Nico and Rory’s Quest: Meeting the Ice Titan
Thursday night, at around 7h30 (shortly before he was supposed to go to bed), my 8 year old son Nico (how fast they grow!) climbs down the stairs to my gameroom/office and asks me to play something. Our cable, internet and phone line were down (the joys of a single provider) and my son was looking for entertainment. Rory (My 6-and-more-than-a-half year old daughter) was baking cakes with Alex (my awesomely hot and ageless wife) upstairs.
Here we are now, entertain us!
Chatty: Wanna play Jungle Speed?
Nico (hesitant): I guess…
Chatty: Oh, I know exactly what we can play. Want to play an adventure game?
Nico (still hesitant): … I wanna play Talisman!
Chatty: We don’t have time to set it up before bedtime, but we can start the adventure game and continue it later.
Nico: Oh… all right!
Nico has a strong barrier to entry for anything new or unexpected (he gets that from me). But once he starts something he doesn’t want to stop.
Character Generation, Old School Style
Chatty (eyeing the Sword and Wizardry character sheets lying on the table): What adventurer do you want to play?
Nico: I want to play a Magician this time
Chatty: Awesome! Here, sit here and start rolling these 3 dice.
Nico (curious): What for?
Chatty: We’ll see how strong, agile, intelligent and so on… your new character is.
Nico, rolling 3d6 in order, rolls up a Magic User with low STR, WIS and CHA, average DEX and INT and high CON.
Nico: Oh, he can’t do much.
Chatty: Those abilities aren’t that important, they help us know who he is. But since he has a high constitution, he starts with 6 HP, that’s a lot for a magician
I insta-houseruled that his PC would have max HP. I have no intention of teaching my son the ‘joy’ of dying often in retro-games since I never found it ‘fun’ to begin with, my kids have shown to be more story oriented.
Nico: Okay.
In hindsight, I should have gone with a statless approach like I did for all NPCs (and Rory’s PC, see below), sticking to HP, AC, Saving Throws and such.
Nico: I want to start with some magical objects and find lots more when we explore.
Chatty: That works for me. How about you start with this wand that shoots missiles…
Nico: REALLY?
Chatty: Ha! Not quite those you’re thinking, they’re magic missiles that are like more like bullets than bazookas. But you can shoot as many as you want in a day. To shoot them, you roll to see if they hit and they deal 1d4+1 damage.
Nico: Ok, that’s cool. Can I have something else?
Chatty (Getting up to recover his stack of Paizo Gamemastery Treasure cards from the game cabinet): Sure. Here pick one at random.
Nico (Picking a card): What are those?
Chatty: They are a pair of horseshoes.
Nico: Oh yeah, I’ve seen those. What do they do?
Chatty (Basking in the freedom of full ad-lib): Well, usually we use them on horses. But in this game, they have enchantments that affect movement of adventurers and you can use them once.
Nico: Once each right?
Chatty (Smiling): Of course.
Nico: So could they either make me run real fast or fly?
Chatty: That’s so cool! All right, each will last a short period of time. Okay, so now we just need to give you your spell.
Nico: What’s that?
Chatty: Magicians have one magical power they can use every day, we determine it by rolling a d10 on (flip flip flip) this chart here.
Nico: Hey! Where’s the 10 on that dice?
Chatty: It’s the 0.
Nico: Your dice are weird dad. I rolled a 6
Chatty: Yeah, tell me about it. You get the spell called Protection from Evil that help you avoid attacks from evil creatures.
Nico (Not impressed, neither was I): Okay.
Chatty: We just need to give your character a name now.
Nico: How about Magi-Nico.
Chatty: How about we explore names that don’t have Nico in them.
Nico: Magico?
Chatty: It’s a good start. Magico the Magician it is! So, now we need to form a party, because a lone wizard will not be able to survive in adventures much.
Nico (itching to start playing): Okay.
Chatty (Opening his D&D minis box): Here start looking for your character and we’ll also chose your 2 helpers.
Nico (Dives into the box): Cool!
Nico eventually picked a Blue-robed wizard with a staff and a knife for Magioco. We also picked an elven mage with a fireball in his hand and a dwarven warrior with full battle regalia. I put an elven swordman and a torch bearer to the side for NPCs.
I made their stats on index cards, bare minimum. The Elf, named named Boulias (Boo-lee-aws) had Burning Hands as a prepared spell (I didn’t check if it existed in S&W, I have the 1e Players Handbook if need be), a wand of eternal Shields and a bandoleer full of darts (possibly my favourite lame D&D weapons ever). The dwarf was the basic axe and shield retro-dwarf called Axtur (ha ha).
Nico (picking dungeon tiles from my box and building an underground river dungeon): Okay lets start…
Chatty (Taking out a yet unwrapped set of Harrowing Halls, graciously offered to me by Wizards of the Coast): Wait, I got a new set of tiles from my friends. We’ll build the place where you get your quest first and then we’ll explore the river dungeon you just built.
We built a hall and Nico chose my Ice and Earth Titan minis and placed them in there. He had fun building the set.
Nico: Okay, so these 2 statues will give the quests. The Ice guy is a good guy and gives good quests and the Earth guy gives evil quests.
Chatty (More than happy to let Nico take narrative control) : Excellent! Now set up your party at the entrance of the hall. There, you see your bard friend Gynax and a quiet man waiting for you.You know what a bard is right?
Nico: Yeah dad, like the guy they always tie up in Asterix.
Chatty: You got it! In the great wooden hall behind them are 2 fearsome statues that stand at least 20′ high each.
Late Arrivals
At that point, Rory came down. While she had been asked by Alex to fetch us both for bed, my sneaky daughter instead asked to join the game. It was my kids’ bedtime but I was just oblivious to it all, in that parental bliss of sharing one’s passion with one’s progeny.
Chatty: Do you want to play the elf Rory?
Rory: Yes, but I want her to be a girl and change her name.
Nico: Noooo! That’s my story! She’s changing my story.
Ahhh, the joys of forming new groups.
Chatty: Okay, why don’t we make Rory another character? What do you want?
Rory digs in the box and gets a cool female Knife and Staff druid in the leather Britney Spears outfit (Warden of the Wood).
(Father memo: watch her closely and help her build a solid self image)
Rory: I want that one, a magician.
Nico: Hey! Cool, just like me! You’ll get a free object!
Chatty: Yes, here it is (Pick card… doh!). A magical torch! It always stays lit and maybe it has other powers. Also, how about we give you an animal companion that can attack for you?
Rory (Curious): What kind?
Chatty: Look in the box and choose.
Rory: Ewww, they’re all bugs and lizards.
Chatty (Digging deeper in the ‘animal and critter’ section): How about this? This is a “Blaireau” or a Badger in English (yeah, work with me here, my kids are French and translating this part makes it weird).
Kids: Badger, Badger, Badger, Mushroom!
Made of Win if you ask me.
Chatty: Okay Rory, How is your Badger called?
Rory: Hmmm. Blueberry Red!
Chatty: Perfect! And you have this one power per day that makes Blue bigger and stronger if he gets into a fight (+1 attack and Dmg). Okay let’s start our story.
I picked 2 cards at random from the Paizo deck and slipped them under each Titan.
Act I: They Meet
Chatty: Okay, so Gynax tells you that he summoned you here, where he works as the resident bard. This morning, the Statues spoke and asked to see the realms most promising heroes for a very special quest. This happens once per decade.
Gynax: Since you’re my best friends, I thought about calling you first. Also, I hired this guy to hold your light and carry treasure for you.
A short discussion ensued, dispelling the remaining sibling tension with one last power struggle before cooperation set in and both agreed to call him Lightning Torch. (I’m soooo going to milk this later, an out of work super hero acting as a S&W hireling)
Nico: Okay, what do we need to do?
Gynax: Just go talk to the statues and they’ll tell you. Oh and guys?
Nico/Rory: What?
Gynax (Getting a very glitzy mandoline out): If you find cool gems, can you bring one back to me so I can finish decorating my instrument?
Chatty: Okay guys, move your party inside the house.
Rory and Nico spread the minis around the Ice Titan.
Chatty: You see the eyes of the statue light up in colours of
Rory: Green, Red and Yellow!
Chatty: Exactly, you guys are good!
Rory: Of course we’re good!
Titan: I sense adventurers. Speak your questions!
Nico: What is our quest?
Titan: You must explore the Whispering Cave nearby and recover an egg from the dragon hidden in it. Bring the egg back to me. Next question?
Rory: What happens if we die?
I was a bit taken aback by that question. She was obviously worried about that and that forced me to address how I would play it out according to my personal views of the game.
Titan: My magic will save you and you will wake up in the beds you see behind me.
Rory (Seemingly satisfied): Okay.
Nico: Can I ask the other Evil statue a question?
Chatty: Sure
Nico: What is your quest?
Earth Titan (Using a low, menacing voice): You must explore the cemetery, find a passage underneath it, and seek a vampire hiding in it.
Rory: Daaad! You’re going to give me nightmares! Let’s not do that quest.
Chatty: Oops, so sorry pumpkin, daddy got carried away. Hey I know, what kind of dragon do you think will be in the Whispering Cave? A good one or an evil one? (Roll bluff check to fast talk her out of evil vampire mode)
Rory: A Good one! (Success!)
Nico: Yeah, don’t take a red one, pick a cool one.
Chatty (Choosing the Platinum Dragon mini from the cabinet): This one?
Kids: Yeah!
Alex: Hey down there, it’s almost 8h20!
Chatty: Wha? Really? Awww! We’ll start the next adventure tomorrow okay?
Kids: Yay!
I so love doing this!
Lost Badgers and Kid Guards
Last year’s recession hit the freelance RPG pretty hard. So much so that it made it more difficult for budding RPG bloggers to get published outside of their online havens. On more than one occasion I’ve shared my desire to become a freelance writer and I sent several pitches to different publishers.
As things stand today, I have written a level 5 D&D 4e adventure to be published, hopefully, sometime over the summer and I also have an article in the last issue of Kobold Quarterly.
Those who’ve followed me for some time know that I sent some very promising pitches to Wizards of the Coast for D&D adventures. I even went as far as writing a detailed outline for an adventure, named “Where’s Francis”, aimed at pre-teen children. It was a follow-up on the fate of Francis the Badger from the now legendary D&D advertisement video.
(The outline is really, really awesome, I’ll publish it soon).
Alas, for various reasons related to staff shortage and editorial choices, none of my pitches were retained past the detailed outline stage. As always is the case with rejection, some disappointment set in and I started the circle of self doubting again .
That is, until I talked about it to my friend Luke at Pax last weekend.
Yeah, that one.
Luke: You know what Phil? Fuck them! You can write for yourself now, even in that droning English-frog style your fans inexplicably love.
Chatty: Ha! Screw you too. Yeah, heaven knows I have the established brand and reputation for that.
Luke: You totally do, more than those yet-unfired schmucks working on dumbing down 4e and ripping off old campaign settings.
(Yes Luke talks about, and sometimes even plays D&D)
Chatty: Hmm… I’ve been thinking about it, I just can’t bring myself to take that first step.
Luke: Oh fuck you Phil, stop being such a pussy! You know you can do it. Hell, would you consider doing it with me?
Chatty: Bwa? Like doing a kids’ RPG using Mouse Guard?
Luke: It could be something like that, it doesn’t have to be MG. Kids like crunchy crap with tons of numbers like Pokemon and all those card games with numbers in the gazillions.
Chatty: Hell man, my 8 year old son loves WoW minis and Dominion and didn’t we both grow up with AD&D?
Luke: Exactly my point, the design could be even more crunchy than 4e. All kinds of stuff kids love doing. Can you imagine the shit that this would stir in the community? I can feel the trolls lining up to take potshots already, it would be beautiful.
Chatty: (Getting excited) Are you shitting me man? This would be so cool to put in everyone’s face just how brights kids are.
Luke: I shit you not. Kids are great roleplayers and brighter than the last generation in terms of processing info. It’s a great design challenge for a dumbass newbie like you.
Chatty: Yeah yeah, fuck you too. Oh man! Imagine, we could expend on the Character Burner and adapt BW’s magic rules to push the existing MG rule set into a full fantasy game, but…
Luke: Hmm?
Chatty: I’d worry about how kids would react to social mechanics that force outcomes…
Luke (Waving me away in his very New York style): Oh come on man, draw the damn plans before buying the paint. We can get to those later… just think about it.
Chatty: Dude… that would be, like , 55 shades of awesome. Thanks for the offer, you rule.
Luke: Yeah… I get that a lot…
So there you have it. I’m going full-spectral gaming in terms of design too! We still have to work out many details and nothing is set in stone, but the project and the idea has been launched. For the moment, I just need to find a cool Burning Wheel-like name for the game.
Got any suggestions? I am so excited about this!
Exclusive Preview: Alliance 2011 Catalog
Through our sources, we’ve managed to obtain a copy of the Alliance Games distributor catalog for the coming year. This catalog is what game retailers use to decide what to order for their store to carry, and we are fortunate enough to get a peek at what the next year in games holds. Here are a few that caught our eye, along with their descriptions from the publishers. This was an April Fool’s joke about fake products, I hope you enjoy them anyway. -Ed
Swords
Grab your sword and ready your blade… the Swords core rules are a “clone” of the original Swords & Wizardry “clone” of the original Gary Gygax 1974 roleplaying game that started it all. With a thriving community on Twitter working on the book in 140 character chunks, we have managed to take the spirit of Swords & Wizardry and condense and streamline it into a compact, 4 page product, including complete character generation rules and combat, as well as 3 pages of tables and charts about the kind of swords you may find and the type of sword swings you perform. Forget rulebooks with page counts in the double and triple digits- with a revolutionary core mechanic of “roll a die and decide what it means,” you are bound only by your imagination and all the charts you have to roll on.
Pathfinder Essentials
For those of you who love Pathfinder but are having a bit of trouble introducing it to new players, we have developed the new Pathfinder Essentials boxed set. Designed as a starter portable product, containing everything you need to get you started, the boxed set contains:
- A slimmed down version of the rulebook, weighing in at only 450 pages and 15 pounds
- Revised Bestiary, containing over 3,000 monsters in 4 3-ring binders for easy removal in encounter planning
- A set of the first 3 Pathfinder adventure paths
- Enough pewter miniatures of size categories tiny through colossal to represent all the monsters you could encounter
- Magic Item Compendiums and Spell Compendiums, meticulously converted to Pathfinder rules from the original 2nd edition D&D tomes
- A Geek Chic Emissary table (some assembly required)
- Original Wayne Reynolds art (including frame)
Look for it premiering at GenCon 2011. Due to the limited nature of this product, it is recommended that buyers line up early to acquire one (special accommodations will be made for those who wish to get in line at GenCon 2010.)
Dudes of Legend
An early PDF release is already available.
Dungeons & Dragons 4.1 Edition
The promise was made that there will be no “4.5 edition”, and that remains true with the announcement that D&D 4.1e will be released in 2011. Features include:
- Revised Combat: Battles are now 200% more strategic, and include enhanced rules for mass, 3 dimensional combats
- Magic Item Cards: Collectible packs of magic items reintroduce random treasure into the game, while streamlining their use and acquisition.
- Upgrades to D&D Insider: Each character you make through the Character Builder automatically gets a profile on PCBook, the social networking site for player characters, which tracks both your XP and number of friends.
- All books will be revised and republished with a helpful .1 to tell which are the current books- so get ready to purchase Player’s Handbook 1.1, Martial Power 2.1, and so on. All new books will include all current errata, and subsequent printings will update each month with the errata, adding an additional .01 to the title.
We’ll be announcing more features through D&D Insider 1.1123348 each month leading up to the 2011 release, so stay tuned!
Advanced World of Synnibar 2.0 Grand Galaxy Plus Edition
The cries of the countless Facebook fans of The World of Synnibar will be silent no longer. In the spirit of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, a brand new system taking what you loved from World of Synnibar is slated for release April 1, 2011. Playtesting is expected to being March 29, 2011. This new system will take all the elements you know and love from the original game such as:
- Cyborgs
- Ninjas
- People that seem to be Jedi but can’t be named that
- Aliens
- Mutants
- Wizards
- Fantastical Technology
- Mind-numbing random character generation
- Completely unbalanced monsters AND characters
- An armor system that defies all sense of fairness
AND, in the spirit of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it will include all new design and story elements from the very best gaming minds in the world. INCLUDING:
- No longer will you be bound to the hollowed out center of Mars, instead the whole UNIVERSE will be at your fingertips!
- Rules on exceptional endowment (for males) and extreme bust size (for the ladies)!
- A brand new setting: The Larry Notter Synnibar School for PCs!
- New Mind-boggling subsystems with needless complication!
- A NEW dodging mechanic that still makes the best armor completely essential!
GNS RPG
The future of roleplaying is here. Forget the Forge. Forget Story Games. Forget the Indie Press Revolution. The GNS RPG is going to be designed by someone you’ve never heard of, in a secret location, uploaded to the Internet for free, critiqued by anyone with a LiveJournal account who can guess the password.
GNS RPG will change the face of so-called roleplaying forever. It is so cutting-edge that it hasn’t been designed yet. Will you play a team of indie game designers representing various points along the GNS spectrum as they try to dominate narrative control from the others while dealing with secret drug addictions? Will the game be an attempt to emulate the works of Hal Hartley using only d12s and exactly 4 colors of Skittles? Will you be some ghosts dealing with social issues? Nobody knows, and maybe no one will ever know, but if you’re going to look disdainfully on an RPG as “not going far enough,” make it this one.
PLAY D&D NOW, MY LORD
One of the hottest new games out on the web today is Evony. I need not go into how it is amazing. It pretty much speaks volumes about itself. Truthfully, I’m not really sure why anyone would play anything but Evony. Just in case you have not ascended to the next level of gaming, I bring to you several ways you can bring a little of the light and goodness that is Evony to your D&D game until you decide to catch up with the rest of humanity.
- Recruiting New Players
Looking for more players for your group? It happens to the best of us. People move away, work schedules change, kids take up all our free time. Sometimes you need new recruits! One of the best ways to get some new blood for your group is to place promotional materials in areas where prospective players frequently gather. You’ll want to include the standard information like how to contact you and what kind of game(s) you’ll be playing, but you should also put in a little tasteful eye candy from a stock photography site to capture the attention of your prospective audience. Note that the things that appear in the ad may not appear in the game, but you don’t have to tell anyone.
- Make The Game Accessible To Everyone, But Reward Extra Effort
One of the best things about tabletop roleplaying games is that people from all different walks of life and experience levels can come together and play, giving each game a unique flavor. In order to give the game the most realistic feel possible, the wisest Dungeon Masters will allow players to give themselves a leg up on their teammates by setting up a system of rewards.As a start, consider offering one free re-roll to anyone that buys the DM’s pizza for the evening. Once the players become more comfortable and familiar with the concept, try offering a permanent enchantment on a player’s weapon of choice. Prices can vary somewhat depending on the player’s needs. We recommend $10 for a +1 enchantment, $2 per wand charge, and a sliding scale for healing surges based upon whether they are purchased in advance or at a critical moment to the character’s survival. Anyone wanting a Ring of Three Wishes or a sword +5 Holy Avenger should probably be prepared for a price that includes the phrase “and a happy ending”.
In order to encourage participation in these programs, we recommend including at least one monster per game session that cannot be hit by normal weapons. Also, it is good to offer free items to every character every few weeks. One tried-and-true DM favorite is a cloak of invisibility that summons a hungry, invisible rust monster while the wearer sleeps.
- Realism Is The Key To Good Roleplaying
As a DM, you should take every opportunity to make sure the players feel immersed in the game experience. Encumbrance rules are a good start. If you’ve ever read The Lord of The Rings, you know that you get a real sense of how long and arduous Frodo’s journey was because you get a detailed account of every step. As a DM, you can let your players experience this too by making your campaign take place in real time. One huge benefit of this is that every day of travel time in the campaign take a day in the real world. This also has the added benefit of extending the life of your campaign exponentially, freeing you from the worries of rushing to put together that weekend’s adventure. We recommend the purchase of a sturdy thesaurus so that the players don’t get bored by the same old descriptions of trees and rocks every week.Additionally, a real-time campaign virtually eliminates the problem of spotty player attendance. Who wants to have their character stand in place, blank-eyed and unspeaking, while the rest of the party ventures forward? This will also encourage the party to hide their valuables and invest in some sort of mobile, secure lodgings between sessions since you should definitely have bandits attack the party once or twice a week in between sessions.
There you have it. I have just given you the basic equivalent of one of those Fiero to Lamborghini mod kits for your D&D game. Now, my lord, COME PLAY!
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