Articles by Dave Chalker
TheGame is Dave Chalker, a lifelong gamer, freelance game designer, Master of Arts, and son of Jack L. Chalker. Dave is the Editor-in-Chief of Critical Hits and so runs the place. He is the envy of geeks everywhere because he's dating e, the Geek's Dream Girl. (Email Dave or follow him on Twitter).
The 5×5 Dungeon: The Temple of Elemental Evil
To finish off the paragon tier, the PCs in my game headed into one of the most classic dungeons out there: The Temple of Elemental Evil. I started with the original module (while not being slavish to it), then hacked away to adapt pieces to my game and involve major NPCs from earlier. The original module itself wasn’t hard to convert on the fly to 4e, especially with Monster Vault at my disposal.
However, I had a very specific style in mind that would feel like a big dungeon crawl. That posed a few problems:
- My group is pretty capable, and I wanted to challenge them in ways that reflect the dungeon crawl style- choosing when to rest, what resources to expend. where to explore, etc.
- I wanted to push the group forward in ways they weren’t used to in my episodic campaign.
- To really get the Temple of Elemental Evil feel, I wanted to give the PCs good reasons not to hack and slash through everything, even though they were more powerful than most of the enemies there.
- I wanted the Temple to really come alive and react, in ways discussed by Rob Schwalb and Chatty DM, whose articles would ultimately serve as the inspiration for what I wanted.
To try and achieve these ends, I came up with a 5×5 plan (based on my own 5×5 Method) for the Temple: one for each element, and one for the Temple itself (which also represented the imprisoned demoness at the bottom breaking free.) These I dubbed the Machination Meters: a list of goals that each temple element was pursuing for some ultimate agenda. Advancing a step on a track represented the passage of time and the goals advancing while the PCs adventure. [Read the rest of this article]
Four Months in the Borderlands: D&D Encounters
With DDXP next week, and other obligations the week after, tonight is my final session of D&D Encounters, just shy of the big finale of Keep on the Borderland: A Season of Serpents. I volunteered to DM for a few reasons: I wanted to support the program, I wanted to see what my friend Chris had in store for countless adventurers, I know that skilled DMs are in demand for local players, and finally, I think pretty highly of my own skills as a D&D DM.
I’m no stranger to running games in public venues for people I don’t know. I’ve been running games at conventions since I was hand-scribbling character sheets with made up systems, been involved with game company demos, ran a local con’s gaming room, and so on. What I didn’t have was experience with RPGA/LFR: I haven’t been involved with it since second edition. Thus, even with all that experience, I still felt a bit of trepidation week after week. How would the adventure go? Who would be playing? Would I flub a crucial detail? Even with everything already planned out for me, I still spent time re-reading the encounter, getting together any materials I thought crucial to getting the encounter “right,” and mentally preparing myself.
After 18 weeks of running (with a few gaps) here’s my impressions of how it went and the program itself. [Read the rest of this article]
D&D XP 2011 Is Coming: Convention Coverage
We’ll be back at the D&D XP convention this year, from January 27th to the 30th. There’s still time to attend- badges as well as tickets to the many events will be available at the door. Shawn Merwin told you why he enjoys the convention so much, and I’m going to be there running special Gamma World adventures, so there’s plenty of reasons you might want to attend right there.
However, the other reason you might be interested in the convention is for all the news and previews, whether you’re going to attend or not. In 2008, we were there to bring you the first major seminar that revealed many of the first details about 4e as well as interviews and other coverage that filled in more details. Last year, we brought you early word of D&D Essentials, the D&D Encounters program, glimpsed some Dark Sun characters, and were given an early taste of Gamma World.
This year we’re hoping to get a more clear vision of where D&D is going forward, especially in light of recent announcements and, of course, the resultant rampant speculation. Some books announced at Gen Con are now off the schedule, including at least one that filled some gaps in the post-Essentials rules era. Dragon and Dungeon magazines have been shifting around dramatically. We have a Virtual Tabletop coming. There are collectible cards being presented as an optional add-on to D&D to decidedly mixed reaction (including from yours truly.) And then there’s Ravenloft and hints that it will contain some kind of interesting additional component. Hopefully after this year’s seminar, we’ll all have a better idea of where things are headed for the year to come, and that path is filled with cool stuff for D&D players. [Read the rest of this article]
My Love Letter to “Mage: The Ascension”
Even though I’ve played dozens upon dozens of different RPGs, if you ask me what my favorite game is, the choice is clear: It’s Mage: The Ascension (2nd edition, to be precise.) It’s not the game I’ve clocked the most hours playing, or spent the most money on, or wrote the most about. I can’t even recall playing in a campaign as a Mage that lasted for more than a few sessions. Why do I have such fondness for the game, over 10 years since I picked up the book? Simple: it’s the first RPG that felt like it rewired my brain.
Editor-in-Chief’s 2011 Blogolutions
I rarely like to write posts about the blogging here itself at Critical Hits (for one, my Twitter feed proves a much more effective channel). I always like to write posts that I myself would find interesting (if, of course, I hadn’t written it in the first place) and I find posts about blogging or lack thereof pretty uninteresting and self-indulgent. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from celebrating every year with a bit of self-indulgence. This will be another bit that I hope you will forgive, and hope you will find a bit interesting.
As I mentioned in our 5th anniversary post, it’s been a pretty big year for us. Our second big award nomination, launch of our first “spinoff” blog Roll, release of our first regular podcast The DM Guys, sponsoring convention events, and our first custom web app Junkulator have all been pretty big milestones. However, the thing that has had the biggest effect on me and the day to day was taking on more writers and setting up a regular schedule. That had been my vision for the site for several years: an online gamer magazine, featuring the latest news, as well as multiple columns from unique voices. This was the year that it finally happened. You could say that I accomplished my big resolution from 2009.
Now, however, that means I have a group of great editors, writers and readers who are looking to me for what’s next. These are just some of the ideas that have passed by me in the past year that I might try and implement in the next year. All of this, of course, is subject to change, addition, deletion, and spindling. [Read the rest of this article]
First Impressions Review: “Famine in Far-Go”
Famine in Far-Go is the new release for the new version of the Gamma World RPG. It is one part expansion set, providing new rules for both the players and GM to use, and one part large adventure, spanning several levels.
What You Get In The Box
- 4 sheets worth of cardstock counters, covering all the new monsters in the book.
- 10 cards, 2 each of the 5 new Cryptic Alliance cards.
- 2 double sided poster maps (5 different encounter areas altogether)
- 160 page book, including 20 new mutant origins, cryptic alliances (both the 5 for PCs and plenty more for NPCs), 67 monsters, writeup of the town of Far-Go in East Dah-Koh-Tah, and complete Famine in Far-Go mini-campaign that takes characters from 3rd to 6th level.
20 New Origins
The list has already been revealed. There are some great new traits (like the Alien’s “not from this world trait”, where the GM chooses from two Alpha Mutations to give you whenever you’d draw one), and a lot more of these origins also contain weaknesses (like the Reanimated’s slower speed.) Of course, the humor in the origin descriptions is present here as well, like this from the Mythic description: “You might be a tentacled monstrosity from a sunken city, a blonde-haired Nordic with a lantern jaw and a big hammer, or a famous author with curious ideas about aliens.”
While new origins do add a bit of complexity to character creation (as with any sourcebook), given the amount of duplicate origins I see in most games, having more origins available is definitely a plus. Of course, with new origins all contain a host of new character concepts and random pairs. If I somehow roll Wheeled Simian I’m not sure how any other character will be able to compare. [Read the rest of this article]
“Leverage” RPG: The Misidentified Dolphin Job
I’ve been talking about Leverage RPG amongst a few of my gamer friends, especially the possibility of hacking it. We’ve come up with quite a few hack ideas already, including:
- Inception
- D&D (like has been done here)
- Mage: The Ascension
- Mistborn
- Firefly
One thing I was sure about though: before going too far into a hack of the game, I wanted to get some experiencing running Leverage as is to get my head around it. While I had participated as a player, running it is a whole other task, one that I wanted to know before diving into the system too much.
Well, my D&D game wrapped early on Sunday, and I suggested with the time left we bust open some Leverage. Here’s a rough recap of how it went. [Read the rest of this article]
Announcing: Gamma World Guide, Grand Unified Junk Table, and the Junkulator
As part of our continuing Gamma World coverage, we bring to you today our Gamma World Guide, collecting a number of useful links throughout the web for your games.
However, we haven’t just brought you a new guide like our Skill Challenges guide… we’ve created a new tool for use in your Gamma World games.
It started with Jared von Hindman of Head Injury Theater, who recently did a lot of research on Gamma World, discussing random junk tables. I got in contact with him, and from our combined files, I typed up all the entries from older editions of Gamma World (and a few supplements.) I did some editing and trimming and dropped all 800-some items into a massive spreadsheet, along with a few surprises. We called this mega-list the Grand Unified Junk Table.
From there, Vanir put the whole thing into a database, and started coding a random generator to pull out pieces of junk and display them. The three of us tossed ideas back and forth (adding to the coding workload, as these things go), Jared contributed some more art. And so the three of us present…
The Junkulator, the result of our efforts. The Junkulator pulls a random piece of junk from the Grand Unified Junk Table, assigns it a random condition (also culled from various GW editions), gives it an image from Google Image search, and displays the result. You can get a single piece of junk, or 1d4+1 pieces of junk for your starting set. You can also display the Grand Unified Junk Table in its entirety and print it out if you want an offline chart to roll on. The result doesn’t always make sense, but hey, that seems appropriate enough.
We hope you enjoy the GW Guide and the Junkulator, and thanks both to Jared and Vanir for making it happen. Speaking of which, Jared contributed an article about the history of the junk tables in Gamma World, so be sure to check it out for some extra context and commentary.
And while you’re at it, check out the rest of Critical Hits Presents: Drinking Dungeons & Dragons and our events at DDXP 2011. Of course, there’s more on the way…
The Gammarizer: Bringing Your Town to Gamma Terra
The Gammarizer is my attempt at a semi-random adventure generation tool for Gamma World. You start with a location all the players are familiar with (like your hometown) and then change it to fit into the post-apocalyptic setting of Gamma Terra, and in the process, generate an adventure on the fly. This method focuses on using the elements of a setting and altering it to connect to the origins of the PCs to give it that Gamma flavor and a personal connection.
To begin:
- All the players decided on a setting that everyone at least has a passing familiarity with. (For example, Westminster Maryland.)
- Gammarize the name. (Questmonster.)
- Each player writes down on an index card one element of that setting to start with. This can be specific or general. (McDaniel College, plentiful corn fields, Main Street, and cows are all possibilities.) These should be kept secret except to the GM, and duplicates are fine.
- The GM shuffles the cards out and gives one to each player. It’s OK if players get their own.
- Each player writes down on the card a way that connects that setting to one of their own origins. (A radioactive ratswarm may say that the corn fields are irradiated or filled with rats.)
- The GM takes the cards and builds the adventure. If something immediately suggests itself based on the cards, great. Otherwise, try taking the cards, and assigning (either randomly or by selecting) one to be a setup/hook, two to be encounters/scenes, one to be a complication, and one to be the climax/finale.
- Make adventure go.
I ran a test of this over the weekend, and I’d say it was a big success. The PCs all provided me with very good seeds to start with, and the nature of Gamma World makes it easier to gloss over any leaps of logic (“of course you can negotiate with the pile of cats” “of course a gravity cannon can turn a park into an army of mutant plants.”) [Read the rest of this article]
Review: “Leverage” RPG
Long time readers will remember the 4th Power Project, my attempt to merge d20 Modern with D&D 4e. While researching powers for PC, I took notes from a number of sources, and one that bubbled to the top was the TV show Leverage. For those who don’t know, Leverage is a show about five highly skilled con-artists and thieves who have decided to help those who have been wronged and have no place left to go. Each episode is one complete heist- like watching Ocean’s Eleven in an hour (and with only five people.)
It turns out I wasn’t the only one watching Leverage for RPG research- the Leverage RPG has just been released from Margaret Weis Productions to bring the same sort of stories to your RPG table. You assemble your crew of a grifter, hacker, hitter, mastermind, and thief and pull off one job in an evening to help the helpless and provide… leverage.
Now, it would have been easy to put together a game where there’s a bunch of useful skills, you roll some dice, add the number to the skill, and go on. Instead, the designers went several layers beyond what was needed to put together a licensed RPG, and instead created an extremely well put together system that not only captures the show perfectly but also gives a ton of tools for players and GMs to create your heists. [Read the rest of this article]
