post publication edit) And lets not forget this.
thing is, making these things work within the rules can be quite a lot of work… D&D 3.5′s crunch can be pretty unforgiving for DMs.
I’ll let you on a little secret that took me 7 years to learn*. You see, you don’t have to ‘do it by the rules’. You just need to trust yourself, start with something that already exists, screw a little bit with its crunch and a lot with it’s fluff.
Don’t forget the Rule of Cool: If it’s cool enough, no one will care about the crunch behind your encounters, just stay fair to the ideal of making it fun for the players.
Want a fantasy Flamethrowing Tank? No problem! Take a Bulette, the size fits perfectly. Make it a construct (but don’t bother with changing HD or saves. Just make the damn thing immune to critical hits). Strip it’s burrowing ability, tag on a CR-equivalent Red Dragon’s Breath Weapon (6d6 Cone of Fire, DC 19 Ref save) and bump the CR to 8. Five minutes of work plus adding the fluff of what a 4 legged fire-breathing construct looks like and where it comes from.
Now stick a Half-Dragon Umber Hulk Barbarian on the Tank and you’re in business!
Want to create a Chainsaw-axe powered by the soul of the user? Take an Adamantine Battle-Axe (it ignores Hardness), bump the damage by one category (1d8 = 2d6) and have it cause 1d2 point of wisdom damage whenever it is powered (and 1d2 every minute after that).
Simple and cool.
Heck, throw the rules away and screw with the freaking landscape for ultimate coolness:
- A Forteress-Golem, that moves slowly but inexorably on Colossal rollers powered by Fire/Water elemental engines, crushing everything short of Mountain ranges in their path. (With the obligatory Evil Overlord cackling 24 hours a day in the Golem’s Bridge).
- A mountain made of Petrified Zombies on top of which lives an ancient Ninja master the PCs must defeat (A very hard feat when there is only one) in order to know the location of the Lost Cove where sits the legendary Pirate Warjack! (lol!)
See, Mish-Mashing can be fun! Happy belated Halloween!
*Other, less Crunchy DMs will say “what took you so long?”
Adventure Prep, Session 5: When Frustration leads to Inspiration
Okay, so this week’s game is a transition from my adaptation of the Vile Addiction adventure (From Dungeon Magazine #145) to its sequel, Spawn of Sehan from #146.
Going in this week’s preparations, I had the following goals:
- Focus the adventure on the more impatient Butt Kickers like Eric and Math to make up for last game’s Storyteller’s festival.
- Introduce Stef’s new Character, a Half-Dragon (Brass) barbarian, hopefully in such a way to be as seamless as possible.
- Prepare the jump to Planescape shortly after this game.
- Add more Ptolus Organizations into the adventure’s Fluff to build more Plot seeds to allow players to find anchors to build up their character’s motivations.
With all that in mind, I set out to re-read the adventure. It turns out the adventure sucks big time with the party’s current composition (i.e. no Rogues and no clerics). As is, the adventure is a medium-large dungeon crawl featuring a Crypt-like environment filled to the brim with monsters that seek to kill the party without resorting to bringing Hit Points to zero (i.e it features a lot of things like ability damage and draining effects).
The adventure also features a lot of different monsters that, while thematically linked feel like they were dropped randomly in the adventure (probably to showcase the critters from the latest Monster book of the time). The number of empty rooms is also very low, making this adventure likely to last 3 or more sessions… probably taking us to the Christmas Holidays.
Finally, as written, the dungeon has been looted countless times and is pretty low on Bling. Thing is, I like bling, my players like bling, and a lot of it is spent on healing items… go figure…
With my frustration level rising as I was reading the adventure, I curiously found myself in an oddly familiar, almost comfortable, position. It was too late to change adventure, I had to forge on, but I had an almost impossible situation on my hands. I had yet again painted myself into a DMing corner… But the thing I forgot to mention in that semi-neurotic post is that I’m often at my creative best when in that situation.
My 1st decision was to nix any monsters that I knew my players would hate. Level draining demonic locust swarm sitting alone in an otherwise empty room? Nixed. A cloaker hiding in a room already occupied by a monster whose abilities include making characters defenseless? Nixed. Etc. This frees up space in the otherwise overcrowded dungeons.
Then I had to address all those plant-like monsters that were seen heading into the Cemetary. Where the hell do I put them? They are dangerous as hell and I can’t cram a lot in the dungeon, the characters will get killed!!
So I decided to have a potential ally, a known Ptolus NPC living in the graveyard, giving the PCs a hand by having it deal with the drug junkies-turned walking toxic vegetables.
Aside: The plant-like creatures have a very badly designed ability that acts like a poison. Thing is, the initial damage is trivial (lose one point of x) while the secondary damage is downright lethal (It deals multiple dice of damage to a stat that is one of the usual Dump stats of D&D).
Since players have no idea what the ability does, the 1 point of ability damage risks misleading the characters in thinking nothing that bad will come from failing the second saving throw. I’ve reworked that to spread the multiple dice of damage over the initial and secondary stage, making the ability a lot scarier up front, prompting immediate restorative action.
Next, I made some of the random monsters into agents of an antagonistic organization. This makes the story more interesting as players won’t be the only one after the source of the plant-like creatures.
I finally added some extra Bling to correspond to the various challenges met in the dungeon. Where it makes no sense to put loot, I made it up by having the various organization with a stake in the adventure offer rewards to the players.
While I was doing this, and as frustration was slowly ebbing away, inspiration struck me:
The Source of these plant-like creature is an otherworldly entity. Not Planescape otherworldly, Chthulu otherworldy.
One of the characters, Stef’s Dragon Shaman, has been exposed to the secretion of that “thing” (He was dipped in a cauldron of the green secretions last session).
…a secretion that, so far, can change people into horrible things…
… and Stef wants to change his character…
…and the “thing” has a plan and sooooooooo much to offer to the frail beings of this dimension…
… and Stef’s character is quite possibly power hungry enough to consider any offer, no matter how unholy or alien… and egoistic enough to resist the mental manipulations that come with the offers…
So I wrote a short Cut-scene where Stef’s will be presented with two offers (Stef usually doesn’t read this blog so I don’t mind spoiling it too much)… If Stef choses one, he’ll wake up as a 1/2 dragon Barbarian if he choses the other well… lets just say that he’ll take the 1st choice.
Convincing his pals that its still him will be interesting… but hey it’s Ptolus! These things are almost mundane there!
When I was done with this idea, it blossomed into potential cut scenes for all other characters that may become in contact with the “thing’s” essence. Ideas that could act as foreshadowing for things to come… including a little romp in the Planescape setting.
These scenes will allow me to tackle my next DM’s challenge: Roleplaying the interface between a completely alien mind and player characters. I’m going all out for a series of insane “WTF!!!” moments… I’ve pulled it before, I know I can do it again!
So there you go… when painted in a corner, break the freaking walls and blame it on Lovecraft!
YouTubes of the Week: No Connection At All Edition
Two videos I just had to blog about this week, but they’re both short. The first, “Mike Tyson’s Brunch Out” which is hilarious and difficult to describe. And after the jump, the first trailer for the first Dragonlance animated movie… and boy, it does not look good, despite some awesome voice talent.
[Read the rest of this article]
Campaign Fluff Tools
Tonight I had planned to write an Adventure Prep post for this week’s game, but I don’t have a lot of time and will do it Tuesday evening. Instead I’m whipping up a short post on some Fluffy tools I use to better create a sense of immersion in our games.
One of the walls of my basement gaming room features 2 very useful props.
1) A large Vinyl map of Ptolus, the city where the campaign is based. It’s available from Fiery Dragon Productions. Whenever I plan an adventure I use it to place the action and I refer to it during gaming sessions. Getting up and pointing to specific parts when needed adds a nice dimension and engages the players who crane their necks to have a look. It’s quite large (31” X 47”), looks great on my wall and it features a reference grid (A to O on the horizontal and 1 to 10 on the vertical) that allows to find key streets, buildings and landmarks.
2) A whiteboard where I write campaign specific info grouped in 3 categories (these info are also copied in our Google Group). Here’s a rundown of the three:
Points of interests: Buildings and neighborhoods where characters have interacted with key NPCs and organizations.
Plot Hooks: Any or all NPCs or objects the players have interacted with that could be revisited (at their initiative or mine) in a future adventure. When players seem interested about something, I note it down and add it there.
Rumours and News: Rumours, hints and red herrings about the current and future games. Writing them are a blast because they act like a brainstorm for present and future adventure ideas.
As an example I thought I’d share what is written on the board this week (Although it’s technically readable if you click the image)
Points of Interests:
- Keepers of the Veil: A militant Undead-Fighting organization
- Pale Tower: A tower where most of the Celestials of Ptolus Live
- Khatru Manor: A Militaristic Noble House, Cixi is part of that House
- Iridithil’s House: The Elven Sanctuary of Ptolus, Homebase of Aravar and Lillie.
- Knights of the Pale: A militant Demon-Fighting organization Cruguer would like to join.
- House Dallimothan: A Dragon-friendly Noble House. Home of Plantagonox, my pet NPC.
Rumours and News:
- Unkillable Troll in the Sewers
- Killraven (crime Syndicate) dragon trains Ratmen Rogues
- New Drug Competes with Shivel (another drug) in Warrens.
- Fighting Seen on Spire (Foreshadowing of things to come)
- House Wars: Khatru vs Rau (Following this, the prisonner was a House Rau noble, a Pirate Noble House)
- Vladaam seen in Necropolis (The Vladaams are the über Evil Noble family)
Plot Hooks:
- Troll in Sewer
- “Rescued” Rau Noble
- Lillie’s Spriggans
- Joining the Knights of the Pale
- Plantagonox’s missions.
- Cixi’s Homeworld
- Slavers under Ptolus?
- Objects of note
- Onyx Orb of the Trees
- The Ratskull gem
- The Demon’s horn in Amber
What kind of fluff tools do you use?
You can do that to Magic cards too, it's just not a big deal
We’ve talked briefly about Eye of Judgement before, the Sony/Wizards of the Coast game that merges the CCG with the PS3. I haven’t played it, nor to my knowledge has anyone on the staff here, but reviews say it’s pretty fun. It still has a huge cost of entry, however.
Well, maybe not so bad, because apparently you can photocopy the cards and the system will still recognize them. Whoops! Just find a friend with some cards and a Kinko’s, and you’re in business.
I would imagine that Sony technicians are working hard to find a way to beat this through a software update, which they can force you to install before playing online.
First Impressions: Guitar Hero 3 (Xbox 360)
I strolled right into my local GameStop yesterday and picked up Guitar Hero 3 (game only) for the Xbox 360. (Also grabbed the Orange Box, but resisted Halo 3 for now.)
Using my trusty band THAC0, I’d estimate I’ve played through about half of the game on Medium, maybe a little more. I still don’t have my 360 wired for online play, so I can’t tell you how that plays. I also only bought the game, so I’m still using my GH2 controller. (I’m planning on getting the guitar that comes with Rock Band.)
Inq. of the Week: Webvertising
Transformers! More than meets the eye. Transformers! Better than expected but still meh. Many of you felt it was pretty damn good too, so that sounds like a success overall. I watched it the night after the poll was posted, and found many, many flaws but was quite impressed by Shia LeBeouf. I can see why so many people liked it… and it definitely brought back some nostalgic memories. (As did The Incredible Changebots)
ChattyDM recently posted about his decision to pull GoogleAds from his blog, due to disappointing returns. Well, we sympathize for sure: GoogleAds was the first ad program I signed up for near the site’s inception. In the twoish years it’s been up, we’ve earned less than $30 in clicks. Granted, there was a lot of time when they had sub-optimal placement. I’ve always strived to make ads as unobstrusive as possible, since it bothers me when sites are more ads than content. Despite placing it at the bottom of every post and in the upper-right corner, no arrangement seemed to generate more clicks.
There was a period of time when we sold plenty of Amazon merchandise through our affiliate links, but that died off completely as well. Presently, I pulled the Amazon widget for causing too many load errors. It’ll return in some form using all the new tools after I get a chance to play around with them.
It was a few months ago when we were approved for Text Link Ads, which were recommended to us by GameProducer. Text Link Ads has been great, allowing us to finally operate in the black and put money both towards increasing our bandwidth to keep up with increased popularity and in spending it on contests. Unfortunately, according to David Airey and Yehuda, TLAs are causing some problems in search rankings due how the links work. I haven’t noticed a problem yet, but if we do lose search ranking, I’m not sure what we’ll do…
So anyway, this is a general question based on your surfing habits, as we try to make a decision that keeps us running and keeps you, the all-important reader, happy!
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