Adam Dray

Empire Craft invitation

2009-10-22T21:20:33Z

I'm playing this game called Empire Craft. It's a web-based strategy game and it's free. Yeah, there are alluring things you CAN spend your money on, but you don't have to spend a cent to have a good time.

I'm totally addicted. Anyway, if you click that link and build a city to population 5, I get a small game perk. I'd love it if you tried the game out to that point. Really, building to population 5 takes about 15 minutes.

Suicide Prevention

2009-09-14T16:01:36Z

Two of my friends, bryant and michele_blue, are joining a walk in Boston to raise awareness and money for suicide prevention. You can learn more about what they are doing, and why, in Bryant's LiveJournal post. All money they collect will go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Every little bit helps.

Help them out, if you can.

Blue dots, yellow dots

2009-08-31T16:29:29Z

I took a little psychological test that measures one's ability to count blue dots and yellow dots quickly ("gut number sense"). I did well:

You had a score of 87% correct on this test. Based on the results we have so far, the average person who takes this test scores 75% correct.

Your percentile score on this test was 99, meaning you scored higher than 99% of people who took this test.

Try it yourself. It takes about 15 minutes.

They really need to give you a cut-n-paste results box, though. I had to cobble this together myself.

[GenCon] Games on Demand

2009-08-07T20:06:01Z

I am going to be running games at Games on Demand at GenCon this year.

Find me in the GoD room (Fischer Ballroom in the attached Omni-Severin Hotel across the skywalk) on Friday from 10AM-2PM and on Saturday from 2PM-6PM. I will have a handful of games prepared to run on ~~request~~demand: Dogs in the Vineyard, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, My Life with Master, The Princess Game, carry: a game about war, Annalise, Misspent Youth, Shock: social science-fiction, Verge, and D&D 4E Metrocalypse. There are probably other games I'll have ready.

I plan to have a 1-2-page "catalog" handout with pictures of each cover and a blurb about each game so people can browse that.

The way it works is: You find me in the GoD room, browse my catalog, and show interest in a game I know how to run. We find other people willing to play that game. I run that game for you right then and there. It costs a generic ticket for each player.

Even if you arrive late or mid-slot, there's a chance I'm not occupied. Find me and see if we'll do a half-slot or a slot-and-a-half of your pick of games. Chances are, we can occupy you. Bring friends!

There's a second option, too. I can give you short demos of a bunch of those games in a single slot. Like, we make characters and roll some dice for a conflict or two for 3-5 different games. As many as we can get through. I can do showroom demos (you get the idea of the game without me worrying about being 100% accurate about rules and procedure), or I can do play demos (we play by the rules but I skip around a bit to make it happen faster).

I'm also sometimes available to run these games after dinner in the Embassy Suites lobby. Get to me early if that's what you wanna do because I'll probably jump into someone else's game if I'm not otherwise occupied.

I'm not the only GoD GM. I expect there to be a half dozen or more GMs involved in this and we'll be providing coverage in the GoD room 10AM-6PM Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (but I am not sure on the end time on Sunday). They will be running a different set of games, so if nothing on my list appeals to you, find another GoD GM and ask them what they can run for you.

Sweet, huh?

[Metrocalypse] Conveying atmosphere

2009-08-03T16:46:14Z

Last Tuesday, I ran my second installment of Metrocalypse: Oxford 1605, my setting for D&D 4E. Based on the excitement of the players during and after the 4-hour game, I can safely say that it rocked. It was a pretty bog-standard D&D fighty adventure, so I am wondering what made it so fun.

I think a large part of it is atmosphere. Metrocalypse is, at the end of the day, just a setting, a justification for all the weird stuff in D&D. Its magic is making the player characters come from a more normal place -- in this case, 1605 Oxford, England -- and dumping them into the world and "forcing" upon them terrible transformations and dropping them into a terribly dangerous jungle that swallows the city. Conveying that atmosphere is one of my most important jobs as Dungeon Master.

Atmosphere occupied my mind during the game. In the prior game, when the PCs crossed from Christ Church Cathedral (their home base) to the Bear Inn on Alfred Street (the Mayor's home base), I turned the travel into a random encounter. I wanted to make the players understand that travel was dangerous. In last week's game, I realized that they'd be frustrated by a constant onslaught of random encounters whenever they wanted to move around the city. Still, I wanted them to feel how dangerous travel was.

My solution was to tell them it was dangerous with a little exposition. I described the jungle-clogged streets in some detail. The forest canopy was higher than it was a couple weeks ago, I said. The underbrush was full of choker vines, razor-edged weeds, and carnivorous plants -- not to mention all kinds of monsters. "Just assume that whenever you travel, you have to kill stuff," I explained. "It's never an easy journey." I also described how line-of-sight was so limited, that sometimes they'd walk into the walls of buildings before they realized they were there. Every house and shop was like a hidden ruin, waiting to be discovered in the forest.

I'd prepared a handful of quest cards, 4"x6" note cards with minor and major quests printed on them. Each quest has a name, a minor/major designation, an indication of the quest's level and XP reward, a short description, plus hints about the treasure available on the quest. I am going to enhance them further to explain what kinds of encounters each quest has, so the group can choose what kind of play they want. For example, a quest might offer "2 small combat encounters, 1 long role-playing encounter, and 1 short skill challenge." The group looked over the cards and chose one of my favorites, which involved eradicating some giant ants.

With atmosphere on my mind, I had them come upon an ant scouting party (2 worker/minions, 2 warriors, 2 drones). During the combat, I described the pincer attacks, the acid burns, and the chemical smells (these ants communciate through pheremones). It was a short encounter.

The largest encounter was an ant work party (12 workers, 2 warriors, 2 soldiers, 1 drone). I drew out the battle map with a 20-foot-wide street and 25-30-foot buildings aside it, with several 5-foot alleys between buildings. The players' eyes widened as I dropped the 15 pogs on the table. Unfortunately, I hadn't prepared ant pogs, so I was using kobolds. I regret that but I didn't have the wooden cut-outs. I've ordered some (should arrive soon, I hope) and I have printed and punched a bunch of really creepy ant art for next time! The worker ants were tearing down the buildings, log by log and stone by stone. I drew giant piles of rubble around buildings on the map.

The ants have a special ability that allows all of them to shift 2 squares whenever an ant dies. Man, it's creepy when 14 ants all skitter when one dies. The PCs' clever battle positions were constantly overrun by ants that could burrow under them, shift around them, or climb the buildings. I managed to convey the impression of a swarm of giant insects.

I ended the game with a preview of next week (this Thursday). They followed the ant trail to the northwest corner of the city. The ants have created a 100-foot-tall mountain of rubble with cave entrances in it. It's swarming with giant ants. They need to penetrate the depths of the mound and kill the ant queen. If all goes well, they hope to score some royal jelly, which has magical healing properties (I decided).

For next time, I have a few techniques I want to add. First of all, I want to convey urban decay. In every scene, I will include one bit of narration about buildings and visibility in the woods. I will also mention one or two bits of humanity that have been left behind: a wooden toy on the ground, a table set for dinner but left to rot, a shoe stuck in the mud, a stack of papers. If I can get just a couple of these tidbits into every scene, the world will be richer for it. Second, I will have the players take turns describing what they encounter in each travel scene. I don't want them to take travel lightly. If I remind them that it's scary by letting them narrate spooky and dangerous cut-scenes, they can take part in the building of atmosphere.

Crossposted to Story Games

Wild, Tethered, Bound

2009-08-03T13:01:07Z

Check out my wife's contest! Help her promote her ebook for a chance at an Amazon.com gift certificate. Wild, Tethered, Bound is a modern, paranormal romance with Greek gods, forest nymphs, and Afghanistan deforestation.

Edited: Fixed the link. It now goes directly to Steph's writing blog page rather than to the Facebook page that links to her blog!

Edited again: Right now, Steph's own social network consists mainly of Firan people and writer people. My social network is much wider. Specifically, I suspect there are people interested in Greek mythology, fantasy, and romance in my network, so I'm reaching out to interested people. And, hey, chance at a $15 gift certificate, right? Also also wik: If this kind of thing interests you, check out her two ebook novellas, each of which is less than three bucks, linked off Steph's site.

[D&D 4E] Perceptions based on the wrong information?

2009-06-18T21:19:38Z

A lot of people don't like the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. That's fine. I am not personally invested in people liking the game. I don't try to make people like the game.

One of the predominant complaints about the game is that it's overengineered for tactical combat and that it discourages role-playing. I can understand why people would think this, but I believe a lot of people make this snap decision based on a small amount of play. They have not taken enough time to understand the rules, so everyone is focusing on complexity of the rules. Combats take longer, so they spend more of their games in combats. They play once, and walk away from the table without seeing anything but the tactical game.

Maybe they play several times, but the games are still "one shots." They have different characters each time, or perhaps they jump their characters by a level or more for each game, to try out play at different character levels. They never really internalize any of their character's powers. They may understand the tactical rules better, but they're focused on remembering which at-will or encounter power to use.

These are not fictitious people. This is me and my friends. I watched us get laser-focused on the tactical game, on the character powers. I watched us stumble through skill challenges without role-playing. In Daniel's game, we jumped our characters from 1st level to 4th to 8th to 10th, or something like that. We never played the same character more than one session. My cleric, Tobias, had a different set of powers for me to master every time. The group didn't know how to work together. However, even with the powers changing every time, after a few sessions, we did start playing differently. Tactical play isn't all there is to D&D 4E.

In my Metrocalypse campaign, I'm not skipping levels. I am going to award double XP to move things along, but players will get to play the same set of powers for 2-3 sessions before leveling. Advancing one level isn't a sea change like jumping from 1st to 4th. Players will be more familiar with their characters. Really, though, my first game went well. We had a couple of small role-playing encounters, a little fight, and a big fight. There was role-playing during combat, even, by which I mean that players let their character's personalities dictate which tactical options they chose. They also "reskinned" their powers (with my encouragement) so they'd fit into the mutated Oxford 1605 setting. The doppleganger cleric was blasting holy light out of his silver cross and stuff. Awesome.

I ran Metrocalypse: Oxford 1605 at Camp Nerdly a few weekends ago. I'd pre-genned a bunch of famous people from history. You know, Shakespeare as a Gnome Bard and Queen Elizabeth as an Eladrin Shaman. None of these players had seen the characters before. A few of them didn't know 4E at all. Naturally, they were going to have to spend more time focused on their powers and crap. But what happened in play was entirely different. Yeah, we had some huge, awesome fights. However, those fights were dripping with the personalities of the characters. During fights and between, there was some awesome role-playing.

Maybe DMs who are new to 4E also have a sort of tactical blindness. They prep their adventures and focus way too much on the monsters and not enough on the stories. If you try out 4E for the first time at a convention, or at a Game Day, there's a big chance that the adventure you're playing was designed to teach the game to new players. There's a chance it will be several encounters loosely chained together by a weak plot. The characters won't have any personality to brag about, because they're intended for one-shot learner's play.

There's another thing at play here. When you get a new character or get a bunch of new powers, you want to see them in action. You push to get into a fight so you can unleash holy hell on those monsters. There's something ingenuous about jumping into combat first chance, having a blast with your tactical powers, then bemoaning that you didn't get to role-play. First of all, you can role-play during combat. There's nothing stopping you. Second, if you're having fun, don't knock it. It's fun! Really, though, if you want less tactical combat and more character interaction, work that out with your DM. That part of D&D hasn't changed.

I'm not saying that people aren't entitled to their opinions. I'm also not trying to make a false consciousness argument here. I'm not trying to say people don't know what they feel. I just want to throw out some food for thought and maybe make people reconsider why they don't like the game. 4E fixes a lot of stuff that was broken in 3E/3.5E and it's a shame if people discount it before giving it a real chance.

Kalinos: City of the Heavens (my New Crobuzon)

2009-06-14T04:21:53Z

This is my attempt at a "New Crobuzon," as described by judd_sonofbert.

The "rules" are:

1) Take your three favorite human-ish monsters out of the Monster Manual and they are minority citizens in the city. Detail how they get along, how being in the city has culturally changed them and what niches they fill in the city. How do the powers that rule the city keep them down?

2) Take three really bizarre fucking monsters and figure out how they exist in the nooks and crannies of the city and how the powers that rule the city keep these beasts from doing unacceptable amounts of damage?

3) Um...play?

I'm going to interpret the first rule loosely. My "minority citizens" are few in number but are powerful politically. They are the "powers that rule the city." Also, what is "human-ish" is a matter for debate. Some of my monsters are human-ish and some of my humanoids aren't very human-ish.

Three humanoids: angels, maruts, devas. Three weird monsters: wraiths, giant ants, and a sorrowsworn shadowraven swarm.

Background

Kalinos used to be a normal city, fairly cosmopolitan, but populated mostly by humans, eladrin, and devas. Sure, you could find a scattering of halflings, a furnace of dwarves, or a hide of gnomes, but these were minorities here. Kalinos is known for being a center of culture, sea and land trade, and--of course--religious importance. The metropolis is the religious capital of three of the world's major religions. Some of the largest and oldest temples stand here, said to protect ancient relics of unimaginable power.

When the gods died, the world was pretty shaken up. Most mortals might not have known what was happening in the heavens if not for the sudden appearance of angels to tell the story. These fearsome beings came in great number, and a lot of them came to Kalinos. Some learned scholars claim these divine servants were attracted to the magical relics. What is known is that they quickly let the priesthoods know that their gods were dead and that they, the angels, had come to keep the religion alive. Such personal attention was exciting at first, until clerics and other holy persons realized that an angel's wisdom was not perfect like the deity's and that angels have ambitions and pride. And they are here, talking to you, and not watching from the unfathomable distance between planes.

Humanoids

Angels are the servants of divine powers. They can be good or evil and everything in between. In Kalinos, they work in small groups, usually reporting to an archangel and headquartering in a temple-palace. They demand obeisance from their followers and "converts." Different groups of angels and their faithful wage war on other sects and faiths. Kalinos is divided into a dozen large boroughs now, each associated with a temple. Some forge alliances, others declare holy (or unholy) war. Sometimes two angels and their henchmen battle in the skies over the city, and sometimes one of them dies and falls to the ground (it is said that the body of an angel falls to earth as a ball of rock and metal from which one can forge powerful weapons and armor).

Maruts are powerful, astral mercenaries. They followed the angels to earth, but came in smaller numbers. They met with the royalty and nobles and generals of Kalinos and offered to help them. They explained that these angels had betrayed their divine sponsors and had conspired together to kill the gods in a single cosmic sweep of the hand. Though they don't know how the angels accomplished their goal, the maruts avow that it is true: the gods are dead, along with any other divine servants who remained faithful. The maruts themselves are independent and unaffiliated, though they despise what the angels have done. They have come to Kalinos to aid in a war against the angelic host--for a price. The maruts have hired on as powerful mercenaries in exchange for a promise to turn the city over to them when the angels are gone. Sitting with the men and women who once ruled the empire, they negotiated the laws by which they will rule when they have won.

Devas are incarnations of once-immortal servitors of good deities. When the angels came, many devas "awakened." What were remote and fuzzy impressions became clear thoughts and memories. They remembered serving their gods and goddesses and remembered these angels who used to command them. Many devas jumped to serve their old masters in the cause of good. Many were not given a choice as the angels bound them to service with threats of holy retribution. Because of this enslavement and rumors of what the maruts have told, many devas in the service of "good" angels have begun to question their masters' true intentions.

Monsters

Wraiths are incorporeal undead that skulk in shadow. They are common in the streets at night. So much death has fallen on Kalinos and there are no gods to collect the souls. Many lost spirits go mad or are turned to evil in other ways. Most turn into shadowy wraiths. Most of the angels and maruts have no problem getting rid of wraiths they encounter, but the citizenry of Kalinos are no match for these powerful undead. Since they can phase through walls, they often hide in dark buildings, warehouses, and crawlspaces during the day.

Giant ants are a new arrival to Kalinos. The angels seem to be excavating ruins under the city, and they seemed to have awoken a nest of giant, hibernating insects. They just appeared in the tens of thousands one day, climbing all over buildings and walls. The ants seem to be focused on building a giant stone hive structure in the center of Kalinos. It is already 40 feet tall and hundreds of feet across, constructed of bits of rubble and debris the workers collect from the city. They tear down nearby buildings and use the rock for their hive. Unless provoked or hindered, they do not attack people. The angels and other citizens of Kalinos see the ants as a major threat to the metropolis, however, threatening their way of life and are talking about waging war on them. It is not known how the ants will respond.

Sorrowsworn, terrible manifestations from the plane of shadow and fragments of death incarnate, are often sent to slay powerful mortals who have cheated death. A shadowraven swarm is a flock of death ravens that often foretell the coming of a sorrowsworn master. Such a swarm has arrived at Kalinos and it makes the angels and maruts--really, everyone in the city--very nervous. Have the gods somehow figured out how to get revenge, even in death? Maybe they're just here to claim the wraiths. It is unclear what is going on or who has sent them, but they are a harbinger of the worst kind of trouble.

[D&D 4E] Fell Taint, revisited

2009-06-05T14:31:38Z

I held a reading of the introduction to the Fell Taint in the Monster Manual 2 at Camp Nerdly this past weekend. Without fanfare or a lead-in, I simply had someone read it aloud to the other gamers. Their reaction was priceless. I think chadu peed himself a little. Okay, maybe not, but he laughed muchly.

As if to mock us further, Wizards of the Coast is featuring this creature from nether places. The article (which requires a D&D Insider subscription to read) has the following intro:

Fell taints are beautiful, translucent orbs of wispy tendrils that flow and writhe as if in winds that aren't there. They have a subtle iridescent glossy sheen and are about 2–3 feet in diameter. Adding to their strangeness is the fact that they don't make any noise. Frequently their victims scream in agony or whimper in despair, but the fell taints themselves are completely silent no matter what they are doing at any given moment. A fell taint's victim can feel a hit from the fell taint, but the fell taint's tendrils continue to twist and flow undisturbed.

I am still laughing, Wizards. Please don't stop.

[D&D 4E] Metrocalypse at Camp Nerdly

2009-06-03T18:16:27Z

I posted a summary of actual play for the Oxford 1605 event I ran at Camp Nerdly. Overall, it was a blast and players had lots of fun, but it had numerous problems.

[D&D 4E] Fell Taint

2009-05-28T03:16:29Z

So, I'm flipping through the new Monster Manual 2 for 4E. Lots of good stuff in here. Bullywugs!

Then I get to the entry for the Fell Taint. I allow myself a little adolescent chuckle. Heh heh. He said "taint."

Then I read further:

Insubstantial alien predators from a twisted realm of madness, fell taints kill by generating insanity and despair in their victims. These unnatural horrors slip between worlds where and when the boundaries thin. Their presence alone opens any gap a bit wider, allowing more dreadful entities to pass through.

I'm sure I'm reading too much into this, but is the author also having an adolescent chuckle?

ETA: Link for slang definition.

[D&D 4E] Metrocalypse: Oxford 1605 -- first session

2009-05-20T19:52:19Z

Last night, I ran the first game of Metrocalypse: Oxford 1605, my setting for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition.

Recall that Metrocalypse is the world where some real city from some time in Earth's past gets sucked into the D&D world and overcome by monsters. In the meantime, a few of the city's citizens start transforming and exhibiting weird, special powers (i.e., they get D&D races and classes). It's a setting that looks at transformation, community, and survival. My test campaign is set in Oxford, England, in the Fall of 1605.

The Cast

A month ago, we met and made up characters. It was just me, Daniel (dikaiosunh), Tom (animadversio), and Craig. Last night, Tom brought two of his friends, Jody and Brian. Both are serious 4E gearheads and I'm told Jody is an ENnies Judge. Cool.

So, the characters... I hope the players will forgive me and correct me if I misrepresent them, as I'm largely doing this from memory.

Daniel has a small menagerie of PCs he created. He was going to play his peasant-girl-turned-warden, but changed his mind at the last minute. For the first game, he chose Joachim. Joachim is a Portuguese marrano (crypto-Jew) who is pretending to be a Catholic pretending to be an Anglican so the English don't burn him at the stake. It's complicated, but it works. After the metrocalypse event, Joachim found himself being tattooed by the burning holy light. He awoke a deva and found he had the power to unleash G-d's terrible fury on his foes. He's adopted a role of guardian of the Bodleian Library, which had about 3000 books at that time. (Joachim is a deva invoker.)

Tom created Nicholas, a very cynical atheist. He's a smart man, so he pretended to be devout and such, but he couldn't help but debate with the theology professors when he was a student. After the metrocalypse, his sharp tongue now threw powerful barbs that actually injured people. Worse, he had been transformed into the visage of a devil to punish him for his sins. Nicholas has been trading with the native kobold tribes. He gives them small Oxfordian treasures and they give him food and other supplies. (Nicholas is a tiefling bard.)

Craig plays The Spaniard. He has a real name, but it's long and complicated and Spanish, and we dubbed him "The Spaniard" before he chose his name, and the nickname stuck. The son of wealthy, but mostly unimportant nobles, the Spaniard learned guerrilla warfare techniques in Spain and was employed as a spy and infilitrator by the Spanish diplomatic delegation to England. He's a womanizer and swashbuckler with a dark edge. Catholic, too. After the metrocalypse, he found himself only a little changed. His appearance had grown slightly fey (but it only made him better looking, I'm sure) and he felt his infiltration skills were far sharper than before. He is also trading with the kobolds, and he might have a friendly rivalry with Nicholas. (The Spaniard is a half-elf rogue.)

Jody statted up Shawn. He was a stone mason in his past life -- the actual profession, not the secret society (but I'm trying to convince him to change that). Also, I believe he's a Church of E type (the only one in the group). After the metrocalpse transformation, Shawn grew to enormous size and his body became covered with fine stonework. His fighting skills improved drastically, too. Shawn lent a hand to Daniel to help protect the Bodleian Library with muscle and masonry. (Shawn is a goliath fighter.)

Brian is playing Devon, another secret Jew who had to fake being a good Anglican to avoid getting burned at the stake. Her deceit required her to study Anglicanism in great detail. After the metrocalypse, Devon discovered she had the power to change her form in drastic ways. She immediately decided to pretend to be a male priest of the Church of England. Devon is keeping up this masquerade, but finds she can wield the holy power of the Cross. Devon has a vested interest in protecting the volumes in the Library--and learning as much as she can to keep up her lies. (Devon is a shifter cleric.)

Beginnings: Protecting the Bodleian Library

So, first an apology to my players. I kept telling them that the library was in Christ Church Cathedral, but it's not. I checked today. The Bodleian Library, which housed around 3000 books by the start of the 18th Century, was actually in the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, on High Street. St. Mary's turns out to be pretty cool, since the former was established in Anglo Saxon times and would be around 600 years old by 1605 (though the oldest remaining part -- the tower -- was built in 1280), and not the gigantic monster of a building and courtyard that the Cathedral is.

Anyway, the group sort of organized themselves around the Library, so I staged the first encounter there. Joachim and Devon both served in the Library, mostly guarding the treasures (including books) and monks there. Nicholas and the Spaniard had a reason to be there: Joachim would trade smaller artifacts from the church for the stuff they needed, and Nicholas and the Spaniard were the go-betweens who traded with the kobold tribes. Shawn was there to help with guard duty and masonry tasks.

One night, a raiding party of strange, small, impish-looking creatures crashed through a stained glass window with a battering ram. I drew out the halls of the area around the Library and noted doors, windows, bookshelves, rolling wooden ladders, and some statues. The raiding party really consisted of "reskinned" goblins: 1 goblin hexer (controller), 2 goblin skullcrushers (brutes), and 8 goblin cutters (minions). Devon got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time -- alone in the hall with the minions -- and got swarmed. He had 10-15 points of damage in the first round and declined to take his opportunity attack against the careless imp combatants because he (Brian) didn't imagine Devon-the-unarmed-priest going to fisticuffs. Another minion ran crazed through a door into a smaller antechamber and attacked Nicholas.

Meanwhile, the Spaniard was sneaking into the long hallway from the other end. He tried to hide behind a statue as he approached the raiding party. Unfortunately, the imp leader cast a hex on him. The fibers of the carpet grew and writhed like snakes and wrapped around the rogue's ankles, rooting him to the floor (and threatening to cut him badly with 12 damage if he moved).

Joachim burst in and heaved a ball of angry holy light at one of the minions, frying it.

The heroes seemed stunned by what happened next. The two imp brutes charged in and, instead of hammering on them, avoid them and grabbed one of the large and very expensive statues in the hall, and then tried to carry it out of the Library! Joachim blasted one of them and slammed the brute back against the wall. The brutes gave up on stealing for now and started attacking people.

At some point, Nicholas used one of his new powers to blind the imp leader. According to the rules, a blind creature can attack by guessing the square an enemy is in and then attacking at a -5 penalty. Well, Nicholas hadn't moved since using the power, so the hexer targeted his last known location and I rolled very well. The leader dug a handful of sand out of a bag and blew on it. Wind spirits carried the grit thirty feet and blinded Nicholas with it. An eye for an eye.

Shawn was cornered by three of the imp cutters, but luckily there was a door to his back. He slid into temporary safety and started fighting back. He held up his cross and glowing light burned cross-shaped char marks into the foreheads of his foes, killing them! At one point, he pointed his cross like a weapon and a beam of holy light punched a hole right through an imp's torso, like a laser might.

To fight the hexer and his two brute bodyguards, Joachim summoned his anger. His body flashed with light and his shadow fell on the ground then animated as a creature of holy fire. This angel of fire fought the brutes for a short time before they destroyed it.

The heroes were taking a fair amount of damage. The minions could drop 4 damage on a hit -- 5 if they could flank -- and the brutes' axes regularly hit for 12 or so. The hexer could hit for 5-6 damage or blind or pin someone down with his curses. The cleric and bard had to heal themselves and others a couple times.

After a brief spat of fighting, the last remaining minion decided to flee for his life. The leader fell, then one of the brutes shortly after. The remaining brute started to run, but Joachim shouted him down (a really good Intimidation roll). The skullcrusher dropped his axe and came back like a scared puppy. They tried to talk to him but no one could speak his language, which had no Earthly origin. After some frustrating attempts at sign language communication and some debate about what to do with the captive, the group decided to just kill him. Joachim led the brute outside and slit his throat.

They spent some time after that cleaning up the library. In the days after that, Shawn shored up the windows and some of the doors with stone walls. The Library is more defensible now.

Travel: Encounters in the Streets

The Spaniard had met some Englishmen in the city. They talked of a growing community of other people who were huddling together in the safety of numbers. The Spaniard received an invitation to stop by the Bear Inn, talk to the Mayor, and join their community.

The group decided to go meet these people. It was not a long trip, purely measured by distance, but the roads are now clogged with jungle trees and underbrush and filled with monstrous things. Joachim decided to stay back and guard the Library (probably because Daniel wasn't feeling well). On the way, a bunch of them noticed a shadow pass over them. Nicholas perceived that the shadow was dragon shaped. He looked up and saw a ginormous fucking dragon, dark green with long veins of angry red. As he flew, contrails of smoke streamed out of nose and down over his serpentine neck and wide wings. Tom decided that Nicholas should stand in a clearing and gape for a better look...

Wondering if my florid description of a very, very dangerous and huge dragon was too subtle for Tom, I asked him if he was sure, and he said yes. I didn't want a total party kill on the first night because of one player, so I went a little easy on the group, but I think (and hope) it scared them a little. I had them make Stealth checks to hide in the forest as the dragon swooped down a blasted the with huge waves of fire. The Spaniard rolled well; everyone else failed. Since Craig had stated that he wanted the Spaniard to hang back about 20 feet and watch the dragon attack, I gave him 1d10 damage. The others got 2d10 damage. There was lots of wincing around the table, because it hurt a lot and they knew it wasn't over. They started running for their lives. The Spaniard went his own way. The other three stuck together, making a juicy target. I let Devon make an Athletics check to lead the group to safety. After a couple failures, and 1d10 more damage each time, they managed to get a decent roll. The dragon botched his Perception check, and the group huddled in an abandoned stone building till the dragon got bored and went back to Oxford Castle, where it had taken up residence.

The Bear Inn: Meeting the Mayor

Oxford's mayor, Richard Bryan, operated a safe house in his tavern, the Bear Inn. I had learned the name of Oxford's mayor in 1605 and had learned that he was a brewer and continued to operate the Bear Inn on Alfred Street, so I just had to use this. He had a growing community of about 100 people who lived in the block of buildings near the Inn. By banding together, they were able to fight off threats. I let the players know that these seemed to be normal, untransformed people, and that statwise they were minions (1 hit point each).

I reminded them that many of the PCs look normal or mostly normal, but some distinctly did not. The Spaniard has slightly elfin features. Shawn is 7'-8' tall and has stony growths on his skin. Joachim looks like some kind of dark-skinned angel, with Hebraic writing on his face. And, of course, Nicholas looks like a freaking devil. Only Devon looked like a completely normal person. I told Tom that people's reaction to Nicholas usually involved pointing, screaming, and fleeing. Nicholas decided to go along anyway and try to talk and reason his way in.

The Bear Inn was guarded by two halberdiers who were terrified of Nicholas' appearance. Devon and the Spaniard tried to persuade them to relax and let them all in, but they wouldn't budge. I had called for a Diplomacy check (DC 25) and they'd rolled well but had come up a couple point short. Nicholas decided to try to talk to them himself. I gave him an additional -5 penalty because of his appearance, but he used one of his encounter powers to sway their friendship. Doing that, and by rolling incredibly well, Nicholas managed to beguile and talk his way past the guards, who followed him in and left the front door unguarded. Shawn stood guard outside, perhaps sensing that his giant size might make things uncomfortable in the crowded tavern.

The inn was a simple affair. Three stories with rooms upstairs, and a crowded room full of tables on the main floor and a simple tap room in the back. The people in the tavern screamed when the devilish Nicholas entered, of course. The three adventurers spent some time convincing the people that he wasn't going to take them all to Hell. Eventually, Mayor Richard Bryan came out of the tap room. Some more Diplomacy checks got Bryan to trust them. Devon being a priest definitely helped smooth matters over.

The Mayor asked them about the Library and suggested that they use the books for kindling, since the jungle wood was proving a poor source of firewood. This appalled the heroes. They learned a bit more about the Mayor's community. Bryan invited the heroes to join his group. Ultimately, I think they'll decline, but we'll see.

Lessons Learned

That's about where we left things until the next game.

The game session could be divided into five sections: setup, combat in the library, role-play in the library, hazards of the streets, and role-play with the Mayor. The library combat and the Mayor parlay were planned encounters. I ad-libbed the rest.

We'd started pretty late. Tom (who drove Jody and Brian) got lost in College Park. Daniel had work issues. Once we finished gnoshing some pizza and meeting the new folks, it was 8 PM, an hour past the scheduled start time. It took me a few minutes to get my books and whatnot organized around me, but I had prepped encounters and found the pogs I needed and put them aside. We spent 15-30 minutes talking about how to get everyone together as a group, and came up with the Bodleian Library connection.

The combat encounter was fun, I think, but it took about 75 minutes to run five rounds of combat. I could have been a little faster on calling out initiative order. I may hand that off to a player next time, since there's no reason for the DM to track that crap. Most of the players took some time to figure out what they wanted to do. 4E presents a handful of options to characters where 3E often only gave a player one useful option -- this is a wonderful change in terms of being tactically interesting, but it often means thinking about stuff takes up game time. Also, 4E gives every player a standard action, a move action, and a minor action during his turn; in 3E, a player had to choose to move or do something like attack and less to do made things quicker. I think the players will get quicker as they master their characters' power lists.

I could have sped up the combat a bit by knowing my monsters better and by printing out a reference card for each of the three monster types. A fair bit of my time was spent finding the right creature on the two Monster Manual pages in front of me.

I enjoyed watching the group role-play without me. It felt like real D&D, not a series of flavorless tactical encounters, as many people have called 4E. There wasn't a ton of this kind of role-playing though. I think it will pick up as players get more comfortable with their characters and have more stuff to role-play about. I will continue to lead them a little with questions about morality and how they feel about issues. There's a lot of fodder here for great fun.

The street encounter could have been better. It was all DM-fiat, really. I'd decided long ago that a huge red dragon had moved into Oxford Castle. Partly I did this to keep the players from making the most defensible place in the city their base right away. Partly, though, I just thought it was cool and great atmosphere to have this giant death monster flying around to remind them that the city was terribly dangerous. I did not expect Tom to have his character stand in the middle of a clearing and gawk at it. When he did, the only logical thing to do was attack, but I had painted myself into a corner: I also did not want a TPK on the first game night, especially if the encounter wasn't balanced by the books. A 6th level encounter would be really tough, but fair. A 15th level encounter would not be fun or fair, though one can argue that "fair" also includes playing the world as a real, living place, and that the character had asked for it. There's a world of GNS theory in this, but I'm not gonna go there right now.

In the end, I decided to treat the encounter as a giant hazard and series of tough skill checks. The players rolled crappy at first and got burned up badly. I think that scared the crap out of them. As described above, eventually the dice evened out and they escaped. Because Craig had chosen to have the Spaniard go off alone, I threatened him with a wandering monster roll, which didn't go in his favor. I was going to have some kind of nasty creature attack him, but it was getting late and I wanted to get to the meaty role-playing encounter, so I told Craig that I owed him one. Heh.

The encounter at the Bear Inn went well and served its purpose. Mainly, I wanted to showcase that the characters (especially Nicholas) were freaks to the rest of the Oxfordians. They also met the Mayor and were introduced to his backward, conservative ways. Over time, his conservatism will be more of a source of conflict in the game.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, though there were complaints about not getting enough done (with concessions made to the fact that we started an hour late). Overall, it went very well. I'm looking forward to the next game!

[D&D] D&D Insider prices are going up

2009-05-20T15:31:47Z

I turned off Auto-Renew on my DDI account today. Wizards of the Coast is essentially doubling the price of the DDI subscription starting in July. I could justify $5/month for the content. I cannot justify $10/month for it. This makes me very sad, as I enjoyed the site and was starting to get used to the Character Builder (which will continue to work, but won't be updated -- every so often, I might buy a month of DDI to get the updates).

According to the FAQ, they let you add another year to my subscription now at the introductory price. I did that. After turning off Auto-Renew, I upgraded from quarterly to annual. I'll turn off Auto-Renew again, so I don't forget next July and get charged $120 for another year of DDI. Next year, maybe they'll have convinced me it's worth re-upping.

And, really, this process should be a lot easier, dammit. C'mon.

Correction: The annual price is only increasing by $1/month. I am less enraged now. The monthly price did go up a few dollars ($7.95 to $10.95, I think). If you're gonna pay for a bunch of months, though, you'd probably get an annual subscription anyway.

[D&D 4E] Metrocalypse for Nerdly

2009-05-02T16:11:14Z

I am running a session of Metrocalypse: Oxford 1605 at Camp Nerdly. Because it's a short 4-5-hour game, I want to provide pregenerated characters. Because I don't know my players' preferences in advance, I have to build flexibility into the adventure.

Player Preferences

I don't know how "advanced" my players will be in terms of rules knowledge. They may be 4E experts, dabblers in other versions, or totally new to D&D. So I need to have characters that are ready to play.

Moreover, I don't know if this group will want to do more fighty stuff or more social encounter stuff. I need to make the adventure structure flexible enough to support anything, though I will probably insist on some fighting and some social encounters. The character sheets need to be more than a collection of stats.

Characters

I've been tweeting a bit about my thought process for creating characters for this game. The setting is Oxford in 1605, violently pulled into the D&D universe. The characters are people from history but now they are transforming into people with D&D powers (changing races, gaining classes).

Here's the short list: Queen Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Hobbes, William Shakespeare, John Dee, Edward Kelley. I'm taking some liberties with history, but I don't care. Yeah, Elizabeth died in 1603. It's a magical world: she came back to life somehow. Since James is now King, the Oxfordians may or may not take her seriously as queen, which partly quells my concerns about making one of the characters vastly more powerful politically than the others. If they want, the players can play out their doubt that she is, indeed, their resurrected Queen. Kelley also died in 1594, either by suicide or during a failed escape from prison. Raleigh was locked in the Tower in 1605. Nonetheless, these characters are too interesting to let history stop me.

For most of the characters, I will present two build options. I want the players to have some choice over the characters they play, and the party composition. I will explain roles (leader, controller, striker, defender), if necessary, and show the group the following matrix:

Character	Race	Class	Role
Queen Elizabeth	eladrin	shaman	leader
Queen Elizabeth	eladrin	invoker	controller
John Dee	deva	wizard	controller
John Dee	deva	star pact warlock	striker
Edward Kelley	tiefling	rogue	striker
Edward Kelley	goliath	warden	defender
Sir Walter Raleigh	dragonborn	fighter	defender
Sir Walter Raleigh	dragonborn	warlord	leader
William Shakespeare	gnome	bard	leader
Thomas Hobbes	human	shaman	leader

I can't imagine Shakespeare as anything other than the Bard, right? And dikaiosunh wrote up Hobbes for me, so I don't know if I want to mess with him (he's perfect). I'm not totally satisfied with Kelley as a warden, but I needed another defender. He'd make an awesome illusionist wizard (from Arcane Power). I made that build have him as a goliath, because I can see him imagining himself as much bigger than he really is.

The group will want one of each role, and then the remaining characters can do what they want. Using the DDI Character Builder app, I can stat up these guys pretty quickly. I think they're going to be mid-heroic-tier-powered characters (4th, maybe 6th level).

Cool Stuff

As I do research about these people, I stumble on some amazing things.

Queen Elizabeth was characterized as the "Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser. That's why I made her an eladrin.
According to wikipedia, John Dee "immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology, and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind" (emphasis mine).
Dr. John Dee was thought to have put a hex on the Spanish Armada. This caused bad weather and let England win the naval battle.
Dee had a library of over 4,000 books. In Oxford.
Daniel discovered that Thomas Hobbes was a student at Oxford in 1605.
Edward Kelley was "a classic Renaissance scoundrel," "an erstwhile lawyer who had already had his ears cropped for counterfeiting before he met Dee. He also stood accused of necromancy - the practice of using dead bodies for divination." I suspect Kelley was scamming Dee into believing that he was talking to angels.
Kelley tried to convince Dee that the angels had ordered them to share everything, including their wives. Dee complied because -- well, you know -- the angels said so. Right? Kelley also had Bohemian Count Vilem Rozmberk convinced he could produce gold in large quantities using alchemical tricks.
Sir Walter Raleigh, at one point, had attached himself to the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, the son-in-law of Baron Burghley, William Cecil. Raleigh duelled a lot.
Raleigh helped raise the money for Edmund Spenser to publish the first three books of the Faerie Queene.
William Shakespeare's plays might have been written by Edward de Vere, or so one legend goes.

I am a twit

2009-05-02T04:11:52Z

I have finally succumbed and joined Twitter. If you want to follow my thought patterns on certain gaming topics, follow me. I'm more likely to talk things out there than here. I tend to post sporadically on LJ in larger posts that are more thoroughly "cooked."

My Talented Wife

2009-04-01T16:22:10Z

So my wife, publishing paranormal romance under the pen name Stephanie Draven, has just released her first novella e-book, "Midnight Medusa." It's a romance, yes, but it's a romance with a cool modern mythology setting, Greek gods, and a political message. The cover does it no justice, so ignore that.

Buy "Midnight Medusa" for like three bucks or less. Get it as a PDF or e-book from Harlequin or in Kindle format from Amazon.com.

Keep an eye out for her follow-up novella, "Wild, Tethered, Bound," expected to drop in August, and her two full-length novels, due out some time next year.

Mouseover long image titles...

2009-03-06T22:09:54Z

If you're a fan of the webcomic xkcd -- if you're not, get over there now! and add xkcd_rss to your friends list! -- then you probably realize that there's some extra funny hidden in the title (the text you see when you hover over an image) of the comic itself.

Firefox truncates this and trails off with periods of ellipsis, and I had my own clever workaround involving highlighting the image and right-clicking to View Selection Source so I could see the HTML markup for the image, and read the extra funny.

Well, I discovered the Long Titles add-on for Firefox today. Install it, and mousing over an image will show you the entire title. Woot.

http://xkcd.com/552/

[Dreamation] Vinny's Address

2009-02-23T17:09:54Z

At the Indie Designer Round Table on Sunday, Vinny Salzillo, the coordinator for Dreamation, addressed the room. I want to lead into each topic with direct quotes from Vinny. I may be paraphrasing a bit, but these capture his sentiment.

"Make sure everything is perfect." Vinny wants to help us protect our brand. He gently told us to make sure that everything is exactly as we want it so we don't look like amateurs. When we're writing our entries for the schedule, we need to double-check spelling and capitalization and consistency.

Further, Vinny warned us against using the game's title as the event's title. He seems to worry that gamers will see the same event name from one con to the next and think we're running an event that they've already played, and thus feel we're not doing anything new. The truth is that a lot of our indie games are replayable and don't have "scenarios" or "modules" in the same way D&D and other games do. If I show up for a game of Shock:, I know that I'll be generating the scenario with the other players as part of play. There's no game master! Why bother giving the event a name other than "Shock: a game of social science fiction"?

I ran two games at Dreamation: Verge and carry. Neither of them need a different scenario each time. Each is replayable as-is. Nonetheless, I gave them catchy (but basically meaningless) titles. The Verge event was called "Even Phillip K. Dick Wasn't This Crazy" and the carry event was called "1969." Despite my effort to differentiate my own games, someone (either Michael/Kat on the IGE side, or Vincent and team on the DEX side) screwed up and replaced my own carry blurb with earthenforge's carry blurb. Oh well.

"We had 27 people trying to get into a 4-person game." Vinny wants us to let more people into our game events. I cringed when he said this, because many of these games don't play well with 5-6 players, but we need to work with Vinny. He has a couple different finite resources (or "currencies") he needs to balance: game events, tables, time slots, game slots (for players), and players. Each game event eats up a table during a time slot. He wants to make sure that there are enough game slots for players in each time slot. If I run a game for me and 3 players when the table can hold me and 6, that table's potential is cut in half. Said another way, Vinny sees the potential to double the number of players he can entertain. So we really need to work with Vinny on this.

At the start of my carry game on Saturday, blackwell stopped over and asked if she could jump in. I already had 5 players and felt I was straining a bit. With 20-20 hindsight, I can say we had the perfect group size, but one more player wouldn't have broken things. We finished a little early, even. If she'd stopped by five minutes earlier, or if I hadn't been (over-)thinking, "Would I just be letting her in because she's an LJ acquaintance?" or if I hadn't been a little overwhelmed with prep, then maybe I'd have invited her in. I probably should have. I just sort of made a default decision (mentally, I was thinking, "I made the decision to allow 5 players when I wrote the event, so I don't want to second-guess that at a moment's notice"). In retrospect, I made the wrong decision. I apologize, JR. I suck. Raincheck?

We indie folks need to stretch our tables a bit. I will strive to do so at future cons, but not to the point where the game suck. I have played in events that were just too full, and I don't even mean indie games. Many convention games of D&D that I've played have felt overstuffed. Consider that D&D 4E is designed for 5 players plus a DM. 6 players is a reasonable maximum, but play is going to be slower. Do you stretch that table to 7-8 players at a convention? Does that make the con experience better for players or not? What will happen if I try to run a 6-player game of My Life with Master? If I can get 80% of the usual fun out of it (20% lost to slowness, lack of "screen time," and general disorganization due to a larger table), but entertain 6 players instead of 4, is that better than giving 3-4 players a 100% fun experience? I think that's Vinny's call to make, though I have to decide, too, if I want my name attached to game events that aren't as fun as I know they could be. I will stretch, but I won't let it break my games.

"These indie playtest games are a joke." Vinny did use the word "joke." This one made me feel really awful. I ran a playtest of Verge, of course, and I'd been basking in the afterglow of how well it had gone. Calling that event a joke was a punch to the gut. He explained his reasons, however.

He felt that the playtests were events that a lot of players wanted to get into. That surprised me. He stated that these playtests often were opened only to a small number of players (as above) and that he had to turn away a lot of people. Because GMs ("red badges") get preferential treatment when choosing events, he felt that the slots were full of other designers. Some kind of indie gaming circle jerk, apparently. Was my Verge playtest an exclusive, cliquish exercise? Well, it was attended by Bill White (designer of Ganakagok), selentic (certainly a game-tinkerer and general Story Games dude), jeisen (close friend and long-time Verge tinkerer), and Gina O'Melia (whom I'd never met, and I don't think she has indie gang colors). So yeah, probably.

The problem is that I've tried to run playtests at Dreamation in the past, and it was really difficult scheduling it and getting people to show up, despite their wanting to do it. Getting it on the schedule let people choose between my game and other games.

Vinny suggested a "professional track" where we can slot playtest events. I'm not sure exactly what he means, but I got the impression that he intends to separate those events from the usual "R-series" of role-playing events. Now, if he keeps them off the usual schedule (and only shares the schedule with Story Games or something), or drops them in a midnight-4AM time slot, I will be annoyed but I'll deal (or go back to scheduling these events myself).

To me and many other designers, playtesting our own games or other people's games is a big part of the Dreamation experience. I think we need to make this clear to Vinny. Dreamation is becoming an indie game Mecca, but part of that is the playtesting opportunity. At this con, I ran my one playtest and played in two other playtests (gobi's Do and macklinr's Mythender), and they rocked.

[Verge] Why is this a cyberpunk game?

2009-02-19T18:19:09Z

Verge claims to be a cyberpunk game. Well, technically, it claims to be a post-cyberpunk game; I suspect I need to write a short section that explains both cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk are.

Last week, Verge's #2 fan, Jason Corley*, asked me why I think Verge is a cyberpunk game. Between the two of us, and later amended by Raffaele Manzo (rafu) on Story Games, we came up with an answer. In several parts:

The game connects ideas in strange ways, in a postmodern way. Certain cyberpunk authors do this, too. For example, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash connects software viruses, Sumerian mythology, and Samurai sword-fighting.
Specifically, the game asks you to connect technologies, ideologies, and organizations. These are the bedrock of 80's cyberpunk.
The way the network connects ideas can feel a little strange, even schizophrenic, the way a Philip K. Dick story feels (to me, anyway).
The characters in the game tend to be "free agents." This is a common cyberpunk trope.
The game focuses a lot of mechanical attention on control. This is another cyberpunk trope.
Free agents + technology + control vs. organizations (authority) + ideologies = cyberpunk.
The game has a mechanic that lets you "burn" your friends to get ahead. Another cyberpunk trope.
The mechanics of the game have a cyberpunk "feel": a network with nodes and edges, "signal and noise" dice, etc.

* jeisen is Verge's #1 fan, since he's played every version of the game since I started writing it. But Jason has run independent playtests and called me long-distance to tell me how to make Verge better, so he's vying for that spot.

Positioning conflict resolution system

2009-02-18T19:50:11Z

I wrote up a new conflict resolution system based on my idea of jockeying for position (advantage) before finally resolving it with a die roll.

This is a neat little set of mechanics, I think. It uses pools of d6es, grouped into dice melds to activate maneuvers your character knows, and each maneuver does different things (like shift the position or increase the damage potential). It's still a rough idea, but I think there's enough there to understand where I am going with it.

[Dreamation] My events

2009-02-12T18:44:13Z

I'm running two events at Dreamation:

R205: Verge (PLAYTEST); "Even Philip K. Dick Wasn't This Crazy" by Adam Dray. An INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED GAME in production by Adam Dray - Part of the Indie Games Explosion! This is a playtest of Adam's very non-traditional science-fiction/cyberpunk role playing game. Play begins with quickly snapping together a strange future world, and then plunging your characters into it. Friday, 8:00PM - 12:00AM; One Round; All Materials Provided. Beginners Welcome; Fun, Under 18 Requires Parental Clearance.

R266: Carry. A Game About War.; "1969" by Adam Dray. An INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED GAME from Hamsterprophet Productions - Part of the Indie Games Explosion! Lay your war game tactics aside and fill the boots of U.S. soldiers deep in the rugged jungles of Vietnam near the end of the war. Carry your burdens through carnage and brotherhood and see what kind of man you become. Saturday, 8:00PM - 12:00AM; One Round; All Materials Provided. Beginners Welcome; Serious, 18 & Over ONLY.

Most oddly, I do not remember writing the copy for Carry. I wonder if someone else spruced that up, or if I cutnpasted it from the Hamsterprophet site without remembering it.

[Metrocalypse] Outline

2009-02-06T18:10:31Z

A month ago, I mused here and on Story Games about my "Transit City" idea. In brief, it's a D&D 4E setting concept where a whole city and its inhabitants get sucked into a monstrously dangerous, magical world (more or less the typical D&D world) and the city's surviving people start warping into magical forms (more or less the typical D&D races and classes).

My discussions with folks on Story Games, on Firan, and on the Foundry have been most fruitful. These have helped me refine and enhance my setting idea into its present form.

A City out of Time and Space

I had planned to use a fictional medievalish city, but Ralph Mazza challenged that. "Why not make it a real 16th / 17th century city...there's lots of cool medieval city maps on line, and I bet you could find some really interesting historical things to include."

Indeed! Taking that even further, I think that the setting is a vehicle for bringing any city into the D&D world. Also, any harsh environment can serve as the world into which the city is teleported. For example, dikaiosunh wants to make 15th Century Great Zimbabwe the city, with Shona-speaking people vying for survival in a harsh ice world. For the core setting, I want to include something most English-speaking people can get their heads around in a few minutes (for convention play, too): Oxford, England, at the start of the 1800's.

The primary idea is that you take any city you want and plunge it into a D&D world and that D&D world invades and razes the city almost (but not quite) to the ground. The streets become a nightmarish apocalypse. The denizens begin their weird magical changes. The magical world's natives (monsters and humanoids) invade the city. This simple concept lets you play with whatever "civilized" culture you want -- Classical Greek, Chinese Han Dynasty, Renaissance Italy, Colonial America, even modern Sydney, Australia -- and still play D&D with all the trappings. The city could even be from fiction (Minas Tirith from Middle Earth, for example). The game asks, "What if this city and its people were teleported into a harsh D&D world? What if these people started transforming into magical D&D characters? How would these people react?"

If I publish this, a large part of the rules will focus on taking whatever city you want and turning it into a metrocalypse. While I think pre-gunpowder civilizations would work best, I will include some rules for handling Industrial technology (you choose: a) it works as usual and here are the stats for guns, or b) this stuff doesn't work as expected any more).

I also have to think about how to treat religion. If you're playing a Crusader in Jeruselem, or a Jesuit at the Vatican, you're not going to start worshiping Pelor (one of the standard deities of Good in D&D). You're going to keep praying to God. Players will want all the "dressing" of the mechanics for these "new" religious options. What divine powers are they learning as a result of their Jesuit training? How does Satan play into the mythology? I think I have to tread carefully here. I don't want to insult anyone.

Metrocalypse

I keep using this word! I coined it while discussing the setting idea with Firan players. dikaiosunh heard me use it and he keeps saying it, so I think it's catching on. Admittedly, the term sounds a bit heavy metal (Daniel says he air-guitars every time he says it). That may be more a benefit than a hindrance, though. I want this world to be fucking metal.

"Metrocalypse" sums up the feel of the world. It's a metropolis and an apocalypse. And it's rockin'.

No Barriers

I'd originally envisioned this huge domelike barrier that surrounded the city. Powerful dragons or someshit had put up the barrier as soon as they discovered the city a few weeks after its appearance. The barrier keeps more big monsters from getting in. The barrier keeps more of the city's people (and PCs) from getting out. I imagined that the underground tunnels provided a sneaky way out and that kobolds or something had figured this out. Alternatively, there was no barrier, but the wilderness outside the city was so dangerous that no heroic-tier character dare leave the harbor of the city's walls.

Ron Hammack hammered me for the artificial nature of the barrier. Yes, it was a device to keep player characters in the city. Truth is, if the players have bought into the setting concept at all, then they have tons of stuff to do in the city. My real goal needs to be making the city interesting enough to keep the players' attention. If exploratory missions lead them out of the city, that's fine. All the "points of light" are in the city, so they'll have to return to recharge and rest.

Points of Light

D&D 4E introduces the "points of light" concept. Essentially, the typical D&D world is an extremely dangerous place full of monsters, but it is dotted with settlements of friendly (or at least not overtly hostile) folk. These are the points of light in a dark world.

The metrocalypse setting follows this pattern. Everywhere outside the city is dangerous, though player characters might discover small native villages who are friendly to them. The city is a magnet for monstrosity. It, too, is a terribly dangerous place. The city's inhabitants band together in temples, apartment blocks, and garrisons. These are the new communities. These are points of light.

Daniel has offered the term, "pools of darkness," to describe specific locations in the city that are site-based adventures. These are opportunities and challenges for the PCs. Sure, the streets are dangerous, in general, but the local graveyard is animating the corpses from the graves and an army of skeletons is now marching house to house to root out city folk for some nefarious purpose. The local graveyard is a pool of darkness.

Common Features

If (when) I create this as a product to sell, I realize that Dungeon Masters will entertain their players in myriad cities from world history. Nonetheless, I want all of those gamers to have some touchstones of common experience. Certainly, the "I was a seamstress on Earth, and now I weave spells in this horrible metrocalypse" bit is a shared experience. I want a little more though.

I am thinking that the core world should have some unique features that all players will eventually encounter. Daniel suggested giant creatures with buildings on their heads. I'm not sure I entirely get that, or how it works.

I want to create a new humanoid race who is behind the teleportation, or at least who know about it and investigate (and profit off) the new city appearances. There are different "transit" cities all over this planet and they come from all kinds of different places. I imagine a strange chameleon race. Maybe they're actually chameleon-lizard-people, but they could be gnome illusionists, too. They sneak around the city invisibly and spy on people. They collect stuff from buildings and take it back to their labs outside the city. Occasionally, the chameleons abduct citizens for "testing." I'm aiming for weird lizard-people with suction-cup hands and big-brained skulls, though.

Also, Roger Carbol suggested a heretical cult who predicted the metrocalypse. They are survivalists. They prepared food and weapons. They organize citizens and protect them from danger. The survivalists also might have the first clue about getting back home. I think this group needs to be a core setting element.

[Misspent Youth] Free Ashcan PDF

2009-02-06T16:45:34Z

Says author indie_insurgent:

So as part of the ongoing deashcanification process for Misspent Youth, I've decided to release the pdf of the ashcan version for free.

Please read, play, enjoy, and let me know what you think. I'm now working on the final version, so feedback now is especially crucial.

Thanks.

This was the first game product I edited. Also, this game is very fun to play.

[One Bad Egg] The Purifiers

2009-02-04T17:54:22Z

Yoinked from drivingblind:

Shrouded Agendas: The Purifiers

The Shroud has changed the world in many ways, some profound, but others more subtle. This is the story of how the Shroud changed a man’s beliefs without changing his body. A man named Wilhelm ark-Trasser found himself on a quest that led him into the dark heart of the Shroudlands. There he faced the toughest challenge of all: remaining true to his principles in the face of adversity. The Shroud changed him, and he changed the world. Will the Shroud change you?

Within these pages, you will find details about Wilhelm ark-Trasser and his group of missionaries, called the Purifying Horde. You'll also encounter three new nonplayer characters, nine new monsters, a new disease called shroudrot, the bizarre device called the shroudmask, and six adventure ideas. All together, it's enough material to launch a full mini-campaign suitable for heroic tier characters, plumbing the fundamental question: when do the ends no longer justify the means?

Shrouded Agendas: The Purifiers is priced at $4.99 and is on sale now!
Release date: February 3, 2009

One Bad Egg Bookshelf beta users get early access. Sign up for an account today!

Available at Indie Press Revolution

And RPGNow

Coming soon on Paizo!

I edited this product!

In past products I edited for One Bad Egg, I was mostly doing copy editing. The products were simple and focused (a new class, a new race, a new set of gods). The Purifiers is a different thing. Unlike most of OBE's other products, it is aimed at DMs, not players. It's the closest thing to a "module" or "adventure" that they've published. It contains a bit of backstory, some badass villains (and their means, motives, methods, and opportunities), and a bunch of adventure seeds, plus a bunch of other things I got Lee to add. My contribution was substantive editing. I reorganized the text. I asked Lee for lots of new material and got about 4-5 more pages of additional text from him. There were probably a dozen back-and-forths on the writing-editing cycle.

Working with the author--the talented Lee Hammock--was a great joy. He is a goldmine of creativity and talent. He is easy to work with and doesn't take my editorial changes personally. He "gets" the fun stuff. For instance, I said, "You have this 'ark-' prefix as a special title for your main character. I think it'd be cool to explain what it means." I got back this great bit about a festival contest where the winner gets the title (which confers some bonuses on Diplomacy checks, if I remember correctly). Awesome. "Okay, so let's make that contest a skill challenge." I got back this multilayered challenge with hot coals and combat and an obstacle course. Sweet! Together, Lee and I turned the creepy shroudmask procedure into a Ritual, and imagined the main villain, Wilhelm ark-Trasser, as an Unbroken paladin (in the appendix).

One of my goals for this product was to be a sort of capstone for the Shroud series of products. You don't have to own any other OBE stuff to use The Purifiers, don't get me wrong. But I made sure that the mini-campaign pulled in bits and pieces from OBE's other products. You'll find mentions of Apelords, a couple Gods of the Shroud, and the Unbroken. I made sure that sidebars explain stuff, like the deities, in case you don't have those products. Also, I didn't force anything that didn't naturally fit. You won't find any mention of the Death-Mother in there!

This product has a lot of crunch. There are monsters, statted NPCs, a template, a disease, a ritual, a skill challenge, and a magic item. There's a lot of non-crunchy stuff, too, because I think a lot of players do love the color and backstory. The NPCs are fairly well-developed people with their own motivations. If you're looking for a creepy adventure that doesn't have to be solved in combat, you could approach The Purifiers as a diplomacy mission. There are lots of adventure hooks. We mention a big dungeon-like area but don't develop it at all (man, it'd be fun to do it up--just sayin'). There is a world of room here for a DM to add her own creative strokes, or plug in other published products.

So, of all the OBE work I've done so far, I am by far most proud of The Purifiers. I didn't just improve the author's work by fixing grammar and spelling. I got to work closely with Lee to draw out every last bit of creativity the man could find (all while he was moving to a new place, too).

I hope you'll check it out. It's only five bucks!

[Verge] Revision

2009-01-28T07:08:09Z

I have finished revising my post-cyberpunk RPG, Verge, and it is ready for internal playtest. If you're especially brave, you might try to run it for your friends. It's strange, but it produces interesting and fun stories (at least in prior versions).

This round of revisions include a complete rewrite of the resolution system, inspired by In a Wicked Age. It's way simpler than the RISK-dice version. It's post-victory stakes negotiation, "with a stick," as Vincent says about IaWA. It's "if you don't do X in the fiction, I will do one of these pre-approved things to you via network changes." It should work much better than the old system.

I've tightened the language a lot. I finally came up with names for the !'s (surges) and ?'s (drains). The radio broadcasting terminology pervades. Signal and noise, frequency and signal strength, surges, drains. Where will it stop?

I run this thing Wednesday evening for the "traveling group." I'll revise after that, as needed, and then I'm running it as a scheduled event at Dreamation. I may have really ugly printed copies (dare I say "ashcan") to hand out FOR FREE at the con.